Keith De La Rue: The Ivory Tower
Keith De La Rue: The Ivory Towerknowledge management Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 28, 2003
IBM: Time for change: Innovation in an era of overtime and budget cuts
IBM: Time for change: Innovation in an era of overtime and budget cutsEven when we all agree that creativity in the workplace is important, how can people begin to dedicate time to innovation so that it becomes part of their everyday lives?
- Set a deadline
- Do something that's bite-sized
- Connect and stay connected with innovative people
- Make innovation part of something you can't avoid
- Spend saved time
innovation Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Howard Rheingold: Stanford Lecture on Smart Mobs
Howard Rheingold: Stanford Lecture on Smart Mobs"A (Windows Media) video is now available of a 90 minute lecture and Q&A by Howard Rheingold, delivered at Stanford University on October 24, 2003."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 27, 2003
Greg Costikyan: The 300 Games Every Game Developer (and Gamer) Should Know
Greg Costikyan: The 300 Games Every Game Developer (and Gamer) Should Know"There are several reasons why I think it would be useful. For one thing, I (and everyone who comes into contact with game design wannabes) am often shocked at how ignorant such people often (not always) are--how limited their experience with games. In some cases, they don't even seem to play games at all; in others, their experience is limited to a very narrow range of games."
This would make Clark Aldrich very happy. In his book, Simulations and the Future of Learning, he devotes an entire chapter describing games that the readers should play in order to get into the flow of simulations
[thanks Mark Bernstein]
gaming Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 27, 2003
Institute of Design: Methods
Institute of Design: Methods"In addition to the human factors framework, the Institute of Design uses a range of methods to help gather data, analyze and understand human behavior, and to develop prototypes to test human-centered designs. Following are brief descriptions of some of those methods."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 27, 2003
Croner Human Resources: You
Croner HR: YouAdd tag Permalink | Friday, October 24, 2003
Strategy+Business: Colonizers and Consolidators: The Two Cultures of Corporate Strategy
Strategy+Business: Colonizers and Consolidators: The Two Cultures of Corporate StrategyThis is good business strategy article. Especially interesting because of the movements in our industry (Docent, Click2learn merger and more to come). It describes the relationships between colonizers (the pioneers) and the consolidators (established firms). Here's what I would like to see in our industry "established firms must create, sustain, and nurture a network of feeder firms -- young entrepreneurial companies that are busy colonizing new niches. Through its business development function, the established company could serve as a venture capitalist to these feeder firms. Then, when it is time to consolidate the market, it could build a new mass-market business on the platform that these feeder firms have provided."
Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 24, 2003
Amazon does text search
Amazon does text search"A significant extension of our groundbreaking Look Inside the Book feature, Search Inside the Book allows you to search millions of pages to find exactly the book you want to buy. Now instead of just displaying books whose title, author, or publisher-provided keywords match your search terms, your search results will surface titles based on every word inside the book."
Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 24, 2003
Macromedia: Central
Macromedia: Central"Macromedia Central will help Flash application developers sell and deploy their applications to the public. Central will provide an integrated online marketplace, including a try/buy framework and secure managed transactions."
[Free Beta Download]
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 23, 2003
Wired: Sim Soars as Learning Tool
Wired: Sim Soars as Learning Tool"Of course, there's a lot about flying a plane that you can't learn in front of a computer. You can't learn how the controls feel, how the plane handles, or how to use your muscles to control it. But for many tasks in flying, Flight Simulator can be a great help to the learning process."
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 23, 2003
New e-learning blog: Dusk and Dawn
New e-learning blog: Dusk and DawnMindful_Learner, the same person with whom I co-wrote the 10 Damaging Myths and who wrote Learning by Design for elearningpost has started his own blog. Welcome to the community!
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 22, 2003
David Weinberger: When blogs get really popular
David Weinberger: When blogs get really popular"While there are a hell of a lot of blogs and blog readers, blogs aren't even close to being a mainstream phenomenon the way email is. It'll happen. And here are some guesses (note: guesses) about what they'll look like when they do..."
blogging Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Knowledge at work: Knowledge searching
Knowledge at work: Knowledge searchingDenham takes the Johari Window concept of human interaction and applies it interestingly to the different states of organizational knowledge.
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Information Today: Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Inf
Information Today: Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites"As long as personas are developed with diligence, the planning and development tool has three key benefits for interface design projects of all kinds. First, personas introduce teams to hypothetical users who have names, personal traits, and habits that in a relatively short time become believable constructs for honing design specifications. Second, personas are stand-ins with archetypal characteristics that represent a much larger group of users. Third, personas give design teams a strong sense of what users' goals are and what an interface needs to fulfill them."
[thanks infodesign]
interface, personas Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Revised Category List
Revised Category ListI've revised the category listing on elearningpost -- found the last listing too narrow. Here's the new listing:
- Big Picture -- decision making, strategy, leadership, etc.
- Cool Stuff -- cool examples of interactives, websites, resources, etc.
- Education -- e-learning in schools and universities
- Information Design -- IA, usability, experience design, accessibility, etc.
- Knowledge Management -- Well, KM stuff
- Learning Design -- This might be controversial, but I find instructional design too narrow
- News -- facts and stories on the industry
- Standards -- learning standards related stuff
instructional design, interactives Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Harvard Working Knowledge: Getting a Handle on Employee Motivation
Harvard Working Knowledge: Getting a Handle on Employee MotivationThis article describes how to use the "8 motivational anchors" theory first put forth by Edgar Schein at MIT some thirty years ago. Examples on the best communication and recognition strategies for each of the 8 types are also given.
Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Merger: Docent and Click2Learn
News: Click2learn, Docent plan to mergeTook the lead from Jay Cross and found this press release on Forbes. Will have to wait and see how this development affects the industry.
Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Jay Cross: Informal Learning: A Sound Investment
Jay Cross: Informal Learning: A Sound Investment"Informal learning is effective because it is personal. The individual calls the shots. The learner is responsible. It
Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 20, 2003
Discovery Channel: First Flight
Discovery Channel: First FlightSome real good interactives complementing the video on the Wright Brothers' first flight.
interactives Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 20, 2003
Disability terminology: Preferred words and phrases
Disability terminology: Preferred words and phrasesAttended a Web accessibility seminar last weekend and got some pointers on which words and phrases would be acceptable to people with disabilities. Here's a partial list:
- Do not use "disabled" as a class noun (e.g. "the disabled are..."), instead use "disabled people" or "people with disabilities"
- Also, do not use "handicapped" or "invalid" when referring to disabled people
- The preferred antonym for "disabled" is "non-disabled", not "able-bodied" or "normal"
- Use deaf and speech-disabled instead of "deaf and dumb" or "deaf-mute"
- Use hard of hearing when the hearing loss is partial
- Use mobility disability instead of "limp" or "lameness"
- Use visually disabled to refer to people who cannot see.(An acceptable antonym would be non-visually disabled or sighted).
- Barrier - obstacle preventing a person with a disability from accessing information
- Equalization - people with disabilities taking their rightful place alongside non-disabled people
Here's a detailed list from Accessibility Ontario.
Add tag Permalink | Monday, October 20, 2003
David Weinberger: Metadata and Desire
David Weinberger: Metadata and Desire"Every ordering we come upon is one that we've made up to suit some purpose. The foods in the grocery are grouped by type (fruits, pastas) but also by type of container (canned fruits next to canned vegetables) and impulse buys (chewing gum and The Weekly World News) not because God has declared this to be the right way but because it happens to accord with the way we use and buy the goods for sale there... So, while it seems perfectly feasible to map one schema to another, it isn't always possible because they have different purposes in life and thus express life differently... But that means that metadata, an abstraction of an abstraction, is directly and intimately tied to human projects and human desire."
metadata Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 17, 2003
William Bardel: Depth cues for information design
William Bardel: Depth cues for information designA good thesis on using the different depth cues to display complex information. Bardel proposes three different type of cues -- 1) perspective, 2) occlusion related, and 3) focus related. He's explains his concepts by using some of Tufte's famous diagrams. On the whole, I found this paper to be a very informative and an easy read.
Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 17, 2003
MSNBC: Are Computers Wrecking Schools?
MSNBC: Are Computers Wrecking Schools?"Oppenheimer is brutal in his assessment of the well-to-do "high tech" schools he visits, all too often finding teachers and administrators in a fog of self-delusion, bragging about glitzy student PowerPoint productions that in fact reveal scant understanding. He is equally cutting about the technologic follies he sees in underprivileged schools. This time he lays blame on ambitious administrators and clueless federal programs that ignore the real needs of teachers -- many of whom need careful coaching even to find the "Enter" key."
school Add tag Permalink | Friday, October 17, 2003
Don Morrison: Strategic vs. Doctrinaire Blending
Don Morrison: Strategic vs. Doctrinaire BlendingDon made this presentation at the Strategy+Practice in Blended Learning Conference in London last month. He talks about some of his experiences with blended learning and on what works and what does not.
[PDF, 450 KB]
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, October 16, 2003
Digital Web: Think Beyond
Digital Web: Think Beyond--Think Global"First, there is the basic site that is simply internationally-friendly, then there are multilingual sites and sites that target other cultures. Let