eLearning Weekly

DevLearn 2008 – Day 1 Recap November 13, 2008

Day 1 of DevLearn 2008 kicked off today with a great keynote from Tim O’Reilly (@TimOReilly), where he walked us through the Web 2.0 movement and how it has impacted learning and training. Here are some of the notes I took during his keynote:

• We should always try to follow the “alpha-geeks.” These are the people who are constantly hacking and studying things in unconventional ways. They are often the ones who come up with the most innovative solutions and they tend to have the most fun. If we follow their fun stuff, it’ll usually lead us to innovation.
• Tim started Make magazine and Maker Faire as a tribute to the alpha-geeks, and to promote their activities.
• The idea of Web 2.0 was introduced to re-energize the tech world after the dot com crash. Web 2.0 was a renaissance that soon took on a life of its own.
• Web 2.0 harnesses collective intelligence; this data is the new “Intel Inside.” Check out the O’Reilly book: Programming Collective Intelligence.
• Web 2.0 is about finding meaning in user-generated data – meaning which may be hidden from plain sight.
• Web 2.0 for the enterprise means turning your company data inside out for everybody to see (or paying a startup/vendor to do it for you).
• Good quote: “The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” – William Gibson
• Tim also spoke about machine learning and patterns. He recommended A Pattern Language and Air Guitar.

So, given all these changes, how do we teach the right skills? Follow these steps.

1. Follow your own pioneers and alpha-geeks.
2. Turn them into mentors.
3. Provide self-starters (tools) with access to the best online references.
4. Show, then do, with reinforcement from small successes.
5. Study success stories carefully, then don’t assume they are easy to emulate.
6. Stop fondling the hammer and focus on the house.

I also attended the following sessions. I’ve included the notes I took in each session:

112 – Mobilizing Tests: Building & Deploying Assessments to Cell Phones (Robert Gadd)

• Slides available here.
• Why use mLearning? Because we always have our cell phones on us. On average, corporate workers will return an email within a 4-hour time span. The same workers will, on average, return an answer to a text message with 6 minutes.
• OnPoint Digital’s mLearning system works with all major phone platforms (iPhone, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile). The system also allows people to choose their preferred modality for receiving communications (ex. by voice, text message, etc.).
• The OnPoint Digital system looks impressive and it sounds like the cost is reasonable.

202 – Work Literacy – A Key to e-Learning 2.0 Success (Tony Karrer)

• (After briefly meeting her at lunch, I was able to sit next to Wendy Wickham in this session. Very cool!)
• Handout / slides available here: http://tinyurl.com/workliteracy
• Things have changed drastically in the world of information systems. How can we keep up? Our brains are wired to seek out more information, but a barrage of information can ultimately reduce our IQ. We currently aren’t adapting well, given all the new information that is available during this day and age.
• Darwin quote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” We need to adapt.
• For knowledge workers, work and learning are inseparable. We are always learning.
• We are making a transition from information workers to concept workers.

309 – Learning 2.0 and Workplace Communities (David Wilkins)

• Slides available here.
• Case studies of ACE Hardware, Intel, Cisco, and more. All examples showed an overall community using social media, rather than the occasional blog or wiki.
• The idea of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) is antiquated; we are all SMEs now. All of us can contribute useful information to the overall community.
• As we use more social media, our roles will change to be social media architects, where we will build and nurture learning environments.
• Using one-off tech tools does not a add up to a social media strategy. Using WordPress doesn’t make your organization “2.0.” A bigger view is needed to make sure you build up a community within your organziation that can communicate and function on its own.