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The end of data?

David Weinberger on his new insight: there is no data; all is metadata. "There used to be a difference between data and metadata. Data was the suitcase and metadata was the name tag on it. Data was the folder and metadata was its label. Data was the contents of the book and metadata was the Dewey Decimal number on its spine. But, in the Third Age of Order, everything is becoming metadata."

Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 18, 2004

Six Criteria of an Educational Simulation

Clark Aldrich has come up with this synthesis [PDF] of this research into educational simulations: "Specifically, there are six criteria that are emerging as critical, and ultimately not just to simulations but all educational experiences. Three criteria, linear, systems, and cyclical, describe content. And three, simulation, game, and pedagogy, describe delivery."

simulation Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 18, 2004

Innovation & Synergy: The Power of the Implicit

A sixty minute video lecture by Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs on communities. I could not watch the full video as it kept crashing Safari. I will try later using Firefox. "This talk will describe new mechanisms for automatically identifying communities of practice within large networks and for elucidating the spread of information within those communities. In addition, I will describe a novel methodology for information aggregation that leads to accurate predictions of uncertain events in the real world."

innovation Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 15, 2004

Creating Accessible Macromedia Flash Content

An in-depth look at how to make Flash movies accessible.

Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 15, 2004

Emotional Learning

Some wonderful research on emotional awareness is explored here in this Learning Lab Denmark article. "Some sensory inputs never reach our conscious attention, but brain scannings have shown that they cause brain activity nevertheless. Thus, we register more than we are aware of."

Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Leader’s Guide to Storytelling

Some wonderful writing and analysis is taking place at Steve Denning's "Leader's Guide to Storytelling" weblog. In one post he analyzes why the 1984 Super Bowl ad for the Macintosh was a success and why similar efforts failed in the dot-com boom. His opinion is that the dot-com ads were 'inscrutable narratives'.

storytelling Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Innovate

Innovate is a bimonthly e-journal featuring cutting-edge research and practice in using information technology to enhance education.

Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 11, 2004

Gaming helps traders score big-time

Playing games increases performance at the workplace: "Video game skills and a good poker face online are becoming essential job qualifications in the financial markets, with recruitment drives assessing potential star traders in online gaming exams."

Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 11, 2004

Panadol 24 Pack: new instructions for consumers

Nice usability study governing information design on the Panadol label : "This case history demonstrates how information design research and practice can bring about useful social change on a large scale. It is a lightly edited version of a report prepared for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in August 2002 following our work on redeveloping the consumer instructions for Panadol, the most widely used paracetemol analgesic in Australia." Here's my take from this experiment: you need to test for maximum performance first, even if this means that you have to ignore regulations. "We did not, at this stage, ensure that the new instructions complied with the regulations. Rather, we developed the instructions with a view to maximising their performance, regardless of the regulatory requirements." [thanks e-literate]

instructional design Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 11, 2004

Gary Klein and Cognitive Task Analysis

I'm just back from the Gary Klein masterclass on Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) for Expert Knowledge Transfer. CTA is an analysis of the cognitive skills needed to perform a task proficiently. Gary is a very smart person with many solid years of experience analyzing how firefighters, commandos, marines, etc. make decisions under pressure. His first book, Sources of Power, is filled with many stories of high pressure decision making. His second book, The Power of Intuition, expands on the first and offers concrete methods on how to prepare people for making high-pressure decisions. CTA has many different methods, but Gary mentioned 3 that he uses often: 1) Knowledge Audit, 2) Concept Mapping, and 3) Critical Decision Method. A knowledge audit is done to quickly identify the key cognitive elements of job; concept mapping is done to quickly identify the domain of the decision; and critical decision method is done to analyze decisions made during a critical incident. Now, I know that I am not giving you much detail here, but I did try to Google for some of Gary's papers and came up with something interesting, CTA for Instructional Designers [DOC]. This papers provides a nice overview of CTA and its different methods of elicitation. The reason I am attending this masterclass is because I feel that Gary's CTA methods can give me more ammunition to analyze and learn how people use intranets and websites. I will try to write a more detailed paper on this when I get the time!

instructional design, intranets Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 07, 2004

Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in

James Farmer provides this longish paper on how weblogs can play their part in facilitating communities of inquiry. I truly believe that weblogs and wikis, if implemented properly, can add value to the entire online learning experience, not only for students but also for instructors. The difficult part is trying to persuade instructors or academic decision makers to try this low-effort but high-presence technology. This paper can surely help in kick-starting the conversation. "The discussion board is the ubiquitous communication tool within these OLEs and hence significantly shapes the kind of communication that takes place. In light of this, the degree to which a successful community of inquiry can be facilitated through the use of discussion boards is examined and compared to the possibilities afforded by weblogs in the same role. Weblogs, it is argued, offer new opportunities in the development of social, cognitive and teacher presence online and should be considered in the development of or alongside established OLEs."

community, blogging Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Using a “strawman” for page layout design

"Using a strawman design -- a design that is created with the intent of discarding it -- can help to overcome many of the difficulties in the design process."

Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Information Hunters

This is a brilliant synthesis of research on information foraging -- the finding that the human behaviour when searching for information was similar to that of the hunter-gatherers and animals in search for food. Here are some recommendations: