The Need for Instant Gratification

My husband has been - unsuccessfully so far - trying to convince me that I need an iPod Touch or some sort of similar device that would allow me to connect to the Internet without firing up my laptop. I'm interested, but not ready to bite yet. Yes, it would perhaps help me survive this class more easily, but would I use it beyond this class?

Whatever the answer to that question - and I don't think I'll know the answer unless I actually get one which seems a bit of an expensive experiment - I do know that I sort of wish I had one earlier today.

Here I was, reading my chapter for class, the one I just blogged about, and I kept having moments of I-want-to-remember-to-mention-this, or some other "brilliant insight" (ha!) but I didn't have the computer on. I would have rather made several mini-blog entries instead of one long one. I'm sure the long one missed what I really wanted to say because, let's face it, the chapter had stewed and stagnated for several hours in my brain by the time I could use the computer without my 18-month-old wanting to play her favorite computer game at Kneebouncers.com.

So what do you think? (Take my poll) Should I cave to my husband's thoughts and get a device? (BTW: I still haven't completely figured out how to use my cell phone and it gets left at the house more often than it actually stays in my purse.)

"The Computer is Not a Box, the Computer is a Doorway"

The quote above comes from Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText, on page 267 of Wikinomics. It is a description of how the Net Generation sees the computer, and something that I live every day, seeing the possibilities and yet feeling held back by the slow change that happens in any large organization with an established set of norms.

This chapter really hit home for me. I'm someone who desires and values organizational transparency, and who strives to always innovate or at the very least improve upon the processes I see around me. As I read about Geek Squad  and how "a continuous process of innovation and improvement ... keeps the agents motivated to perform at their highest levels" (p. 242), I couldn't help but think of myself and Daniel Pink's Drive. In Drive, Pink explains that Autonomy (being able to feel as if you have at least some control over yourself), Mastery (the continuous process of incremental improvement) and Purpose (what you're doing has meaning) are the motivating factors for most of the best achievers, not money.

The idea of wikis in the workplace, repositories of knowledge and innovation that don't just die in someone's in-box, is hugely appealing. How often have you spent days emailing back and forth to solve a problem, and then promptly forget how it was solved the next time it comes up? How many listserves are you subscribed to where the same questions come up repeatedly? How great to have a wiki to go to!

So what does "the computer is not a box" mean to me?  It means that I'm not confined by my computer, by massive in-boxes ("email itself is breaking" say Tapcott and Williams, after years of being used as the primary collaboration tool, it is no longer efficient, p. 252). Instead, I'm set free by my computer, by being able to talk freely and frankly with the president of my organization or the janitor who cleans my office, or the team that I work with all the time who lives on the other side of the planet. We can all build on each others ideas.

And I'm able to teach others, through sharing my knowledge in wikis, with video, through blogs. I'm not sure what my organization would do if I started a professional blog, and yet maybe that would be an interesting thing to ponder.

Our Instructional video

My mother-in-law will be staying with our daughter in the near future, and we thought it would be helpful for her to know some of the signs that Leah uses on a regular basis. Leah communicates with about 30+ signs, so we grabbed some of the most important on video, did some minor editing and posted it on YouTube and sent to my MIL.





Thought that was a pretty great use of technology to help MIL do some "pre-work" before she gets to our house!

Wikinomics Chapter 7: Wisdom and creativity of the crowd

Photo by aemde

Back to Wikinomics: in chapter 7 we're introduced the concept of companies opening up their platforms for others to modify and create other applications - mashups - by combining data with many sources. Perhaps the biggest challenges to this harnessing of the "wisdom of the crowd" are

1. Allowing "the most interesting applications" which tend to violate copyrights or the rights of the people whose data is being used.
2. Creating a business model that allows "the crowd" and/or its most productive members to share in the wealth.

Obviously, the crowd benefits from its own collective wisdom, but those especially productive members wonder if they shouldn't get more, somehow. I'm curious what has been done since this book was written to make some of these things happen. I know, for instance, that Flickr has teamed up with Getty Images in order for some Flickr contributors to have their photos marketed and perhaps licensed and make some money off of it.

Have you seen other ways that platforms have shared with the crowd? And how about all the apps now available for iPads, etc. Are any of those built by the crowd, bought by Apple? Any ideas?

We've got wikis, yes we do. We've got wikis, how about you?

I've just gotten off another weekend of class, my first for Designing Learning Interventions. Really need to get in bed, but wanted to post and share:

Both classes I'm in this semester are using wikis. I've posted to both now. On the wiki for Emerging Technologies I've started sharing resources for cool tools I've found (or that others have found. Sorry, Wendy.) that I thought would be useful for people creating learning programs. On the other wiki, I placed a rubric for an assignment that my professor asked me to create so we could then get the input of the class. She had planned to send it via email, but had already created this other wiki so it seemed a perfect use for it, a place where we could comment, collaborate, edit and determine what worked best for us.

I'm curious to see these two wikis for two very different classes and how they unfold. I've yet to use a wiki for something and have it "work" the way it was supposed to. My past experiences have all been me adding stuff to a wiki and no one else touching it. Do you need the massive numbers of Wikipedia to make a wiki worth it? Or is it just a matter of engagement?

Off topic - Just joined delicious, after Robin's recommendation. We'll see how this goes!

YouTubeSocial: Seeing the (Learning) Possibilities

How many times have you been in a class setting and someone pulls up a video from YouTube? Film/video can be a great tool for illustrating a point, using for a case study, or for other facilitation techniques. But what happens when you are teaching an online course? 

Enter YouTubeSocial. Complete with chat capability, it makes it possible for everyone to be watching the same video at the same time and critiquing it at once. One person, presumably the facilitator/instructor, holds the "remote" and can stop, start, pause and everyone's screen does the same thing.

Social Media and Social Good

Alongside all of my thoughts about social media and privacy, and the fear-mongering that sometimes come along with that, I've been repeatedly coming across articles on Mashable! about the good that social media is doing. Look at this great infographic that Robin tweeted.

Really, I've been blown away by the sheer number of articles I've seen. (I'll admit to not getting much of a chance to read them. Will be trying to make a point of doing so soon.)  One of the things I'm very curious about is how others see this playing out.

In a way I see technology as the great leveler. Put a computer in someone's hands with the internet, and they can take open courses from MIT. Or write a blog post that gets their ailing mother attention. Or a YouTube video that lands them on the Today! Show, or use social media to try to save lives from disease.

On the other hand, what does it mean for those who can't get their hands on the technology? Who live in places where the internet sounds like magic? Or who can't afford internet in their homes, but have to rely on public libraries or schools?

I don't pretend to know the answers, and maybe the gap is much smaller than I think. But I wonder...

Amaze yourself: Record your screen! and so much more.

Photo by thekeithhall

Okay all you tech trainers out there, or folks who have had to answer the SAME computer-related question ten million times for different people. Take a few minutes to download and learn Jing. Capture what you are doing on screen, narrate it, and share it in minutes!

I have been talking about doing this for months but never got around to it. I was afraid the learning curve would just be too steep. I don't have an excuse anymore, as it is super easy to use, and free to boot!

Who knew (besides my awesome professor!) that capturing audio with Audacity would be so easy? That podcasts (if you plan a bit ahead) don't have to be huge, laborious undertakings? Obviously, many people have, as they've been doing them for awhile, but I suddenly feel a little more ahead of the curve compared to others in my workplace.

This was the weekend I've been waiting for, and I have not been disappointed. I'll admit to being intimidated by Twitter, podcasts, and the amount of information out there - and moving a little deeper into this crazy labyrinth of the web - but I'm excited as well.

Test Post

Information.

BoldUnderline.

My first "Podcast"

Not exactly stellar material, but I made it in less than 15 minutes, and I've never done any of this before.

Cogs in motion: Amazing ways to collaborate at work and in learning.

 

Photo by ralphbijker

While none of us want to be "cogs in the machine," grinding away at mindless tasks and not being valued, there is something to be said for the way cogs all work together to accomplish the end goal. Some cogs are little, some are large, and they all do their part.

Wikis are a perfect example of how cogs, no matter how large or small, can contribute to a body of knowledge. Maybe I don't know a darn thing about aerospace engineering, but I'm a stickler for good punctuation and can help proofread an article for typographical errors, then write my own about good punctuation! As a class, we'll be using a wiki to share the cool information and resources we find for using technology in learning, and hopefully lots of neat ideas of HOW to use them as well.

I also love the applications for Google docs. Imagine a committee meeting via conference call where everyone can work at once on difference aspects of a document. Or even not at once, but at least not having to send back and forth via email, trying to keep track of whatever is the most recent.

Education as a self-organizing system

Photo by TEFL International

Found on Luis Suarez's Blog, the following TED talk about children collaborating in a self-organized way really gets the juices flowing. It is such a foreign concept. Can children learn without being taught? Of course they can! Are we prepared to let them learn in this way, in their own, collaboratively curious way?

I know I struggle with my little girl, my sweet 17-month-old. I want her to learn on her own, through play, through exploring her world. At the same time, I know that she will be in school some day (or home-schooled?) and there will be certain things she HAS to learn.

Yet again, the pieces of the puzzle that seem to draw attention to themselves are TRUST - trusting in our own natural ability to learn - and CONTROL. Can (Should!?) we attempt to control what children learn?

Social Media and Privacy

One of the things I've been fascinated and afraid of with social media is the privacy issue. It is SO easy to find some less-than-desirable information about people in the cloud, and not always within their control. 

I find that some people over-share: about themselves, about their families, about their friends. And I can't help wondering how it affects their futures. I know at the college where I work, athletes in particular have been warned repeatedly about what they post on Facebook, and what their friends post about them on Facebook. NCAA rules = no underage drinking. If you go to a party and your friend takes a picture of you with a beer in hand, you could be booted from the team. One of my favorite lines from an Equifax newsletter, paraphrased: you should treat your posts on social media sites as if they were public, because increasingly, they are.

Two posts I read today discussed this issue: one from a prospective employer's perspective, and the other as a "netiquette" column about how not to be boneheaded on your friends' social media sites.

So tell me: do you "Google" prospective employees? Teenage daughters' boyfriends? The new neighbor?

Shrinking inboxes? Less clutter?

Inbox Control

Read an intriguing post from Mashable about a guy who is trying to change how we use email. Interestingly enough, he is trying to do it by using social media instead.

For all of you who are tired of your overflowing inboxes, could social media actually be the answer instead of part of the problem?  I'm very, very curious, and thus, have subscribed to Luis Suarez's blog, Thinking Outside the Inbox. I haven't gotten much of a chance to read his theories, but Tip #3 in the Mashable post got me thinking:

"So the next week, sort out the Q&A. The way to deal with that is to set up a blog offering the answers. The blog will be indexed by Google, and your answers will be available to everyone out there. This means you are no longer part of the bottle neck, and you are helping people to feed themselves with the information that they need."

I have to wonder: would people within my organization bother to seek out my blog? Our website (on which we've toyed with creating an FAQ page but have never made it) is a mess that no one ever goes to see. It has some incredibly useful information - that no one ever uses. If I could regularly blog (with some screencasts!) how to do some things on the online calendar, I might be able to eliminate a few questions from my inbox.

Clutter Control
The inbox issue is just one part of an ongoing struggle to control clutter in all of its forms, from junk mail, to bills, to knickknacks, to my daughters toys in every room and the free t-shirts I get and never wear.  So I've also subscribed to Unclutterer.com. We'll see if it helps me accomplish my goals or will just be more information I don't use.