e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: eLearn-Magazine

  • The Perils of Prediction

    As we watch the spectacle of the jackasses in the mainstream media blithely continue to pretend to know what they’re talking about after being repeatedly and stunning wrong in the predictions of the U.S. Presidential primary, it’s worthwhile to look in the mirror. Stephen Downes has a good report card up for those of us who had the audacity to make predictions in last year’s eLearn Magazine‘s annual crystal ball reading. After giving each of us (including himself) a grade, he muses:

    So that’s it. What did I learn from all this?

    First, that there are two major types of predictions: one, which identifies a current trend, and says it will continue; and the other, that identifies something novel or unexpected. It seems clear that the former predictions are easy and safe and not especially useful. The latter, while not as safe, were much more useful to people.

    There are also different types of predictions. Some predictions speak to attitudes. Others speak to trends (including a subset of these that suggest a trend will go mainstream). And still, others speak of technological or system-wide advances. And finally, the most useful predictions identify side-effects – the result of some unexpected event and development. For example: predicting people will want video is one thing, predicting that it will become popular is another, predicting that Flash video will help video become accessible is another, but predicting YouTube is most useful of all.

    And third, scale is a tricky issue. There were many predictions that will probably come true – some day. But they did not come true in 2007. We want to reward such predictions, because we feel they are accurate, but unless it happens, it’s just another false prediction. Another trend was a slew (the perpetrators won’t be named) who correctly predicted last year’s event or trend.

    Good points all. I try make predictions about areas where I have some personal knowledge of events that maybe not everybody has and to be as aggressive in my predictions as I feel that I realistically can, but I do tend to err on the side of caution.  Sadly, I don’t think I’m nearly smart enough to predict something like YouTube so I generally don’t try to shoot the moon, so to speak. I think it’s good to know one’s own limitations.

  • FAS's Kay Howell on the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act

    Federation of American Scientists’ Kay Howell, who authored the research roadmap for the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act, has a column in eLearn explaining why passage of the act is so critical:

    Today’s students are not only comfortable with technology-they know how to use it effectively to solve problems, find resources, and build networks of people with shared interests. So why do we send them to places of learning and ask them to leave their technology tools at home? Why do the cookies on my ten-year old daughter’s computer know more about what she likes to read and how she likes to locate information than does her teacher?

    The answer, unfortunately, is fairly simple: As a nation we’ve been unwilling to make the investments necessary to give our kids and their teachers the same productivity tools used in the computer, pharmaceutical, energy, and other industries. The federal government funds substantial research and development (R&D) initiatives that translate into advancements in key US industries-and those investments pay off handsomely. Federally funded R&D, performed mostly in US colleges and universities, leads to improved productivity through better processes, products, and services, and the graduate students that participate in the R&D eventually end up as workers in the related industries. It’s a great model that has served our country well.

    Unfortunately, there is no such R&D model for the education sector.

    It’s a good read. And once again, I urge you to write your congresspeople in support of the bill and get your friends and colleagues to do the same.

  • e-Learning Usability Engineering Guide is Up

    Lisa Neal and I have an in-depth tutorial up on eLearn about how to do usability testing for self-paced e-learning courses (although the methods would work for collaborative courses as well). It was originally written as a stand-alone guide and I’m not sure how well it reads in article format. In any case, you may find some of the information useful.

  • Learning Objects Considered Harmful

    I have a new column up on e-Learn called There’s No Such Thing as a Learning Object. This has been a long time coming; I was an early advocate for learning objects–and still am an advocate, in some ways. But I think that the term has gotten so badly abused that we need to do something about it.

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  • Why Mashups Make the LMOS

    Regular readers know that I’ve been flogging the notion of a Learning Management Operating System (LMOS) pretty hard. The other day, LMOS partner-in-crime Patrick Masson and I published an article about the need to make LMS’s mash-up-friendly. Well, today, ZDNet editor David Berlind effectively connects the dots between the article and the LMOS concept. (more…)

  • Two New Articles in e-Learn

    I just had two new articles published in e-Learn Magazine. The first one, A Call to Arms, is an opinion piece arguing that we urgently need more direct faculty-technologist collaboration in LMS design if we are to make any kind of reasonable progress. The second one, which I co-authored with my colleague Patrick Masson, is an attempt to lead by example. In Unbolting the Chairs: Making Learning Management Systems More Flexible, we pair up as a teacher and a technologist to argue for changes in LMS design that would facilitate better support of the long tail of learning applications.

  • The Intractable Problem of Informational Cascades

    Stephen Downes’ new column on e-Learn does a great job of showing that solving the informational cascade problem is more challenging than I had presented it to be in my own article on the topic. In fact, his own analysis reveals that the problem may be harder to solve than even he himself suggests. The problem, as is often the case, is largely due to those pesky externalities, i.e., reality stubbornly refuses to conform to an elegant theory (and alas, Stephen is even more of a sucker for an elegant theory than I am). (more…)