Blogs as a Basis for Social Networks

Interesting to see the buzz around Diso.

DiSo (dee • zoh) is an umbrella project for a group of open source implementations of these distributed social networking concepts. or as Chris puts it: “to build a social network with its skin inside out”.

Our first target is Wordpress, bootstrapping on existing work and building out from there.

This aligns pretty well with my experience of Learning and Networking with a Blog. It appears to be heading in a good direction where you can have a distributed understanding of the social graph. While that sounds somewhat like OpenSocial, I'm still not sure that I believe that OpenSocial gets me what I really want/need - interacting with the social graph across sites.

This is also a good direction in that it starts with something that you own as an individual - your blog (as opposed to starting within the walls of Facebook).

Of course, this is early, but the general trend of seeing distributed, open social network solutions is encouraging.

Master's Education Technology or Instructional Design - Which Programs? Why?

I'm hoping people might be able to help a reader who has an inquiry that I really don't know much about...

I've been reading your blog for a while. I've read the an older blog post on Online Master's program's, but I am still quite lost.

I would like to take a two year Master's program in education, education technology, or instructional design. Right now I'm leaning towards the University of Colorado Denver or the San Diego program.

I am a corporate trainer wanting to expand my skills and knowledge to creating interactive training programs (eLearning).

I am wondering if you have any suggestions on which Master program is would provide a solid education on this subject?

I've known several people who went through the San Diego program and were quite good. But other than that, I don't have enough experience with this question to have any real thoughts.

Help?

Visual Thinking - Do You Have Questions?

I've been having a bit of dialog with various folks from the VizThink conference about whether and how much Visual Thinking relates to eLearning. See:

• Crash Course in Visual Thinking
• VizThink and Visual Thinking and Learning - Still Not Sure

for background. These discussions have diverged into a discussion of whether I'd get value personally from the conference given my past challenges with being able to figure out how to create diagrams.

Well Dave Gray has decided to take this on in an online session. You can see more information and sign up by clicking this link: How is Visual Thinking Related to eLearning?

One important note on the description. It implies that I'll be answering questions - actually, I'll be asking questions. Hopefully Dave will be answering.

In fact, if you have questions that you would like to see answered, please let me know.

You Sit on a Throne of Lies!

It is the time of year in which Christmas movies make their appearance on basically every channel. I couldn’t help but watch, in its entirety, the movie “Elf” starring Will Ferrell. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I enjoy a good stupid movie sometimes. It will not ruin the movie to tell you that this is a scene in which Buddy (a “Real” elf) discovers a faux Santa.



This clip got me to thinking about the tradition of Santa Claus. Who here remembers when they found out Santa wasn’t real?* I know that I remember exactly where I was when my older sister told me the news. I was 5 years old and it was Christmas morning. I think she was mad at me and declared, “Well, Santa’s not real! I saw mom and dad put stuff in the stocking!” I went up to my parents and asked if Santa was real, and they said, “Do you believe he’s real?” I said, “Yes!” and continued to believe for about 2 more years until my 1st grade class made it clear that he was not real.

Has anyone else ever wondered why we continue a tradition of lying to our children about Santa? I mean, I don’t think I’m emotionally damaged because of it, but in retrospect, it’s a strange tradition.

And I bet you didn’t know this, but a school psychologist has sought to answer this question about children and Santa Claus. Yes, Virginia, School Psychologists do it all!** Interestingly, the article makes the point that believing in Santa is not only harmless, but there may be actual sociocognitive benefits for children to believing in Santa, including fostering traits of kindness, cooperation, generosity, reciprocity, and creativity.

First, it’s the parents that have a hard time with children discovering there’s no Santa. One study of children who no longer believed in Santa Claus reported predominately positive reactions upon learning the truth, suggesting a largely benign transition. However, their parents reported sadness in reaction to their child’s discovery, perhaps signifying the loss of their child’s innocence.

Second, writing letters to Santa gives children a chance to practice kindness. For example, studies of letters to Santa showed increased requests to Santa Claus for gifts for other people after the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. In another study, children increased their donations to children with handicaps after hearing a story about Santa Claus.

Lastly, the author argues that believing in Santa requires imagination, and this ability for young children to engage in magical thought and fantasy can promote both creativity and cognitive development. It is possible that there are moral lessons to be learned, such as having hope, reinforcing good behavior, and teaching children the importance of expressing gratitude for the gifts they receive.

My jury is still out on the tradition, though this article makes me lean toward thinking it’s okay. I just love research-based decisions. There is the fact as well that in addition to my distinct memory of finding out there was no Santa, I also have wonderful memories of the magical Christmas mornings in which I was filled with a sense of mystery and wonder as to how Santa knew I wanted to get the full set of the Glamour Girls Dolls*** I wouldn’t trade that memory for anything.

*Hopefully, this is not the time you found out, or I am the spoiler. No one likes a spoiler.
**Thank you David N. Miller, of NASP Communique. Happy Holidays to you.
***Small dolls that were probably the inspiration for today’s Bratz dolls. Those little dolls were sassy!

Best eLearning Blog

The winners of the Edublog awards were announced and I'm happy to report that this blog won for Best eLearning / Corporate Education. I want to thank each of you who voted in support of this blog. Sincerely, thank you!

They've offered an opportunity to submit an "acceptance" but honestly, I'm a bit at a loss on what I should put in an acceptance.

I definitely want to thank everyone who I've had conversations with over the past two years while writing this blog. The conversations have been the value for me and it's been tremendous.

I'd start to name names, but I'd be worried that I would leave people out. And it would take me a few hours to go through and find all the names. Should I just suck it up and do that? Or is there another way to do it? Do you think people would feel slighted if I happen to miss them? Is that worth the risk?

And other than thanking everyone, what else would I put in an acceptance? Anyone? Please help.

Update: Here's what I submitted -

Thank you for the edublog award. I want to especially thank my readers for voting for me, but I really want to thank everyone for all of the conversations we've had over the past two years. I really started my blog with the expectation that it would be similar to speaking engagements. What I've found is that it's a truly extraordinary Learning and Networking Tool. Through blogging, I've accelerated my learning greatly, I've met too many interesting people to possibly name and thank, I've met up with many of them face-to-face at various events, and truly it's become an integral part of my professional life. I look forward to continued conversation about the intersection of technology and learning.

Update: I just saw a post by Clive Shepherd - Edublog Award Winners. He's actually done a nice job on this that I may essentially rip off...

Now, I'm sure no-one starts blogging in order to win awards, although the appreciation of one's peers is always welcome. Looking at other measures of success, I'm probably financially a little worse off after devoting so much time to this blog over the past two years. Luckily there are benefits that far outweigh the costs, not least many new friends in the blogosphere and a hugely enriched understanding of the professional field in which I work. For this reason, I would recommend any other learning and development professionals out there with a story to tell and a willingness to share perspectives with your peer group to take the plunge and join us.

I may skip the financially worse off part. :)

Crash Course in Visual Thinking

Based on my post - VizThink and Visual Thinking - I've received quite a bit of input. If you've not really thought about the connections between visual representations and eLearning, it's likely worth going to the post and reading the comments.

If you've ever doubted the value of blogging, this to me has been an exceptional example of the value. I've had a few of the great minds in visual thinking helping me to understand:

a. how visual thinking relates to eLearning, and
b. how visual thinking can be learned.

I'm looking forward to a series of posts that Christine Martell is doing around learning to think visually. And Tom Crawford just did a post that points to some resources for getting started in visual thinking. Dave Gray just sent me a link to his Squidoo Lens. It has some great resources. Although he scares me a bit when he tells me:

Most of what I do comes down to pushing people off the cliff and making them dive in.

Very visual description yes. But with a small fear of heights ... :)

This is hopefully turning into a great introduction to how visual thinking can be learned.

Interestingly, Christine, Tom and Dave Gray from Xplane all point to Bob Horn's book as a great example. I'm a bit worried if that's the example. I'm even more worried when I went to Bob's web site. Dave Gray has always done incredible graphics that really help me to quickly understand a topic. Bob's web site violates a lot of what I would consider to be good design. Please, tell me that I won't think that's good design by the end of this crash course? I can't imagine that anyone thinks that good design?

VizThink and Visual Thinking and Learning - Still Not Sure

Tom Crawford is a person I consider to be a friend, colleague and really good person. He has a wonderful background including being director of eLearning at Root Learning and working for Masie organizing events. He is now CEO of Vizthink - and is organizing and running VizThink '08. I think he's done a wonderful job pulling together what looks to be a very interesting conference.

All that said - I'm still not sure I really get the connection between visual thinking and eLearning. I asked Tom to help fill me in and so we've had a little dialog on it. I thought it would be worth sharing a bit of our conversation and inviting others to join in.

Tom suggests...

When creating an e-learning module, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of pages of material required to document what is to be created. In some organizations, they have replaced the documentation with storyboards which are certainly a step in the right direction, visually. However, even storyboards can be complex to create, hard to update, and even harder to develop from. Visual thinking offers opportunities to streamline that development process especially during the review and approval stages. Very rarely will someone read pages of text, where a visual that communicates the same message provides a quick way for people to review and then respond. The process also benefits from the creation of personas, visual stories about the learner, which help keep the learner the focus of the design.

I agree with Tom about using multiple Persona (Personas? Personi?) to help focus the design effort, but that's design 101, not really visual thinking. I definitely agree with creating representations of what the screens will be and/or storyboards. Again, design 101. So, what the heck is he talking about with this? Isn't this standard design stuff?

Tom goes on ...

Another portion of visual thinking is usability, information design, and interactivity. How often have you looked at an e-Learning module and not know what to do? Colors are drawing your eyes in many directions, text fills the screen and is hard to use, buttons work sometimes and not others with no indication of why, the interactivity does reinforce the message, the visual (often clipart or a stock photo) are irrelevant and distracting…these are all signs that more attention needed to be paid to the visual (and visual thinking) aspects of the module. The use of space, color, images, text, and interactivity are all significant portions of the visual thinking space, and if not done well they can inhibit and even prevent learning from occurring.

Uh, Tom, this is exactly user interface design. There's got to be more, right? Or am I missing something in what he's talking about. I'm not saying good user experience design is not important - it is hugely important, especially for a lot of the projects that I work on. But, I have many sources for help with user experience - I'm not sure I get how that could be the focus of VizThink.

Finally, he gets to what I expected him to discuss...

Finally, and maybe most importantly, visualization can enhance almost every learning opportunity. When they are well designed, visuals communicate more information, more quickly, with more retention and longer recall. The application of visual thinking is across all art styles from photos and video to sketching and illustration to virtual worlds and even product design. New tools allow annotation, collaboration, and co-creation visually. Rather than talking about doing something, people use the creative process to solve problems, generate ideas, and streamline processes.

To me, when you talk visual thinking, I normally think of the wonderful diagrams that people can create from your concepts (see Marilyn Martin's picture of my eLearning 2.0 concepts).

There certainly is big value from being able to take concepts and turn them into diagrams, pictures, visualizations. Kathy Sierra is a master of that. I've always felt that there was a certain skill required to do that where you can crystalize the important issues, simplify, picture them and then render. I'm sure that Tom's conference will talk a lot about this.

And, certainly if you are able to do that, you can create more powerful learning tools. Just like you can create more powerful marketing tools, communication tools, etc.

So, again, I highly respect Tom and the conference. And maybe it's as simple as the fact that a lot of what we do in training, learning, education is try to crystalize the important points, and turn it into an engaging, meaningful learning experience. So, maybe it's a parallel and very useful skill. But I have this sense that Tom thinks there's more to it.

And, I just am still not sure I get what he's seeing? What am I missing here?