observations on e-Learning

 
With the recent major articles about blogs (Business Week, NY Times) there will be an upsurge, and even more attempts to find something to do with this tool. In e-Learning and knowledge management, we're going to see all kinds of strange concoctions, mostly founded in ignorance of how people learn and how they access information. At this point, aside from teaching journalists, it seems to me that blogging can be an excellent means of discussing a topic (if more than one person is able to post to the blog), but beyond that there is little opportunity for practicing a skill or getting feedback. Without an audience to interact with, it is essentially a presentation that one may as well bay at the moon.
posted by Frank at 5:09 PM

 
b.cognosco: Friday, June 20, 2003: "Author's note: The above story is satire. In keeping with the spirit and antics of our political leaders it is puerile, mean-spirited, even borderline moronic. But I feel better." The story he refers to is a fictional account of Oren Hatch's saying that people watching Cubs games from the rooftops should be shot. Hatch had said earlier that hackers should have their computers taken away, and this spoof is a bit over the wall. Not bad, and there will be some people who will probably believe that hatch said it. And agree with hatch.

But the interesting to me is that an author even needs to point out that his article is satire. It says not only that we miss the visual and aural cues present in face-to-face communications (so did Jonathan Swift), but that our audience (some part of it anyway) is insensitive to the verbal cues in the piece and needs to have it labeled. Of course, the note may simply be that the author wanted to reveal more of himself and his attitude -- "But I feel better," than we might have known from the article itself.
posted by Frank at 9:09 AM

 
Learning Circuits -- ASTD's Online Magazine All About E-Learning
posted by Frank at 4:03 PM

 
Creating a market There's a slick magazine that's been publishing six times a year for many years . . . on wooden boats. It covers things like the grain in wood, how to pull a hydralic plug through a hull, varnishing mahogany, etc. It was clearly written for the owners of the almost 10,000 wooden boats in this county. But it has more than 180,000 subscribers – no comps, all paid subscribers. That's 18 copies for every wooden boat in the country, whether floating or sitting in a shed or drydock.

The publisher obviously knows something about creating a market. Incidentally, there's also a website www.woodenboat.com that nicely designed and reprints the articles from the magazine--so one would not even have to subscribe in ordr to get most or all of the content.

I suspect those extra copies are not going into the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists, and there are not that many subscribing libraries to make up the difference. The publisher has been able to broaden the appeal of that magazine so that some 170,000 people and institutions that do not own a wooden boat nevertheless want to read about making, maintaining and sailing them.
posted by Frank at 6:11 PM

 
Counteracting the Internet Rumor The incredible connectedness of people can hurt a company so much more rapidly today than ever. And the means of counteracting it are not simply to post a correction on your website.
posted by Frank at 8:48 AM