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."

Cognitive computing, as the new field is called, takes computing concepts to a whole new level.  Earlier this week, Dharmendra Modha, who works at IBM's Almaden Research Center, regaled a roomful of analysts with what cognitive computing can do and how IBM is going about making a machine that thinks the way we do.  His own blog on the subject is here.

Leaders are expected to operate at such a rapid pace and high level in this business environment that critical-thinking skills are paramount for success. Even though critical thinking may seem like a soft or unquantifiable skill, it's actually a key competency for leaders who operate in today's business climate. In fact, the lack of critical thinking can lead to questionable decisions, which in turn could potentially tarnish a business' reputation.

To what extent are you responsible for innovation in your company? The reality is that unless they're in research or product development, most people in organizations don't think of themselves as innovators. In fact, many managers discourage their people from inventing new ways of doing things - pushing them instead to follow procedures and stay within established guidelines.

LinkedEducation.org is an open platform aimed at further promoting the use of Linked Data for educational purposes.

Dr. Bernhard Haslhofer works as instructor on Web Information Systems at Cornell Information Science. Just recently he gave a course which examined technologies for building data-centric information systems on the World Wide Web. Semantic Web Company (SWC) had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Haslhofer to examine the question "How to teach Linked Data?".

Howard Gardner of Harvard has identified seven distinct intelligences. This theory has emerged from recent cognitive research and "documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways," according to Gardner (1991). According to this theory, "we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. Where individuals differ is in the strength of these intelligences - the so-called profile of intelligences -and in the ways in which such intelligences are invoked and combined to carry out different tasks, solve diverse problems, and progress in various domains." Gardner says that these differences "challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning. Indeed, as currently constituted, our educational system is heavily biased toward linguistic modes of instruction and assessment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, toward logical-quantitative modes as well." Gardner argues that "a contrasting set of assumptions is more likely to be educationally effective. Students learn in ways that are identifiably distinctive. The broad spectrum of students - and perhaps the society as a whole - would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a numbers of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of means."

One of our most important living philosophers, Dan Dennett is best known for his provocative and controversial arguments that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes in the brain. He argues that the brain's computational circuitry fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and that what we call consciousness - isn't. This mind-shifting perspective on the mind itself has distinguished Dennett's career as a philosopher and cognitive scientist. And while the philosophy community has never quite known what to make of Dennett (he defies easy categorization, and refuses to affiliate himself with accepted schools of thought), his computational approach to understanding the brain has made him, as Edge's John Brockman writes, "the philosopher of choice of the AI community."

But the second thing he explained to me was more subtle and way more powerful. He explained that I should start working on a project as soon as it was assigned. An hour or so would do fine, he told me. He told me to come back to the project every day for at least a little bit and make progress on it slowly over time. I asked him why that was better than cramming at the very end (as I was doing during the conversation). He explained that once your brain starts working on a problem, it doesn't stop. If you get your mind wrapped around a problem with a fair bit of time left to solve it, the brain will solve the problem subconsciously over time and one day you'll sit down to do some more work on it and the answer will be right in front of you.

Much hype surrounds the topic of gamification. Often seen as a technique to add engagement to existing tasks, projects, marketing campaigns, and initiatives, the term gamification unfortunately lacks the seriousness it deserves. This report seeks to change the point of view and demonstrate where gamification plays a role in the enterprise. More importantly, executives will discover how gamification can drive behavior and outcomes through both monetary and non-monetary incentives in enterprise class settings.

Artificial Intelligence is not yet HAL from the 2001: The Space Odyssey…but we are getting awfully close. Sure enough, one day it could be as similar to the sci-fi potboilers being churned out by Hollywood. If that's your idea of what artificial intelligence is all about, then you aren't far off the mark. In layman's terms, artificial intelligence is about creating intelligent machines through the use of intelligent computer programs. Most, if not all of artificial intelligence (AI) tries to mimic human behavior. The scale of ambition is different, but artificial intelligence programming is a full-fledged field in the cutting edge of science today. If you have some interest in the world of tomorrow, check out these websites to grasp what artificial intelligence is all about.

For the most part, the biological metaphor has long been just that - a simplifying analogy rather than a blueprint for how to do computing. Engineering, not biology, guided the pursuit of artificial intelligence. As Frederick Jelinek, a pioneer in speech recognition, put it, "airplanes don't flap their wings." Yet the principles of biology are gaining ground as a tool in computing. The shift in thinking results from advances in neuroscience and computer science, and from the prod of necessity.

What are some insights about the world that neuroscientists take for granted, but would seem counterintuitive or mind blowing to most non-neuroscientists?

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

For some time now, Structured Dynamics (SD) has been touting the unique advantages of ODapps, or ontology-driven applications [1]. ODapps are modular, generic software applications designed to operate in accordance with the specifications contained in one or more ontologies. The relationships and structure of the information driving these applications are based on the standard functions and roles of ontologies (namely as domain ontologies), as supplemented by UI and instruction sets and validations and rules. When these supplements are added to standard ontology functions, we collectively term them adaptive ontologies [2].

Ontologies are to the Open Semantic Framework what humans were to the Mechanical Turk. The hidden human in the Mechanical Turk was orchestrating all and every chess move. However, to the observers, the automated chess machine was looking just like it: a new kind of intelligent machine. We were in 1770.

Gamification isn't just about badges and trophies. Experts weigh in on what you need to make next-generation customer rewards really work for your business.

What is it that drives decisions at the exact moment of choice and action? - even in the most mundane, everyday action? If the choice-point itself is a true moment of chaos - a point where literally anything is possible - then what is it that guides us through each of those infinitesimal yet ubiquitous moments?

In the world of technology companies, the "labs" concept and nomenclature found a friendly home. Microsoft Research has FUSE Labs, there's HP Labs, and Mozilla Labs, and let's not forget the once-mighty Google Labs (R.I.P.), among many others. Digging into the history of big tech "labs" would be the subject worthy of a book, of course, but in the context of this narrow post, it's worth briefly noting that for those that make things and are builders, every big company needed to have something like this for branding, recruiting, and to keep the innovation engine humming as their corporate parents grew larger and more bureaucratic.  Perhaps each one wasn't referred to as a "lab" explicitly in name, as Amazon has A9 and Google now has Google X. No matter the name, there's something powerful in the word that reminds us of the old chem lab and that spirit of experimentation.