eLearning Roadtrip

What an earthquake taught me about Twitter

We were rudely awakened this past Sunday morning when an earthquake threw us out of bed at 3:20 am. It was a big one. The roar of the quake, the smashing glasses, dishes, and pottery, accompanied by the sound of exploding transformers and the splash of hundreds of gallons of water being thrown out of the pool, was deafening.

And then the shaking ceased, the noise stopped, and it was all over.

Of course, we knew what had happened. We live in Northern California. People who live in "earthquake country" are prepared for earthquakes, or at least we like to think we are. Flashlights in every room, with shoes at bedside (to avoid bare feet meeting broken glass), 5 gallons of water and food/shelter for 72 hours. 

What we were NOT prepared for is the shock of sitting in the silence and the dark in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake that throws you out of bed at 3:20 in the morning.

The wifi and landline phone were dead; we had no power.  But I had a fully charged mobile phone and working cell service. I turned to Twitter and within about 15 seconds I learned that we had just experienced an 6.1-on-the-scale earthquake, the epicenter of which was just 9 miles to the southeast of where we live. I saw that friends in San Francisco and San Jose had been awakened by the quake, too, and had already checked in to see if we were okay. We saw that our friends in Napa had been slammed, and were advised not to drive over to help because the roads had been damaged. 

As the morning went on, we eventually posted pictures on Instagram and messages on Facebook to let friends and family know that we were alright. But what I learned in those first moments, when immediacy mattered most, was that in case of emergency, when WE needed targeted information, Twitter was where we turned first. 

 

 

 

 

Living Under the Sword of Data, on #Lrnchat

On May 9, 2013 I will have the pleasure of joining the crew at #Lrnchat for a session on the topic of learning analytics. You will find us on Twitter, Thursday, 8:30 pm ET/5:30 PT. Look for us at #lrnchat, follow along at @lrnchat.

 #Lrnchat is a regularly scheduled event that takes place every Thursday evening.  Participants using any number of tweeting tools (such as Tweetdeck and Tweedgrid) to keep track of the messages that fly around among the session participants. It is hosted and facilitated by a number of learning and development social media experts who shall remain nameless until I get their permission to drop their names. Questions get asked, responses get posted, conversations get started, friendships get launched. It's amazing how much one can pack into 140 characters! 

The name of this particular post, in anticipation of tomorrow's #Lrnchat, comes from one of my favorite analytics parables. In March of 2009, the lead designer from Google resigned in protest to what he described as an engineering culture that was obsessed by numbers. Douglas Bowman offered his reasons for resigning  in a blogpost entitled "Goodbye Google". In his explanation he gave the following examples of how data-obsessed Google had become:

"Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle."

In closing, he wrote that "I’ll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data."

I remember being struck by that phrase as the perfect way to describe the double-edged benefits and risks that analytics bring to discussions of learning, achievement, progress, success. I offer this as something that each of us should keep in mind as we gravitate toward a greater use of enterprise data in our decision-making. 

I know we will have 90 minutes to talk about this. In anticpation of the conversation can I just offer this observation - It helps to have an idea about the problem you are trying to solve before you dive into an analytics campaign. And once you DO know, you need to be prepared to respond. Problem identification, without taking action, is almost worse than not knowing at all.

Here are a few references that I hope you will find to be useful. Happy reading! See you on Twitter.

Background References

Goodbye, Google The blogpost written by designer Douglas Bowman when he resigned from Google in protest to the data culture around decisionmaking. http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

The Gawker story that picked up the story of event leading to Bowman’s resignation from Google http://gawker.com/5177144/googles-data-fetish-drives-away-its-top-designer

Articles I've written on learning analytics:

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/data-changes-everything-delivering-promise-learning-analytics-higher-education

http://www.astd.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/TD-Archive/2012/08/8-Realities-Learning-Professionals-Need-to-Know-About-Analytics

Recent tweets on Big Data –related topics by @edwsonoma

The Big Data Landscape http://bit.ly/12KXpvA 

11 Big Data myths http://bit.ly/15CD26B 

The Surprising Predictive Power of Analytics http://lnkd.in/M2VS9j 

The Rising Costs Of Misunderstanding Big Data http://lnkd.in/fBGWVP 

Ten things you need to know about Big Data http://tinyurl.com/cabxeam 

What's the skillset of a talented #BigData Scientist? http://ow.ly/kNKw7 

 

Roadtrip Diversion - Spring has Sprung

The last few months have been so busy that I have not been taking the time to blog. I rather expect that there is a client or two who might be a little bit testy if they thought that *their* project wasn't the most important thing in my world. Because you know, of course, it is.

Still, after a weekend in snowy Wisconsin I returned to northern California to be greeted by a frenzy of blossoms and blooms. They made me so happy I just had to share.

 

Trust Me

I'm not really sure why some are so surprised to find that we elearning pros frequently work with and for people who don't "get it" as well as we do. Of course they don't. Our practice is to help our stakeholders do a better job using (1) technologies in their learning practices and (2) learning technologies in their business practices. That's what we do. It's why our customers give us money.

Of course it's easy to get aggravated at the mis-steps, the voluminous RFPs, the jerk project manager, the spread-sheet-brained executive devil. Creepy association people. Of course it feels good to vent. Social media users have found that Facebook status bars, Twitter posts, and  blogs are easy ways to share just precisely how one feels about everything, to everyone, in an instant. 

I just want to go on record saying that I think a well crafted, snarky dart is a thing of beauty. Sometimes one must loudly and proudly proclaim a principled position and bitch-slap the opposition. And sometimes people say stupid things and deserve to be called on the stupid things they say.

I really haven't been able to come up with a good reason for people to completely lose their good manners just because it is possible, even encouraged, to say whatever one wants to say on the Internet. A rude remark is no less rude just because it is digital.

Lest anyone think I am sprouting a halo and wings, rest assured, I am not. My quest is rooted in enlightened self interest. It's all about trust.

Chris Brogan talks about the emergence and importance of Trust Agents. His and Julien Smith's book on the subject is based on the premise that while it is easier than ever to reach your customers, it's also less likely that they will listen unless they trust you. Trust is the most valuable online currency today. Trust comes from reputation. Reputation is built a variety of variables -  competence, commitment to excellence, discretion. The ability to conduct civil discourse.

Civility. What a concept. 

These days I am paying attention to what it takes to build and maintain trust. And a lot of what I am seeing seems suspiciously like common sense. Behaving toward others with the same courtesy that I would like them to behave toward me. Thinking before writing down the snide remark, and thinking twice before hitting send.  Being mindful of the impact of snark, and to remember that what I think is hilarious and witty can sound hurtful and mean to someone on the receiving end. Remembering that tweets and facebook posting do tend to have a life of their own, and to never forget the value of discretion. To never really believe one's own press releases, and maintain a sense of humility (even when you know you are right). And doing one's best to rise above the petty and the personal. 

It will make a difference. Trust me.

Snapshots from the Road

In the spirit of "a picture is worth a thousand words", here are a few snapshots from December roadtrips, including a trip to Berlin and another to northern Wisconsin. This time the travel itself became part of the story. Sonoma to San Francisco to Frankfurt, no problem. But then - snow in central Europe and the UK. Flights to Berlin were cancelled. So we did what any sensible traveler would do - we took the train. Got to Berlin a few hours later. Luggage arrived a couple days after that.

This was the 16th Annual meeting of Online Educa Berlin, the largest and most international elearning conference that I attend. It is held at the Intercontinental Hotel on Budapeststrasse. The main bar is the Marlena Bar. It is the site of many meetings, gatherings, networkings, reunions, and rendezvous during the first fews days of December. I learn as much from watching and listening to what's going on here as I do from the plenaries and sessions.

Berlin in early December is a wonderland of Christmas lights and craft markets. Hard not to get into the holiday spirit.

  
Despite this year's freezing temperatures plenty of Berliners gather for gluwein and jagertee, at Christmas markets all over the city. This one, the Weihnachts Markt near the Opernpalais along the Unter der Linden, is particularly good.

 
Sunday morning and once again snow threatened. Thankfully there were no flight cancellations this time, and only minor delays along the way. Before I knew it I was on the way back to San Francisco.

Which was good, since I turned around a few hours later on a red-eye to Green Bay. Just in time for the first artic blasts of the season. Within two days of arriving the bay out front of my family home had frozen over.

Fortunately my flights back to the west coast squeeked through a small window of clear skies, so I arrived back in Sonoma in time for a taste of winter, Wine Country style. That means it was sprinkly rainy, with temperatures in the mid 50s F. Fog rolling down from the hills around the valley, like big clouds of cotton candy. Fields are emerald green. Definitely not the kind of winter I grew up with!

Around the corner, through the eucalyptus grove. The fog and rain seem to bring out the smell of the sap in the trees. One of my favorite places.

 It's good to bring the Roadtrip home.

Dispatch from the Road -The Other Side of Jane Hart, #oeb10

Thanks to social media tools like Twitter, many of us who work in the technology-mediated learning arena find ourselves making lasting connections with fellow practitioners of this thing that we do with technology and learning from all over the world. With a little bit of practice and with virtual venues such as #Lrnchat and Facebook, one can form astonishingly robust connections with people that we wouldn't recognize if we walked past them on the street.

These days, when I attend an industry event such as DevLearn, WCET or Online Educa Berlin, I find myself scanning the tweetstream to see who else is attending that event, and then trying to find those people to say hello, face-to-face. Finding a fellow "tweeter" at a conference is a bit like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...and I know I am not the only one who feels this way. It always makes me smile when I overhear, "Wow, I follow you on Twitter. it is so great to meet you in person!" (a comment often followed by something like "uh, you don't look anything like your photo" or, my personal favorite, "That avatar looks just like you!"). It reminds me of how important it is to never forget about cultivating the other side, the inter-personal side, of the connections that we create online.

In the past few weeks  I have had the pleasure of spending face-to-face, in-person time at both Online Educa Berlin and at DevLearn with one of my personal favorite people to follow, UK-based social media expert Jane Hart. On Twitter, Jane is better known as @C4LPT.  As the managing director of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, Jane has been helping educational institutions and  businesses understand how new technologies can be used to improve education, training as well as business performance. She currently focuses on the use of social media for collaborative learning and working - as well as for social media marketing.

Can I just say - Jane's Top 100 Tools for Learning and her Pick of the Day are resources I use all the time. Best way I have found to keep track of the constant stream of new social media tools. If you are an elearning professional, whether corporate or from education, you need to know about Jane. 

Tonight, as Jane and I and a number of us converged upon Marlena's Bar at the Intercontinental Hotel for a glass of wine following our session, talking and laughing and teasing and telling funny stories to and about each other, I reflected on how very nice it is to have the chance to sit around a table looking each other square in the eye. Have to say, I like knowing Jane and friends even better than I like knowing about her :-)

Next time I check out Jane's Pick of the Day, you have to know that I will be smiling, thinking about the warmth of the camaraderie we all shared this evening. It was a treat to spend time on the other side, the non-digital, inter-personal side, of Jane Hart and friends.

Great Advice in Less than 140 Characters

During the recent DevLearn 2010 #DL10 conference I had the pleasure of participating in the closing panel hosted by Brent Schlenker where my co-presenters - Richard Culatta, Aaron Silvers, Gina Schreck, Jane Bozarth and Cammy Bean - and I each had 5 minutes to share a big idea with our DevLearn colleagues.

It was one of the best presentation experiences I've ever had. Thanks again to my co-presenters for being the wonderful people that they are, each and every one.  

One of my favorite moments came when Cammy Bean offered some sage advise on the topic of social media manners. Go, Cammy!

Fast forward a week. I've had social media, analytics and transparency on the brain. I have also continued to  noodle out loud on the topic of digital manners. The question I posted today looked something like this:

To which  Dr. @JaneBozarth responded

Yes!! Thank you Dr. Jane!

And then, just as she did at DevLearn (#dl10), @Cammybean reiterated what IMHO should be the golden standard for guiding our community's online behaviors:

@janeBozarth and @cammybean to the rescue.

Sometimes the best advice comes in less than 140 characters.

You Say "eLearning", I say 'Online Learning". She says "Distance Learning". Does it Matter?

Practitioners, analysts, proponents and critics of this thing we do with learning and technology solutions will frequently use all of these terms interchangeably to describe the discipline of using technology for connecting learners with learners, teachers, content, experts and experience. There's nothing really wrong with that. These days everybody kinda gets that "anytime, anywhere learning" uses technology to extend the boundaries of classrooms in some novel and compelling ways, no matter what we call it.

While I agree that the boundaries of these constructs are fairly fluid, they do each possess characteristics that make each unique. eLearning tends to be used when referring to Flash-based content and web-delivered, self-paced, independently completed courses built on linked modules and assessments. Collaboration and web conferencing also fit here. Distance learning has tended to depend on telephony (e.g. audiographics, compressed video) cable and broadcasting systems, using a class-room model (e.g. cohorts, start and stop on fixed schedule) for delivering distributed courses.  Online learning refers to course delivered via the Internet; sometimes with a teacher, sometimes not. Sometimes with "live"/real-time web conferencing, sometimes not. Sometimes with course sylabi and digital content, sometimes not. Managed in an LMS. What is held in common is that it is an internet-dependent experience.

The reason I wanted to mention this today is that even as some of us in the education sector are getting all wound up to do battle over online learning eQuality (please refer to my past two blog posts) there are some sectors that have already moved on. They are already talking about mLearning as the new elearning. And game based learning and augmented reality as the next big thing that will replace online learning. And virtual learning getting ready to give game based learning a run for its money. (I would make a catty remark about Second Life, but I heard a rumor on the street that Microsoft may be interested in buying them so I expect it is smarter to keep quiet.) 3D learning. Rich Internet Applications for learning. And the hottest of all: Social media. Social media. Social media.

As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Kerr once said..."plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". We need to care about the technology, and we DO need to understand the subtleties between and among the variations of technology-based teaching we are likely to encounter. But we also need to understand the commonalities as much as the differences, and look for ways to learn from each set of evolving practices on the way. Because there will always be a next new thing. And we all have too much to do to keep starting over every time we get distracted by something new and different.

 

The Pecha Kucha Instructional Design Smackdown Challenge

While at DevLearn this past November my friend Jay Cross asked me to participate in a video interview. Jay is maniacal in his devotion to "walking the talk", using new media and pushing people out of their comfort zone. I love that about him. Even though my appreciation means that I have to be okay with the occasional video conversation.

Jay asked me where I though elearning was going (based on DevLearn presentation I had just completed) and I responded with some highlights from the preso. A few days later I saw a discussion of the interview between two people I follow on Twitter, suggesting that I only talked about the "what" of the future, not the "how". Well, of COURSE I jumped in and asked if they really expected that one should take on a problem/solution answer with elearning people in less than 5 minutes - in some circles we would still be defining this thing that we do!  Well, not too surprisingly both jumped in almost immediately, saying "yes!, underscoring the value in getting to the point. And in that instant I uttered something to the effect that "well, then maybe it's time for a pecha kucha ID video smackdown".

According to Wikipedia, Pecha Kucha (ペチャクチャ), usually pronounced in three syllables as "pe-chak-cha", is the onomatopoeic Japanese word for the sound of conversation. The equivalent term in English is "chit-chat".  Pecha Kucha events were originally conceived as a venue through which young designers could meet, show their work, exchange ideas, and network. They usually consist of around a dozen presentations, each presenter having 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds. Each presenter has just 6 minutes 40 seconds to explain their ideas before the next presenter takes the stage.  The format keeps presentations concise, fast-paced and entertaining. In 2004 PK events began running in a few cities in Europe, and has since spread virally since has become a worldwide phenomenon, now running in more than 260 cities all over the world.

Young designers? Well, why not young INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS?? Or old instructional designers who still have a few tricks up their sleeves? Why NOT encourage big thinkers to capture the essence of a position, a platform, a solution, whatever, in 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, timed. 6 minutes, 40 seconds to share.

Maybe it was Jane Bozarth who mentioned "smackdown". Or maybe Janet Clarey. In any event, next thing I knew we had a pecha kucha ID video smackdown tweetstream going on. All kinds of (instructional design people who use Twitter) people wanting to get in on the fun. 

Several suggested refinements involving kimchi, mudwrestling, jello, tequilia and a few other suggestions best left alone.  I was also getting a few direct messages from people saying "you know, I don't really know what you are talking about, but as long as I don't have to wear liederhosen and a beanie in public I'll be okay with whatever it is."

Something uttered in the tw-heat of the moment should not constitute a binding agreement, so I wasn't planning to hold anybody to doing anything...nevertheless, I'm thinking that maybe its time to introduce The Pecha Kucha Instructional Design Smackdown Challenge. Still not sure what the Challenge part of this is, yet - except to challenge you all to think about how you might describe your ID work and what you love about it in 20 slides, 20 second per slide.

Cammy Bean and Koreen Olbrish and I are doing a presentation at the upcoming Learning Solutions conference;  I have included a pecha kucha component to our session. I have no doubt we will be exceptional.

Aaron Silvers' Mentat Beard (yes, it's a nom de plume) has written a fabulous rap entitled ADDIE is a Methodology not a DESIGN that is an obvious candidate for a pecha kucha interpretation.

I am working with Megan Raymond to host a pecha kucha activity at the upcoming WCET Annual Conference in beeeeyoutiful La Jolla, CA. Nov 10 - 13. (I will be doing a separate blog post about the WCET Call for Proposals in the next day or so, so stay tuned!!) We're looking for big thinkers who have something to say about accelerating the adoption of learning technology innovation in post-secondary education settings. in 6 minutes, 40 seconds!!

We have challenged Brent Schlenker from the eLearning Guild to bring his bongos and triangle to San Francisco for DevLearn 2010 to get us started with DevLearn pecha kucha. Actually, it wasn't much of a challenge - he VOLUNTEERED to bring the bongos and triangle.

So. Who's else is in?

ADDIE in 5 Screen Shots

I had a g-r-e-a-t discussion on Friday with 10 instructional designers that I happen to follow on Twitter. Serendipitously, I am working on a presentation that is germane to the discussion that follows. We were, once again, spinning around the workflow process model known as ADDIE.

And yes, @gminks, I knew what I was doing when I tossed the "A-bomb" out the window. Research. Yeah, that's it - research.

This is also a lesson in Twitter 101. I know that many of you out there are highly experienced tweeters. I also know that there are many of you who read this blog that wouldn't know a tweet if it bit you. Still can't imagine why anyone would care about what other people are doing at any given time, and THEN posting a message about it.

Well, get a clue, my tech-resistant darlings. This is something you need to know about.

I took screen shots of the Twitter feed and have posted them in order. I did this because (1) It is Sunday, I am lazy and this was a fast way to replicate the back-channel without asking people to create an @edwsonoma search column. Also (2) I wanted to show some of my tech resistant buddies what a tweetstream looks like, and this is an easier way to do it.  You will notice from the time-stamps that the tweets are best read from bottom to top in each of the 5 sections. However, you will also notice that most tweets can be read somewhat out of sequence without sacrificing too much meaning. It's a bit like walking into the middle of a discussion at a cocktail party. You'll catch up.

If you are an experienced Twitter user, don't bother to read this next part.

If you are a Twitter newbie, this paragraph is for you. A little bit of guidance to understand what you are looking at. These are individual microblogged posts that were published to the Twitter website, sorted using my user name (since this was a conversation I was following). For each individual post into what is called the "tweetstream" each contributor sending the message will show up as the first user name, in bold red. The sender's picture shows up with each tweet they make. The string of letters following each "@" is a Twitter user name. People who send a tweet will often add the name of people, prefaced by "@", that are part of a particular online conversational thread. If you see an RT in front of a user name it's because someone liked a post so much that they forwarded it. If you are intrigued about Twitter sign up for a user name at http://twitter.com.

If you are an instructional designer, might I suggest that the people involved in the following conversation should definitely be on your "follow" lists.

And now, back to ADDIE. I hope you enjoy the following discussion as much as I did.

If you haven't seen the Beard's Posterous post on ADDIE's a Methodology, not Design please scroll to the bottom of the page (after you read the conversation below, of course) and I will be very happy to share the link. I would like to believe that his genius was inspired in part by this fine discussion.

And yes, Cammy and Koreen and I will offer an ID pecha kucha smackdown performance at Learning Solutions. Gauntlet has been tossed. We're there.

 
 

 

Don't you just love doing research?

The link to the Beard's Posterous site is http://thebeard.posterous.com/addies-a-methodology-and-not-design-full-lyri. Definitely worth the trip.