1. the internet allows for a different set of cognitive skills- those associated with rapid information processesing, network theories (connectivism), and social constructionism to name a few. Divine ignores theories of socially constructed learning.

2. rote learning of facts does not constitute 'deep thinking'

3. the Internet is going to facilitate the way the mind needs to evolve for skills relevant to the C21-it is in itself  a global neural network

My presentation The cellphone: ultimate distraction or powerful learning tool? is about the growing disconnect between childrens' learning experiences in classrooms and outside "in the world." I propose the cellphone as a tool that supports formal education and also informal learning, and thus as a way to span these disconnected sites of learning. (Children have multiple sites of learning, e.g. school, home, playground, etc.)

Two projects that I highlighted: Dr Math and M4Girls. Two suggested projects: an alternate reality game using cellphones and m-novels, short stories serialised into daily chapters, delivered on cellphones. The phone is used as a reading and authoring platform.

As the month of September comes to a close, I thought I'd squeak in my response to the Learning Circuit's big question on To-Learn Lists. I started by spending some time reading everyone else's responses, and I learned a lot. Thanks to everyone for sharing your thoughts and lists.

To-Learn lists can help shorten to-do lists
Like everyone else I believe that knowledge workers need to learn continuously to stay abreast of their industries and that to-learn lists are a good way to do that. I also think that to-learn lists can help us shorten and better target those long to-do lists.

In the old paradigm, managers were responsible for an employee's learning
Tony's questions on to-learn lists got me thinking about the whole idea of personal responsibility for learning. In the old paradigm, much of the responsibility for a worker's learning was on the corporation or the worker's manager. Human resources and/or managers came up with employees' learning development plans and decided what learning opportunities to make available: Which classes would be approved for next year?

We should be responsible for our own learning
But those who move up in their careers ultimately realize that the responsibility for learning rests on themselves. And while they may work with their managers to make that learning happen, they no longer rely on their managers to plan their development. In many cases, they guide their managers: Here's the training I'd like to take this year.

Today's technologies make it easy to develop a personal learning plan
Today's technologies have enabled informal learning so that it's easier than ever to develop and act upon a personal learning plan. The first step, and possibly the hardest step (for me anyway) is to set clear learning goals. But once you know where you're going, development options are many and mostly free. Based on your goals, you can set up your to-learn list. Then venture out to the wide open Web for blogs, social networks, articles, Webinars, colleagues, wikis, videos, tutorials, and all kinds of resources to help you meet your goals and check off items on your to-learn list. Many people are creating their own Personal Learning Environments to help capture their learning and share it with others. Michelle Martin at the Bamboo Project Blog has a whole section devoted to PLEs, with lots of useful advice for setting one up.

Your personal learning plan is not complete, however, without personal measures of success
In The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lencioni makes the case that managers need to help employees come up with personal measures of success so that they can objectively know for themselves when they're succeeding. Taking that a step further, I'd say that those who want to move up in their careers need to develop their own personal measures of success. They may want to share those with their managers so that they can be sure to align with their organization's requirements. But at the end of the day, as managers come and go, organizations change directions, new technologies arise, and industries transform overnight, each of us needs to have our own standards and take the steps needed to meet those standards.

So, here is my to-do list, inspired by the Learning Circuits Big Question on To-Learn Lists: 

1. Define my goals.

2. Make a to-learn list based on those goals.

3. Identify ways to check off the items on my to-learn list.

4. Define my personal measures of success.

5. Set up a Personal Learning Environment to capture and share what I learn.

Give your staff access to Google Docs, Webspiration, some wki and blog software - remove their limits on email box size, let them share information, reports, contacts, bookmarks...Drive space is so cheap, install a Raid 5 array of USB Sticks if you have to!  Let the staff chew on, crunch, mash, recombine and create information, ideas and knowledge - and just maybe, we might see some innovation sparks as a result. Maybe even our Learners will get the learning that they so desire.

It's not about the access....

The ongoing evolution of the Internet..and it will be all about the Internet, means that people who are still to use the technology or have limited experience, are being left behind at an unacceptable rate. There are some small movements to address the real issues here but it's all too slow and lacking in volume to make a difference.

I chatted with Nick Booth last night about the situation and we drew similar conclusions about what should actually be happening with that money. It should be providing training, guidance, communication, advice etc delivered by the people with the right skills and attitude and in a manner that recognises that the way we learn will need to change to make the most of what the internet is becoming. These "digital mentors" can be the answer to an as yet fully realised situation.

Our project is in the throws of equipping these mentors with the kind of knowledge and skills that will benefit those excluded from the digital community. Hopefully before too long, those who make the decisions will be aware of what's actually going on and who knows, maybe do something about it.

What I did so far and what is in the planning list?

- I finally started to build a concept map with CMAPS, did not set the work-in-progress online yet.
- Will tag tomorrow some relevant sources in my del.icio.us archive that could be linked with networked learning and connectivism.

Some additional ideas and questions >

- Quotes sometimes capture concepts or ideas very fast and clear. Any list of quotes already related to this course?
- Would it be possible to structure this massive online course as a massive open space according to the open space technology?

And last but not least a technical helpdesk question> somebody knows how to embed Flickr-Slideshows in a wordpress blogpost? I think Wordpress does not accept <scripts> and how do you upload new wordplug plugins if your blog is hosted under Wordpress and not on your own server? Thanks !

In his book "Informal learning, rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance" Cross explores how informal learning benefits organizations. Before we explore this question in the scope of our own learning institution I let Jay Cross explain what he exactly means with informal learning:

It would be a useful exercise to assess what will work for our organization, considering how informal learning might supplement what we are doing already, rather than replacing it.

- instant messaging accelerates the information flow (cf. ILO adopted Skype)
- finding people faster can increase worker productivity 20 to 30 percent (cf. upcoming professional biographies on the website)
- improve workplace learning through coaching because there is not much time for courses, combining work and learning is the foundation of performance-centered design and workflow learning. (Cross, 2007)
- build shared places in order to work on prototype ideas
- embed the use of the staff development blog in all staff development activities
- ... (your suggestions)

Teemu Areena (Finland) referred in a presentation to this as missing places of learning or third places of learning. You can watch this presentation below. Interesting is the concept of 'Serendipity' : "The art of making an unsought finding" (Serendip: old name of Sri Lanka).

[slideshare id=64240&doc=serendipity-20-missing-third-places-of-learning3647&w=425]

Last week I attended the CLO Breakfast Seminar in San Francisco, hosted by CLO Media, where we discussed how to define, deliver and measure learning’s value to an organization – essentially how do we justify the time and money we spend providing learning opportunities for our employees.  Now the hippie in me needs to tell you that there is absolutely no reason to ever defend the time and expense of training your workforce.  Learning is an end in itself and I think in this case the ends definitely justify the means.  But the reality is most of us hippies moved out of the commune and into the corporation a long time ago, which means we do have to justify how we spend our company’s training dollars.

Truthfully, this used to be a far easier task, because the way learning was consumed (mainly in the classroom) gave instructors the opportunity to immediately evaluate the impact of the course material using surveys and assessments; but over the past several years learning has undergone some significant changes.  The classroom is no longer the center of the learning experience.  Social networking, the new informal delivery methods like blogging, wikis chats, forums, etc., and the introduction of millennials into the workforce have radically reshaped how employees both work and learn.

At last weeks CLO seminar, Bob Lee, Learning Solution Strategist for Cisco, stated that today most companies are still investing nearly 70% of their learning budgets in traditional learning methodologies (classroom training, self-paced desktop courses, webinars, etc.) even though nearly 70% of the learning employees consume is now through informal methods, like blogs, wikis, forums, chats, etc.  This means learning executives not only must adapt their learning programs to accommodate these new methodologies, but they must also lead the way in demonstrating the value these new tools bring to the organization.  The question is, how do we measure the value of informal learning?

At Oracle we’ve been using social networking and informal learning tools for a good while now, at least within the applications division, and from what I’ve observed there are some easy ways for learning administrators to gauge the value of informal learning brings to their business.  They can start by simply asking their employees – ask them which of these tools they are using, how often they use them, and how effective they are.  They should also ask how often the employee simply consumes information vs. how often they contribute to the knowledge base as authors, responders or reviewers; because I think active participation vs. passive consumption is the best measurement of the value these tools bring to your organization.

In addition to employee based valuation, learning executives must also link these informal learning methodologies to the employee’s profile, performance and development plans.  The simple fact is people want credit for the learning they complete and today most learning management systems only record the learning in which an employee formally enrolls.  Very few solutions provide a way to capture the informal learning (the 70% or more) employees consume; not to mention a way of integrating this content with performance goals and development plans.  Oracle’s Enterprise Learning Management application includes a supplemental learning tool that allows administrators to define and configure non-traditional learning methods like blogging, wikis, and forums which employees can then use to create custom learning records.  Afterwards, these entries can be associated with specific learning objectives and performance goals which are in turn reflected on the employee’s profile record.  This is one way to give employees credit for the informal learning they complete, but learning management solution providers must get beyond the traditional enrollment model and begin to rethink the way learning is delivered and consumed.

Finally, learning executives need to make a commitment to informal learning.  Peruse any edition of your favorite talent management publication, attend any talent management conference, or browse any of the talent management blogs on the internet today and what you will find is a vast dialogue on the social networking – informal learning – web 2.0 revolution.  This revolution is not something that’s coming – it’s here already; and learning executives ought to be the architects and champions of these new methodologies.  They should be leading the fight to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of informal learning – not only in reducing costs, but also in supporting and achieving the business objectives of their company; because learning methodologies will come and go, but good leadership will always be in-style.

Introducing social media into my personal development planning has made a huge difference to my learning journey. Two things in particular stand out to me as practical steps to take, if you want to increase your thirst for learning at work. And it begins with stepping outside of your comfort zone.

1. Connect. Make connections with people who inspire you. Think about the things you want to learn. Get to know your colleagues, introduce yourself to peers and subject matter experts around the world and learn more about your company or industry. With a little encouragement, you may even find yourself making the mind shift from "this is how it is" to "this is where it's at".

2. Participate. Step out and share your ideas,  have confidence and work on something that has tangible results. Consider your conversations, blogs you could read, extra-curricular projects (like this one!), online communities and other more informal learning approaches. Consider how you can contribute. What ideas or knowledge can you share? Which skills would you like to sharpen?

Think about the possibilities. You could be part of something GREAT. If you plan your learning activities to include some more informal learning approaches, you can improve your chances of creating a more relevant, enjoyable, personal and interesting journey of learning.  You might even meet some pretty amazing people along the way.

It's probably a matter of attitude - about making a decision to work at learning. Jump in. Step out. Drift a little in the things you enjoy. Get caught in the virtual wanderlust.

This post is my response to the theme for  Working/Learning Carnival "Work at learning; learning at work".

Many a corporation misses massive opportunities by demanding to know
“Where’s the ROI?” in cases where ROI is an inappropriate and
misleading indicator. Permit me to explain why.

And Jay, as usual, goes on to explain with clarity ... giving me several "uh-huh" moments.

The ROI of enterprise 2.0 learning

At the same time, we are getting better connected in a virtual sense. We can use blogs to share our journeys, share events and post items on Facebook, meet up in virtual worlds, chat on Skype, collaborate on wikis,  join communities, quickly connect using instant messaging, update on Twitter -the list goes on. Peer groups converge around the world, meeting online based on common interests, problem solving and the growth of social networks.

Do these virtual spaces enable individuals and groups to connect better? What is the impact on our physical spaces? How do you deal with it? What are the pros and cons?

And what is your experience?

“How do you deal with the increasing virtual world (web based interaction) and the resulting influence on your physical world?”

The working party for segmentation and integration (the Melbourne Uni and IBM Virtual and Physical Learning Spaces project) is looking for examples. We will be presenting at a public forum in November. We'd really appreciate reading about other experiences and thoughts. Please take a moment to share :)

“Google is an incredibly powerful and
deceptively simple service, leading many training and learning
professionals to assume that Google is ‘plug-and-play’
and requires no specific instruction,” said
Victor Alhadeff, CEO of Boost eLearning. “Yet
according to real-world Google users, they are only finding the
information they need about 60 percent of the time. With this in mind, it’s
critical that learning professionals understand how they can help
employees increase their productivity and search accuracy by leveraging
the full functionality of Google.”

(You have to contact Boost eLearning for a copy of the survey ... I think they should make it available without any hoops, but that's just me)

Yet this does bring up some questions in my mind ... because for all of the times I use Google (which is quite a lot throughout any given workday) I've never been 'formally trained' in using it. I'm pretty sure that my organization doesn't offer training in how to effectively use Google.

But should there indeed be formal training? I'd be more inclined toward creating informal learning opportunities where folks are given a variety of ways to increase their knowledge/understanding in how to use Google more efficiently. I just can't get my mind around the need for a full-blow set of training courseware for this.

I wonder what other folks and organizations do ... since Google is likely to be a preferred learning platform (much more so than any LMS).

It's something I have been discussing with an informal learning working party recently, for instance the impact virtual spaces have on communities such as international students, working mothers, working students and alumni.

If I think back to any major virtual influence of my world, I begin to think about the arrival of our first child in 2002. I had so much to discuss, learn and share about this experience- a gazillion questions about every detail from childbirth, how to grow up a human being, to the fine art of mashing a banana- but I didn't know many mums. For a good couple of years I shared details of my pregnancies, birth stories, first smiles and nappy (diaper) changing horror stories with my online friends on a popular online mothers forum. My friend Penni (who also happened to be a local, but discovered through our online community) wrote a wonderful and insightful post about the community, how it formed and how it morphed from a large, public, anonymous community, to a smaller, more personal (and possibly time absorbing) moderated community. I even found myself spending a period of time as one of the moderators of this community (on msn.) At times it was great - there are some lovely mums out there. But the homophilous nature of the community was a little stifling for me, in the end.

A couple of years later I moved suburbs and connected with a positive, supportive local community of women. They're absolutely wonderful. I canceled my subscription to the online mothers community as it was becoming more distracting than helpful. I'm still friends with some of these mums on Facebook and have met some new friends through work who blog or tweet about the demands and joys of motherhood. As Penni wrote in her post, now that she is no longer part of an online community "...with no windows or doors, I now feel like I live across the breadth of the internet, I feel like an Internet gypsy, not homeless, but that I have many many homes, some temporary, some, like this one (Penni's blog) more permanent. Through blogs, facebook, emails, and other means I've kept in contact with many of these people."

My friend Jo summed it up nicely, in response to Penni's post " I don't know if these friendships forged online that become addictive are so healthy, I teeter between them being a great source of company, information, creative thought, and also of being an horrific waste of time. I *know* that I have met some amazing people through these parenting sites and that they have opened my eyes to new ideas and thoughts, as they have equally frustrated and annoyed me. I think that the appeal can be that you have a constant audience."

My "virtual experience" as a new mum provided me with a good source of information and connection when I needed it. Despite the support of a great husband, I wonder how I would have dealt with a terribly colicky baby, wakeful nights and the transition back to work and study without the advice of these mums around Australia. In addition to learning about motherhood and babies, the experience taught me a great deal about the workings of an online community, issues around trust, facilitation, purpose, friendship, integrity and values.

So now, here's a question for you. The segmentation and integration working party is interested to hear your stories about the way wonderful webby things have changed your life. In particular, how has the web impacted you as an individual, or company, or school - in a community (or tribe.) I'd love to read your comments, or please write a post and link back here!

"How do you deal with the increasing virtual world (web based interaction) and the resulting influence on your physical world?" Please share your anecdotes!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="image originally uploaded by Elo Vasquez"][/caption]

When I need to learn something I pretty much create my own little PLE of resources and information, documents, bookmarks ... you name it. My LMS-of-choice (if I can call it that) is Google.

Case in point this past week I've had to ramp up pretty quickly on a topic that is unfamiliar to me. I have to learn what it is, how it works, and how to use it. Sounds like a job for a training program, right? Well ... I've not taken a single course on the subject. Instead I've pulled together a bunch of bits and pieces of information and constructed my own learning experiences.

And I can't think that I'm alone in this. I'd imagine that many (if not most) knowledge workers don't think:

• "Now I'm enrolling and taking a course"
• "Now I'm searching for a document in a repository"
• "Now I'm accessing a performance support system"

No - we don't care really the source of the information ... and we're not terribly concerned about the specific delivery channel so long as it is easy, convenient, fast and gets to the stuff we need right then and there.

And yet I still hear the mantra, "information is not training."
Okay - true enough. They are not the same. But so what?

If I can take bits of information and put them together into a framework that allows me to know what, when, why, how and the like ... then I learn what I need at that moment.
If I can find a training program (that won't bore me to death) that gives me the flexibility to jump around and practice in a safe environment and see where my choices go wrong and what I can do to make better ones ... cool!

But the key in all of this is that I learn what I need (or think I need) in the way I think is going to get me the results quickly and directly.

Still trying to figure out how to fix this, but in the meantime here are the sites that caught my eye recently.

• Google isn't making us stupid - it is challenging our design
• Get a Personal Search Engine Dashboard with Hittery
• Performance Support: eLearning Technology
• screencasting >> primer
• Clive on Learning: Learning styles don't exist
• Tiddly Backpack
• Learnlets >> Pre-tests = learner abuse
• Mozilla Ubiquity as an On-Demand Learning Tool

Todays Edu.au seminar with Professor Martin Westwell Martin (Director Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century ). Below I've taken some of the main points of interest -

Teachers are asked to be experts in everything. Whereas in other sectors, people can specialise.

• People now say intelligence 20% nature, 80% nurture -- used to be other way around
• There is very little doubt that violence in an environment causes violent attitudes and behaviour - your brain re-wires.
• An interesting trend -- young people are better than ever at distinguishing between authentic and synthetic environments/environments
• So socialistion the primary use of internet - not finding info
• Our brains are constantly wiring and re-wiring
• But the emotional context has a large effect on the learning and thinking

• The people in an environment are most important

• Teacher student relationship very important.

• RElationship between kids themselves and parents are very important

• Blue light important - the blue light that we see in the morning sends a message that says stop producing melatonin
• Neuromyths -- the ideas that kids learn in certain ways and are labelled as such permanently does not support that
• Teens overestimate risks, but coordination of thinking and ability to inhibit impulses is not developed yet
• collaborative environments need to be more sophisticated -- blogs, wikis, moodles - we lose something if not synchronous
• Prescriptive instructions kill the chance to exercise executive function
• When you intervene and let kids know intellgience is malleable - their learning goes up
• Obviously categorisation is going to happen to some extent -- but we have to be careful about the messages we send to learners about what type they are
• We do one thing and then switch quickly to another - we cannot paralell process.

• Tools of the Mind - preschool program - a US-based currciulum tha tpimproves Executive Function

Via a post I found through Workplace Learning Today, Rob Wilkins asked whether "instructional designer" is really an accurate title for what we do. He suggests that "information and instruction architect" might be a better description, especially as we move to more learner control, personal learning environments, and Web 2.0 tools. I agree with at least some of what he's saying; instructional designer does carry some connotations of formal, instructor-led learning.

Wilkins focuses on the "designer" part of the title in his post. He says that designer implies "that an outcome, as a result of receiving the instruction, will be achieved," but that an architect builds without knowing exactly how a structure will be used. It's an interesting analogy, but I'm not sure I quite agree.

To me, if there's an issue with the title "instructional designer," it's with the instructional part rather than the designer half. "Instructional" is the word to me that implies formal learning: a teacher or trainer in front of a classroom or a self-paced tutorial where learners must follow the software leads.

Of course, most of what I'm doing for my job is very much formal training. Graduate courses still have quite a bit of formality, even online. However, when I'm designing courses with Web 2.0 tools that (hopefully) help people build their personal learning environments, it's not quite the traditional course. I've had some great success with student-led blog discussions and wiki galleries of peer work and feedback. Our facilitators definitely do more coaching and mentoring than direct instruction. I do try to design courses where students can be empowered to direct their own learning, at least within some framework.

At least as far as my own work is concerned, I think it's always focused on learning but not always direct instruction. Does that mean that "learning designer" or something similar would be a better description?

Like Wilkins, I'm not sure. What do you think? Is your job more about learning or instruction? Are you an architect, a designer, or something else?

Image credit: Saturday-June 16 from sscornelius's photostream.

Let's take the 'small pieces' aspect of the Emerging Environments for Learning course through USQ. We are exploring some pieces such as tikiwiki, mahara and moodle (core tools, our separate interest areas for our facilitated pages and projects open up myriad further tools). There's no single sign on for these components, although I think it's time to investigate the OpenID option as it may allow me to bring these together in some way. I've used 'janicebreenwhite' for my knowledgeGarden activities, not realising it becomes an oddity when logging in to it as one component in the course.

Thank goodness I kept the same password! I've had to create and maintain a special file listing all the tools I've created accounts with: the usernames, passwords (enough hints for me to know which they are) and any specific email account they are associated with. All the small pieces, (bloglines, del.icio.us, wikispaces, Flickr, Scribd, slideshare, blogger, wordpress, facebook, bebo, this course, ezine subscriptions, email accounts, online repositories... and that's without our online banking and workplace setups), are in danger of becoming a 'dog's breakfast' (translation of this colloquial term... imagine the scene) and management is definitely a significant factor in juggling participation in contemporary digital environments.

And I straddle the digital native-digital immigrant divide! I'm a defacto native. Some of our students face the challenges of comprehending and navigating between multiple windows running simultaneously, let alone what we are doing.

I changed out my 25-year old bathroom exhaust fan the other day and… in a moment of false pride… told my eldest brother. He asked me what I did with the old one and I told him I’d tossed it. “Oh, too bad,” he said, “I could have rewired the motor for you.” He’s a gearhead, always fixing cars, but spent most of his career as a computer geek at Hewlett Packard.

My other brother could have built a new wooden faceplate for the fan. After a career flying in the Air Force, he now makes his living creating custom electronic Halloween displays, including motion. If you want something really cool for your house this Halloween, let me know and I’ll pass on your contact info.

 Our dad was an electrical engineer who always told us that he built the first crystal radio set in his home town.

And then there’s me. I can change the oil in the car, but I don’t. I could hang a new door, but it would probably be crooked. I’ve got the genes, but not much desire to be handy.

For a long time I’ve presumed my handiness shortcomings are a cultural thing. Both brothers are more than 15 years older than me. I just grew up in a different time. On my suburban block, for instance, the only guy with a woodshop…band saw, wood lathe, drill press, etc… is a professional home builder. By contrast, my father-in-law and about 10 of his peers/neighbors have power tools in their garages.

But the winds of change of are blowing. In the last 2 years especially, empowered and enabled by the Internet, there’s been an explosion of do-it-yourself handiness, repair and invention. And thank goodness for it. Now more than ever, the world needs to be fixed!

Here are some of the best resources I know for informal learners who want to learn how to do stuff that’s handy, helpful, playful, cool, or all those.

Howtoons. Targeted at kids, it’s a 112-page comic book featuring Tucker and Celine, a brother and sister, who get off the couch and start making cool stuff like a marshmallow shooter.

Instructables.com bills itself as “The World’s Biggest Show and Tell.” It has user-generated instructions in 8 broad categories including ‘craft,’ ‘food,’ ‘green’ and this one from ‘tech’ for a “breathalyzer microphone.”

Make Magazine. Both a blog and a quarterly print magazine Make was the first to recognize a renaissance in DIY. In the current issue, No. 14, how to make an inexpensive digital microscope. On the blog, modding your scanner into a camera. 

Maker Faire. Brainiacs on display in this event sponsored by Make Magazine. The first one took place in San Mateo, California and is now spreading to Austin, Texas and beyond. 

Who or what am I missing? You tell me. Use the comments to suggest other DIY gems.

I am about 60 days into my new role here at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. With each additional day I become more and more aware of just what an incredible institution I have been privileged to join.

The vision of the administration, the caliber of the faculty and the sharpness of the students are truly something that must be experienced to be understood.

Besides my teaching role here at Fuqua, I am also tasked with identifying key leverage points where web 2.0 and 3D internet technologies can be leveraged create distinct and differentiated learning modalities for our MBA programs.

If you stop to think about it, as Kevin Kelly so ably recounts, the web is just over 5000 days old. The amount of change that this innovation has brought to society at large and to industry and business is quite astounding.

On the societal front, the Myspace generation is truly wired. Or is it wireless?. In either case, their connectivity to others is both pervasive and persistent. They view the computer as a connector not a cruncher. They are not willing to be passive consumers of broadcast media, instead they demand to be active co-creators of content and insights and they want ongoing push-pull/dialogue to occur in the sensemaking process that amounts to traveling on many vectors of successive approximation toward the truth.

On the business front, we are moving to the era of the Globally Integrated Enterprise, one where work seeks its own level and supply and demand for various components of the business are optimized in real time through the IP network.

As I thought about my new role I began to wonder how my perspective on the thoughtful application of technology to learning would change if I put on my IBM Consulting hat and thought of my students as clients. How would they rate my service as a teaching professional? How would they rate me in terms of engagement and transformational learning given that they live in an age of permanent, persistant and pervasive access to information and experts with the touch of a button. How would I stack up relative to the array of technological affordances they have at their disposal to figure stuff out for themselves?

If I reframed my role from that of professor teaching student to one of service provider educating client would my strategic approach to the application of technology to improve the educational experience be different?

Suddenly my mind flashed to a great video by Michael Wesch, Digital Ethnographer from U of Kansas (you probably know him from the Machine is Us/ing us fame). The video below provides a pretty compelling look at what my clients most likely want to say to me but don't dare to because I am not their service provider or experience coordinator, I am their Professor.

As a student of disruptive technology who has spent the past 20 years working in enterprise learning I believe we are now at a true inflection point where one of the most powerful sets of transformational technologies of our time is training its sights on the one institution/enterprise function that has heretofore managed to emerge unscathed from the application of technology: Education.

So here I sit in the nexus. In one corner, a set of technologies that are fundamentally transforming how we live work and play and, in the other, an institution (i.e. University or K-12 School) and or enterprise function (i.e. Learning Function) that has largely deployed technology not to transform how we facilitate learning but simply to automate how we teach.

There is an old adage that says that the diffusion of innovation follows a predictable path: A scientific discovery, informs the creation of a new technology, which ushers in a new set of business opportunities that end up reshaping the structure of industries and organizations. An apple falls on Newton's head leads to the creation of the laws of physics, leading to the invention of the internal combustion engine, which dis-intermediates the thriving "buggy whip" manufacturing business and ultimately leads to Sloan's notion of the Bureaucracy and Ford's Assembly Line.

The is another adage which suggests that for change to occur there is a precondition that learning take place. With all the change that has happened in Society and Business over the past 5000 days due to the arrival of the internet and significantly more on the way in the wake of Web 2.0 and the 3D internet, I believe it is safe to say that individuals and organizations will have more than their faire share of change to deal with in the next 500 days.

So the real question is, how will they learn to deal with that change? Will it largely be self taught through the network or will those of us in the education business recognize the huge opportunity that lies before us and begin to redefine what education should look like in the era of the first-person interface.

Technology has fundamentally transformed society and business, can it do the same to transform education to help us cope with change in the 21st century. In his video on the next 5000 days of the web Kevin Kelly suggests we need to get better at believing in the impossible because if we don't we will be more unprepared for the future when it arrives.

I don't know about you, but I am ready to rumble ; ) Let us all reach for the impossible when it comes to changing the game in learning rather than speeding up the past.

Anyway...this is what the project is all about.

It is not enough to build a university around the specialized needs of its academic programs; it also needs a collection of distinct gathering places that catalyze interaction and bring the campus to life -Wallsjasper, 2008

The project on Virtual and Physical Learning Spaces is a collaboration between IBM and The University of Melbourne and is investigating informal learning environments that are critical to the role and life of the University.

Alongside the University’s formal teaching spaces and buildings are informal spaces – inside, outside and virtual – that are often open to the public and support a range of learning activities, from individual study and informal group-work to socio-cultural activities such as exhibitions, cultural and community events. These activities are intrinsic to staff and student experiences at the University and are vital to the University’s role as a public education institution.

In December 2007, the project’s working group came together to consider a central question:
How can virtual and physical spaces be designed, integrated, used and understood to better support informal learning?

A Think Tank, comprising key university staff and senior IBM personnel, identified six ‘critical issues’ that should be considered in the project. These issues provide the foundation for reflection and discussion over the coming months of the project and are:

• Architectural Determinism
• Fragmentation and Recombination
• Segmentation and Integration
• Community Engagement
• Teaching and Learning Boundaries
• Control

In November, each Working Party will be invited to present at a Public Forum on Informal Learning Places jointly hosted by IBM and The University of Melbourne. It is expected the ideas presented in the Public Forum could be used by different communities in the own practices and endeavours.

Last Month I had the opportunity to participate in this wonderful symposium organized by University of Utrecht and IBM. Here is the conference agenda. Great line up of speakers.

It was a mixed reality event. There were participants physically co-located in Amsterdam and The Eduverse Foundation hosted a simultaneous event in SL. To do this show I was in my office in Durham on Skype with another machine open to the SL venue. It was a lot of fun but definitely demanded every ounce of attention I could muster to manage the various media streams. A Digital Native I am not ; )

You can check out videos of all the symposium talks here. Chuck Hamilton from IBM also spoke and I would also like to draw your attention to David Williamson Shafer's talk where he brings up some very good points about the need for game design at the epistemic level as opposed to simply working at the skill and knowledge level.