One of the sadder points of 2010 was the loss of a great learning leader and colleague, Jonathan Kays. For an all too brief time Jonathan was the Chief Learning Officer of the Masie Center’s Learning CONSORTIUM after following a long career with the Central Intelligence Agency, including a stint as their first CLO. However our loss has also resulted in much gain as my long time friend and colleague Elliott Masie inspired and pulled together a fascinating collection called “Learning Perspectives 2010” in memory and commemoration of Jonathan. This collection of “Over 40 learning leaders from global corporations and government agencies contributed perspectives on how learning is changing (and will continue to change) in the coming years” is as eclectic as it is excellent IMHO.
Nigel Pain, another dear friend and colleague, along with Elliott, Meghan and Brooke from the Masie Center somehow managed to tap all these contributors, get their submissions and expertly edit them all in mere days and the result is something Jonathan will have appreciated and smiled at. A printed version was given to the 2000 people fortunate enough to attend the big Learning 2010 event at the end of October. Better yet, and in part the purpose of this posting is to let you know that earning Perspectives 2010 is available for anyone as a free download at http://learning2010.com/ebook
I’ve long since departed the USA and resumed my life of constant adventure aboard the good ship Learnativity* and have been reading and re-reading more of the articles in Learning Persepctives 2010 as I float out here in the tropical atolls of the Marshall Islands. As I’ve been doing so I thought many of you might also enjoy starting off your new year being inspired by some of these articles and by Jonathan’s legacy and hence this post.
* Cut and paste these lat/long coordinates 07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E into Bing or Google Earth to see my current location
As another gift to yourself courtesy of the Masie Center I’d encourage you to go check out the enormous collection of even more great content including lots of video and audio from the Learning 2010 conference that is all available at www.learning2010.com Even if you’ve been there previously it is worth return trips as there have been lots of additions in the last two months.
I was humbled and honored to be asked to submit some content for this tribute to Jonathan and I’ll be posting some out takes from that in the coming weeks here to stimulate some additional comments from you and inspire me to add more of my own so please stay tuned for those.
Wherever this note may find you today I hope that 2011 is floating your boat as well as it is mine and look forward to another fun year of learning, loving and living.
Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog
Back aboard the good ship Learnativity moored off town of Uliga on Majuro atoll, Marshall Islands 07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E
A recently funded new company called Sunday Sky is worth keeping an eye on for its potential to augment learning and content. Another one of those simple yet powerful ideas I think and what Sunday Sky does is to automatically turn your web content into videos.
More difficult to describe than to just learn by example so check out this example of how ePlans.com an architectural home plan design company is using this. Click on the video obviously and you’ll quickly see how Sunday Sky has enabled them to convert what would have been separate and rather static home plans and pictures and assembled them into a mashup collection in video format.
No doubt we will see commercial sites such sa ePlans use this first but start to think about how YOU could use this ability to convert some of your content into different formats such as video to make them more accessable, more compelling, more engaging and more customized to fit each individual you are reaching.
As per my mentioning here several times before I’m a big fan of the RSA animations and so this Sunday Sky example has me wondering if there might be a way for “the rest of us” to be able to take some of our content and have it automagically converted into a video along the lines of an RSA animation?
Anyway, wanted to bring this recent example to your attention of how mashups are enabling the Snowflake Effect of mass customization to reach more and more people in more and more ways.
Some of you will have heard me going on about how “getting small” is a really BIG deal for over 15 years now. The context is that by making and breaking everything down into the smallest possible units (and not one bit smaller) we enable the creation of infinite numbers of infinitely customizable combinations so that each new assembly or mashup is a unique combination that fits a unique set of conditions just right. And yes, I’ve been using the Lego ™ block analogy for as many years to illustrate this.
One of the latest examples comes in the recent announcement of Amazon “Kindle Singles” which they describe as;
“twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book.”
Obviously not a new concept in terms of format or size but what this does do is add a significant new publishing venue and dramatically scales up the number of people who can now have their ideas and writing published for a much larger audience. For those who wish to do so this also adds some incentive and options to have their writing earn some money but I think the larger opportunity this presents is for more ideas to get out to more people.
You could argue that this is superfluous because anyone can already publish anything they want by posting it to the web via the blog and other means, and maybe these Kindle Singles won’t amount to much. However as you know I am very big on how well the whole Kindle environment or experience has been put together (see links below) such that it is not so much about a piece of hardware as it is about content and ways to seamlessly have what you want, where you want and how you want, when it comes to text.
There are a LOT of examples out there where a seemingly small and simple idea has amounted to a very big deal in terms of how it just hits the right note at the right time and takes off with far reaching effects. I’m not talking about fads that spike and then die off but small things which become very big and influential. Take something like Email for instance, which on its surface is just electronic letter writing and how “big and new” did that sound when first proposed? More recently things like Facebooka and of course Twitter would seem to be top examples. We often don’t factor in how much making something quick, easy and simple makes all the difference when it comes to adoption.
So it is with this line of thinking that I believe Amazon Singles could become a big deal. Yes, it is a proprietary solution and comes with the usual limitations and detractors who will quickly point this out. But again, so too have many such innovations and small new things started out this way and then caught on to become either defacto standards or otherwise broken out of the proprietary limitations. Some of us will remember the days when Email was very proprietary and you could only communicate with others who were using the same Email program.
In any case I think this intoduction of Kindle Singles is worth keeping an eye on and even more so to trying out for some experiential learning so I hope more and more of us will give it a try and get those good ideas out there.
I also love these RSA video animations like the first one below which are intriguingly from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Art and are an extremely effective way of presenting ideas and concepts. If you’ve not seen one before I think you’ll enjoy not only the topic but the presentation style itself and you’ll find lots of them available on YouTube and elsewhere if you start searching.
But my real purpose of this post was to bring your attention to this provocative pursuit of the challenging question “Where do good ideas come from?” and a book which Steven Johnson has recently released after his five years of his pursuit from an environmental (our surroundings) perspective. The presentation and the book provide the patterns he has gleaned from his research and observations.
I particularly liked his his notion of “creating spaces where ideas can mingle, swap and create new forms”. And as a real serendipity and Lego block kind of guy I was particularly drawn to Steven’s thoughts on good how good ideas are formed by the collision of smaller hunches and the cognitive catalyst of serendipitously stumbling over some rich bit of new information. He notes that what we’ve been seeing, over the past six to eight hundred years, is the historic rise in connectivity to reach out to other people and borrow their ideas and hunches and let them collide with ours and create something much bigger than the sum of these hunches themselves.
Check out these videos below and see if they don’t provide some great cognitive collisions with some of your hunches and ignite some great new ideas that you can share with the rest of us and keep this cycle ever growing and widening.
Note: I am much better at starting things than finishing them and have this bad habit with starting postings that never get posted. This one has been sitting in my drafts folder for several months now and long overdue to finally get to you so here it is. The iPad announcement has since come and gone and will help fuel some of what I'm looking for but as you'll read I'm still optimistic and holding out for a future covered in "digital goo". - Wayne
Seems I’m on a bit of a print sprint of late (see previous List with a Twist posting for example), though I’m surely spending more time in front of a screen than ever. Today’s update is about the future of magazines and an update on my long standing quest and wait for the arrival of true digital paper or digital “goo”.
I LOVE Magazines!
I read a lot of magazines—more than one a day—on a very wide range of topics. And I’m one of those silly people who reads every page of the magazine, including all the ads. So as digitally inclined and geeky as I may be, let’s get this out of the way up front: I LOVE magazines.
Things I love (and want to retain) about magazines:
Focused topical areas
Relative, informative, and clever (sometimes) advertisements
Great glossy color photos, graphics
Serendipitous discovery of cool new ideas, products, etc.
Reading anywhere I’m sitting, having it in my hand/lap rather than on my desk
Just the right size/heft for handheld/lap reading
Easy on the eyes for extended reading
Cleared for take off and landing times! (reading anywhere such as planes)
No cords or batteries
However, as with any love or relationship, here are a few things I don’t like so much and would like to see improved:
Physical delivery format limits me to mail subscriptions, magazine stands, etc.
Weight. On my last flight 28 lbs/12.7kg of my bags were magazines!
Wastefulness. Apparently 15% sale of magazines in bookstands is considered high!
Static images only
Read only
Requires good external lighting
No easy search/find capabilities, especially across issues
No connections to related items of interest
No cut, copy, paste, share, keep (I used to have boxes full of torn-out magazine pages)
No disctionary or lookup
No easy way to archive them
Can I do some of this reading and resolve some of these problems on my laptop, tabletPC, smartphone, eReader? Yes, but not well, and with no where near the same reading experience of real magazines.
I Love Books Too
I don’t equate magazines at all with books, though books too are another love. Many of the items on my like/don’t-like list apply to books as well, but my Kindle has resolved most of my don’t-like list items and it has increased my book reading quantity and quality. I’ve still got some key items on my wish list for the next eBooks version such as a touch screen interface, handwritten notes, etc., but the ease of getting new books no matter where I am, access to so many (including almost all of the classics for free), linked note-taking and having my entire library with me all the time (including manuals for all my boat equipment) has been one of the best experiences in the past few years.
And for me, Kindle passes the most important test of all for book reading—I can lose myself in the story. By this I mean I am unaware that I’m reading, paper or otherwise and I'm in the story or in my thoughts as I read! Much of this is due to the very paper-like screen technology (E Ink in the case of Kindle and many other eReaders) as well as its baby bear (not too big, not too small) size and weight.
eMagazines?
So far, eReaders and tablets don’t work too well with magazines…at least not for me. I’ve tried quite a few and continue to try more of them—both software and hardware based. But with magazines, I’m looking for a different experience: color is critical, so is size of the images (larger), and yet not larger in weight and size in my hand/lap. However, I’m seeing some help on the horizon for my magazine reading and in the short term (next year), I think some of the new digital formats could provide some near-term solutions.
Check out the video below for something we’ll almost assuredly see in the next few months, and which has some promise. If you’re like me, you’ll need to look beyond the content of this example (Sports Illustrated), but I do like much of what I see in the demo (thanks to Dan Pink for the tip). Peter Kafka also has a posting on this: “Game On: Time Inc. Shows Off a Tabletized Sports Illustrated”
I am especially intrigued by the interface and the nice mix of old and new with such things as retaining all the familiarity of the old, a print- and paper-based magazine, blended with new capabilities, such as richer content with video and audio, search, rearrangement, sharing, and linking. This video is well worth 3 minutes of your time. Have a look and see what you come away with?
Note that pretty much everything you see in this demo, and what I’m most intrigued by are the changes in content and interface features. However just as important as these will be the issues of the hardware and the physical attributes of what comes next.
Here is another example of a different set of perspectives on what the future of eMagazines might look like. It’s worth watching to see what these researchers and developers assessed to be some of the essential elements of the magazine reading experience which we want to retain and what we want to avoid.
I’ve been a tabletPC champion and user for over 10 years (bought one of the first Apple Newtons too!) and still believe that tabletPC-based features, especially screen-based features such as multi-touch, “flippable”, handwriting recognition and input, and so on will become standard features on all laptops and all screens for that matter. At this point in time, tabletPCs are the best and almost only choice for any digital magazine reading I do, but the benefits I get from magazines are not there. Much of the problem is due to the physical limitations of the device, too thick, heavy, and clunky. And there is still no help with subscriptions, integrated note taking, integration of content across devices, common formats, ease of access, and very limited content beyond what is in the print versions.
It is no coincidence then that there is so much rumor and hype surrounding things like the upcoming “iPad” and rumblings from other hardware sources. It may also bode well that some of those in the publishing world are taking a more future-oriented view of these developments, such as is demonstrated by Time Inc. in the video above and by this more recent announcement ofWired's upcoming version for the iPad. Adobe is also rumored to be developing a publishing tool and magazine reader for tablet devices. And here is a recent list of "5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010". At the very least, 2010 promises to be a significant year for more options that may help deliver some of my wish list items for magazine-type reading.
Digital Goo: The Only Book or Magazine I Ever Need?
As excited and optimistic as I am that we will see all of the above, and more over the coming year, I’m holding out for a completely different development—digital goo. This is what I’ve been asking for and evangelizing about for more than 20 years. Digital goo will be the advent of “real” digital paper, virtual paper or whatever we come to call it, and more importantly, will be a major shift in the way we think of, access, create, and consume content.
Here is an excerpt from an old paper that will give you an idea of what I have in mind for “digital goo”. I wrote this back in the 1990’s, so you’ll have to pardon the black and white and television orientation, but I think you’ll get the idea. It is as simple as it is profound, and yes, I’m still waiting.
… imagine a substance at the molecular level where each molecule is a tiny sphere where one half of its surface is black and the other half white. Each black and white sphere can easily be controlled by electrical input so that either the white or the black side is facing up. Now, mix this substance into paint or wood pulp or plastic and you suddenly have the ability to make ANY surface digital and capable of displaying ANY image you’d like with almost infinite resolution.
You can see the possibilities. Imagine binding a few pages of digital paper together to create truly digital books! Oh, and note that the images on this digital paper can move, so suddenly that you can be watching “TV (the content) in a book.” Just throw in some other colors with those black and white molecular spheres and we’ve got color screens literally EVERYWHERE! An equally frightening and exciting vision for most of us, I suspect. Based on what I’ve been privileged to see in research labs for the past few years, the introduction of this technology into the marketplace can’t be far off.
Therefore, I’m hoping that the next iteration of eBooks will consist of a few pages of real digital paper bound into the only book/magazine/paper I’ll ever need. These pages will be made by adding some “digital goo” to the regular production of paper, or paint, producing sheets of relatively ordinary looking and feeling paper which are now essentially “just” digital surfaces capable of displaying any content at near infinite resolution including video and animations. This same digital paper could also accept inputs such as touch and handwriting.
For me at least, I still want multiple pages, and I think we may see a renaissance of books as a format and form factor in this regard. Maybe it is just a function of my rather severe ADD affliction, which results in my flipping back and forth through multiple pages of a magazine that I’m reading. I bring most of my laptops to their knees because at any one time, I usually have more than 30 tabs running in my browser, and more than 10 other apps running at the same time. But I think we all have versions of this problem, and having multiple pages, both for just larger display areas (think centerfolds and flip outs) as well as speed of access, means that this will become a very common and highly desirable feature.
Research is going on to support much of this and I’m sure that like most things, it will be here sooner than we expect and also take longer than we expect for us to take advantage of.
Peter Kafka in another related posting on Condé Nast’s Offering for Apple’s Mystery Tablet: Wired Magazine finished with the following paragraph that seems just so apropos for the world of exponential change we are living in and a fitting end to this post:
“But all of this assumes that consumers, who’ve shown no inclination to pay for this stuff on the Web, will be willing to pay for it once it appears on devices no one owns yet. We’ll find out soon enough.”
The 3D scanning effect that brought us radiohead’s “House of Cards” video is now within the realm of us mere mortals thanks to the work of Kyle McDonald. In a new project on Instructables, he shows how to connect a projector and 3 cameras together to great a great low-cost 3D scanner.
You’ll need a camera, a projector, and some open source software to process the image data. Using these simple tools, [Kyle] turned out much better video than before. Take a look after the break to see his results from scanning at 60 fps using a PS3 Eye. The trick to this setup is getting the correct synchronization between the projector and the camera, something that could be improved with a bit of extra hacking.
Very much worth watching this chunky video* (above) on how 3D scanning is entering the DIY (Do It Yourself) domain.
Note the cool new "drag to share" tab in the top left corner if you've not seen it before
Talk about mass personalization and The Snowflake Effect! Suddenly you can have an avatar which really IS you! Right now. With what you probably have on your desk.
If you've not done so already be sure to check out the Instructables site itself for a great example of DIY learning content.
And think about the implications and applications for learning, education and training.
Every day we get closer to the singularity where the real and the simulated/virtual/digital become indistinguisable or one and the same.
If you're not equal parts fascinated and frightened I don't think you're paying attention! Let's resolve the frightened part by guiding this in the right directions by using it for great results.
.... and the concept is a simple one - to make video interesting.
The service uses the YouTube API and replaces the YouTube player with a Speakertext player. Users can search video text for relevant quotes and embed the linked quote or the Speakertext player and video into their blogs. To index your own video with the system, you can either transcribe it yourself or opt into a Mechanical Turk package. For $20 dollars per hour of video, you can have speeches, events and podcasts transcribed. The company plans on creating a premium service and launching on additional video platforms in the months ahea
This capability is definitely worth keeping an eye on. I think not only of how much I could use this for finding relevant video, but also of being able to then embed the portion I want into a blog or other content. The applications for learning seem equally valuable and the transcription rates ($20/hr) are also worth noting how much they have fallen.
This is also one of the exponentially growing number of examples of how various types and styles of content are being "mashed up", how our interaction with content is changing and more so how we are changing from mere "consumers" to creators.
Chances are that you are getting at least a few emails and IMs with links to YouTube videos every day. While watching these alone can be fun, Synchtube turns this into a far more social experience. Synchtube allows you to share and discuss a video in real time with up to four of your friends. The first person to enter the room controls the playback and also has the ability to change videos.
Features
To get started, just head over to Synchtube.com and copy and paste a link to a YouTube video into the box in the lower right corner. Then send out the link to the room to your friends and start the video once they have arrived.
The latest addition to my list of "What if the Impossible Isn't?" Simple and useful, always a great combination.
The synchronization of video and chat enables true and interactive conversation and by using YouTube this enables pretty much any video source to be used. Opens some interesting options for learning and sharing and worth trying and keeping an eye on this as it develops.
Goof visualization and fun way to look at what we often take for granted. It is good to continuously remind ourselves what some of these numbers are and to continue to be amazed at the world we live in.
Given the exponential rate of change, ideally this needs to be a fed with live data such that the numbers can show both the value at any one time as well as the rate of change.
And best of all perhaps, there is lots more where this came from, the OnlineEducation site and the OlineEducation blog. Well worth your time but be forewarned that you likely won't be able to look at just one of their great graphics. And that's the good news!
This interview on BigThink.com with Nicholas Negroponte about the ongoing One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is well worth the click and the time for you to watch, and perhaps most interesting of all, there are several other topics there worth watching.
I found it to be very open and authentic as Negroponte answered the following questions:
How did One Laptop Per Child get started?
How did you design a laptop specially tailored to children’s needs?
Do you worry about the laptops growing rapidly obsolete?
What evidence is there that One Laptop Per Child is working?
How can teachers and students make the most out of a new laptop?
How do you respond to critics who say, “Students should read books, not play with computers?”
What will be the equivalent of the “Negroponte switch” in the next 20 years?
What are the most radical technologies forthcoming from the MIT Media Lab?
Should people “unplug” more to avoid media oversaturation?
Following the battle between newspapers and Google, will walls between media increase?
Which of the projects in your career has been the most difficult?
In the interview Negroponte provides some very reasoned and fascinating commentary about how he judges success for OLPC with examples such as truancy rates dropping to zero in many places (from up to 30% previously) and stories of how kids with an OLPC are teaching their parents to read and write.
Negroponte also makes some very revealing comments and tell some interesting stories about the reactions and effects on teachers where the OLPCs are in place. He notes five consistent comments they get from the teachers involved:
Discipline problems go down in the classroom.
They've never loved teaching so much.
They've never had parents so deeply involved with school.
Not only does truancy drop to zero, but the energy level in the classroom is just undeniably different.
They just get swamped by emails with questions from the kids.
Negroponte also discusses things like the “Negroponte Switch” where he predicted about 20 years ago:
“…that most of the information that you got through the ground, through wires and physically, would in fact come through the air, and most of the things we got through the air, like television, would come through the ground.”
You can also hear about his more recent thoughts on how he believes that the next big change will be at the “space between biology and silicone”. Negroponte discusses some of the most recent work going on at MIT and his thoughts on “unplugging” and how he sees life now as more of an omelet!
The interview video runs almost 30 minutes but I strongly encourage you to watch more than just the beginning or read through the transcript. For me, much of the best was at the end where he talks very openly about the projects in his life which have been the most difficult.
I also liked the way BigThink.com put together this interview where the questions appear as just text on the screen for a few seconds and then all the rest of the video is simply a head and shoulders shot of Nicholas with an all-white background. They nicely provided a full text version of the interview accessible with one click, which then scrolls down below the video. It’s very handy for people like me with limited bandwidth and for those who want to grab relevant bits of the interview.
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