Rebuilding Indianola

Old ladies pass up bingo for cell phones....

2007-01-15T11:19:00.001-06:00

My friend, Michelle Miller has this post on her blog from yesterday.

WonderBranding: Marketing to Women: The First Wave of Boomer Tech?

Essentially, it serves to remind us that females over 40 are one of our fastest growing groups of tech users, whether we are talking cell phones, PDAs or computers. If you are one of these folks or if you are planning to teach to this group, you have chosen a great group to serve. Not to demean other groups, but it's been my personal opinion that this category of users seem to relish the learning more than some other groups. That is not to say that others don't enjoy learning but this collective shouts it from the rooftops when they finally "get it".

My Mom, who will be 80 on her next birthday, has already called me this morning to tell me how much she enjoyed using my brother's laptop (he was visiting her this weekend). Her only complaint was that she has not yet learned the knack of using a scroll pad instead of a mouse. From my background, I know there are work-arounds for that. What did she like best....the portability of the computer games she likes to play.....who'd a think it.

technorati tags:proactiveaging

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elderbob.2.07

2007-01-14T03:00:00.000-06:00

So, the new year begins. It's already January 15, and aside from several things I worked on during the holidays, it's time to get the machinery cranked back up and working. I am now hosting the RebuildingIndianola blog on my own server, and I have upgraded nearly everything at Elderville (still need to manually upgrade the WordPress blog...maybe I'll get to that soon), most of the videos have been moved over to GoogleVideo, the new Brannan & Brannan Wind Farm is coming together nicely, and BranninniGlassWerx is...well, slow right now...too much to do.

The family is all healthy, and I am still positioned somewhere between my Mom and lots of grand kids and great grand kids in this generational sandwich.

I'm taking a semester out of school this spring (Master of Educational Technology at University of Texas at Brownsville), so I can devote some energy to Knowplace. Knowplace will host the Knowtips Conference and the Canadian MoodleMoot this spring as well as be co-host for the WiAOC (Webheads in Action On-line Convergence), so I felt a need to focus on areas other than my formal studies.

I'm also signed up for a couple of the EVOnline sessions that start today. In fact, that was part of the reason for this post. Toward the end of last year I created a short "Self-Introduction" video that I thought I would display here instead of writing a long drawn-out discourse on who I am for each learning session or training I sign up for. Now I can just refer folks to this post and you can get to know me without having to re-write my bio each time I take a new class.

And with that, Ill post the video and sign out of this post. I'll be putting additional work related post here in the coming days, so put me on your social network.


The Elderbob Profile

Taming a Glass Tiger

2006-12-15T05:14:00.001-06:00


An educational video of me creating a blown glass piece created from glass murrinni.

Happy Holildays

2006-12-14T17:20:00.000-06:00

School's out....school's out....and I have a bit of a break. I have several projects to get started on, but I wanted to get this one up, so people could see it before the holidays get here. I think it is just a part one, since I have a lot of left over video of other cool stuff my grandson has done, but I'm not sure how much of that I will be able to get to.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to all from the Brannan's. I hope youers is a good 'un.

Make it count.

2006-10-19T13:12:00.000-05:00

In response to a post to the The "EdTech" Blog regarding "University of California A-G Guide".

Standardization....hummmm....! I can see why when it comes to obtaining degrees and/or certification, but there are going to be far more classes on the net than those just for degrees and certification. I have taken all sorts of clases on-line. Many have directly related to a degree. I had not really considered whether or not it might provide me a degree that other schools might not accept, but I see the point. I have also taken classes that were supposed to be standardized only to find that in some cases, that meant they would send a spy to the class to see if we stayed on-line for not one minute less than one hour at a time.

I can see where a University has it's standings to protect. If they dont turn out a certain product, then not only will funding drop but so will the reputation of the school. But I do have a concern that the requirements might get too inane and foolish, and turn into clockwatcher rules or TEKS test type standardization. The best answer for me, is to avoid such types of programs, and focus instead on what fun non-standardized things adults want to learn about, and then keep my finger on the learning pulse of the participants.

I'm gonna have to think about this one for a while. It's a difficult issue and seems to have many sides.

...but does it work?

2006-10-11T16:38:00.000-05:00

In response to a posting in the The "EdTech" Blog on "Study: Ed Tech Has Proven Effective".

One great thing about what I do, is that this question is not quite as important as it is to those of you who teach in the public school system. Since my focus is the self-directed, adult learner, much of my focus is on whether or not the tools allow them to feel like they got their money's worth out of a learning experience. Furthermore, much of what I wish to do, has it's foot in blended learning, and as such, there are several markers by which the participant gets to determine the worth of the class.

For those of you who teach in public school, you are doomed to teach on with the same folks you have always had to work with. To me, we both are faced with a public of "Creators/Innovators", "Early Adapters", "The Great Majority Who Will Eventually Accept Change", and "Those Who Refuse To Change". The biggest difference between me and some of you, is that most of my clients fall into the first and second groups, "Creators" and "Early Adapters". As such, I don't have to work near as hard to use technology in learning situations. If anything, I have to make sure that my technology is highly advanced and in many cases "state of the art".

That is not to say that I have not worked in similar situations as yours. I used to work in a place where everyone was supplied with a brand new high speed Dell laptop computer. But then they were forbidden to use it in the field to tap into the internet, either for email or for looking up useful guidance on the net, or even for collaborative projects or to file office reports. Instead, everything was "word processed" then downloaded to really nice Dell PCs in the office. The reason? "The Great Majority Who Will Eventually Accept Change" is just that.....the great majority. In order for any of us to leverage our position to get into the group of innovators and early adapters, we have to belong to groups where those are the norm, not the exception...and the public school system is just not there yet.

Studies like the one in the eSchool News article go a long way in providing those of us on the fringe with data to help shorten the "eventuality" of majority, but the article is really quite middle of the road....more like those in the "great majority" would like to read. And perhaps that is the problem. The middle ground seeks middle ground data out to protect it's middle groundn turf. The fringes (on both extremes) seek out their own corresponding articles. In order for eSchool News to be read and accepted it has to go very slowly.

On the whole, when all the articles are read and discussed, I think that we are going to find that it is the content and approach that drives the learning, not the technology. The technology is fun and exciting and it has bells and whistles, but you still have to satisfy someone. For me, its the early adapter, and for the rest of you, it's the great majority.

A new slide show tool...

2006-10-08T21:59:00.000-05:00

I am exploring the uses of a new slide show tool. The tool is called SlideShare and is only avialable via invitation. You can use it to embed a slide show on a blog or webpage. I'll be trying it soon on a wiki and a Moodle.

For those of you who do not know, one of my hobbies is working with hot glass. I have taken several years of instruction at my local university (University of Texas at Arlington) and in the course of those instructions, I had cause to put this slide show about glass paperweights together. I hope you enjoy it.

Hearing the world whisper in my ear.

2006-10-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

Around 7 PM tonight, I plugged my blue-tooth earpiece in my left ear, grabbed my Motorola cell phone and headed out to my truck for a trip across town to my favorite super electronics store. As soon as I was in the truck, I clicked on Global Learn Day 10, which I had pre-coded into the phone. I muted my side and got in the telephone conference room right away (it's weekend here, and all my cell phone calls on weekends are free). I immediately heard John Hibbs soothing voice telling me that we were about to set sail on a journey around the globe. Over the next 24 hours, John and his merry band of creative educators and thinkers from all parts of the globe would dazzle us with the electronic teaching trinkets of modern times.

So while I am prowling the incredibly crowded aisles of a huge electronic store looking for wi-fi ports, in my ear I am listening to John instruct Bob Zwick (who in actuallity is only about 30 minutes away from where I stand) to play a tape that was recorded a few days ago, of a conversatation between Vint Cerf and Sir John Daniels, two of the real pioneers of our profession. It was recorded because one of them was currently in flight and would have been unable to participate. As I view the stocked shelves of wireless routers and receivers, I am listening to these two living legends discuss things like wiring the third world and the digital divide. The folks around me have no idea what kind of abundancy we are standing among. In fact, it is almost shocking to me to realize how fortunate I am to be able to listen to this conversation and search for electronic parts at the same time. By the time I reach the check out line, Stephen Downes was discussing the interviews with John. I wanted to turne to people and ask them if they had any idea of what I was listening to on my cell phone. I didn't because I didn't want to have to explain it, and I really didn't think most of them cared or would even understand...we take so much of the world for granted.

So driving home in the clear Texas night with a big bright moon, I am thinking about how wonderful my life is. And about how today, John Hibbs and the folks at the Franklin Institute made it just a little bit better.

(after note: at about Midnight, I had to get out again - it's along story) and by now the folks from India are on talking about distance learning and the different meanings of currency. It strikes me, that in terms of this new meaning of currency (up-to-the-moment), John and all those listening are truly wealthy.

Note: The entire GLD 10 is archived.

A new electronic baby

2006-10-04T00:41:00.000-05:00

...so today, I finally broke down, opened the piggy bank (actually a wonderful birthday gift from my sweet wife) and bought a new HP m7640n - AMD dual processor with lots and lots of memory and room for more. I love it. Now I will put the old PC in the room where I watch the baby so I can continue to work when I baby sit my grandson, and the new one in my personal office and the laptop wherever I am. I am now in the process of setting up a wireless network for the entire system. I'll let you know when I get it all done. I feel faster already (or maybe I feel lighter because I'm broke).

Who's watching who? Social Networking.

2006-10-03T09:15:00.000-05:00

In response to a posting in the The "EdTech" Blog on "A Privacy Paradox: Social Networking in the US".

Privacy and the protection of it, have been problems longer than the "digital age" has been around. Joseph's brothers, stole his coat of many colors and dipped it in sheep's blood to convince their father, Jacob, that Joseph had been killed by wild animals. Joseph was sold into slavery. His identity had been stolen by his own brothers. Now, mini-cams hover above the cities where once hawks lived in trees. The Cams are able to see great detail and though the managers of such services swear that they will not be misused....it's highly likely that they will be. Satelite technology is available that allows Google Earth to show you how many cars are parked in my drive way. GPS technology can track me around town via my cell phone. We are but a step away from imprenating humans with small electronic capsules that will be placed under the skin that will contain not only our identifying data, but perhaps our medical and credit records, along with school records, driving records and what have you.

I am always struck by the idea, that with all this digitized information, that half of us, will be sitting around seeing what the other half is up to. That leaves the other half to sit around and see what we are up to.

I cannot and will not deny that protection of identity via social networking applications is of great importance and deserves to be attended to, I am not quite as sure as the problem is as grave as some folks would like to make it out to be. In my youth, I took great delight in meeting new folks. It was a way of testing my "adulthood"...seeing how someone else matched up to me, learning new things, and of course, taking risks all along. Somehow, I have made it this far, and am none the worse for it. It is probably far better to teach kids how to respond to innappropriate and dangerous behaviors than to outright ban the social networking applications that seem so strife with such things.

Day Twelve - Whatcha' lookin' at?

2006-09-30T00:35:00.000-05:00

While we are looking at web-based visual sharing communities, I want to look at three very similar communities as our last stops. These communities are OurMedia, YouTube and Google Video. Ourmedia (web site) boasts 115,000 members. Of the three, it houses the widest variety of multimedia, including photos, audio and video. It's also worth noting that OurMedia is a subsidiary of the Internet Archive (the complex effort to index all the internet since 1996). The bulk of the media on OurMedia is Creative Commons material, meaning that virtually anyone can use the materials with proper notation.

YouTube (web site) is similar to Ourmedia but is smaller. However, we are talking about small in relative terms. The community that supports YouTube currently uploads about 65,000 videos per day. Thats a lot of members. YouTube's videos encourage interactivity among members by forum like comment areas linked to each video. With it's Video target, many of the comments on individual videos are videos as well. YouTube also allows for a lightweight tagging system, but not near so well organized as Flickr.

And finally, the guys and gals of the Googleplex, give us Google Videos. Google Videos probably have the most progressive effort to make video accessible to any OS, thought they are also most criticised for the quality of their videos. Although it sounds like everything here is video (and it is) amazingly a number of musicians have begun to use Google Video to get their music videos out on the net. Google Video also has close ties to the commercial television industry (several of the major players have put entire episodes of commercial TV on Google Video).

Looking at these communities individually, one can ascertain a number of minor differences. But for our purpose what is more important is the underlying structure. One of the first things to note, is that all three of these communities have massive server support, with YouTube being the smallest. Google, with it's huge net indexing and search facilities and OurMedia with its Wayback and Internet Archive facilities would seem to be able to host more videos on their servers, but in actuallity, there is little difference between all three in terms of servers space. Another thing that I think makes these communities very important in the learning community sense is that they are while there is an ever greater need for broadband to play the videos, they all seem to be gravitating toward formats that leave even smaller footprints on our computers, meaning they load quickly and are easily viewed. Google and YouTube both exclusively use Flash technology, with Google tinkering with several other possible extensions to make for faster and better quality video. OurMedia also heavily reliant on Flash but more likely to use some other types of files. Finally, all of them are right out at the leading edge of Web 2.0 technology. When you think about how long they have been around and how astoundingly successful they have been, and how easy it is for the educational community to embrace this technology, it's easy to see why these communities are just the first wave of many more come.

Finally, what is not said may be the most important thing about these commuities. They are all set to be put on hand-held and ipod type devices. Not only can you carry your TV with you, you will have an amazing choice of videos to look at. And with the indexing ability inherant to these behemoth servers, you should be able to look through videos like you look through books and periodicals in the library.

Anyway, I thought these would be a good final stop and would give us plenty to think about in the near future as we all explore more learning communities on our own. I am pulling the convertible off the internet highway now, and I'm going to check into the nearest cyber-motel. My eyes are bleary and my head is exploding from information overload. I need some rest. What about you ....?

Day Eleven - I'll show you mine, if....

2006-09-29T22:26:00.000-05:00

One learning community, I wanted to make sure I visited is a place with lots of visual appeal, but few words...and yet it is a very highly effective community. There is much sharing, a huge membership with lots of sub-groups, and a very well known social element.

Flickr identifies itself as a photo-sharing community based on a Web 2.0 platform. When I first encountered Flickr, I didn't really notice the community so much. I thought it was a great way to use photos on various websites or classes I was taking. I could take on my photos, and instead of posting it to my own server, I could use the space at Flickr. Then I found the tagging mechanism. I found that there were other folks out there taking similar photos of similar things. Not only that, but many of them were willing to share and in many cases let me use their photos on my web endeavors. Much of the material on the site was marked "Creative Commons" which allowed me to use it with proper documetation. This was my first real-life encounter with the "copy-left" culture. This in itself was an education. Most of this attentiveness came about whent the original Canadian owner (who established Flckr in 2002) sold their holding to Yahoo in March 2005 and came under the strict US Copyright laws.

Then much to my surprise in 2005, I got my first invite to join in one of the many sub-communities of folks taking photos based on specific subject matter. From here I went on to join several other groups of like minded amateur photographers. In Flickr's early days, there were chat rooms where groups like this met (IRC), but that has since been replaced by the tagging and internal email systems.

There are several other photo sharing communties but none have had the success of Flickr.

Day Ten - Learning Communities - Hacking Folders and Things

2006-09-28T01:44:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but I often find that I am a poor time planner. I think that it is just part of the human condition in these days of information overload and multi-tasking. David Allen wrote a fine little book a few years ago, about his experiences at fighting to maintain control of his scheduling and stress levels throughout years of professional work. The book, "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity", spawned several communities of like-minded learners who embraced Allen's approach and then went beyond. One of the best known of those communities was 43 Folders.

43 Folders is a geeky little community, whose inhabitants have an almost religious zeal around Allen's thoughts. The site is full of information based on the book and has a nice GTD Wiki in addition to discussion list and MP3 potdcasts. There is a very narrowly focused niche here, and seldom do the constituents stray from it. It is sometimes as if the book were the original open source platform, but this dandy little group of developers has taken the API and created a myriad of by products all aimed at the same end result....saving time and alleviating stress. It is hard to visit this community without bookmarking it and coming back here to spend a lot of time and take away a lot of great ideas about how to take better care of yourself and your work.

Poke around the community a bit and see if you can find the motivation under the activity here. What is the "value ad" that keeps people coming back?

See also:
Life Hacks - A spin-off community from 43 folders with much the same general focus
LifeHacker: - The products end of 43 folders.

NOTE: I am not a fan of pseudo-scientific time organizers and stress releivers...things are usually not that simple. But seems like the more times I read Allen's book and look at these sites, the more I agree with his simple approach. Now if we could just approach life with a similar process.

Day Nine, Learning Commuities - Geeks in Sleeping Bags

2006-09-27T08:45:00.000-05:00

We are in for a treat today. Today, we stop in a community where everyone is a geek like us, but we get to meet each member of the community in person. Not only that, the level of interactivity is super high...almost everyone here participates in some way. This particular community of learners is a blended community, that is, it exists not only online but also Face 2 Face. This community is called BarCamp. The BarCamp community is generally informal and relies on mixed-mode delivery to provide for learning. The scaffolding of the community is the Open Space Technology format. The learning content of such communities is very much user driven. The BarCamp facilitators may put together a list of potential subject areas for discussion and learning, but in the end, it is totally up to the learners as to which subjects will be included in the BarCamp. Furthermore, the content itself is completely controlled by the participants. There are no hired presenters...just participants who are willing to share their knowledge with other participants. And finally, membership in the BarCamp community, requires each member to promise to present on some subject matter. F2F BarCamps generally occur in centralized cities in a free meeting space, and it is not unusual, due to the scaffolding for the BarCamp to advertise itself is "round-the-clock" learning, and because of that, often boast of "bring a sleeping bag" overnight accomodations (people gotta sleep dont they?).

The on-line part of this community is then heavily reliant on blogs, photo sharing (often similar to power point presentations), social bookmarking and wikis to follow-up the subject matters encountered in the F2F portion of a BarCamp. There are also a couple of E-lists that carry BarCamp discussions (I've listed the best below).

What is the BarCamp's role in "Learning Communities"? I am not sure there is an answer to that yet. BarCamps may be a passing fad, or they may be the inevitable result of the social side of on-line learning communities. Only time is going to tell us where BarCamps fit in our Learning Communities model.

Additional Reads:
BarCamp for Dummies
BarCamp Wiki - A terrific list of BarCamps that were, and BarCamps that are yet to come.
The Nuts and Bolts of BarCamp
Google Groups Bar Camp - Probably the best e-list group on BarCamps.

Day Eight - Learning Communities - Increasing Learning and Involvement

2006-09-26T11:21:00.000-05:00

Today, I thought we might pull into the next drive in movie and watch whatever is on the screen. Well, lucky for us, there is a film here about learning communities. It's short but it brings up some pretty good points. One thing that really has been hanging around my brain since watching it, is how professionals talk to each other. Far too often we couch what we say in language that we fully understand, but makes many of us sound like outter space invaders to other group members. In order to sustain a really interactive community, we have to re-learn or re-hearse basic communication skills. Using the latest terminology may prove to us, that we are on top of technological change, but if the party who is listening to us does not understand that of which we speak, then it does little to even open our mouths.....


Academy for Sustainable Communities

What kinds of things in this short movie reverberate or connect for you?

Day Seven - Learning Communities - Use it or lose it

2006-09-25T23:18:00.000-05:00

Today, the throttle is wide open. We are moving at speeds we never thought were possible. In fact, we are learning so fast that we surprising ourselves. Now, we are whizzing through learning communities and quickly recognizing their qualities and make-up. In fact we are not entering a community that will help explain this phenomena and get us to thinking about how we can provide faster learning in our learning communities. Up ahead is Brain Connections, the on-line learning community of the Scientific Learning Company. It's sister learning community, Posit Science, actually is spread out accross the U.S. in various F2F communities, in a number of Universities and can actually be ordered installed in new Dell Computers. Both are communities established by Dr. Michael Merzenich, based on his theory of Neuro- or Brain Plasticity, which posits that learning can actively and delliberately be acheived by action on the learniers part. Duh? you say. Well, at first it doesn't look like much, but this theory has profound effect on adult learning. It means, that humans can continue to learn as long as they want to, and as long as they actively (let me repeat that - ACTIVELY) pursue learning.

Now, here's the reason I wanted to visit these two communities. Information is coming at us so fast to day, that in order to keep up, we must remain adaptable and we have to become fast learners. Neuroplasticity, allows us to see that we all have the capability to adapt to new learning. And through action coupled with attititude we can learn at amazingly fast rates. So there are two elements here that should be important in your learning community. One is involvement. If people perceive themselves involved in something they really want to learn, the weil learn much faster. And secondly, it has to be something they WANT to learn. One of the beauties of on-line learning communities, is that people generally join them because they truly want to be there. There are some few exceptions but by and large if you are still a member, then it's because you really want to be there. And the speed by which you learn something you really want to know, re-inforces your desire to learn which in turn allows you to continue to learn at fast rates.

Common sense? Well you'd think so, but....read "Change or Die", and see if we normally follow these rules of common sense learning. I think you will be surprised at the results of the surveys described. If you were truly given a choice of changing or dying, you would choose change...right? Wrong. There is good statistical evidence to suggest that you wouldn't. In fact, in this article, the odds are nine to one that you would not. Remember what I said about "attitude" being an element of "fast learning". You indeed, have to want to change. Learn more about how to invoke that kind of attitude in your community members by reading the article.

Finally, how does this all apply to you as the facilitator. I beleive that much of what we learn in a situation has to do with modeling. If you are going to model "fast learning" for your community, then you have to model it for them. We have already noted that there are three distinct phases in a learning communities existence. We can take that same model and apply it to how we learn in a daily environment. What do we need to do to prepare our selves for fast learning in the start-up phase (learn before doing), in the middle (learn while doing), and at the end (learn after doing). By modeling a few techniques to our community members we can effectively facilitate faster learning on their part. Read "The Future of the Future: Learning Fast to Stay Relevant in the World" and let me know if these are things that you do or want to do in your life.

Day Six - Learning Communities - The Great Divide

2006-09-24T23:09:00.000-05:00

Today, if you get a chance go over and take a peak at "internet's largest community for educators"....Digital Divide Network. This is a fine example of learning community and it is one with all the bells and whistles. In light of earlier comments about low threshold communities....has this one overdone it? It's membership continues to grow and there is terrific involvement of some of the best online educators out there. So how does it maintain its stature? What keeps it in the positions it is in? What kinds of things here would you like to emulate in your own personal learning community?

Have a great weekend.

Additional Readings: What Can Social Networking Do For Your Organization

Plagiaristic Pugilism

2006-09-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

(In reference to the EdTech Blog and a review of "Students Rebel Against Database Designed to Thwart Plagiarists").

I have mixed feelings about plagiarism-detection. Certainly, I do not wish to see a paper copied verbatim for a grade. On the other hand, some things are just so common that it is likely that more than one person may have the same idea. Perhaps using the same language to express that idea is what the argument is about, but I am afraid my thoughts on creation of content are still unsettled.

I suspect that much of this line of thought is headed toward a discussion of copyright enfringement, and if so, then I definitely have some off-center thoughts. For example, we already have Open Source, Copy-left and Public Domain issues to mull over. Thinking too hard and long about whether or not a thing is plagiarism, takes the wings off of thought.

Such a huge mountain of information as we face today, for me, is most likely to lead us to use other tools such as hyperlinking which actually shows the original document. It seems to me that the entire article is frequently more useful that some short quote from within the article. I think we live in changing times and that many of the rules that have worked well in the past will not work so well in the future. Mechanically or technologically searching for plagiarism seems rather costly, and I am not sure that it really benefits the student. Perhaps teaching more creative ways to express oneself has a better role here.

Day Five - Learning Communities - Living with Albert

2006-09-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

What do you need to know about the technical limitations of your members and their equipment before they participate in a learning community?

When one thinks about how to start a learning community, one of the issues that needs to be dealt with is to consider the technical limitations of your members and their equipment before they participate in a learning community. That consideration might include matters of privacy and security for a youth community, speed of the computers for rural community, or perhaps whether or not a computer or a telephone might be the best and most affordable device for a community in a poor area. Today, I’d like to us to visit a community for those with limited abilities. Certainly, the handicapped, the elderly and others can enjoy and benefit from learning communities, but just how do we go about making those types of communities accessible to potential members?

A nice article to read in consideration of these factors is “Building Smart Communities: what they are and how they can benefit blind and visually impaired people”. Afterwards, why not visit Leukodystrophy Family (Nervous System Disabilities), or the Visually Impaired Blind Users Group of Massachusetts, or listen to this audio interview (Life with Albert Part I and Life with Albert Part II - If you have problems with these links try to listen from my blog, Rebuilding Indianola) with Albert, a blind instructor in a refuge camp in Western Sahara, Africa (an incredible interview with a unique approach to using very sparse resources, basically a screen reader only, to build a learning community in a place with 95% illiteracy). This interview was original podcast from another interesting learning community with unique approach to using technology to enhance education, EdTech Talk, a part of the WorldBridges network. Now that these communities with unique approaches to user capacity and capability are in our rear-view mirror, how will you implement your learning community so that user equipment and technical limitations will not hamper the other aspects of creating a learning environment?

Day Four - Learning Communities - The Moodle Commons

2006-09-22T22:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Kayla commented on SCoPE an how comfortable she felt in another community that was built on a Moodle foundation. I thought that today, we might look at still another community built on Moodle---The Moodle Community. This is the development community at Moodle. It is large, well organized and a wonderful example of how a Moodle can be set up to handle a learning community.

It also brings to mind a question about foundations of learning communities. How distinct are the appliications that communities of learning rest on. We will look at some communities that are strictly email list, some that are Moodle based like this one, and some that use other applications, like Joomla and Elgg. So give me your thoughts on the foundations of learning environments. How do they influence the community or do they?

Day Three - Learning Communities - "V" Towns

2006-09-20T22:11:00.000-05:00

I am not much of a "gamer" myself, but certainly many "digital natives" grew up learning to use the tools of learning technology by navigating their way through the various levels of many on-line games. One developer has called this future oriented technology as "learning on steroids". Currently, we have to choose among classroom-based training, synchronous online seminars, asynchronous Web-based training and a smattering of other options when determining the best delivery mechanism for learning content.

So driving into future learning communities lets make a virtual stop. Web-based training and a smattering of other options when determining the best delivery mechanism for learning content.

Second Life is a community built in a virtual environment. It has over 700,000 residents, it's own economy, and the roots of educational systems ( It's internal search engine boast of 23 "educational" entries, though some might not be what we would consider traditional education with Second Life University the largest with 279 members.) You don't have to have an account to prowl around the front page and see some examples of what this site is all about. Obviously, this type of community brings up all sort of issues about privacy and security (similar the the communities at FaceBook, MySpace and There), but their popularity would indicate that those issues will eventually be resolved. For now, they provide wonderful examples of potential learning communities and environments.

Does Second Life pique your creative side a bit in terms of how you would use such a product for an educational community?

Day Two - Learning Communities - A Band of Gypsies

2006-09-19T20:23:00.000-05:00

Our second stop is a temporary community, sort of a "band of gypsies" of learning. It is a short term moving community, going from place to place in real life and communicating to larger learning networks from the experiences the gypsies are gaining.

Otago Polytechnic has initiated a traveling open space conference called The Future of Learning in a Networked World. Participants will meet on September 18 and travel to participating institutions in Dunedin, Christchurch, Northland, Auckland and Wellington recording discussions around this topic.

Day One - Learning Communities

2006-09-18T20:03:00.000-05:00

Our first visit is to one of the first communities of learning that I ever enjoyed. Both Knowplace and I have offices there, though I don't use mine as much as I once did (I guess I must dwell there only in certain parts of the year). But I still love the place. It is built on one of the "Cadillacs" of web-sharing platforms - Elluminate.

The community is called Learning Times. LearningTimes.org is an open community for education and training professionals. Members have free access to a wide range of opportunities to interact and network with peers from across the globe. Member activities include live webcasts and interviews with industry leaders, online debates and discussions, live coverage of industry conferences, and international working groups.

Whirlwind Toor of Learning Communities Starts Tomorrow

2006-09-17T19:42:00.000-05:00

I am hosting an educational workshop at Capillano College/Knowplace over the next couple of weeks on "Learning Communities". A portion of the workshop will be devoted to a whirlwind tour of different "learning communities". The tour will provide the prudent explorer an opportunity to travel the Internet speedway, cruising from one community to another. I will be posting a new community each day of the course, so take a glance or spend some time, or at least put it in your aggregator or your del.icio.us list or however you save mementos of places you have been and would like to return to. It will be up to the explorer to glean what they can from each community, but feel free to commit your thoughts to this blog, as you pass these places of learning.

"Operator!...May I help you?

2006-09-05T00:16:00.000-05:00

Response to "Mobile Learning: The Next Evolution of Education?" posted to The EdTech Blog.

"Over the past decade, mobile computing and communications devices have become essential tools in higher education and business environments. It is now routine for business travelers and educators to carry laptop computers, cell phones, and PDAs that allow them to access data and information from anywhere—whether in a conference room, classroom, or while on the move."

While this statement may be true, note that it concerns itself with "educators", not those being educated. Of course, that is not to say that many of those being educated do not also find a need to carry a laptop, a cell phone or a PDA, but the handheld computing devices are not the ubiquitous devices that the article seems to be describing....or at least not here in Texas. Major School Districts all over the state allow students to bring the devices to school, but insist that they be turned off during regular class day (apparently this means no use in between classes as well). Penalties range from loss of the device to a fine.

I did a Google search before writing this post to see what information exists on the net regarding Educational Cell Phone Use in Texas. Not too surprisingly, there was little definitive information. Instead, there were several things that struck me as I scrolled through several pages of results.

First, it was interesting to see how many places are studying the use of cell phones as educational devices. This can probably be taken a number of different ways but for me, my first thought was that we are desperately seeking tools to re-inforce our current notions of how to teach. We have tried a lot of other things, but it just seems that most of them don't have the desired impact (personal opinion:putting our money where our mouth is, is probably the most likely to impact classroom test scores - the continued funding deficit in public education only re-inforces poor education).

The next thing I noted was that most of the Texas school districts indicated, had banned the use of cell phones during regular classroom hours. In light of item one, this seems a bit strange. If the devices really have potential, why aren't we letting some schools experiment with them...woops, I forgot, we are in an educational democracy here. We can't let one school have something without giving it to all of them....and God forbid, we find someone to give every schoolchild in Texas a simple cell phone and school account (even though most phone plans will give you a free phone to use - we are probably holding out for one of those $100 laptops for each child instead). I didn't see anything about teachers or administrators being allowed to carry these illicit devices, though earlier entries in the EdTech blog comments, would lead me to belief that they are fairly ubiquitous.

Another seemingly unrelated but serious issue was the use of cell phones in cars, being disruptive to driving activities. Hmmm. So the power of the cell phone is so great that it breaks our concentration and causes us to run into other autos. Or maybe on closer look, it has more to do with the dialing and answering process. Maybe audio and voice enhancement for all cell phones and screens large enough to see the print on, would make a difference. Keep in mind that my blog entry here (at least on my blog) is read aloud by a female voice without me activating anything after the original programming. Of course all those voices might distract drivers from listening to the drive time DJs, that radio pays so highly during those periods of high drive time. We had similar problems back when I was going to school in the 60's. Back then we called such distractions "daydreaming", and though most teachers banned such activity, they were not very successful (poor pedagogy leads to poor learning). Maybe if we turn this around, it might bring about a more profitable outcome. If cell phone can command such attention, then perhaps the best place to instruct would be over the cell phone. Of course, then we would have to ban driving while learning.

Finally, my last observation had to do with the fact that there are all these devices and none are on the same wavelength. They all use exactly the same technology, but charge different prices at different times of the day for use on devices that only work in specific geographical areas. The manufacturer of almost any cell phone will tell you that by and large, any phone will do anything, any other phone will do (or at leas most can be programmed to do what the others do). The catch is, that when the benevolent cell phone provider gives you that cell phone for free, they also program the memory chip in the phone to restrict use to meet their personal policies. This enables them to make ever more money to help save a terribly failing hard land line infrastructure, that could be replaced by WiFi and cell phones. Or heck, maybe the line their pockets with the extra money.

Whatever cell phones realities there are, this conversation has just begun, and it's ramifications will be with us far into the future. Already VOIP is looming on the horizon, and we have yet to get much of a handle on device usage in the classroom with limited capability cell phones. Not only that, but cell phones have become so ubiquitous in many societies, that we can hardly put them back in the box. And increasingly, we are finding lots of good reasons to have them in our pockets.

If you are an instructor, you need to continously think about my first observation....the new cell phones are coming, and they are quite likely going to change the way we educate. They will be VOIP, multi-media, have more processing power, interact with PCs or laptops more readily and will be cheaper than ever. You can turn them off, but the kids will learn on them, whether you are involved in what they learn or not.

Terrorism and laptops.

2006-08-13T10:07:00.000-05:00

One of the things that has fallen out from this weeks terrorists arrests in UK, is that apparently, laptops are no longer going to be allowed as carry-on luggage on airlines.

I have no idea how many teachers this is going to affect, but I think it is a great candidate for a major change in how business deals with information and data. If your laptop has ever had an opportunity to view films of airline baggage handlers tossing bags through the air into the hold of the plane, it will surely close it's top and go into hybernation when it finds out that in the future it too, will be in that load of baggage tossed through the air. It's possible that the outcome of such events will be that laptops will be built that are much more sturdy than what we see on the market now...and of course, at least in the early stages those will likely be heavier and bulkier...just the opposite of where things were headed.

More likely, I think, we will see a massive embracing of Web as storage approach. Business firms will load their materials into a remote site, and then either rent or borrow a machine at a remote location to download their materials and share them with their remote co-workers. And if you follow that a bit further, then there is at least an outside potential that no one at all will travel to the remote location, and instead, we will stream materials from one place to another. Streaming a meeting to a Blackberry or other handheld device is far more likely than taking a risk of carrying precious data in a laptop that might be damaged in transit.

How does all this affect you? Streaming is essentially the same, regardless of the codec. Some of you are already considering or at least thinking about streaming video as well as audio. This technology is already pretty much available, but in the past it was not preferrable to a live interaction. Terrorism may be the key element that changes the way we all interact on the internet.

elderbob

Google may expand library project with UC Library contents

2006-08-10T01:11:00.000-05:00

"Google is keen to have access to UC's 34 million volumes from 100 libraries on 10 campuses, which is described as collectively the largest academic research library in the world. UC wants to delve more deeply into the Internet revolution with a deep-pockets partner like Google paying the costs of scanning books."
LATimes
So the end times are upon us...California is about to fall into the ocean, and like Ninevah and Alexandria before it, a great library is about to be lost....But wait. Is there a way to prepare for said demise? Is there a way for Google to save the day?

Well, UC California thinks so. The great UC library, is about to join Stanford and Harvard in the monster attempt to preserve written data by digitizing. It's partnership with Google might involve (keep in mind that we are still in early stages of negotiation here), making two copies of a book (not known yet whether this includes copyrighted materials or just public domain materials), one for the libraries own personal use, and one for the huge Google database of works. Does this sound familiar to you? I should, The great library at Alexandria in it's heyday, would ask travelers to submit any usable documents to the great library. It would keep the original and make a copy for the owner and send them on their way. It was an early attempt at cataloging a database of all print and art materials available.

So regardless of great earthquake or humongous hurricane, or world war, so long as Google can maintain a digital virtual library, we have a chance of preserving the knowledge of mankind.

Personal Reflections on Module 6

2006-07-06T19:19:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it took a few minutes to find the last chapter which was actually from Peter Block's "Flawless Consulting" book. The article, nevertheless, give one some final thoughts about consulting and especially about ethics. Block starts off talking about how unsettling the subject of ethics may be to some. But in today's world, ethics seem to be on the forefront of lots of peoples minds. I worked with a couple of folks not too long ago to set up an organization to promote business ethics. Though it is a subject of frequent discussion, when we started asking about the need for ethics training for business folks, we got a bit of a cold shoulder. I like to think it was because most firms already feel that their employees are ethical. But on the other hand, I got the distinct impression, that many just did not see a need to pay good money to teach their staff how to play nice in this market economy. Either way, we did not get enough business to sustain our efforts. And in fact, it has caused me to notice how many professions now are required by law to provide a set number of ethics hours per year in training. What happened to the "Golden Rule"? Why do we have to legislate people to be ethical?Block's approach is to put it on the back of the consultant. You have to continously be asking yourself, if you are actually delivering the product you promised. There is that realization that the consultants work is tied directly to the clients output, and that the consultant has little control over that output, but I think the best route to go to be an ethical consultant is still to be honest to oneself, and to deliver what you said you would deliver. We always have the option to give the money back and say that we can't do something....don't we?

The other article "Marketing and Representing Your Small Business" offers a handful of tips on ways to improve your visibility and reputation through simple marketing. It's a nice article and I find that I am already doing many of the suggestions that the article suggests. These are low budget suggestions and really ought to be standard fare for anyone in business for themselves.

And lastly, the final project. I think that for me, the jury is still out on what I learned from this exercise. To some extent, I feel that it was a very strained effort. I know that I did not feel that I had sufficient information to make a proposal, and perhaps there are real situations where it is just like that. But I would have loved to have more time and more access to the views of others regarding the usability of the website before I suggested anything in print. On the other hand, maybe the project was to get me in a documentational mode. Perhaps, the writing of the project was the end goal. Either way, I felt ill at ease, in making a proposal that was somewhat out of my area of expertise and without sufficient information to dig further and learn more.

All in all, I have enjoyed the class. As always, Blackboard is a clunky, slow and inefficient content management system, and I truly wish the University would consider an enhanced format, but the materials were good, the book was quite good (well beyond my early expectaions) and the classroom interaction was terrific (in fact, it was a bit difficult to keep up with all the posts. It was over all a good effort and I would recommend it to other students.

I, Robot.

2006-07-05T19:16:00.000-05:00

Re: Robots Stand for Bed-ridden Students from eSchool News
Re: Pebbles, Home

It's a bit of a scary thought, that the students in the classroom "have become used to the robot and were treating it as if it were Achim after just a few days", as stated in the eSchool article. The story is about robots as classroom intermediaries for students who cannot physically be in the classroom. Or at least that is what it purports to be. But in the back of my mind, I can't help but think about all the additional educational and social data that must be being collected by someone for reference for future experiments. I dunno....something about us all having our own stand-in robots for when we would rather be fishing than listening to a math lecture. Or maybe to study social interaction between machines and humans. Oh no! Now, Kurzweils comments about machines being the dominant species in a few years comes flooding up from the back of my mind. Maybe the experiment are really about how robots accept real people in a learning environment. Who knows. It's a bit of a quirky story, but on the other hand it is certainly expectable technology. Even chaos has patterns and though it may seem rather chaotic that this mecho-creature exists, it may be the first event an a long chain of events on the chaotic scale. If it is, then it makes Kurzweils thoughts even more valid.

The truth of is, that we are already daily dealing sets of robots. When you call information for a phone number, you are speaking to a machine. When you draw cash out of your bank via ATM, you are dealing with a machine. Driving down the street, if you look at the signal lights you will often notice the mechanistic camera eyes of some sensory network that is fed into a machine to allow some other machine to monitor our daily travels. The same machines have been taught to give you a ticket if you fail to comply with certain laws (red light cameras and toll booth cameras). We are not only interacting with the machines, we are actually teaching them ways to think:

And who will write the software that makes this contraption useful and productive? We will. In fact, we're already doing it, each of us, every day. When we post and then tag pictures on the community photo album Flickr, we are teaching the Machine to give names to images. The thickening links between caption and picture form a neural net that can learn. Think of the 100 billion times per day humans click on a Web page as a way of teaching the Machine what we think is important. Each time we forge a link between words, we teach it an idea. Wikipedia encourages its citizen authors to link each fact in an article to a reference citation. Over time, a Wikipedia article becomes totally underlined in blue as ideas are cross-referenced. That massive cross-referencing is how brains think and remember. It is how neural nets answer questions. It is how our global skin of neurons will adapt autonomously and acquire a higher level of knowledge. - From Wired, "We Are the Web"

So my next question has got to be, what does this have to do with Education or Information Consultation. Well, I think I have some experience with this very thing, or at least a very early version of it. My experience comes about with my dealing with the rag tag gang of web education subversives, The Webheads. Every Sunday morning at 1200 GMT the webheads meet online. Members from all over the world. People from many cultures and social backgrounds. They started meeting at TappedIn with only text chat capabilities. Then it was on to the audio capabilities of Yahoo Messenger. Now, we often Skypecast with voice and video. It's sort of like being in a classroom online, but there is no classroom, but everyone has the potential to see everyone else. All that holds back our complete visual presence is bandwidth. When computers get enough storage and fast enough to process all the information, then we will all be classmates in miraculous virtual classroom. Now the "global skin of neurons" is starting to mean something. We are but a first step.

The very teachers who are the Webheads, take their experiences back and now add them into their regular classrooms. It's not unusual at all for any one of us to virtually visit someone else's classroom half way round the world. The point is, that the same technology that creates a PEBBLE also tears down the classroom walls as we know them. No longer are we bound by culture or geography. It is feasible for anyone, anywhere to join in a class on virtually any subject. It will make us rethink standards and how to apply them to students. It will make us ask ourselves what the role of the classroom teacher is. It will test libraries and books, social networking, and language. It is but a glimpse of the future that is here now.

Personal reflections on Module 5

2006-06-30T11:18:00.000-05:00

Early in this course, several folks mentioned in the forums, how much they disliked Chaos. Chaos is really just a state of dis-equilibrium. Not only does chaos have patterns, but there are also primary drivers that cause it to occur. Chapter 11 discusses some of the things that are the primary drivers for such chaos. Two major areas are work environment politics and resistance. Both are common to all consulting environments. It think it might have been useful to make a distinction between work politics and real politics. Considering that many of the class will be involved in real politics because of tax-payer supported education, I would have liked to have seen some discussion of how one deals with the frustration of dealing with contracts and grants and government related bureaucracy. I know that these are unique to educational technology (or maybe they aren't....as in life-long learning), but many of us are going to be dealing with such elements for a long time into the future. There were lots of comments made about such things as standards testing in schools that represent this frustration, but I didn't think that this section of the text dealt with it. Again, I wish there were a textbook that dealt more with Educational Technology than Information Technology. Maybe in the future one of these students will feel compelled to write such a text....maybe even me!

The second chapter, "Blueprint for Development" held a lot of appeal for me. This section was about continuous development of ones skill set and as such falls into one of my favorite categories, "life-long" learning. In my particular niche of working with retired or retiring people, it is noticeable that many retirees do not want to completely leave the work force. Many of those folks are realizing now, the importance of continued skill refinement because of changes and developments of their own fields. So this need for continuous development is certainly not unique to consulting. I was pleased to see it included in the text because far too often text books act as if they are the end all to learning, which is seldom ever true. And it fits perfectly into the concept of review and revision that has been so apparent in the consulting process that the text alludes to. Now that I am retired from the government bureaucracy, it has been amazing to find out what a closed system I was in. All of the bureaucracy training was pretty much within the bureaucracy. When you get away from it, you realize there was so much more to know. It was really empowering to me personally to realize that there was far more to learn than just how the bureaucracy works or how to fill out a certain form, or which policies applied when. Internal government consultants are hamstrung a bit by this. Unless they are willing to go outside of the work environment and learn more about their area of expertise, they are going to very limited in what they can learn. This was a rather short chapter but it contained a great deal of good advice about how to go about improving ones skills and self-awareness.

I also enjoyed the almost opposing views of how much one should charge for consulting services. I say "almost opposing" because the two articles seem to have different orientations as to whether one should charge by the hour or by the job. I think both views should be considered. On the one hand, I think it is probably a good idea to keep track of ones times and expenses, but also to be aware that in some cases, charging by the job creates a more creative and supportive environment in which to work. I think it ought to be the consultant's choice as to which best suits a situation. I see no problem in quoting an hourly rate, but being willing to negotiate a "by the job" fee. Either way, being aware of what kinds of time and effort are being spent on doing ones job, helps to give one an idea of whether or not a job is profitable or not and allows the consult to revise fees for future consultations.

What's the difference in a wind-up toy and a laptop?

2006-06-29T19:14:00.000-05:00

Re: Educators First to Text Negroponte's $100.00 Laptop Prototype from eSchool News

I know a lot of folks are going to talk about the $100.oo laptop, and I know it is a terrific stride toward reduction of the digital divide. There is no doubt that is a fabulous first step. Unfortunately in my opinion, it is only going to work in a small part of the world economy. One Hundred Dollars in many parts of the world is an amount that would make one almost rich. It would not matter in those places whether the lovely wind-up (actually the hand cranked power generator has been removed from the current $140.00 iteration) computer was $100.oo or $10.00, it would still not be an affordable educational expense. And yes, I am still talking about the same places where the device was intended to be employed. Take a look at the names of some of the countries already in line to buy such devices: Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Argentina and Venezuela. How many developing African or Middle Eastern nations are on that list? Similar devices have been tried before and the economics of the world just didnt provide enough stimulus for production ( see Simputer
- $130-$240 USD depending on the size of screen - , in India or the Dragon Dream - about 100 pounds english - in China).

I think it is great that a bunch of engineer got together and built this device for such a low cost. Now I wonder if I could get them to work on the internal combustion engine. Truth is, I think the money that has been sunk into this project/contest would have been more wisely spent in developing cellular phone technology that would have made smart phones cheap enough to put into the hands of really poor people.

Or perhaps it's all a moot point. Perhaps, just perhaps, the very thing that we are sitting around talking about is already occuring and we are just not noticing.

A few weeks ago, I had the absolute delight of hearing from a blind man who teaches in a refugee camp in Southern Sahara. He joined my regular Sunday morning get together with the Webheads in a Skype powered internet broadcast from WorldBridges. Take a few moments to listen to his story. Afterwards ask yourself what effect the $100.00 computer will have on this man and his efforts or if he will even be able to get his hand on one. I think you will be surprised at his comments.

Toward the end of another interesting weekly EdTechbrainstorm hosted by Doug Symington, we were joined in the public skypecast by Albert. As it turns out, Albert was skyping in from a refugee camp in the African desert of Western Sahara. where he is a "blind hippie, teacher, Sufi political dissident".

For the next 2 and 1/2 hours, the handful of us left in the webcast were captivated by the life experiences and insights he shared. The first few minutes are a bit tech related, but by minute 8 Albert begins painting us an amazing picture of his life. I usually have a difficult time providing a clear answer to the questions "What is Worldbridges?" - to me, this this conversation is Worldbridges.

Conversation with Albert - Part 1

Download mp3 ( 56:28, 25.8MB)

Conversation with Albert - Part 2
Download mp3 ( 40:58, 18.7MB)

Part 2 of our conversation wtih Albert, a "blind hippie, teacher, Sufi political dissident" who was skyping in from a refugee camp in the African desert of Western Sahara.

Personal reflections on Module 4

2006-06-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

Chapter Nine appears to be the final piece of the IT Consulting Framework around which the textbook is centered. In fact, it seems to me a sort of list of final thoughts about things that need to be attended that didnt fit elsewhere in the framework. Thoroughness, Documentation, Security, Maintenance, and Training are all listed as things that need to be addressed in the consulting proposal and process. Making sure that the client is satisfied, checking real results compared to our original visualization of results and finally documenting the clients satisfaction, are all wrap-up processes that need to occur before we can call the project finished. I think that all of these seem to be items that have been alluded to in earlier modules, and this is a last checklist before we can start looking at the add-ons that can create value beyond the project for the client. Just doing excellent work, is not always going to get a consultant to the top of the list of potential consultants to be considered for future projects. So what else can we add to the consulting process to make us more memorable, or more identifiable for future consultative jobs.

That is partly where the second chapter in this module comes in. In fact, Chapter 10 is in a segment of the text, titled "Developing Superior Consulting Skills". Ok, so you have that consulting framework down and you have found ways that you can apply your skills and traits into the framework and come out with not only an acceptable consultation but a good or maybe even great consultation. You can now rent a billboard and announce to the world that "I Did IT", but that is not likely to get you a future job. And for a moment, let's assume that most potential good clients all already have a great list of consultants that can do just as good a job as you. How do you work it so that you rise to the top of that list every time? You could wear a clown suit to final implementation review meeting. You could take your client dinner and get them drunk on Champagne. You could even hand the consultant a post card with a picture of him with his arm around your shoulders congratulating you on a job well done, and your contact information on the reverse side. But the truth is that none of these things are going to add VALUE to your consultation. I don't like to think of these as "freebies" but as "additional benefits" that come only with your consultation. They are almost like bonuses. These are the kinds of things that are going to keep you in your client's roladex or Outlook Address Book. These are the kinds of things that cause your client to hand your business card to other associates that may be looking for great consultants. This chapter discusses some ways that the consult more or less embeds themselves into the project. Breifing the client on how the consultation affects parts of the client's business beyond the immediate scope of the project. The book identifies this as addressing depth and breadth of the project. We need to make sure that they understand that one change is likely to lead to another, and by making them aware of some of the things that have potential to change due to our consultation, we are really making them aware of future consultant opportunities between them and us. The book also suggest offering support and maintenance services. These are a great way to keep us aware of the client's work environment and provide us additional opportunities to pitch other consulting proposals in areas outside of the scope of the original consulting proposal. I really llike the idea of providing documentation to the companyat the end of the project. It is one thing to get the job done but handing the client a manual of how it was done and how to keep it up from your perspective, can save them tons of time, and make sure that your consulting efforts have a long life in the client's environment. Asset management was also mentioned, though I have a bit of trouble understanding what the authors mean. I did note that one suggestion was to make sure you let them know people they could outsource elements of the project to. Thomas Leonard, the creator of coach training at Coachville, used to suggest a list of experts that we use. Not only would we put our list of experts that we used together, but we would share the list with anyone who we added to it. The theory was that if I considered a service good in one arena, the same sort of satisfaction would apply to other arenas. Additionally, if they were satisfied with my service, then they would likely be satisfied with services of others that I used. It was a great way to create a network of involved clients who not only liked my service but also liked the kinds of services I liked. The added value was that it saved the client a lot of time, regarding many different areas of their life, and it kept me at the top of the list of consults who did memorable extra things for them. These kinds of additional elements added to my consultation keep me within the clients awareness whenever an additional consulting possibility comes up.

The "Putting It All Together" article mainly reiterates the need to bang our own drum by using a technique called the "Elevator Speech". Short and too the point, the speech is like a verbal business card intended to make sure a potential client will remember you when a need for a consultant rises. But it also needs to go further. It need to titillate the interest of the client enough to have them contact you before the need for consulting arises. In fact, ideally, the potential client's response to this speech should be something like, "I find that a very interesting thought. Let's get together sometime and discuss this in more detail." Which should lead you to establishing the date and time of the meeting. At that point the door is open, and it took less than three minutes to do it. Elevator speeches need to be finely tuned things. I tried to adopt my personal ElderCoaching speech into the elevator speech that would be presented to personnel from UTB regarding the needed changes to the Ed Tech Web Page. The one thing I kept finding myself missing was feedback. I like to "try it out" on a variety of peers, before settling on a final version, and even then I have tried to keep mine flexible enough that I could slightly vary it depending on the kind of environment or client I am introducing it to. I use mine as my tag line on my letter heads and on my web site and emails. I am glad to see this as part of the course.

...2025 Redux...

2006-06-28T11:37:00.000-05:00

'We are the species that goes beyond our limitations.'
Ray Kurzweil

A friend from Kuwait sent me this link to a series of future oriented tales from CNN. This first installation called "Heaven", to be followed by "Hell" boldly asks Ray Kurzweil about the future. Now Kurzweil (who's actually a year younger than me), who has given us "Trans-humanism", "Electronic Keyboard Instruments" and "Text to Speech Synthesis", has always thought way out on the fringe. And perhaps this article predicts a future that is a bit past where reality will take us. But the guys track record is such that even if parts of it come true....well, let's just say, to an old fellow like myself, it's a bit scary.

'There are three major trends to keep in mind. One is that we're doubling the power of computers every year for the same cost. In 25 years, they'll be a billion times more powerful than they are today. At the same time we're shrinking the size of all technology -- electronic and mechanical -- by a factor of a hundred per 3d volume per decade: that's a hundred thousand in 25 years. And we're also improving our software, and in large measure we're doing that by actually understanding hw the brain forms intelligent functions.'

Kurzweil argues that we are not becoming more machinelike, but instead, machines are becoming more humanlike. And if he is right, then I need to rethink libraries, cybraries and search engine technology. Instead of going out to look for a document, perhaps, my simple thought or question will summon up the hyperlink to the document, whereupon, my brain processes the information in the document just like it was a thought in my head. My meager brain, enhanced by a bank of tiny, powerful computers becomes the library in itself, and the data it contains gets amplified out to the nth degree, so that everything that can be known, is all residing within a synapse length of my thought processes. There is nothing I cannot know and nothing that my mind cannot understand. Books are not necessary, any more than MP3 players, Video screens or Cellular communication devices. Our brains use the computer user interface that has been built inside us by nanobots to make all the necessary connections to allow us to experience music, movies and communication with others, more directly than has ever occured previously. You gettin' scared yet?

By 2019 the computers will be so small they will be almost invisible and people will communicate with them through speech, or even perhaps facial gestures, just as they would with another human.
Distance will become no obstacle to anything --- even sex --- and computers will be able to pipe hyper-real images of real people direct to your eye.
You will use an automated personal assistant to do your shopping for you, and they will in turn make purchases virtually on your behalf from an automated shop assistant.
'We're making exponential gains in reverse engineering, understanding the methods of the human brain. Within 25 years we'll understand how the human brain performs its functions. If you if you look ahead to the late 2020s we'll actually understand the software methods [needed] to interact with the brain."

Now here is the part that really, really disturbs me. Technology is growing so fast, that I can no longer fathom the amount of change in 20 years. When I read Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" in the 60's, I at least had an inkling of where we were going and what it would look like. Even Herbert's "Dune" had elements about wars, and nations, and power that I could put in perspective. In 1999, Levine's, Locke's, Searls' and Weinberger's "Cluetrain Manifesto" seemed logical and relevant. But Kurzweil is more than I can handle. I can visualize parts of what he is telling us, and I even understand why he interprets this leap in technology as "Heaven". But I am fearful of CNN's next (second) part of the series, titled "Hell". If 2025, is Heaven come home to roost, the what of "Hell" and what part does technology play in it?

'Just think: the word blog hardly existed three years ago. People didn't use search engines five or six years ago. The first reference to the World Wide Web was in 1993 in the New York Times. So these new capabilities come along, and we really readily accept them. The adoption times for these new technologies get shorter and shorter."
Humanity is the great adapter -- and survivor. 'We didn't stay on the ground, we didn't stay on the planet, we didn't stay within the limitations of our biology, which was a lifespan in the 20s a thousand years ago.

...like to P2Ps in a pod...

2006-06-27T19:12:00.000-05:00

http://owli.org/node/1309?PHPSESSID=d12e655a5c47512805f4d4a0fdb733cc

Beating the odds...

2006-06-26T21:34:00.000-05:00

re: EdTech Blog

Kennedy cheated on his spouse.

Johnson was dishonest about the war.

Nixon lies...Ford pardons.

Carter is brutally honest and get in trouble for being a bit too honest.

Bush Sr. was head of the CIA. I am sure he never lied.

Clinton only lied about certain things and women.

Bush Jr...well, the jury is still out on that one....we'll see what history says.

And it's not just limited to presidents or even politicians. Enron, Arthur Anderson...et.al. Oh, you get my drift.

Cheating is not new, nor is it as pervasive as it first seems and it is not just the underdog that does it.

The reasons for cheating are myriad and in fact, I am not seeing a tremendous effort to squelch it. In fact, it is somewhat unnatural for many cheaters to actually suffer any punishment.

The history of this country and for that matter of most nations is littered with lies. And yet, the countries still survive, and most of them have a fair footing on morality. Cheating appears to be a fascinating subject for news, and if you can't find it on the regular nightly, there will surely be a lot of marital hanky panky on one of the entertainment/actor shows for the public's prurient interest.

Now, I must admit that when I was growing up, I did not steal watermelons out of people's fields. I always gave back the excess when someone miscounted my change. I never cheated on a test or exam. I never copied a statement from another person. In fact, I never had an idea that was not originally mine. Of course, I did fib a bit.

At the bottom of it all, is an assumption that all these test that we are cheating on, is really going to tell someone what I know. Well, the reason I do so well on test is because of steroids, Ritalin, Ginko Biloba and Huperzine A, Phosphatidylserine, and/or Acetyl-L-carnitine and a handful of other performance enhancement drugs. Then before I take and exam, I have a straight person pee into a condom, so I can dumb it in the little test bottle that they use for testing my blood. I even tuck the condom up under my arm before I empty it so that when they test the temperature it will be close to body temperature. Then during the exam, I have a proxy give me high pitched phone rings that only dogs can hear so the proctor can't see what's going on. Do I feel guilty...nah....I feel above average, because in today's world who wants to be average.

If we want to put an end to people doing disservice to themselves by not learning certain materials, then perhaps we ought to look instead at what we are doing to help them learn the materials.

Now that we have convinced you that some of your students are cheating, can you spot the cheaters? Can you use your own personal dislikes and prejudices to place people into categories that you really have no evidence that they belong in. "That person looks so dumb that he must be cheating." "Most people of that race cheat." "He was held back in an earlier grade, so he is probably cheating." Instead, why dont we just truly care about every student in the room. Why not spend a little time getting to know their habits and quirks. Why do we offer our kids UNCONDITIONAL love, but these jerks have to pass a test.

Let's ask trick or loaded questions. Lets phrase them in such a way, so that the person taking the exam is likely to be confused and answer one way one time, and another way another time, proving that they are cheating. Furthermore, let's not tell them that we will be watching to see if there is cheating. In fact, let's leave the room and watch secretly through the window, instead of telling them honestly that you are there to moniter the test and to make sure that they don't copy the wrong answer from someone else's exam.

Let's give those who cheat, all the attention that we can muster, while totally disregarding the exceptional student. Let's reward only those who get the "A's" but not those whose grades have improved the most. Let's spend a lot of time telling what we are going to do to cheaters instead of spending time to talk about the importance of honesty and personal integrity.

Let's not even consider the amount of work we are giving to a pressured class. Let's just assign it and expect them to stay up into the middle of the night studying for the exam. Let's not consider how many of them have to have jobs to help their families pay the bills or for them to belong to all the costly extracurricular activities that seem so important. In fact, let's get them to take their work home with them, while we tell ourselves that it's ok to leave our work at school, instead of admitting that we have trouble keeping up with all the kids in class and all the work we have to grade so quickly. Let's not even admit that we might be giving them more than they can possibly do without cheating.

Lets tell them what we expect from them (including that a certain percentage will cheat), instead of listening to what they expect from themselves. We sure don't want to let them sign any kind of personal contract that might allow them to put in print what they have agreed to do with their abilities.

It seems to me, that unless schools start hiring behavioral counselors, the a lot of you are going to be the closest thing that a student ever gets to a counselor or a personal coach. You have in your hand the potential of a persons life. If we attend to it, in a postive way....if we expect nothing but the best....if we listen, and empathise...maybe, just maybe there will not be a need for a cheating proctor.

The Library in 2025

2006-06-26T17:03:00.000-05:00

re: the ITWeek article "Future Shock" by Tracy Caldwell
re: EdTech Journal entry "Will Libraries Survive the Digital Revolution" of June 11, "

Representation of the Library at Ninevah;

No, I don't have a clue what libraries will look like in 2025, anymore than I could have predicted, 19 years ago, what I would be doing today. I am not a seer or a forecaster, but I can tell you with some assurance that given the history of thousands of years, man will still find himself in 2025, in need of a way to store data.

Humans have probably kept data for their entire existence of the species. We might not recognize it at first because it might be little more than notches on a stick or slash marks on a rock...but there have probably always been ways to keep up with data. Now, I already hear you saying that libraries store more than just data. Well, perhaps, though I am not totally certain that books are much more than the recording of data. If you look at the history of libraries, most of them were created by wise men or women based on the idea that a record needed to be kept. From the Assyrians through the Rockefellers and Gates, libraries are meant to contain lots of data. In fact, libraries in modern time have yet to completely overcome the data storage space problem. In order for libraries to continue to exist, they must find ways in which to preserve maximum amounts of data in units that take up the least space. If your library is not already looking at digital storage, then it is probably doomed. And what library designer of our day and age would be so foolish to overlook the need for storage space whether that be shelves or digital storage.

Large scale digitization projects are underway at Google, the Million Book Project, MSN, and Yahoo!. With continued improvements in book handling and presentation technologies such as Optical Character Recognition and ebooks, and many alternative depositories and business models, digital libraries are rapidly growing in popularity as demonstrated by Google, Yahoo!, and MSN's efforts. And, just as libraries have ventured into audio and video collections, so have digital libraries such as the Internet Archive.
Wikipedia on Digital Libraries

I think, over the years, that I have had instructors whose vision of knowledge repositories was limited to the university library. And I suspect that I frustrated them by my utilization of search engines and data that exist on the internet. The fact is, that in terms of the sheer amount of information available, the internet wins hands down. No library can possibly hold as much information. Nor can it hold it in such a portable manner. I supposed that we could argue that some of the information on the net is of little value because it may or may not be accurate, but over time, we could have made the same arguments about book type libraries. In fact, there were probably as many misrepresentations in those notches on a stick or slash marks on a stone, or clay tabets, or papyrus scrolls as there are on todays internet. It may look like the the amount of useless information is greater on the net, simply because the database from which is it culled is so much larger itself.

In a report from UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems, (2002),

"Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks."

In this sense, the change in the structure of storage has already started. We are now storing most information in formats other than books. Most of it is now being stored in much larger and more secure containers than in the past. These containment vessels hold greater units than ever before. It would be unusual to find a library with the needed space and electronic software and servers to store all the necessary data that we can access from the net by storing it in separate but interactive nodes.

Since the majority of the information is stored in digital format (the new text or book), we can sense the urge to fine even more effective and efficient methods of retreival. This means that the our early search engines are changing at an increasing rate all the time. They are unflinching in their quest to locate and categorize information. Even in their early days, search engine strategists realized that human capability would pale in light of the mountain range of information that had be sorted. So the first thing they did, was to create robots who could endlessly search for fresh data, photograph it, note it's location and then categorize it. Once that was done, it was a fairly small step to create a way to summon up that photo of the information from the location the robots had posted. No library in the world would even dare to attempt to catelog all of the other books in all of the other libraries in the world. And even with such advanced techniques we are still only cataloging a small portion of the total amount of data that exists and is accessible. It may be that until we actually create an artificial intelligence that exactly mimics human quirks of looking for information, we will never find a search engine that can prowl through all the available information that exists, and show us only the items that relate perfectly to our information inquiries. (Tim Bray has written an awesome explanation of not only the history but also of the future of search engines in his "On Search; the Series" essays...it's well worth the read).

Will libraries survive the digital revolution? If you mean the physical location, then "yes". And in addition, they may look more and more like internet cafes instead of the Library at Alexandria, but yes, a place will exist where one can go and freely or at least cheaply access a huge amount of information. Of course the answer is also "No". If I can search all that information from home and get the same results, then what is the purpose of going to the library? Then on the other hand, there are social and psychological elements of library visitation. And maybe I will comment on that on another day.

If the question of survival of libraries as repositories of data is being asked, then definitely "yes". However, we are already pushing the limit of how much data the feeble human mind can deal with at any given time, so I suspect that the manner in which data is stored is likely to change. In fact, I beleive that we are moving more toward a multimedia type of data than in the past(or one could say that we are going back to early forms that worked well). Visual language in the sense of symbols, or aural meaning in the sense of auditory information, and perhaps other methods of utilizing other human sensing mechanism (touch, smell, and perhaps even taste) will be utilized at greater and greater rates. I also suspect that we will eventually learn to use robot type "workers" to cull through some of that data and make it more "digestable" to human mental processors (we already use Ipod robots to search through all of a days podcasts while we sleep, find those that the robot has been programmed to beleive that we would be interested in, and then download them into a "book" format, that we can listen to, as soon as we wake up, thereby saving us an immense amount of time).

One final note:

The name of this blog, "Rebuilding Indianola" has several meanings. It came to mine originally, when I was thinking about how humans respond to their environments. It reminded me of New Orleans, and the daring willingness to of man to always exist on that narrow ledge between terra firma and the aqua world. Indianola suffered the same fate as New Orleans, but Indianola didn't have the kind of consultants at hand to rebuild. I think the name also directly relates to this post. Virtually every great library that has ever existed has been burned, drowned, plundered, demolished or otherwise somehow destroyed. That has never killed the concept of data repository in the guise of "Library". The library as a concept is much greater than the sum of all the data that it contains. Furthermore, in every case where one was destroyed, another was built to be bigger, stronger, more beautiful and better able to store data than the one that was destroyed. And finally...I have put this post off for a week or so, even though I extensive posted my feelings about libraries on the "...on the road to the Royal Library at Ninevah..." blog , that was in use in a "Multiliteracy Class" last fall. At that time, I became more familiar with Library, Cybraries and modern Librarians and the way they view the world. I have come to follow many of their blogs fairly closely (See my Bloglines ). Last week, the American Library Association had it's annual convention. This convention was the first convention to be held in New Orleans, since the terrible flood of last year. Who knows....perhaps Indianola will be rebuilt.

The Tale of Two Consultants

2006-06-23T09:32:00.001-05:00

I think that consulting is continuously evolving. In fact, much of what consulting is, can be determined by the word that precedes it. Whether that is employment consulting, technology consulting, educational consulting or personal consulting. Much of what happens is subservient to the environment in which it occurs.

Although there are now more detailed descriptions of the process of consulting, the meaning and the results are still embedded in the structure or scaffolding of the consultation itself.

In order to explore this a bit, I have posted two interviews with two different types of consultants, and have attempted to show how the consultants themselves, describe their work in terms of the environment that they work in.

I think that this is important to the individual who is contemplating adding consultancy to their repertoire of work skills…whether you are a coordinator, a teacher, or an employee or teacher. It is likely that learning more about consulting, goes a long way in improving our skills as professionals whatever the field. Furthermore, today’s flexibility in consulting allows anyone to learn to be a consultant in their preferred setting.

In terms of my own consulting vision, I even see combinations of consultant areas being blended together to consult in fields that don’t traditionally lend themselves to such elements. I also see more and more folks becoming collaborative consultants or even co-consultants, or consultant teams.

So here are two interviews from folks who are consultants in somewhat different fields. One is an employment consultant, and the other for lack of a better word is a community of practice (education) consultant. In their own words I think that the listener will find many similarities in what they do but also find that what they do is tremendously influenced by the environment in which they practice.

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In the first interview, I spoke with Bill Fenson. Bill heads up his own consulting firm, The Skills Emporium, LLC and has been a leader in improving employee performance through individual career alignment for over twelve years. Bill currently serves as Business Career Services department at University of Texas at Arlington . He has more than 14 years of experience in counseling and assisting corporate employees in transition.

Bill has also authored numerous papers and a book, Implementing and Managing Telework, A Guide for Those Who Make It Happen . He is an oft-requested speaker at business related conventions and is active in a variety of civic groups. He is the former President of the National Employment Counseling Association .

I interviewed Bill in my “extension office”…America’s Best Coffee Shop in Arlington, Texas, where I often plug in my laptop and communicate with colleagues and clients all over the world. Because I work mostly on-line from home, it is a real treat to go out and even greater to visit one on one with an old friend like Bill. Click the arrow below to listen to our interview.

Consultant Interview with Bill Fenson

(This interview with recorded with a Radio Shack microphone and Radio Shack Vox digital recorder. I apologize for the amount of background noise. The interview occurred while a band was setting up for a live performance later that night. I digitally edited and remastered the tape (using Audacity 1.3 beta open source software) getting rid of as much of the background noise as I thought I could. It may not be the most professional job, but I am still learning about live interviews)

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I also interviewed Vance Stevens ; Vance is a Lecturer in Computing at Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, "On the Internet" editor of the TESL-EJ (Electric Online Journal) , on the Editorial Board of Computer Assisted Language Learning An International Journal (CALL-Journal), Vice-President II, Executive Committee for November 2004 - October 2006 of APACALL (Asia-Pacific Association for CALL), EVOnline Liaison to the Distance Education Sub-committee of TESOL's Professional Development Committee, and Advisor to the PDC for 2005-2006. and semi-official leader of the Webheads In Action , an international consortium of professionals interested in education, technology and the internet. Vance takes a more collaborative approach in his consulting. He calls himself a coordinator and facilitator instead of consultant. However, I find that much of what he does, falls within the expanded meaning of consulting. Vance is a prolific writer and international speaker and a specialist in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) . He also conducts scuba diving classes , and is an avid spelunker .

Vance’s interview can be heard by clicking the arrow below.

Consultant Interview with Vance Stevens

MP3 File

Vance and I tried to communicate via Skype (VOIP) but had trouble establishing a trustworthy connection. We also tried the new Yahoo Messenger with Voice Beta (which has built in recording ability as well as Video play), but again, could not seem to get in sync with one another. Keep in mind that Vance was in Abu Dhabi, UAE and I was in Grand Prairie, Texas, USA. Eventually, I sent Vance the questions I wanted him to answer via collaborative capable Writely . However, Vance choice to podcast his answers, instead, using Audacity and Podomatic . Once the podcast were on the net, I copied them to my PC, used Audacity to add my voice asking the questions and the uploaded them to my account at Audioblog (now Hipcast) . From Audioblog, I transferred them to my “RebuildingIndianola” blog and from there to this document using “Writely” where I am posting all my coursework. This sound quality of this interview is far superior to the first but keep in mind that both Vance and I were using Logi-tech USB headsets to record our voices and were in quite place with no background noise.

Personal reflections on Module 3

2006-06-23T02:08:00.000-05:00

ts:

I thought that this module was probably the core of the course. The materials were very precise about how to go about thinking through a project and how to sell it to a client.

The chapter on Designing Solutions contained several thoughts about different ways to get to the same end point. But above all, it put everything in a perspective that a beginner could understand. I really enjoyed the section on creativity and appreciated the article on The Role of Ideas In Consulting. The author re-iterates the idea about ownership of decisions being in the client's court and re-inforces the consultants role as aide, coach or advisor. This is extremely important in the consulting relationship for without it, there is little commitment to change or acceptance. The chapter fits in very well with the previous parts regarding knowing the client well before you start. I think part of my frustration with the final project is that I do not feel like I know why UTB wants to change the web page or anything about the culture and environment that the web page exist in. I suspect that if I had taken a longer version of the class, I would have been given an opportunity to expand that project to one of my choice, in which I could have gotten to know the client better, and could have had an opportunity to explore with them what their needs and expectations were. A single shot project like this amounts to little more than words on paper. I think this module illustrates that "words on paper" are really just the final step in the consultative process, and that interactivity is the key to a good consultation. I also enjoyed the section where the author relates consultation to various approaches that are tried and true. He named Engineering and Structured Programming as two approaches that warrant consideration. He also suggested using review from journals and the internet as a source material for helping us think about creative approaches to projects. I thought this was wonderful advise both from the perspective that it allows one who is not quite so sure of themselves to become a little more knowledgeable, and for the more experience to have a bit of a re-inforcement system. By reading ways that others have used similar approaches, we may stimulate new thoughts about our own approaches and it even allows for greater client involvement (if client throws something at you that you dont know about....you can say "let me get back to you on that as soon as I have given it a bit of consideration")

The next chapter on collaboration, also appealed to me. I use collaborative efforts whenever I can in any project I am involved in. If I go it alone, then the only result in the end is mine alone. Not only that, but I am thoroughly convinced that the more involvement the better the end product will be. Collaboration lends itself to support and acceptance. Being able to express your thoughts is just a way of opening a door on collaboration. Earlier I talked about AI as a great method for getting information from clients. In Appreciative Inquiry, virtually everyone is a stakeholder. And every stakeholder is given a voice in how an end product is being designed. Because of its attention to positive work, the end result is a much stronger project with every employee feeling the benefit. I am not sure that AI is a viable solution for every consultation project, but it certainly can be a useful tool to guide you in seeking information to help make presentation decisions. I liked the suggestions of preparing a presentation that involved all options even though you know that only one will finally be approved, and I also liked the idea that a good consultant is always ready to accept the clients decision and to revise his approach accordingly.

This section, was worth the time spent on the course. It was very illustrative and meaningful to me personally.

In regards to the discussion question, I though it had a number of great ideas. Many of them were things that I already strive to do and have been successful for me in the past. Some of them I have used so much that they are just parts of my personality. I have an unusual, I think, niche that I try to work in...retirement. For example, I usually speak to groups in my full retirement regalia....a flowery Hawaiin shirt and nice khaki pants. I let people know about my "retirement" uniform, and frankly, it is amazing how many people remember me by my dress. I also wear my gray hair in a fairly modern style that not too many people my age use. It gets people's attention and I often use a small icon of me with my glasses and spiked hair as an icon on list servs or on my business cards. I have had people I have never met come up to me at live meetings and say, "You must be Elderbob. I recongnize you from your letterhead." I love it when people say, "we have never met, but I know who you are." Most of that comes from my practice of being involved in my niche communities and serving whenever I can. I have a real advantage to others in that my income is secure (retirement) and I can often devote Pro Bono time where others may not have that luxury. I am currently learning how to internet broadcast and will soon be doing a bi-monthly broadcast where I interview significant people from my niche industry. One of the things I have learned about broadcasting, is that people remember your voice. My Texas drawl, has become a bit like a calling card. I capitalize on it whenever I can by using colorful colloquillisms in reference to projects. I have not always talked that way, but have found that if I sound like I am from Texas, people will remember me above others. I am not sure it gets me any more business, but if recognition is part of the game then I am getting that. I also like the idea of the book writing, though for me, I am planning on a series of CDs based on my internet broadcast, "The Best of Elderbob...a Guide to Retirement in the 21st Century". I often suggest to other coaches and consultants to stop fretting about a book and get a blog instead. A blog comes close to being a first draft of any book you may decide to do, except that it is immediate and there is potential for immediate feedback (before you go to print). It's then a short hop from best of blog posting to chapters in a real book. Lots of great ideas in this short article.

Personal reflections on Module 2:

2006-06-22T20:51:00.000-05:00

I like to think if Chapter 5 as "Imagineering". The idea of taking a concept or thought or idea and putting it in a visual context. It reminds me of a sort of elaborate video game, in which the player has to "imagine" or "visualize" the results of the actions they are about to take. In the case of the gamer and of the consultant, they are both interested in scenarios that result in positive or "successful" results. Having a visual cue of the successful completion of a consulting project, allows the consultant to backwards engineer the appropriate actions to be taken, by whom and when. The successful consultant can get a lot of information from this loose correlation of expectations and arrangements. Furthermore, it is a low risk technique. Imagining and action and ending and then reviewing it and changing the action to acheive a different ending, saves a huge amount of money and time that real implemenation, review and revision would require.

An even higher level skill is to enable the client to visualize the same concept or thought. This makes a two player game. It also allows for cooperation, collaboration, and even competition where it may not now nor ever exist. These practice runs allow both parties to get a grasp of the possibilities and to even brainstorm solutions that might not have otherwise been encountered. The successful visualization allows for all parties who had a glimpse of it to motivate others through their vision. Theoretical questions and answers become a bit more realistic. Perhaps, virtual is a good term to use. Virtual in the sense that were it really to happen, this is the way it would look. Certainly, spelling the specifics of a consultation out in terms of implementation are extremely important, this ability to visualize the end, give the consultant writer a clear vision to write about.

Once a project has acheived a visual status, it's time to start fact-gathering. The next chapter (6) revolves around the preparations necessary to start gathering facts about the end results. In this case, the facts to be gathered have to do with the present state. By knowing where we are now, the consultant gets an idea of how much effort and time, and where such effort and time will need to be spent to get the project done. If we know the present, and the plot actions toward our visualization of completion, then we can break large pieces of activity down into much smaller pieces that can be further reduced until we can start to develop and implement action plans for the entire client operation. I think it is important to recognize that there is also an element of planning involved to gathering this information. The consultant needs to plan and make arrangements with various entities that can give insight into the current environment.

I'd like to suggest that another possible model could be helpful in this data gathering scenario that can actually influence a positive end to the consultancy. I am a long time fan of Appreciative Inquiry or AI . AI uses a simple four step process to get to a similar end result that our author
describes in the text book: DISCOVER (The identification of organizational processes that work well - sounds like visualizing the current state of an organization or organism, but in this case making a point to find successful and/or positive traits and skills), DREAM (The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future - sound like "visualizing success"?), DESIGN (Planning and prioritizing processes that would get us to our visualized successful state) and DELIVERY/CREATION (The implementation). The major difference (and perhaps its not a difference but instead an attentiveness to something the textbook author largely overlooks) is the focus on asking questions with a positive instead of a negative focus. In AI, the consultant and client work hard at identifying the elements of a program that work or work well, and somewhat disregard the problems elements or things that dont work. The advantage is one of a well motivated work force. Instead of starting out from a position that something or someone is doing something wrong, the focus is on who is doing something right, and how it is done, and how it can be a trait transferred to the rest of the organization.

The two additional readings were about defining consultation and about improving consultative skills by developing a more open or receptive attitude. Both are welcome advise, but I thought they covered information that I am already familiar with.

I found the interviewing project much more stimulating. I did two interview with two somewhat disparate types of consultants. One is very clear in what consultation is, and how he goes about it. In the second interview, I deliberately chose to interview someone whose skill are a bit out of the box. Both turned out to be good interviews and I was again reminded of the power of the human voice to help us visualize things. I want to thank both gentlemen for allowing me to interview them and I hope many of you will listen to the audios (in this blog under "Tale of Two Consultants" or from the projects page.

Personal reflections on Module 1:

2006-06-16T17:43:00.000-05:00

In this module, we get an good introduction to the step by step formula that the book follows for consulting. The author calls it a framework and breaks it down into steps in each chapter, and then subdivides that into materials related to each step. The two chapters involved here have to do with identifying the client and their needs, and how the consultant lets the client know the limitations and guarantees of the relationship.

I thought the first chapter was very good. I like the idea of clarifying what the client is looking for. Far too often consultants assume they have all the answers and come on like gangbusters, as if they can solve everyone's problems. The truth is, that they can't and the sooner that is dealt with the better. This is an opportunity to get to know the client and his environment and how he perceives both his problem and his expected solution. It is a critical time of honesty on both the consultant and the client's part. In fact, I think the consultant should spend most of his time just asking good open-ended probing questions about what it is that the client is expecting. It will allow the consultant to determine whether or not he can actually be of use here, and it also gives the consultant an opportunity to decide whether or not he feels capable and comfortable in dealing with this particular client or environment. It is also a good time for the consultant to admit that he has no skills, background, traits or what have you in the areas where the client is seeking help. It's really hard to admit that you don't have the expertise but if you know you don't, then this is the ideal time to admit it. It does not necessarily mean that you will not get the contract, it just means that al the cards are out on the table. It allows the consultant some wiggling room in bringing in additional consultants, learning more, or perhaps even referring the client to a consultant with more background in that particular areas (a good solid referral is often as good as a satisfied contract in getting the word out to potential clients....client will remember your honesty and willingness to share). Other texts and articles have read often refer to this stage as pre-qualifying the client...making sure that there is a good fit between the client and consultant.

This step is also a time to clarify some of the issues. It helps to make sure that you both are on a level playing field. It should keep disagreements from cropping up later.

The next step, has to do with further clarification of the relationship between what the client expects and what the consultant expects. Having this conversation early in process, keeps a lot of the emotionality out of the project. Once again, I consider this a sort of "pre-qualifying" the client. It allows the consultant time to determine if he feels that he can do a great job with this client and this problem. If the consultant does not see a "great" end product, then it might behoove him to pass this one by, and move on to one that has greater potential. It also give him a bit of time to explore who the other players are, and in many cases, a chance to do a bit of background checking before actually saying "yes" to an offer of consulting". For the client, it is likely that the background check has already occured before you get to this point. If not, then all this is just a friendly response to your dynamic elevator speech. This step allows the client to think about how well the potential consultant can work with his team and in his environment. Usually pull-outs from either party can happen in this stage without anyone having to spend much money or time. "Negotiating the Relationship" is actually a great term to describe how much detail has to go into this step. It also represents the kind of give and take that is necessary to make this unique partnership excell. Negotiation in itself, implies that there is a willingness to not only stand one's ground, but also to give in a bit when necessary. These are obviously steps to a win-win agreement.

The two additional reading, have to do with self-awareness and knowledge of one's skills set, and about using that first meeting as leverage into a more lasting rrlationship. Both were very thoughtful articles, and both were full of good advice to the reader.

The final skills translation exercies seemed to have more to do with semantics than skill. I am sure that it is necessary to make sure that the cllient and the consultant are understanding the skills and traites needed for the job, but I felt that the intent was slightly misleading. Business speak, is just a part of the business climate, just like consultant speak is part of that environment. Neither are bad or good...just different. Maybe that why this exercise was included.

This module was a good start.

A mix of confusing terms - Access to Module 0

2006-06-16T13:59:00.000-05:00

What a mix of confusing terms. This thing called Information Technology Consultant seems a bit hard to pin down. It seems that as soon as I get my head around the meaning, the meaning changes because the technology and/or the terminology changes. Right now, I am sitting here, having done a “Bloglines” search, a peek at “Technorati”, a scan of “Del.icio.us” and a review of terms in “Wikipedia”, and after I delete all the advertisements or brochures for companies that “do” consulting, there are several terms that seem to swirl to the top….Role Model, Personal Coach, Facilitator, Mentor, Adviser…all of these seem to be taking a stab at consultancy, but none fully encompass the “consulting”.

It’s fairly obvious that many of these elements mix together in various ways to form a core of consulting, so perhaps we should look instead at how they differ to help sort them out.

Being a good role model certainly influences the outcome of a consultancy. Finding distinctive roles for both the consultant and the target audience is probably a goal for consulting. Making it clear what is expected of each other and then showing how that looks by actually demonstrating said behaviors, most likely produces a very positive end result. In fact, the consult, by demonstrating what consultants do, probably even creates a set of behaviors in the target audience that allows them to exercise more consultative skills. Does this mean that consulting then diminishes its value by demonstrating what it is to others? Not likely. The client, even when modeling well, is not likely to perfectly model what the consultant is capable of. In fact, it may well be that this interaction drives the consultant to become more and more proficient and the client to become more and more consultative. Consultants will not likely be replaced by their clients because true consultants are always at least one step ahead.

Certainly a good consultant often acts as a personal coach. No, not a sports-type coach (though much of personal coaching is rooted in that model), but someone who uses inquiry, reflection, requests and discussion to help clients identify personal and/or business goals, develop strategies, relationships and action plans intended to achieve those goals. Personal accountability is desired by the personal coach, and great insight and even intuition are skills often employed to find out what the client really wants.

The coach acts as a guide, a personal cheer-leader of sorts, a mirror of a client’s progress and one who ask for more than the client realizes they could achieve. Again, all of these are highly desirous in a consulting relationship. However, a personal coach holds the client responsible for their own achievements, while a consultant is expected to motivate clients to ensure specific outcomes agreed upon in advance, and not always outcomes that the client desires, but often outcomes that the person or corporate entity who hired the consultant expects. Personal coaches champion the individual quest. Consultants often have to look at a much larger picture, especially when there are corporate entities involved. Though the coach seeks achievement for the individual, it seems that oft times the consultant, by the very contract he enters to do his job, is seeking to achieve some corporate goal. Personal coaches go out of their way to assure clients that they are not counselors, therapists or that they are consulting. Coaching to me, may be a sub skill of an excellent consultant.

Similarly, a talented facilitator may perform a subset of skills often needed/used in consultant relationships, but these skills do not adequately describe consulting. A facilitator helps a group or even an individual to understand their common objectives and plan to achieve them without personally taking any side of the argument. The facilitator will try to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that preexist or emerge in the consultant meeting so create a strong basis for future action. The facilitator can assist in the development of the end product but they are not the producers. However, simply building consensus so that a specific set of goals can be met, is not the total set of consulting.

Mentors often are referred to as having consulting skills. In fact, it may be that consulting in many cases, is a subset of skills of the excellent mentor. The consultant process may often generate an atmosphere in which mentor relationships can be established. But most consultants would discourage actually mentoring a client while working for an entity preferring instead to let mentoring to become a more long term element outside of the consulting relationship.

Finally, advisers, in general, are professionals who render suggestions in the consulting services. The advisor is usually knowledgeable about the background of the constituent’s goals and can and does make suggestions about how to deal with problems. He almost expects the client to follow his suggestions with out question. I believe the good consultant would expect the client to be highly critical about what is best for the individual or corporate entity.

It seems to me that even Anglin’s model (which appears to built on the ADDIE model of design) is accommodating to all of these skill sets, though on their own individually, they don’t seem to add up to genuine consulting. In that sense, they appear to simply be learned behaviors that can be added together in a complex mixture to satisfy a client’s consulting needs. All are useful, but on their own none of them are absolutely essential. Maybe that is the biggest surprise of all about consulting. It is not as specific as one might first think, and is a pretty flexible form. The consultant can substitute other behaviors when one of these is lesser or even absent.

So, I am not any surer than when I started out, about what exactly a consultant is. On the other hand, I am a bit clearer now on how some specific professions separate themselves on the whole from pure consulting.

Business on a blog

2006-06-16T10:29:00.000-05:00

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by elderbob.

I am sitting in my mobile office this morning...America's Best Coffee Shop. Hubert, the owner, knows that I consider this to be my branch office, with my primary office, my PC at home. I often come here, with my laptop, my USB headset and my cellular phone, and connect with other associates all over the world (if the time zones cooperate). So I am contemplating just how much business you can conduct via a blog this morning. While I was thinking about it, I noticed that my Skype (VOIP) version was not the latest (a newer version was issued this week). So I updated it. Then while I am thinking about the new capabilities in that version, I looked to make sure that it was still compatible with my Jyve application (Jyve is a Skype interactive device that allows for a lot of additional features within the Skype architecture). Fortunately it was up to date, but while I was checking on it, I came across JyvePro. JyvePro appears to me, to be a good attempt to make what I hope to do with consulting even more accessible from my blog. It allows the blog reader or listener, to IM me, e-mail me, leave a message, talk to me if my Skype is active or leave a message on my home phone if I am not active. It also allows me to adverstise my services (maybe my elevator speech or my business tagline). It also allows me to advertise what I actually do and gives me a space where I can put my price. It's still in the beta version and may have some bugs, but it is thinking in the right direction. As this class continues, you will see add this device to my "Links" column. I'll keep you posted regarding how much success I have with it.

In the meantime, for those of you fathers out there...In the States, Father's day falls on this weekend. Fortunately for me, all of my children and some of my Grandkids and some of my Great Grandkids will be around to visit. I'm looking forward to being "King" for the weekend.

Next week, I'll tackle adding an RSS feed to both the blog and the blog audios (both the audio post and the podcast when I have them). I'll also try to connect these back to consulting to show another tool that is available on the net.

Personal Reflections on Module 0

2006-06-14T20:58:00.000-05:00

Module Zero offers us a glimpse into our immediate future. For the next few weeks we will be studying to become consultants.

One of the first things that comes to mind is a sort of dichotomy of the class. Though, the class exist under the broad heading of Educational Technology, the content of the IT consulting class seems more oriented around IT instead of Educational Technology. I suspect that there are several reasons for this, and at the head of the list is probably the amount of material available on IT consulting as opposed to Ed Tech Consulting.

The text, though published in 2000, represents a firm grounding in IT Consulting. That is not in and of itself a bad thing, for consulting, whatever field it exists in, pretty much follows a proscribed path. However, I think that when I signed up for the class, I had envisioned something a little more directly related to Educational Technology Consulting.

Certainly the two additional readings, Those Who Can, Consult: How to Become a Consultant and Is Consulting For You? Take the Personality Test (which is basically a short version of the Jung Typology Test often used in conjunction with the Jung/Meyers-Briggs typological approach). apply in just about any consulting environment. They are very general and simple to understand, and yet complex enough to give the reader some idea of what kinds of trait array they have.

One of the things that seems to me to be missing (and perhaps that is deliberate) is an assessment of either Internet Technology skills or Educational Technology skills. The latter, one would assume, is present to some extent in all the participants, but I noticed in many of the forum posts that there were participants for whom this class was apparently an elective in some other degree program.

So the end result is that we have a slight insight into general consulting skills. Those results are pretty much listed in the forum responses for the entire class. Then the text, helps to tie the dichotomy off by referring to things in a more generalist manner. Chapter One, suggest focusing on the relationship among consulting parties, clearly defining one another’s roles, visualizing success, creating an atmosphere where the consultee makes decisions and the consultant only advises, and finally an over all atmosphere of results orientation. These suggestions help bring the IT consultant into a more generalized consulting mode and are useful tools for all consultants including Educational Technology consultants. And the same thing seems to happen in Chapter Two. Consulting skill sets are considered instead of IT skill sets or Educational Technology skill sets. The end results then allow the readers to tie their thoughts back to the simple trait assessments that they took and then to push ahead with their own personal skill analysis in the Project One posting on “Finding Your Own Consulting Niche”.

Over-all the module goes along ways to calm my fears that the course is more oriented toward IT than Ed Tech. Perhaps the generalist approach is one that is more understandable to those in the class who are considering consultancy as an “elective” or part-time asset to their regular jobs, and complex enough to titillate the imaginations of those who are Ed Tech majors who might be considering Educational Technology Consulting as a personal business.

Some additional web materials can be considered at my del.icio.us page under Module0.

Flogging Blogs

2006-06-12T19:51:00.000-05:00

My first assignment in a class on Educational Consulting was to read Anne Davis' piece on "Blogging and Pedagogy" (in eSchool News On-line). After reading Anne's missive, I posted a comment on Rene Corbeil's "EdTech Blog". Now, having re-read both the article and my post, I feel a compelled to expound further.

Ms. Davis believes that her pedagogical "strategies, techniques, and approaches have improved due to the very nature of blogs". In fact, she goes on to name several ways that blogs have allowed for said improvement..."Audience and Comment", "Voice", "Conversation and Dialogue", "Ownership and Choice" and "Archives". While it may be true that blogging brings each of these individual elements with it, I'm still not sure that I am convinced that pedagogy has improved because of them.

Audience and Comment -

"Having a worldwide audience who can read what students write brings forth recognition for students that can be quite profound. Students are used to the teacher being the only audience for their work. The realization that others think that what they have to say is important is empowering."

While it is true that the potential size of the audience is greatly increased, it is not necessarily true that in the real world, others will think what you have to say is empowering. In fact, in many cases, we have already seen a negative result of one expressing their honest thoughts. The response to such honesty in some cases has been to ban blogs or blog services (i.e., China) or to take legal actions against the poster ( Miguel Guhlin gives some good advice on this subject). If we think in terms of global educational consulting, we have to think about all the participants of our blogging efforts, not just the student. By encouraging freedom of expression, I cannot help but wonder whether in all cases, we are promoting the well-being of the expresser - in Iran, in North Korea, in China, and perhaps even in the US. I suspect, I think best when I get up in the cool of the morning and go out and tinker in my garden. Yes, my thoughts are not recorded anywhere but in my head, but it's a first step toward deciding what I wish to reveal to others. Blogging, it seems to me, encourages one to write without revision. Get up, put those thoughts down no matter what they are, and then publish. More than once now, after a frustrating day with a particular teacher, a student has posted their thoughts without revision and wound up in all sorts of legal entanglements. With a hoe in my hand, I can chop the "itty, bitty heads" off my professors (represented in this case by weeds), and no one save me will be the wiser. But if I threaten to chop the heads off my professors in print, it maybe construed as a federal crime. Walk slowly and cautiously here.

Voice -

"Many students that would be hesitant to speak in a classroom will share their ideas on a blog."

Yea, and many students WILL express whatâ€™s on their minds in MySpace....and you may not like it. It would be a pristine world if all students thought like you and I do....but they don't, especially in the case of teenagers who are just starting to find themselves as individuals. No matter how much instruction we pass out about internet predators, teenagers are still prone to use social networking devices like blogs and MySpace.com as tools of sexual attraction and means to express their angst. Part of our problem is separating the educational blog from the personal blog. The educational blog (the one perpetrated in the classroom) has controls and checks and hopefully, balances. The private one...well, that seems to be where the issue arises...is it really private? I think it is, but increasingly, folks are trying to make it part of the school's responsibility. If a student uses a curse word in a blog at school, there should be swift and negative results. But what if the same student uses the same word in a blog, set up and written from home on their own personal computer? Until the issue is settled - Walk slowly and cautiously.

Conversation and Dialogue -

"Blogs put us on a learning path together with our students where we can shape new learning environments for the future. Blogs also offer incredible opportunities for dialogue and the social construction of meaning."

There is much truth in this observation. Blogs do offer great opportunities for dialogue and social construction of meaning. They also offer a workload that for many will be frustrating an unachievable. Consider for a moment, the potential amount of work that a student may be responsible for if asked for in the wrong manner. Let's assume a normal class size...say 25 students. If each of those students writes one entry per day, in a week's time that would mean that a total of 125 posts would be generated. So far, we are ok. Even the instructor will find that not too unbearable. But now, letâ€™s tell the students that in order to create dialogue and meaning, each student is to read each other student's posts and to comment. Now we are up to at least 150 documents per week per student. That's a pretty large conversation. And if we are to assume that a dialogue is being established, not only should the student write their own comment, the comment on everyone elseâ€™s comments, now they need to read everyone else's comments....by now the student has read 375 post and has written at least 150 comments in a week, frankly, I am not sure how much dialogue has happened so far.

Ok, so maybe this is an exaggeration, but my point is that blogging can easily be carried to an extreme. Furthermore, if the subject of all this blogging is a subject in which a student has little interest, we will now have students going through the motions of critical thinking but in reality doing little more than posting a line or two that are somewhat meaningless. That doesn't sound too much like creating meaning. On the other hand, if the wise instructor were to allow greater flexibility in what a student is to read, then we may develop student who, on the whole, develop a healthy attitude toward exploration of subject matter that they really want to know more about.

Walk slowly and cautiously.

Ownership and Choice -

"Giving students a choice in making their own connections about their learning on blogs paves the way for blogs to be constructivist tools for learning. These attributes are compelling and powerful motivators that help us shape the pedagogy."

On this point, I am in complete agreement with Ms. Davis. I think blogs have tremendous constructivist potential. And further, with much potential, the door to powerful individual motivation is wide open. Blogs can cause tremendous shifts in personal potential. I am still concerned about whether this works for all students, but increasingly, I find that developers have found ways to create blog software to allow for the inclusion of as many different kinds of learning as is possible. Hyper textual writing allows the author to not only show what has influenced decision-making, but hopefully increases the desire to explore new knowledge and sources of knowledge to find fodder for decision making.

Search engine developers have not yet found a way to index all the materials available on the internet. In other words, the potential for construction has yet to exhaust the amount of supply. As students become better seekers, they will develop a real skill of piecing together the diverse elements of their searches. In Net 2.0 lingo, they start to develop "Mash-ups" (it will be interesting to see how many scholars will not get to read this blog because the search for "Mash-ups" in Wikipedia re-directs us to the entry for "Bastard Pop"). Mash ups, according to Wikipedia may be "the practice of assembling new songs from purloined elements of other tracks". In terms of critical writing, it might mean assembling new thoughts from the unrelated thoughts of many others. And just as Mash-ups have stirred the copyright pot in music, we are starting to see the same in the world of literature (Brown's "The DaVinci Code" dispute, Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" or Jason ). Plagiarism has become a campus buzzword again, and much of it focused around, not just the use of verbiage "borrowed" from other authors, but also about concepts that many feel are copyrighted and "owned" by the author.

Archives -

"Having records of the learning that is ongoing facilitates learning and evaluation in a much easier and efficient matter."

Finally, I also agree that being able to access earlier personal works is a positive development. However, I am a bit hesitant to say that such archiving is long lasting. Modern technology already has the capability of life-caching (such as Nokia's Lifeblog or Microsoft's LifeBits Program) but let's not assume too hastily that recording and archiving everything in our lives has a positive end result. In fact, the same kind of hypertext archives that are going to facilitate learning and evaluation, are now rumored to be causes of information overload. Too much information can (according to Wikipedia) cause "technostress".

"Technostress induces a correlated perception that users are being controlled by information and communication(s) technology (ICT) rather than being empowered by it. Like any kind of stress, technostress results in reduced intellectual performance and poor judgment; this is well-known to cognitive psychologists. This stress causes, and is a result of, haphazard and random use of ICT, creating a snowball effect. Lack of an efficient means of dealing with information also acts as an aggravating factor."

So there is at least an outside potential that archiving may just do the opposite of what Ms. Davis suggests.

~~~~~~~

So, at least today, my thoughts about blogging are cautious. I am glad that the technology exists and already a dozen spin-offs are spiraling our knowledge base to new highs (which may or may not be good), and in terms of breathing life into technology in the classroom, they have had an awesome effect on the entire system. Whether they result in the magic pedagogical pill that Ms. Davis suggests, cannot yet be known. They warrant watching and using, but I advise those who watch and use, to keep a critical and cautious eye on them.