Group items tagged

"For about five years around the turn of the century most of my days were spent helping clients manage their knowledge. Back in 2000 knowledge management (KM) was really big. Every year I'd head off to Amsterdam for the obligatory industry conference, KM Europe. We even had our own home grown conference, KM UK, with pretty much the same people but with less impressive venues. Then suddenly things went quiet - KM Europe was suddenly cancelled in 2005, KM UK limped along (and is still going today). KM had lost its way. The promises hadn't been fulfilled. Of course KM just didn't disappear overnight - it just degraded gracefully. One client, a very large UK multinational, shed their KM teams and announced that KM was now 'embedded in the business'. KM still goes on but it's likely to be on the margins and not essential for peak organisational performance whereas in 2000 KM really was positioned as a game changer. So what happened? That's a good question and one which this post is my first attempt at exploring why KM failed to deliver on its early promises. And why do this sort of navel gazing now? Because knowledge management appears to be making a comeback but this time it has a shiny new suit and it's called social learning."

"This talk explores how we can use game mechanics to facilitate more engaging and inspiring learning experiences for our students. The talk was presented during Learning Innovation Talks 02 held at Taylor's "

Steve wheeler 2012 learning 3.0 and the smart extended web

Here is this week's round-up of articles and other resources looking at social media for learning and social learning.

The crux of using social media in any endeavor, as Gina Schreck has said, is, "Social media invites and allows interaction from others. How are you inviting that interaction?" The popularity of social media tools means that sooner, rather than later, those of us in the field will need to examine what this means for us. Among other things, as noted by Taleo's Tom Stone, use of social media tools is an excellent means of making learning more transparent. As he says, "It's captured, searchable, and has much greater reach beyond the two people talking in the hallway."

"Critical thinking can be defined as "learning to think better by improving one's thinking skills." Individuals who are critical thinkers use the thinking process to analyze (consider and reflect) and synthesize (piece together) what they have learned or are currently learning. Unfortunately, much of everyone's thinking tends to be biased, imprecise, unclear, uninformed or prejudiced. Since this becomes severely limiting, critical thinking is needed to improve its quality and value."

"Thinking. The capacity to reflect, reason, and draw conclusions based on our experiences, knowledge, and insights. It's what makes us human and has enabled us to communicate, create, build, advance, and become civilized. Thinking encompasses so many aspects of who our children are and what they do, from observing, learning, remembering, questioning, and judging to innovating, arguing, deciding, and acting."

"Knowledge Sharing is the Learning, Learning is the Knowledge Sharing"

"Lee Rainie will present a keynote discussion on networked learning at the The Free Learning 2.0 Conference on August 22. The conference is "a unique chance to participate in a global conversation on rethinking teaching and learning in the age of the Internet.""

Here are three of the developing topics that combine social with learning - and should be worth integrating in your business during this year.

Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually. Why is this so?

Game-Based Learning, and particularly serious games that teach content, are fast becoming utilized in the classroom. Frequent success stories are appearing, from Minecraft in the elementary classroom to games that teach civics. There is curriculum that pairs World of Warcraft with language arts standards, and many other variations where the gaming focus is on content. What about 21st century skills? Yes, games can be used to teach and assess 21st century skills! As the conversation in education reform moves forward, and educators are increasingly leveraging 21st century skills, we need to consider how to couple games with reform. Let's take a look at what many consider the top three 21st century skills and how games can teach and assess them.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared August Connected Educator Month. For those educators who are interested in using game-based learning might like to join a community and connect with others already are endeavoring in the journey. Especially in the same subject, the exchange of experience will be very valuable for specific targets. This post is focused on online communities(part of the information is from ConnectedEducators.org)

It's tempting to get caught up in every new practice or technology that comes along in learning. Here's how to assess when and why they're right for your business

In the following Q&A, Andrew and Wendy shed light on how collaborative learning turned a failed merger exploration into a success. A version of this post originally appeared on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog.

"PPT discusses how to use social collaboration to re-energize your workforce and optimize your core business processes with purpose driven collaboration. Learn how to streamline problem solving, execute faster and drive rapid decision making to achieve your core operational and financial performance metrics. Learn how The Transformational Opportunity from Social Collaboration will come from closing Business Loops: - Customer Performance = Traditional CRM + Customer Networks - Talent Performance = Talent Management + Talent Networks - Financial Performance & Risk Mitigation = Financial Management + Performance Networks - Supply Chain Performance = Supply Chain Management + Business Networks "

"For more than half a century, computers have been little better than calculators with storage structures and programmable memory, a model that scientists have continually aimed to improve. Comparatively, the human brain-the world's most sophisticated computer-can perform complex tasks rapidly and accurately using the same amount of energy as a 20 watt light bulb in a space equivalent to a 2 liter soda bottle. Cognitive computing: thought for the future Making sense of real-time input flowing in at a dizzying rate is a Herculean task for today's computers, but would be natural for a brain-inspired system. Using advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry, cognitive computers learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember-and learn from-the outcomes. For example, a cognitive computing system monitoring the world's water supply could contain a network of sensors and actuators that constantly record and report metrics such as temperature, pressure, wave height, acoustics and ocean tide, and issue tsunami warnings based on its decision making."

In business, everyone keeps confusing information with knowledge. They're different. Even the dictionary says so: Information: Facts provided or learned about something or someone. Knowledge: Information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Information is ones and zeros. It's raw data, or a list of facts. It's instructions on filling out a business license, or the instructions Google provides when you sign up for Adwords. The obvious stuff. You can often acquire information for free: Go to the Associated Press for raw, un-analyzed news. Or read a 'how to' on building your own car. Knowledge is something else entirely. It's what you get when you combine information with _analysis_ and _experience_. Knowledge is information distilled down to actions. It can and should cost you money, or time, or something else. If you want real analysis of the news you just grabbed from the Associated Press, for example, you might go to the New York Times and pay (at least after 10 views). To learn AdWords tricks that can actually help you profit, you'll buy a book, pay for a seminar or hire a consultant.

AMHERST, Mass. - As computer scientists this year celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematical genius Alan Turing, who set out the basis for digital computing in the 1930s to anticipate the electronic age, they still quest after a machine as adaptable and intelligent as the human brain. Now, computer scientist Hava Siegelmann of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an expert in neural networks, has taken Turing's work to its next logical step. She is translating her 1993 discovery of what she has dubbed "Super-Turing" computation into an adaptable computational system that learns and evolves, using input from the environment in a way much more like our brains do than classic Turing-type computers. She and her post-doctoral research colleague Jeremie Cabessa report on the advance in the current issue of Neural Computation. "This model is inspired by the brain," she says. "It is a mathematical formulation of the brain's neural networks with their adaptive abilities." The authors show that when the model is installed in an environment offering constant sensory stimuli like the real world, and when all stimulus-response pairs are considered over the machine's lifetime, the Super Turing model yields an exponentially greater repertoire of behaviors than the classical computer or Turing model. They demonstrate that the Super-Turing model is superior for human-like tasks and learning.