Manage To Change

Got Game?

Learning is hard.  It takes time, effort, and engagement.  

It's the payoff that keeps us going.

Unfortunately, like exercise or dieting, in many cases learning has been institutionalized as drudgery. What's worse is that for those of us over 35 or 40 we learned how to learn in a way that took all the fun out of it.

Or... should I say we "re-learned" how to learn.  Innately we had it right.  We were born curious and experimental appreciating feedback and adjusting happily when we went down the wrong path.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, educational methodology was adopted that extinguished that joy for many students. Learning became like a failed diet or lapsed gym membership.

This morning, thanks to the Upside Learning Blog I read, Good Video Games and Good Learning, a paper written by James Paul Gee, that started me thinking about how to put the fun back in to learning.

We've all read blog posts or papers about the value of gaming as applied to learning and training environments, but that wasn't Gee's point. Instead, he simply and brilliantly articulated sixteen learning principles, how they are presented in games, and how our current educational methods fare in comparison.  

Here are a few of my favorites:

Interaction: “In a good game, words and deeds are all placed in the context of an interactive relationship between the player and the world. So, too, in school, texts and textbooks need to be put in contexts of interaction where the world and other people talk back.”

Production: "Players help “write” the worlds they live in—in school, they should help “write” the domain and the curriculum they study."

Risk-Taking: "Players are thereby encouraged to take risks, explore, and try new things. In fact, in a game, failure is a good thing."

Customization: "Games often have different difficulty levels and many good games allow players to solve problems in different ways...Customized curricula in school would not just be about self pacing, but about real intersections between the curriculum and the learner’s interests, desires, and styles."

Performance before Competence: "Good video games operate by a principle just the reverse of most schools: performance before competence. Players can perform before they are competent, supported by the design of the game..."

Whether you're a lifelong learner, an educator, or simply fascinated with how people learn, this paper is a must read!  

(Photo from CHC Emerging Tech)

Michael Hansen SIIA Keynote: What I Learned from Galileo Galilei

  Image via Wikipedia

Michael Hansen, CEO Elsevier Health Sciences opened the Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) Annual Information Industry Summit by reintroducing the audience to Galileo. His lessons from Galileo:

In a time of change, remember your roots. Galileo reminded Hansen of Elsevier's core strength to: "bring insights to the world and have those insights as a basis for better decisions." Elsevier published Galileo's controversial work in 1632.

In keeping with those roots, how can Elsevier, or any medical publisher, provide a valuable resource to a physician who only gets to spend approximately six minutes with a patient (generally considered a reliable statistic for primary care doctors)?  What can a publisher deliver in a fraction of that time that could benefit the physician and patient?

To address this need, Elsevier created a Clinical Decision Support business unit.  And, leading into the next Galileo lesson, this unit is not charged with simply delivering information at the point of care.  They are charged with "making information more to the point and more specific, as a recommendation."

In times of pressure and crisis, explore the counter intuitive.  Don't just follow conventional wisdom.

Those not familiar with medical publishing, may not realize that Hansen's example above, providing more specific recommendations to physicians, is very unconventional thinking. For many reasons, not the least of which is legal liability, this isn't often done.

In fact, I would argue it's the most unconventional idea he raised today. 

Below are two additional examples, that while interesting, are not uncommon practices in many organizations:

Hansen offered a sales example to highlight unconventional thinking, with a major client, the sales team took a more collaborative approach.  They analyzed the client's information assets and identified redundancies, resulting in a decrease in content costs of 10%.  His takeaway? "Forge new partnerships, relationships, and collaborations."

Of course, the revised content holdings included several Elsevier assets. 

Hansen's second example was related to people. Many companies say that people are their greatest resource, yet they don't communicate with them and are often reluctant to share bad news.

Elsevier found that in sharing concerns with their employees, they were able to identify savings offered up by people who were much better suited to identify savings opportunities than an isolated group of people in a conference room.  For example, staff were able to suggest cuts in travel that totaled almost 20% across the board.

While the second two examples might not be considered counter intuitive in many circles, that's irrelevant.  They were counter intuitive to Elsevier and, in pursuing them, Elsevier stepped out of their comfort zone.

Unconventional is in the eye of the beholder.

What are we doing to explore the counter intuitive, the unconventional, in a way that is consistent with our strengths (roots)?

Have our objectives changed? Should they have?

Have the methods by which we achieve our objectives changed? Should they have?

Hansen pointed out that the recession is bad but not as bad as the inquisition.  If Galileo could be unconventional, why can't we?

Google Wave: When More is Too Much

We're talking about Google Wave over on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Google Wave was built to answer the question, “How would email look if it were invented today?”  But Wave goes far beyond email-like functionality and tries to get to the heart of communication in all the forms that we’ve come to know.  Wave is part email, part IM, part Wiki, and part document management, to name a few.Ann Michael under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Oct 2009

Come join us!

Sci Foo Camp 2009: Nature Video

After Michael Clarke's coverage of Sci Foo Camp on the Scholarly Kitchen, I thought there was nothing left to say.

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

I was wrong.

NatureVideo just posted a Science Foo Camp 2009 video on YouTube.  From DNA, to skulls, to puzzles, it seems like Sci Foo had it all.

It was interesting to see how most of those interviewed contrasted the open and informal nature of Sci Foo with traditional science research and discovery.

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• Photos: Foo Camp 2009 (laughingsquid.com)

reBlog from Ann Michael under: The Scholarly Kitchen

Attending SSP IN!  Here's a post I wrote on the Scholarly Kitchen:

Fifteen years ago would anyone have imagined that Apple, a dying computer company, would come back to life by gaining control of the music business?Ann Michael under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Sep 2009

Read all the coverage of the Society for Scholarly Publishing IN Meeting on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Google Buys reCAPTCHA

Aside from the topic, which is interesting, I love the idea that Silicon Alley Insider is facilitating the proliferation of their content.

Embedding text.  Why wasn't this done years ago?

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• Google boosts book digitization by capturing reCAPTCHA (arstechnica.com)

reBlog from Kent Anderson under: The Scholarly Kitchen

Image via CrunchBase

I found this fascinating quote today:

Earlier this week, I wrote about the management trap that occurs in industries undergoing disruptive innovation. David Smith from CABI forwarded this presentation from Netflix to me. It’s excellent, and deserves to be shared widely.Kent Anderson under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Aug 2009

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

Online Education: Tastes Great or Less Filling?

Whether to provide a more vibrant and relevant educational experience or to save money on text books, it looks like online education is making some headway. 

Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online, that's what I read last week in the New York Times .  Connecticut teachers were frustrated by rushing students "through their Algebra I textbooks only to spend the first few months of Algebra II relearning everything they forgot or failed to grasp the first time."

They rewrote the curriculum to focus on fewer topics at greater depth in Algebra I, thus better preparing students for the more advanced concepts and eliminating much of the review time in Algebra II (which could now be spent learning concepts that were cut from Algebra I).

The results?

"...school officials say their less-is-more approach has already resulted in less review in math classes, higher standardized test scores and more students taking advanced math classes."

The costs?

...they spent about $70,000 to develop the new math curriculum...[and] the district will soon save at least $25,000 a year on textbooks.

That's interesting.

Not only did they seem to come up with a more effective approach to learning, but they're going to save money.

Two days ago, BBC News published the article, Online Push in California Schools.

"From the beginning of the next school year in August, math and science students in California's high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an academic standards review."

Questioning the true motivation for the change, the BBC News article noted that "Last year California spent $350m on textbooks and can no longer afford it."

Today David Worlock, Chief Research Fellow at Outsell, published The Online Cost of Education is "Cheaper" (Insights subscription required).

As David observes, "School infrastructure in the developed world has now reached the point where the implementation of a fully digital curriculum is very possible...even if the real underlying reasons have more to do with budget cuts than education." 

Could technological advances, changing learning habits, the growing irrelevance of current curriculum, and financial woes finally add up to a wholesale movement of education toward more online learning options?

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• Schwarzenegger's book ban hits Pearson (telegraph.co.uk)

Publishing, Nautilus, and Networks

Image by mindseyeimagery via Flickr

The other day I got a LinkedIn group alert from Andrew Spong linking to an article in The Journal of Electronic Publishing entitled Open Access 2.0: Access to Scholarly Publications Moves to a New Phase, by Joseph J. Esposito.

His "Nautilus Model of Scholarly Communications" was a brilliant way to provide a foundation for discussion.  The model is illustrated in the article cited above, but he introduced it in Open Access 2.0 published in The Scientist.

At the "innermost spiral of the shell of a nautilus, where a particular researcher wishes to communicate with a handful of intimates and researchers working in precisely the same area" is where he proposes Open Access is most viable.   He goes on to posit that at "each step away from the center, the role of the publisher grows and the merits of open access diminish."

At the core of the model is the degree to which the participants in the particular ring of the spiral are known to each other.  At the center, they know each other quite well.  As we move out, they do not and "...the publisher's brand is a form of insurance" to the consumer, insurance against wasting time (and, potentially, money).  

Thinking about the widening rings of the nautilus shell as decreasing degrees of familiarity, it seems as though this model is useful to consider more broadly.

• What kinds of products are valuable to [small] networks whose members are very familiar with one another?
• What kinds of products are valuable to networks whose members are NOT familiar with one another?
• What kinds of supporting services are needed in each type of network?

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• Framing the Open Access Debate (scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org)

Twitter: Unintended Consequences

Image via CrunchBase

A couple of months ago, someone to whom I'm connected on Facebook mentioned that I over ran their home page with Twitter updates the last time I was at a conference.

I tend to take conference notes on Twitter.   When I had Twitter feed Facebook updates, my status was being updated every couple of minutes.  It had never occurred to me that I was monopolizing my friends' Facebook home pages!

When I started to look for a way to selectively update Facebook, but still use Twitter the way I wanted to use it, I consulted several of my Twitter connections.

Most of them weren't aware of a solution. 

What really surprised me was that they also said not to worry about it.

I learned two things from this:

1. Experimentation with new things often has unintended consequences.  They may be good or bad, but we should be looking for them.
2. If we're not careful our advocacy of a product, feature, platform (fill in the blank) will actually turn people off, rather than stimulate their interest.  Ignoring feedback is never a good idea.
   

If you're having the same issue I was with updates, there is an application that enables selective Twitter updates to Facebook.  I started using it during Web 2.0 Expo and it works perfectly for me.

PS Someone else (not the source of the original feedback) recently thanked me for updating Facebook more judiciously.

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• When to NOT Use Social Media (readwriteweb.com)