Group items tagged

blog by Eli Dourado on March 6, 2013 on binge learning. Excerpt: A combination of technology (DVRs) and market service providers (Netflix, Hulu, On Demand) have transformed how and when and where we watch "television." I suspect that students want the same things. Technology and market forces appear to be reshaping how and when and where we learn. Perhaps we education providers should pay attention. But the kind of bingeing that people might like to do with online courses is entirely different. Most people who sign up for an online class at Udacity or Marginal Revolution University want to take the class for its own sake, not as a requirement for some broader credential. The point is not to learn and forget-it is to indulge an interest. This seems like a more natural way to learn than traditional educational structures can offer: develop an interest and mercilessly indulge it until another interest supersedes it. It is a method that conserves the mental energy associated with willpower, leaving more of the brain's resources to focus on the material itself. Since it relies on the student actually being interested in the class, it is hard to fit into a physical schooling environment, where classes have to begin on a schedule, go slow enough for everyone to keep up, and run in parallel with other classes. Online education also saves the resources associated with context switching. Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Each time a high school student has to change classes, she has to quickly stifle the thoughts and questions raised in previous classes to focus on the current class. She has to expend mental resources remembering where the previous session of the current class left off. And when she returns to the class that stimulated the thoughts that had to be stifled, she may not recall them. Far better to focus on-or even to binge on-one subject until she is at a good stopping point.

interesting job of the future--professional triber--someone who puts together project teams on demand

Mary Meeker's annual report on trends. Slides 109-112 on millennials work behavior and expectations and what they value are very interesting--training and development, flexible work hours, cash bonuses. Buy personal technology and use it in the workplace. Millennials much more likely to be on demand workers (4$%) than gen x, baby boomers, or mature workers. Slide 126 is on freelancer categories. Slide 127 is on how quickly freelancers can get work from internet. Slide 128 shows internet enabling commerce such as ebay Etsy, airbnb, upwork, uber, thumbtack, soundcloud, and stripe.

Jane Hart speaks to the context behind her upcoming workshop (starts April 6) on updating our approaches to helping people learn based on what many are already choosing to do. Food for thought ... MAEA and learning design? Blog post?

video (18 minutes) by Clay Johnson, February 2012, hyping his book The Information Diet. Goes to food analogies again and again--pizza tastes better than broccoli--and abundance of entertainment, affirmation, and fear is secret pact between customer and media producers online. What is it that people want? What we tell them through our clicks and searches is that we want to be right acc: to Johnson. AP story--poll economic worries pose new snag for Obama. On Fox news, it says that Obama has big problem with white women. They changed headline and reduced story by 600 words, taking out everything positive about his work. They know that readers will read something negative about president. "Opinion tastes better than news." How AOL should make its editorial decisions--they want to spend no more than $84 on a piece of content. How they decide: traffic potential (using SEO to find out what people are searching for--no one is searching for Pentagon Papers or broccoli); bottom of list is editorial integrity because it is market inefficiency. Believes that we are living in land of info abundance where we want to be affirmed, not told the truth. SEOs complete the inquiry to present tabloid types of info that attract us and distract us and misinform us. Our clicks lead to poor information diets, a disease. Make a whole news movement, a slow news movement, demand that media change. We as readers need to upgrade. information over-consumption, not overload enable infoveganism--eat food, not too much, real food at bottom of food chain. 2. Use source material--show your work. 3. Let me pay you for ad free experience. 4. Content is not a commodity (for news producers)

Blog by Adam Dachis on Lifehacker on living with technology, 8.31.10. Outlines the problem and provides answers. We're surrounded by gadgets that demand our attention, constantly fragmenting our ability to properly focus on the task at hand. Living with technology doesn't mean we have to live with an addiction, however. Here's how to beat tech burnout. Back when we were tethered to desktop computers, this wasn't such a problem. First of all, technology had yet to proliferate in society at the enormous level it has nowadays, but more importantly we didn't have little computers (read: smartphones) that we could stick in our pockets. Previously we might check out email at a few convenient intervals during the day. Now these tiny little multitaskers are requesting our attention wherever we go. We have many more opportunities to interact with information and so we run into two more dilemmas: filtering an information overload and using our technology appropriately. The Solutions So what do we do about it? Overcoming a tech addiction and avoiding burnout requires work. There aren't any magic tricks that'll pave the road to freedom, but here are some ideas to get you started. Out of Sight, Out of Mind Stop Multitasking Never Apologize Get Organized

article by Tim Wu in NYT weekly magazine, June 3, 2014 in Culture. Maintaining your brand The euphemism is "sharing," but Klein would probably just call it selling a personal brand, whether you consider yourself the pretty young thing with literary tastes and a traditional side, the family man who brews his own beer or the tough lawyer with a sense of humor. It can be nice to share, but brand maintenance takes constant work and demands consistency. A serious self-brand should have some presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, Google+ and Tumblr; keeping it all up can feel like working as an unpaid intern for a Z-list celebrity known as Oneself. excerpt Any old-timer will tell you that anonymity online is nothing new, but how things originally were. There has, of course, always been an anonymous culture, usually tied to deviancy or dissidents. In the '80s and '90s, anonymity was indelibly linked to online culture, concurrent with getting at stuff that was otherwise hard to find or illegal. It was kind of the point really, to go where, as one early adopter wrote, "no one knows you're a dog." It allowed users to escape to a place with few restrictions, where you could say things, and maybe do things wholly without social consequence. In the early days, there was no need for any consistency with the rest of your life, and that's what was so great about it.

Bob Marshall on what an effective group workshop looks like--September 30, 2014, quite demanding yet doable. he above story illustrates a range of features of an effective workshop: Certain shared proficiencies in e.g. Skilled Dialogue, Lean Coffee, etc.. Pre-reading (shared), including "standard" texts - here including Nancy Kline and Chris Argyris. Clarity of purpose "just why are we here?". Shared purpose "we're all here for the same things". Folks tweeting and googling continuously during the workshop. Amanuensis / cybrarian to facilitate shared learning in the workshops. Democratic agenda-setting. Mutual exploration of topics. Active curiosity. "Essentiality" - avoidance of rabbit-holes and extraneous discussion of details. Focus on impacts (as compared to busyness, or outputs, or even outcomes). Post-reading - following up new references. Follow-up conversations, actions. Feedback. - Bob Afterword In writing this story, it seemed to me that a video of a workshop in action would be a great addition to the resources available to BaCo staff to help them appreciate the nature of an effective workshop. Maybe one day I'll have the opportunity to write and/or direct such a video. Further Reading What is Dialogue? ~ Susan Taylor (pdf) Share this: inShare10 Email Print More

Jarche on reflection, August 26, 2014 "Here is a typical example of inefficient knowledge-sharing at a conference. A problem is presented in a plenary session and participants are immediately asked to brainstorm and give feedback. But why was the issue not presented weeks ahead of time? Probably because nobody would have reviewed it? What can be achieved in 10 minutes of thinking on demand? Not much. What is really achieved with 50 to 100 people in a room, a presenter and then questions from the floor? Nothing, other than the semblance of building and sharing knowledge. The conference rut reflects the workplace knowledge rut."

good article on how more work is shifting to an always-on demand model in order to succeed or at least stay employed. Mathew Ingram, August 20, 2015

Excellent post on helping clients define what they want: do it on purpose with new clients; demand benchmarks, describe assignment, restate the problem again...

ALISON MOOC--"With more than 1.2 million unique visitors per month and 250,000 graduates worldwide, Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online (ALISON), founded in 2007, is considered by some the first massive online open course (MOOC). " blog by Ellis Booker, Information Week Education, Excerpt: "Our focus is workplace skills," company CEO Mike Feerick told InformationWeek in a phone interview. Indeed, ALISON started with two globally in-demand skills: English and IT literacy, the latter in the form of ABC IT, a 15- to 20-hour training suite that remains the site's most popular course." Excerpt: "Employers don't care where you found those skills or how much you paid for them," he insists. Rather, employers want one thing: Verified competency. One service ALISON offers is tests for prospective hires that employers can administer to check the competence of job applicants who come with ALISON certificates. For a small fee, students can purchase an ALISON certificate after successfully completing a course, as a PDF, paper parchment or framed parchment."

Unusually good assessment IMO by Jane Hart of how modern learning differs from traditional training practices, 4/28/2014. She identifies six key features: autonomy small and short continuous on demand social anywhere, anytime, on any device Are these features then the new standards for learning concierges, learning coaches, learning stewards and facilitators? As well as for the learners themselves?

The first will do anything you tell them, as long as the ones, zeros, and higher-level instructions pan out. The latter will do a variety of things depending on their needs, moods, emotions, and understanding of what is happening and acceptable and important. When the human beings start using the technology, failure becomes a problem that must be managed. As most anyone who has had their email hacked can tell you, the weakest link in any security system is usually the humans. And sometimes the humans leave the door wide open, in part because they don't understand how to close it, don't care enough about closing it, or think the IT folks are just jerks for demanding it be checked so often.

This article on Resource Link, September 21, 2011, captures the learning environments we wish to bring to businesses, nonprofits, and membership associations. "Social Media - what do you need to know? In the 21st century, learning networks are richer than ever before. Social media, including tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow connections with professionals to be developed in offline and online worlds in new and exciting ways. No longer are we limited geographically. Social media allows us to connect not only to those we know, but also to those who we don't know, but who share our passions, our interests and our profession. Despite never having met in the physical sense, it is now possible to share links, comment on educational research, debate, collaborate and create new knowledge with individuals no matter where they are working." Another excerpt: So….Social Media and Professional Learning Communities? What is the connection? A school which is a professional learning community focuses upon removing the walls between classrooms (metaphorically, in all cases, physically in some!), encouraging collaboration, dialogue, ready access to colleagues and an openness to challenge understandings and current 'accepted' knowledge. Excerpt: Roberts and Pruitt, in their book Schools as Professional Learning Communities (p3, 2009) quote research that suggests that the major obstacle for schools who wish to develop as learning communities is the provision of resources such as time to collaborate, leadership support, information and ready access to colleagues. Social Media is not the total answer; but in schools where money and time are in short demand (and which school isn't in this situation?), they can go part of the way in meeting these needs. 1. social media providing to time to collaborate 2. social media providing leadership support 3. social media providing information 4. social media providing access to colleagues

article by Gail Sessoms, Demand Media good definition of where silos may exist--one department, similar worker types, geographic,

article on diversity by George N. root, III, Demand Media

work/life integration not work life balance anymore

Article by Tanmay Vora, January 2016 on VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, complex & ambiguous) Traditional hierarchical structures are fading away to give way to purposeful networks and communities of people working together to achieve a shared purpose. The cumulative impact of these forces demands a new mindset and competences for leaders to be able to stay relevant and make a positive difference to people and hence, business.