Just got back from Learning 2008. It may be that I'm overdosing on learning conferences, but I found this one particularly bland EXCEPT for the the fact that I spoke with Mr. Kevin Kelly and saw a great presentation from Allison Anderson from Intel. Let talk briefly about both.
My conversation with Kevin Kelly was brief. Essentially the question I had for him was based on an article he wrote that spoke of an economy based on "feeding the web" (This was just a small piece of the article). To simplify this, think of feeding the web as the economy of open source. My question was what is the evolution of this economy, where is it going and how does an entrepreneur like me take advantage of it. I specifically spoke of some smaller products our company carries and the potential of these in the open source economy. The one critical piece of advice he gave me was, well if you want to see if something is valuable to begin with, give it away. If people still don't take it, even when its free, its probably not all that valuable.
I did also ask him if he felt the semantic web was inevitable. He said it was, but that the project was massive and that who knew when it would come to be. But what was new to me in all of this was not that we need to construct a semntic taxonomy but that the first step is the deconstruction of current content. You see, this is critical in creating structure. In most cases, the creation of structure or semantics requires the deconstuction of information into its atomic level, which is really the step that matters most. Once you've done this, you've essentially already figured out what your semantics are going to be.
The other interesting presentation I saw, was by Allison Anderson from Intel. Allison presented a vision of what the typical Intel employee may see on their desktop in the future. It was based on the notion that relevant content in the form of training, connections to other people and experts, project information, etc, would all be dynamically pulled into one's personal environment based on their role in the company and what they were currently working on. Well if this isn't the actualization of how the semantic web and structured content will play out in an organization, then I don't know what is. You see....this is the promise. That the days of constantly reinventing the wheel, figuring out what people need to know, learn, where and how will all be an algorythm based on their transparency to the web! This is the vision I think we should all be looking towards.
It is inevitable!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning 08
Got back from IIL08 (Innovations in Learning 08) the annual conference given by the Brandon Hall folks. I gave my presentation on instructional design for the semantic web and got fairly positive feedback. However, I do know of one improvement I would like to make to the presentation is to include more examples.
Based on everything I heard at the conference, the movement to structured content is well on its way regardless of whether people understand it or not. The thing that really gets me, is that instructional designers have yet to take ownership of our failed practice and understand that if they want to practice instructional design they need to rethink how they are going to do this. An instructional designer that is developing courses, at the end of the day is a multimedia/courseware developer....which is fine. There's nothing wrong with having those skills and doing that work. But lets face it, thats not where an instructional designer is providing the most value. As content moves into the networked economy, building taxonomies, creating learning meta-languages, looking at standards is where the instructional designer will find a home. We need only look at SCORM as a standard and understand that it was created by programmers and IT folk with less input from instructional designers to figure out that any new version of SCORM needs more of the instructional design input.
I also had some great discussions with Tom Crawford from VizThink about the semantic web and where its going, what role is it going to play and will it be the next 'BIG' thing. We both agreed its coming one way or another. Its impact I think is where we disagree, however as an instructional designer it will be critical for me to research and learn all I can about it.
Based on everything I heard at the conference, the movement to structured content is well on its way regardless of whether people understand it or not. The thing that really gets me, is that instructional designers have yet to take ownership of our failed practice and understand that if they want to practice instructional design they need to rethink how they are going to do this. An instructional designer that is developing courses, at the end of the day is a multimedia/courseware developer....which is fine. There's nothing wrong with having those skills and doing that work. But lets face it, thats not where an instructional designer is providing the most value. As content moves into the networked economy, building taxonomies, creating learning meta-languages, looking at standards is where the instructional designer will find a home. We need only look at SCORM as a standard and understand that it was created by programmers and IT folk with less input from instructional designers to figure out that any new version of SCORM needs more of the instructional design input.
I also had some great discussions with Tom Crawford from VizThink about the semantic web and where its going, what role is it going to play and will it be the next 'BIG' thing. We both agreed its coming one way or another. Its impact I think is where we disagree, however as an instructional designer it will be critical for me to research and learn all I can about it.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Instructional Design for the Semantic Web
Well, its been a while.
Here's whats really turning me on these days....the possibilities of applying the principles of the semantic web to learning. I've been inspired once again by a Kevin Kelly video talking about the next 5000 days of the web. What I really liked is his analogy of the web as a single system. His vision, and one that I believe we're already seeing is an all encompassing web with peripheral devices acting as windows to that web. More an more, computers and other peripherals are used less as single processing units and more as windows to and through the web.
What this means for learning, is the ability to create the necessary semantics around learning so that learning content is appropriately marked up for our devices to find, retrieve and deliver in a consistent and useful manner. The creation of a meta-language for learning is no easy task, nor is it conceivable that there would be a single language created (at least not right now). But the importance of feeding the web, exposing content to the web is critical for learning.
When my wife was pregnant the quickest wa to learn what needed to be done was research the web. This is the reality of our times, that learning happens real time. Enabling learning comntent to be pulled at real time is consistent with tech trends and also consistent with good instructional design practice. As an instructional designer I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of our field through its application to THE new learning environment web 3.0. For anybody who isn't getting what I'm saying, I will be speaking at Brandon Hall's Innovation in Learning conference on this very topic.
I am also in the process of working on a book that underlies the process for applying instructional design to the creation of 'semantics'. Hopefully one day it will actually get done.
Later,
RT
Here's whats really turning me on these days....the possibilities of applying the principles of the semantic web to learning. I've been inspired once again by a Kevin Kelly video talking about the next 5000 days of the web. What I really liked is his analogy of the web as a single system. His vision, and one that I believe we're already seeing is an all encompassing web with peripheral devices acting as windows to that web. More an more, computers and other peripherals are used less as single processing units and more as windows to and through the web.
What this means for learning, is the ability to create the necessary semantics around learning so that learning content is appropriately marked up for our devices to find, retrieve and deliver in a consistent and useful manner. The creation of a meta-language for learning is no easy task, nor is it conceivable that there would be a single language created (at least not right now). But the importance of feeding the web, exposing content to the web is critical for learning.
When my wife was pregnant the quickest wa to learn what needed to be done was research the web. This is the reality of our times, that learning happens real time. Enabling learning comntent to be pulled at real time is consistent with tech trends and also consistent with good instructional design practice. As an instructional designer I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of our field through its application to THE new learning environment web 3.0. For anybody who isn't getting what I'm saying, I will be speaking at Brandon Hall's Innovation in Learning conference on this very topic.
I am also in the process of working on a book that underlies the process for applying instructional design to the creation of 'semantics'. Hopefully one day it will actually get done.
Later,
RT
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