Institute for the Future. recently had the opportunity to hear Bob Johansen from the Institute for the Future present a vision of the future that is at once compelling and frightening: The term “consumer” will be replaced by “participant.”. Our perception of reality will be largely shaped by technology. More powerful, personalized filters will be required to block out data bombardment. A “generation”—an age group that shares a basic worldview and cultural experience—will continue to shrink such that parents and children may be three or four generations removed from understanding each other. MORE >>

There’s a lot of traffic on the blogosphere about best practices for social media. But we need to be cautious not to confuse best practices with “rules.” Many of our colleagues in higher education in general, and Extension in particular, are seeking some hard and fast policies about social media. Here are four misconceptions that could encourage the development of “rules” about social media, and why I think we should totally ignore them. Social media needs to be carefully monitored for accuracy.” Instead of seeing value in social interaction with knowledge, they fear it. We’re good at it. MORE >>

A few weeks ago I boarded a flight to St. Louis for a conference and met a young man who made me realize how connected we’ve become with mobile technology, across not only distance, but across cultural and social divides. On a typical connecting flight, the person in the seat next to me will be from thousands of miles away from my home , and sometimes light years away in their social, cultural and world view. Not surprisingly, this disparity can lead to just the briefest of conversations followed by hours of reading, listening to MP3 players, or watching in-flight movies. link]. MORE >>

In private industry, successful use of new media technology is evaluated by the subsequent effect on revenue, with recognition, pay increases, and promotion the payoff. In contrast, Higher Education is slow—some say glacially slow– to adopt new media, and is ill equipped to reward individuals when they do incorporate new technologies in their research, education, and outreach strategies. Let’s take a quick look behind the glacier. In higher education, peer-review is the Holy Grail for gaining acceptance and receiving credit for scholarly work. MORE >>

When I was a kid, the whole world was one giant “Learn-O-Rama.” For the most part (outside of the standard classroom), I picked what interested me and learned my way through it. It was a nonlinear process, much like a bloodhound follows its nose to sniff out new information. Nonlinear learning suggests that how we work our way through information can itself contain information, and frame our learning. It’s the road not the destination,” said Jared Bendis, a multimedia developer who works and teaches in the area of nonlinear multimedia storytelling at Case Western. Yikes.) MORE >>