Adobe, Adobe, Adobe, - 3 big web moves

Not sure what this means for elearning, but I really like Adobe and so its fun to see them stepping out and taking some big risks with new products and playing in the Web2.0 space a little more.

So read/write web stacked up these three blog posts in my reader this morning:
Adobe Share
Adobe Media Player
Adobe Acquires Virtual Ubiquity - Enters Web Office Fray

I guess Adobe is on my radar because of their Adobe Learning Summit being co-located with DevLearn this year. Seeing big product announcements makes me wonder what fabulous new tools, and/or upgrades, are being prepared for the learning industry.

Adobe Labs - And on a side note read/write web pointed to the Adobe Labs wiki. You can find a link to the media player in the list as well as many other Adobe technologies. Its great to see a good example of a useful corporate wiki.

SCORM Compiant WIKI - Xerceo

Xerceo is a new WIKI that just hit my inbox. So, I've had no time to use it and therefore this is NOT a review.
Its the concept that interests me. I've been thinking about this type of editable "course" ever since my first introduction to wikis. However, its been a tough nut to crack. I am happy to see that someone has taken the first shot at a commercial product to do this. But I'm sure this is something we will begin to see in the open source products soon as well. The Learning Object proponents have been trying this for years and I haven't really seen it work effectively. I'm guessing each wiki page is like a learning object that is tagged. If you select a tag then you get all of the content organized around that tag, and then you can export it in a SCORM compliant wrapper to report out to the LMS. ???
I don't know. It smells a lot like trying to put the round peg in the old square hole. Is informal/collaborative learning really going to be formalized in systems in useful way? I don't know.
Like I said, I have seen it and my hope is that I will be pleasantly surprised by their solution. For now I'm keeping my hopes low so that I can get excited about it once I actually use it.
If you are an early adopter then check it out and let me know what you think.

The Encyclopedia of Life - Wiki

The Encyclopedia of Life just crossed my desk and reminds me of how incredibly powerful the web has become as an information resource.

The Press Release page has some great media elements and information on the project.

From the press release:

WASHINGTON (May 9, 2007) – Many of the world’s leading scientific institutions today announced the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens will have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered.

Over the next 10 years, the Encyclopedia of Life will create Internet pages for all 1.8 million species currently named. It will expedite the classification of the millions of species yet to be discovered and catalogued as well. The pages, housed at http://www.eol.org, will provide written information and, when available, photographs, video, sound, location maps, and other multimedia information on each species. Built on the scientific integrity of thousands of experts around the globe, the Encyclopedia will be a moderated wiki-style environment, freely available to all users everywhere.

So, we start with all of the species of the world and then perhaps we move on to Geology? All I know is that at some point ALL of the possible information required for K-12 will be available via the the net. So...then what? How are the educators of the old-school going to handle that?

This truly makes me wonder if David Williamson Shaffer is right?

Shaffer, D. W. (2004). Pedagogical praxis: The professions as models for post-industrial education. Teachers College Record, 106(7), 1401-1421. http://coweb.wcer.wisc.edu/cv/papers/TCRpedprax.pdf

Or how our children need to learn my "doing" and "becoming" from his book How computer games help children learn.

I'm not sure we can turn the ship that quickly, but from what I've seen parents are taking their kids off the ship. Virtual schools are growing like crazy, and home schooling is not so scary any more. School used to be a resource for learning. But today when your computer provides infinitely more learning possibilities than any brick and mortar can provide it makes me wonder why more aren't jumping off the ship.

What is a wiki? Explained by pbwiki users

There is no better way to explain a wiki than to hear it from those who use it and find it useful.
The folks at pbwiki have done a great job of gathering input from their users.

Check it out!

This page has many videos covering everything you ever wanted to know about a wiki.

I'm a big fan of pbwiki... elearndev.pbwiki.com

The Power of Peer Production

Serendipity is a wonderful word for how most blogging gets done. You discover something unexpectedly, begin to make some mental connections, and then reflect on it by writing about your new find in the hopes that someone will find it interesting as well and add something to the conversation.

Last night, while preparing presentations, I discovered Esko Kilpi from Finland. What a great name. Check out his article in Nokia People titled The Power of Peer Production. Its a big .jpg file but at full screen it's readable.

Affiliation through personal choice:

"Peer production is the most efficient method for creating value from a resource allocation point of view. The system is developed bottom-up instead of top-down. Instead of forcing people into predetermined groups like groupware does, social software facilitates the natural formation of groups based on spontaneous, contextual needs for interaction. In other words people affiliate through personal choice and actions. Understanding this difference in community formation is crucial for building self-sustaining communities that span the organization or organization and may act as a breeding ground for innovations."

The only company that I know of that actually has been doing this for years is Gore. There have been many articles on the success of Gore and its unique corporate structure. You should google it.

Esko nails the power of wikis in the article and it is a great read.

Owen Kelly - ePedagogy Thesis

I stumbled across Owen's Thesis (actually its a request to contribute to his thesis) and blog via a Technorati search on eLearning.

His Thesis is titled Mimi: A Key Tool for ePedagogy.

He has some great thoughts, ideas, and structure around creating a tool that is a combination of a wiki and blog. Before you roll your eyes and say, "hey, there's a ton of people already working on that." I would encourage us, the learning community, to participate and help by adding our thoughts to his thesis.
Why? Because its exactly what this whole new paradigm in learning is all about...remember...it's about the conversation, collaboration, bla, bla, bla.

While much of the content is not new or groundbreaking to me, I do appreciate the effort in structure the content of such a HUGE topic. As one that gives presentations on this stuff throughout the year I am constantly looking for fresh ways to present this swing of the learning development pendulum. The links in his overview and summary section led me too his post titled We Are Teaching Conducers. Very interesting!

Thanks Owen! And good luck with the Thesis!

Stop by the elearningpost for elearning goodness

I've had elearningpost in my feed reader (google reader now days...in case you were wondering) for quite some time but don't mention him as often as I'd like too.
A couple recent posts really hit home for me. Thanks elearningpost!

Wikis for Exam creation
I loved this one because people that are out in the trenches with the guts to have a go at new technologies really inspire me. Elizabeth, you are an awesome inspiration! Keep up the blogging and the wikiing!
To fix education, think Web2.0 - John Seely Brown
What more can be said about John Seely Brown? A true icon in learning/education/technology. This post just reminded me to read more of his stuff.