7 Things You Don’t Need to Know About Me
By Gary Woodill | January 4, 2009
OK, I’ve been tagged by my colleague Janet Clarey to describe 7 things y0u really don’t need to know about me. I’m playing along even though I don’t usually participate in such things, just to show Janet that I am a social guy… So here goes:
1. I love being a grandfather. I have 3 grandchildren, Katie (7), Geoffrey (3), and Morgan (2.5). Morgan has two mothers (my daughter is married to a woman) and two fathers (two guys from New York who are also married). Life is interesting.
2. I went to 12 schools from Kindergarten to Grade 12. One year I attended 4 schools. I think that by now I have lived in over 50 houses, 11 in the last 25 years of my second marriage. This has given me multiple perspectives.
3. I am the oldest of 10 children, but most of my family is not close and highly dysfunctional for the most part. Most of us hadn’t seen each other for over 30 years until my father’s funeral in April. It was a fun funeral, with lots of laughing and story-telling, now that both parents were gone. Did I mention that my parents were cult-like religious nuts?
4. I love trains. We got a new GPS receiver recently and I noticed that it showed the train tracks running parallel to the road we were on. I got excited! During the year that my wife Karen and I spent in France, I had a first class Eurail pass, and must have travelled on 85% of the French railway system. One day I started from Paris in the morning and circled France by train in a day.
5. I’m Canadian, eh. Mostly I grew up in Nova Scotia. But, I feel like a citizen of the world.
6. We have three poodles and 2 cats, and sometimes up to three more poodles come for visits. I refer to my house as “doggie day care”. Oh, yes, one of the cats has no hair (a Sphynx) and three legs.
7. I’m partly color-blind, like 30% of males. I once went to teach at the university wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe of the same style. Karen had the living room painted red in a previous house, and I didn’t notice for three days. Apparently she also gets her hair colored occasionally as well…
So now I get to tag seven other people…
Topics: General | 4 Comments »
Increased Interest in SharePoint as a Learning Technology
By Gary Woodill | December 22, 2008
In a recent post, Tony Karrer, says:
“I’ve been having fabulous conversations about using SharePoint. SharePoint is so flexible and the documentation for it is so big and diverse, that a big part of my goals have been to understand the different ways that training organizations are using SharePoint.”
My former employer, Operitel Corporation, has been integrating SharePoint with its LearnFlex LMS for about 5 years, now, with several major installations under its belt. The advantage of doing this was to add the many Web 2.0 features of Share Point to the LMS immediately, without the long development cycle of building their own feature set.
In 2006 I wrote a paper with Carlos Oliveira called Mashups, SOAP, and Services: welcome to web hybrid e-learning applications in which we outlined how an LMS could be upgraded quickly with SharePoint, and we listed the many features of SharePoint that could support online learning. (The article is available to members of the eLearning Guild, or from the Operitel website here.)
For the benefit of the current discussion, here is the table of educational features of SharePoint 2.0 from our 2006 article:
Learning Supports” from SharePoint 2.0
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Learning
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SharePoint 2.0 |
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Connected
Workspaces
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Four levels of connected workspaces – individual, team, division, and enterprise – hub and aggregator for all four levels.
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Collaboration
Applications
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Facilities for meeting workspaces; blogs, with comments; wikis; calendars; surveys; discussions; email integration; and offline collaboration using Outlook and Groove.
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Content
Management
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Integrated facilities for documents, records, and content management; support for spell check, tables, and style sheets; recycle bin for deleted items; library/list content types will control metadata, views, workflows, and events; information rights management; version control for major and minor revisions with enforced checkout; extensible file format support; content templates; content can be associated with workflows and/or events; imaging service to create and maintain a picture library.
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Content
Syndication
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Content can be syndicated via RSS on a per-site or per-list basis.
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File Format
Conversion
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Easy file format conversion; rendering of spreadsheets as HTML; Access will treat SharePoint site data as data sources; easy, no-coding creation of dashboards from Excel spreadsheets; PowerPoint “Slide Library;”
Outlook integration. |
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Workflow
Development
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FrontPage wizard for workflow development; workflow templates; digital signature Integration.
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Web site
Development
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Facilities to make it easier to build and/or manage sophisticated internet and/or intranet sites.
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Integration
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Much easier to integrate enterprise applications, custom databases, and Web services.
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Forms Creation
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Ability to create forms with ASP.NET controls.
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Lists and Data
Management
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List creation tool; multiple list views; version history for all lists and libraries showing what changes were made; project task list; Gantt chart view of any list; email to a list for posting; cross-list Web views.
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Formatting
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Ability to send SharePoint lists to mobile devices.
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Feature Selection
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Selected deployment of major features
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Search
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Search features include “Best Bets” and alternate suggestions
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Personalization
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Enhanced MySites with aggregation, personalization, and social networking
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Authoring
Tools Used
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Extensive use of Front Page for site design; publish InfoPath forms as SharePoint sites; Front Page-based Template Designer for content management
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User Interface
Management
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Easy global change of UI via master pages
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Languages
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Out-of-the-box support for multi-lingual deployments
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Security
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Item-level permissions in all libraries and list
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Connectivity
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Uses Web services and SOAP protocols; Web parts
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Messaging
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Email alerts, with filters; submit postings to WSS discussion boards via email; email archiving
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Application
Launching
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Connectable Web parts; Web services; connections to APIs of external applications
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Communications
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Site level: Instant messaging, discussion forums, messaging and alerts. Connects to Live Communications Server for chat
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Polls and
surveys
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Surveys built-in
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Administrative
Controls
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Tools to create and manage SharePoint lists
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(SharePoint information adapted from Miller, 2006)
Topics: General | 2 Comments »
Psst…wanna hear something great?
By Gary Woodill | December 15, 2008
(Cross posted to Workplace Learning Today)
As a “feral learner“, I am always searching for interesting sources of ideas and information. One frequently overlooked source is public radio. As I work in my office, I often listen to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s public broadcaster, for in depth discussions of news, science, history, and live concerts. You can listen to all the programs live on the Internet (Radio 1, Radio 2, or Radio 3) and they are also often available as podcasts, CDs, transcripts, or streaming audio. There is a blog attached to most programs, for listener feedback.
In this brief post, I will highlight learning resources from the CBC that may be of interest to you.
Ideas - a long running program with some of the brightest and most interesting people on the planet - for example, novelist Margaret Atwood delivered 5 Massey lectures in 2008 (available as podcasts) entitled “Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth” - many of the Ideas programs since 1995 are available on CD.
As it Happens - This program has been running for 40 years, and is based on a simple concept. Inside of a “call-in” show, it is a “call-out” show. Tough interviewers call people all over the world as news happens, and often get through to the people actually making the news. Also available as a podcast.
Learning English - Sample program: What do you think it would be like to own the house where a famous person once lived? A Winnipegger who lives in Neil Young’s old house got a big surprise one day when Bob Dylan showed up. For listening and writing exercises to go with this podcast, visit http://cbc.ca/manitoba/features/eal
Quirks and Quarks - This is a great radio program on science that is also available as a podcast. Sample program: Dr. Michael J Tarr has found that men’s and women’s faces are tinted red and green, respectively. (Being partly color-blind, I didn’t know!)
The Next Chapter - a program on literature. Sample program: November 22nd - Mars and Venus edition - Rebecca Eckler on chick-lit for teens, Todd Babiak on lad-lit’s demise, Susan Pinker on the Sexual Paradox, Tom Howell on poetry.
Concerts on Demand - over 900 live music concerts recorded across Canada. Every genre imaginable is here. Today’s concert is by the Downchild Blues Band, the inspiration for Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi’s Blues Brothers. Free as streaming audio. For more streaming music listen to Canada Live.
There’s lots more, but that should give you a good idea of the rich treasure that is the CBC. Canada’s gift to the world.
Topics: General | No Comments »
Is There a War in the Workplace Between Generations?
By Gary Woodill | December 5, 2008
Topics: General | 1 Comment »
Geek Alert!
By Gary Woodill | December 2, 2008
Because I don’t have a training and development background, I recently bought and read an entire Human Resources Management textbook (on a train trip to Montreal to see Richard Nantel) called Managing Performance through Training and Development, by Canadian professors Alan Saks and Robert Haccoun. (my colleague Janet Clarey issued the “Geek Alert” on hearing this.)
I wanted to see if there were important concepts or terms in the field of training and development that I am still missing, or whether I had picked them all up by hanging around training types for the past few years. Aside from a few minor ideas, everything was pretty familiar.
Perhaps the most surprising thing was how little learning theory was in the book - mostly behavioral concepts of objectives and measurement. No social cultural learning theory (such as Vygotsky), no cognitive theories, no constructivism, etc. Just Conditioning Theory (B.F. Skinner) and Social Learning Theory (modeling, imitation and social reinforcement - which comes from Bandura, although he isn’t mentioned), plus Malcolm Knowles concept of Andragogy (as a replacement for the word “pedagogy”). The Instructional Systems Design model is straight out the 1950s and 60s, as if thinking in the training field about how we learn has stood still ever since. There is a longer section on motivation theories, but also nothing very fresh.
I made notes on the main concepts in the book, so I can now pass a test on training and development….
Topics: General | 6 Comments »
Learning Techologies: Motion Capture
By Gary Woodill | June 12, 2008
Motion capture technology promises to speed up the process of developing animated avatars for immersive learning. Existing motion capture software works by tracking the path of a large number of visible markers placed all over the body. Because of the complexity of tracking so many points, motion capture software often gets confused and errors are produced. A new approach using marker-less software from a lab at Stanford University, promises to reduce the error rate, and does not need the actor to wear tight clothing. In fact, capturing the movement of clothing, such as the ruffle of a skirt, leads to more realistic animations. A downloadable paper and video, both entitled Performance Capture from Sparse Multiview Video, describes this new approach.
Topics: General | 4 Comments »
Multiple Metaphors for Learning
By Gary Woodill | June 10, 2008
A recent article by Jacob Vakkayil in the academic journal Learning Inquiry (Vol. 2, 2008, pp. 13-27) is a good review of the various metaphors that surround the concept of learning. Each metaphor gives us some insight, and taken together they show what a complex concept learning really is. No one metaphor is “correct”, but each represents a different understanding. This makes subscribing to only one or a limited set of these metaphors a dangerous practice. As Lakoff and Johnson outlined in their book Metaphors We Live By, much of our understanding and communications are founded on base metaphors that are combined to achieve complex abstract concepts. Each metaphor has implications as to how we view knowledge and the processes of teaching.
Jacob Vakkayil is oriented towards organizational learning in this article, so his examples are particularly relevant to people in corporate training. The eight metaphors that he lists (with my comments) are:
- Learning as transfer - implications: knowledge is portable stuff that can be passed around and the learner is a container
- Learning as corrective change - implications: observable behaviors can be changed and the instructor needs to have objectives in terms of the desired end behaviors from the learner
- Learning as computing - implications: the mind is a computer that processes large quantities of data and the learning is a process of reprogramming mental structures, scripts and algorithms
- Learning as building connections - implications: the human brain is like a neural network where learning is the strengthening or weakening of pathways of neurons
- Learning as self-organization - implications: humans are self-organizing adaptive systems that continuously produces its own components and organization in the context of being embodied, and embedded in a culture and history. Learning is the emergence of new knowledge based on all these contextual factors
- Learning as propogation - implications: cultural ideas (”memes”) are transmitted through humans who act as hosts and transmitters of these ideas. Humans are robots under the evolutionary influence of both genes and memes.
- Learning as coordination - implications: knowledge is distributed and doesn’t reside within any individual. It is partially held by each learner, and is found in collective artifacts made through collaboration
- Learning as participation - implications: learning is also distributed, but is found in the social interaction among individual learners. Learning is always associated with a community, and happens through joint action
Each metaphor offers unique perspectives and, at the same time, limits understanding in various ways. Disagreements within the learning industry and its critics may be a result of each group talking past each other while using different metaphors. Change can happens through the introduction of “disrputive” metaphors that challenges old thinking and bridges the gap between conflicting metaphors.
This article is very useful for clarifying some of the dominant metaphors for learning in use today. An online copy of the article can be found here.
Topics: Articles, General, Training Research | 3 Comments »
Post-biological intelligence
By Gary Woodill | June 9, 2008
An article by Stephen J. Dick, NASA’s chief historian, (New Scientist, May 31, 2008) on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) suggests that we view intelligence as the “smart” actions other biological creatures like us would carry out. He contends that our searches for extraterrestrial intelligence ignore the likelihood that intelligence in the universe has evolved “beyond biology”, towards what we currently call artificial intelligence (AI). If this has happened on other worlds, the process of cultural evolution has probably taken these societies in very different directions than ours. We may be dealing with cosmic snobs! Dick writes, “the intelligence principle renders it unlikely that post-biologicals would wish to communicate with embryonic biologicals such as humans, so we might be reduced to intercepting their communications.” Of course our current ideas of artificial intelligence may also be too primitive as a metaphor for post-biological intelligence, and “the differences between our minds and players may be so great that communication is impossible.” Dick expands on these themes in two books, The Biological Universe (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and The Living Universe (Rutgers University Press, 2004).
Topics: General, Science Article, Training Research | No Comments »
Slick Podcasts for Corporate Trainers
By Gary Woodill | May 6, 2008
When I look at the literature on emerging learning technologies, I find that for the most part it is being produced and used by people in schools and universities. This is especially true for the latest technologies known as Web 2.0. Corporate training on the web still seems to be instructor led and course based with lots of multiple-choice tests.
So it is exciting to find examples that break out of this model. The Cascadia chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) in Oregon and Southwest Washington has produced a slick set of podcasts for corporate trainers that rival professional radio shows. The half-hour podcasts consist of introductory music, conversations, interviews, and news about the chapter. In the latest episode, I was interviewed by chapter members Aaron Munter and Christine Martell about future trends in learning technologies. There are over 50 other podcasts available, produced by volunteer Richard Watson. The hosts are chatty and fun, and the interviews are informative and fast-paced. Try them, I think you’ll like what you hear.
Topics: General, Learning Technologies | 3 Comments »
Learning to Be Funny
By Gary Woodill | March 14, 2008
A great comedian appears to be spontaneous, giving, and having a great time. In truth, most comedy acts are delivered by highly insecure people using carefully contrived and rehearsed material that has often taken years to develop. This is the lesson from watching Jerry Seinfeld in the documentary film Comedian, and from reading Steve Martin recent autobiography Born Standing Up: a comic’s life (New York: Scribner, 2007). In Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is shown developing a new stand-up comedy routine by trying out new ”bits” at small clubs over a period of a year. After a year he has an hour or so of new material to deliver as a coherent “show”. We see him with his peer group, other comedians who are doing the same thing as Jerry. They give him feedback, share stories, and generally support each other, even though they are in a highly competitive business
Steve Martin’s route to fame and fortune is even more tortuous. He sums up the journey as follows: “I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.” At the end of Martin’s success was burn-out, mental exhaustion, and a need to walk away to start a different career in film and writing.
Much of the learning being promoted in corporate training and the new learning technologies is based on memorizing things - what some have called surface learning. Deep learning requires years to acquire, engaged immersion in the world and lots of hard work.
Topics: General | 3 Comments »