eLearning Roadtrip

Killing Themselves Softly: Newspapers and the Internet

One of the best things about my analyst job is that I "need" to subscribe to a wide variety of news services and feeds so that I can stay on top of what various luminaries, innovators and thought leaders are luminating, innovating and thinking about. I really enjoy sorting my way through the steady push of information nuggets.

Two such disparate nuggets came across my desktop in the last 24 hours, offering an ironic reminder of just how much transformational impact the broad adoption of a disruptive innovative technology can carry over (not very much) time.

My January 29 2009 Daily Stat from the Harvard Business School Press noted that 2008 was the year that the Internet overtook newspapers as a source for news. It referenced data from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press noting that for the first time ever, more Americans relied on the Internet for national and international news than on newspapers. In December 2008, 40% of those surveyed said they get most of their news on the Internet, up from 24% in September 2007. 35% still mainly read newspapers, and 70% say television is their primary source of news.

Then, just this afternoon I saw a tweet from etaygafni in which he pointed to what he called a "1981 primitive Internet report". I thought it was so good that I replied and "retweeted" (which means that I referenced his tweet in a new one of mine.) You can follow the links from the Twitter summaries posted on the upper right front page of eLearning Roadtrip.

Take a look at the YouTube video that Etay found: Tinyurl.com/ctt4jr. It is a 1981 news report from one of our local San Francisco news channels talking about the "science fiction" of someday being able to get up in the morning, get your coffee, turn on your computer, and read your news. Shocking. The reporter then takes us to the San Fran Examiner and SF Chronicle for their report on how they were starting to computerize the newsroom.

Etay said  - LOL - that it made him feel old. Kinda did for me, too. I remember when this kind of thing WAS science fiction. And now it's something I do every day.

I still go back for the second cup and pick up the papers, but those of us at my house have been wondering for how much longer. The papers keep getting get smaller, and smaller, and smaller...

Does this mean that we are really sliding down the backside of the newspaper adoption curve?

Sorta makes me miss my slide rule.

Twitter-licious

Twitter is a really interesting social media phenomenon. My friend Wayne Hodgins has told me that he thinks Twitter is going to be a transformational technology, offering a completely new arena for integrated communication - my words, not his, I refer you to his great blog, Off Course, On Target for his words on this and many other interesting subjects.

It is Wayne's interest in Twitter that got me to take a look and try it out. I'm finding that the more I use it, the more I like it. Twitter is all about microblogging - using posts of 140 characters or less to communicate with people that have chosen to subscribe to your various missives. I've seen a number of references that talk about micro-blogging as a channel for "snackable content": digital content that is easy to produce, easy to consume in little bits, and easy to "munch", lots of times during the day. Yum.

In Twitter-speak, each individual post is known as a tweet. If you need a way to sort your tweets, you might want an application such as  Tweetdeck, an AIR app that sorts your tweets into more manageable feeds so you can keep track those you follow, those that follow you, and the things that everyone says to one another.  If you want to refer people to an online article but the url takes up your whole 140 characters, plus, then you need a url-shortening service like tinyurl. If you want to post a photo you need use a photo service such as TwitPic. People who subscribe to posts coming from a particular person are knows as followers. Those of us who tweet sometimes finding ourselves asking our friends to follow us.

Yes...is IS like speaking a different language.

Why would someone choose to receive these little microblog posts all day, all the time? Well in some cases it a nice way to stay in touch with what friends are doing. Wayne, mentioned above, is in the midst of sailing around the world. I've loved being able to keep track of where he is, get links to googlemaps, see his pictures, stuff like that. And, as I mentioned before, he always gets me to think about things in new and different ways. While many of his tweets are sailing-related there are always info-gems scattered throughout. You can follow him at twitter.com/WWWayne

It's also a great way to see the kinds of things that capture the attention of people I respect in the industry. For example, I am a follower of Etay Gafni.  It's fun to see what he is thinking about with regard to new Internet innovations. Tweets from Etay are precise, funny, insightful, original and offer links to other great sites. You can follow Etay at twitter.com/etaygafni

I also follow Anne Derryberry from Imserious.net. Her insights about designing purpose driven games have been eye-opening. You can subscribe to her blog at www.imserious.net and follow her at twitter.com/aderryberry

One of the things I have come to appreciate the most about microblogging is that it gives me a way to sip from the unrelenting fire-hose of information that continually knocks me over and rolls me down the street. This is an easy, straightforward and not-very-time-consuming way to see what people I trust are interested in and what they are talking about.  Sounds like lots of wins to me.

(oh, by the way...you can follow me at twitter.com/edwsonoma )

American Public University System

Beth Davis and I were pleased to spend time with the academic leadership team at the American Public University System a couple of weeks ago.This is a proprietary university system with a mission of supporting the post-secondary educational needs of GIs whose educational plans programs get disrupted when they find themselves being deployed around the world. It was a great day with people who are very good at what they do, and are looking for ways to leverage new ideas and new media to get even better.

We spent several hours reviewing current and evolving views about learning technologies and pedagogy (and yes, we also talked about differences between andragogy and pedagogy.) But the discussions were primarily focused on getting a better sense of what is actually going on in the world of innovative technologies likely to affect teaching and learning. Our intention was to give APUS some ideas about sustaining learning innovation while simultaneously supporting enterprise adoption of technologies that enable engaging experiences and support at every point in the learning value chain.

While it's clear that most of us are drawn to the bright and shininess of new ideas, the fact is that the validation of those new ideas are tested through the adoption of those new ideas in practice. Some of the best discussion we had while in  Charles Town, WV focused on the challenges we practitioners face as we leap across the chasms between and among innovation, early adoption and majority adoption.

Why is it that some great ideas fail to make the transition and others survive? Not surprisingly, we had a few ideas about that......

I've posted a PDF version of the slides we used in our discussions here .