Daily Bookmarks 12/30/2007

A Review of What Instructional Designers Do:
Questions Answered and Questions Not Asked Annotated

Research comparing ID models with what instructional designers actually do for their jobs. The authors conclude that ID isn’t so much about following a rigid process, but about solving complex problems and making nuanced decisions.

Results showed that, while instructional designers apparently do make use of process-based ID models, they do not spend the majority of their time working with them nor do they follow them in a rigid fashion. They also engage in a wide variety of other tasks that are not reflected in ID models.

Rowland (1992) reported his results to be congruent with the research on expertise and indicated that expert instructional designers clearly employ a definable problem solving and decision-making process. He suggested that ID tools, unlike procedural design models, should foster a deep understanding of the system of concern and should include such characteristics as flexibility of structures and processes, a workspace for construction of problem representation, and mechanisms for making multiple links between problems and solutions. Rowland suggested that, rather than to be taught procedures or even problem-solving heuristics, novices need to develop experience in the design process and that a case-based method of teaching, providing involvement with real or realistic situations, might be the most appropriate way for new instructional designers to learn the design process.

Design is always about making judgments about design situations that are complex, rich and replete with tensions and contradictions.

Daily Bookmarks 12/29/2007

Learning Technology: A Framework for Assessing Learning Outcomes in Online Business Simulations

Extensive paper evaluating the success of three business simulations based on both learning demonstrated within the simulation and learning transfered to real world skills

Daily Bookmarks 12/28/2007

EdTechDev: An Argument for Knols Over Wikipedia and Citizendium

Looking at the constructivism and other articles where Dlewis3 has been flooding content with arguments from Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark. This author feels that since David Lewis has made these changes that Wikipedia isn’t the “nonbiased” source it claims to be. I think the author misunderstands Wikipedia’s NPOV though; controversial claims can be made if they’re cited, but so can arguments on the other side. NPOV doesn’t mean everyone agrees on a middle point. It means there is a balance with multiple positions explained. The point is to present the arguments, with citations, and let the facts speak for themselves.

One Year of Blogging

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My first two posts on this blog were published a year ago today. I posted about learning through blogging last week, but I want to look at some more of the stats. If you’re not interested in my self-indulgent meta-analysis and navel-gazing, go ahead and skip this post.

• Total number of posts: 284 (counting this one)
• Number of non-bookmark posts: 90
• Number of comments: 254
• Top categories (excluding bookmarks):
  • E-learning (31)
  • Instructional Design (29)
  • Blogging (28)
  • Lifelong Learning (26)
  • Read/Write Web (22)
• Number of views: over 16,000
• Subscribers: around 150

Obviously, I’m not breaking any records with my statistics and number of readers. I wasn’t sure when I started whether I’d ever have more than a handful of readers, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my numbers. It took me over three months to get that first 1000 views, so I certainly spent my time preaching to empty pews. I’m thrilled with the number of comments I have–almost one for every post. Especially when you look at how many of my posts are just linkblogging, which doesn’t usually inspire much discussion, the number of comments feels like a more meaningful statistic to me than just the number of views or subscribers.

If you’d asked me a year ago what topics I thought I would write about the most, I doubt I would have put lifelong learning in my top five. I guess it just feels like a natural topic to write about here though, as this blog is certainly a lifelong learning tool for me.

Looking forward to another year ahead!

Technorati Tags: blogging, anniversary, web2.0, learning

Daily Bookmarks 12/22/2007

For higher pay, learn to say you’re sorry – Oct. 17, 2007 – Ask Annie Annotated

Fortune Magazine article that cites a study showing a direct correlation between income and a willingness to apologize. So how do we create organizational cultures where people feel open to admit mistakes and apologize (and hopefully learn from those mistakes)? I wonder if a correlation also exists between people who learn more effectively from their mistakes and those who are willing to apologize (and therefore with better pay).

People earning over $100,000 a year are almost twice as likely to apologize after an argument or mistake as those earning $25,000 or less, the survey found…

They were also asked whether they would apologize in three situations: when they felt they were entirely to blame for a problem; when they thought they were only partly at fault; and when they believed they were blameless.

In all three cases, “a person’s willingness to apologize was an almost perfect predictor of their place on the income ladder,” the study says.

Daily Bookmarks 12/21/2007

YouTube – A Vision of K-12 Students Today

A synthesis of information from several videos, including Michael Wesch’s “Vision of Students Today” and Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know.” The style is similar to Wesch’s video, where students hold up signs with text. This isn’t so much new or innovative as a great example of a remix of content for a specific audience, focusing more on K-12 teachers.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills – Framework for 21st Century Learning

Framework for digital skills, broken into 4 areas
* Core subjects & 21st century themes
* Learning and Innovation Skills
* Information, Media, & Technology Skills
* Life and Career Skills

21st Century Skills

enGauge framework for 21st century digital literacy skills

Half an Hour: Free Learning and Control Learning: On the So-Called Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching

Text from Downes’ presentation critiquing the Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark article. Downes goes through a number of Kirschner et al’s arguments, showing the internal inconsistency, lapses of logic, and lack of evidence. Citations included.

Blogging & RSS: My Learning about Learning

December isn’t quite finished yet, so I still have time to answer this month’s Learning Circuits Big Question.

What did you learn about learning in 2007?

This has been my first year of blogging. I started because I was developing a course to introduce Web 2.0 technology to K-12 teachers. I figured if I was going to convince people of all the benefits of blogging to these teachers, I should do it myself. I’d been reading several blogs before then, but I’d never commented or done anything to join the conversation. Blogging has been a great learning experience though.

I have always processed ideas by writing about them, and blogging definitely lets me do that. I think I expected that part of the benefit. What I didn’t anticipate was how much I would gain from interacting with the community of bloggers. I really didn’t “get” that part of blogging before participating in the community myself. The conversations through comments and blog posts have been terrific. I’ve had my thinking challenged many times, and that’s a wonderful thing.

The other huge change for my personal learning this year has been RSS. Before RSS, I was reading maybe a half dozen blogs regularly. Now I have dozens of feed subscriptions (probably too many). Much of blogging is reading what others are writing, and I read so much more now through RSS than I could have possibly kept up with on my own. I know I’m actually spending more time reading than I had been, but I’m also much more efficient in the time I spend. It makes a big difference in my own continual professional development and lifelong learning.

Part of why I enjoy working as an instructional designer and developing online learning is that I personally am always learning something new. This year was better than previous years though; I think I really took control of my own learning in ways I hadn’t in the past. Blogging and RSS both let me direct my own learning, and that’s perhaps the most important idea I learned about learning this year.

Technorati Tags: blogging, learning+circuits, lifelonglearning, rss, tbq, the+big+question, web, 2.0

Daily Bookmarks 12/19/2007

FREE — Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

Portal for teaching resources from multiple US government sites–NASA, DOE, etc. Lesson plans and some primary source material are included.

CSS Creator IE6 left-shift after div

Solutions for a CSS problem I was having with our team blog. Text following a blockquote was cut off on the left. Without a width on the blockquote, IE6 tries to treat the width as 100% plus padding. Putting a width of 80% on the blockquote seems to have fixed the issue. If everyone would just switch to Firefox, my life would be so much easier.

Sarah’s Musings: Leaving comments on my blog

A response to a conversation on how to increase comments on a blog: a guide to commenting, including why comments are important to the blog author. I also like how she makes it clear that disagreeing with her is fine too.

Daily Bookmarks 12/18/2007

The Bamboo Project Blog: Six Reasons People Aren’t Commenting On Your Blog

If you’re not getting comments on your blog, these might be some of the reasons. If you sound like a press release, infomercial, or know-it-all, people won’t join the conversation. Create the right atmosphere, show people how to comment, and make it clear you want conversation, and you might get more comments.

Daily Bookmarks 12/17/2007

Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:: Converting cassettes to mp3 files

Video tutorial on converting cassettes to mp3 using an external USB sound card

Study: Googling Oneself Is More Popular — chicagotribune.com Annotated

Interesting stats on looking up yourself, friends, and others through search engines. Most people say they aren’t concerned about the information available about them online and that it is accurate. The low number of people reporting negative experiences from online information was a surprise to me–the fears about transparency don’t seem to be backed up with data.

Few Internet users say they Google themselves regularly — about three-quarters of self-searchers say they have done so only once or twice. And most who have done so consider what they find accurate. Only 4 percent of Internet users said embarrassing or inaccurate information online resulted in a bad experience.