2010: My blogging year recapped

As 2010 draws to a close, I thought I’d take a moment to recap my blog posts during the year.

I hope you take the opportunity to read any that you may have missed.

Oh, and please leave a comment or two or three…!

Learning theory & instructional design

•  Taxonomy of Learning Theories
•  Theory-informed instructional design tips
•  The two faces of blended learning
•  Style counsel
•  Art vs (Information) Science

Informal learning

•  My award-winning IQ
•  Online courses must die!
•  The ILE and the FLE in harmony
•  How to revamp your learning model
•  Open Learning Network vs ILE

Social media

•  Social media: It’s not about the technology!
•  Social media: Prevention is better than cure
•  The 4 lessons Kid Fury teaches us
•  I stand corrected
•  How not to do social media
•  Why Gowalla should merge with Foursquare
•  Sharing is caring

Knowledge management

•  Art vs (Information) Science
•  Erin doesn’t get it

Government 2.0

•  London, New York, Parramatta
•  I stand corrected

Blogging

•  Thickness of skin required
•  Greetings from the E-Learning Provocateur
•  Sharing is caring

E-Books

•  The age of the e-book
•  The end of publishing as we know it

Engagement

•  The elephant in the room
•  Shades of green
•  The Melbourne Cup: it’s not about the horses!

Events

•  My 1-liners from LearnX 2010
•  My 1-liners from TEDxCanberra 2010

Cartoons

•  The ingredients of intelligence
•  Campus firestarter
•  A short history of spam
•  Thickness of skin required
•  Trending: Sydney
•  Selective tolerance

Miscellaneous

•  Confucius 2.0
•  Green e-learning
•  Honest football
•  The two types of augmented reality
•  Swimming against the tide
•  Square pegs and round holes
•  Facts are a bitch
•  Smartfailing the vintage future
•  Allergic to ATNA

Smartfailing the vintage future

A little while ago, Ben Betts blogged about a wonderful book called 2010: Living in the Future which was written by Geoffrey Hoyle back in 1972.

I love these vintage visions of the future.

Reading the book prompted me to seek other predictions from yesteryear, and I found plenty via Vintage Future.

Some predictions were remarkably accurate (eg telemedicine, prepackaged meals, orbital space stations) while others were way off the mark.

This got me thinking

Why do some predictions of the future pan out so wrong?

I remember as a child being fascinated by a 19th century illustration of space travel that depicted a steam train flying among the stars and planets.

Clearly at that point in history, the futurist was so convinced of the modernity of the locomotive that he did not conceive any other possible mode of transport – let alone the depletion of fossil fuels.

It was perfectly natural for him to expect that, one day, trains would be hurtling through outer space.

More examples

Consider these…

Why is a robot pushing the vacuum cleaner?

Because contemporary practice was for the housewife to do it.

Naturally, then, the innovation was to replace her with a humanoid.

Why must the shopper be at the store?

Because contemporary practice was for the shopper to visit the supermarket in person.

Naturally, then, the innovation was to automate the system on site.

Why is Dick talking into his watch?

Because wristwatches were the contemporary fashion.

Naturally, then, the innovation was to add an audio channel to that device.

Why did they miss the mark?

In each of the above examples, contemporary practice prejudiced the futurist’s expectations of future practice.

They were wearing blinkers.

Of course they had no concept of jet engines, infrared sensors, the World Wide Web and smartphones. But without an audacious imagination that dared to consider the possibility of these technologies, their predictions were doomed to fail.

Not so fast

It’s easy to look back with a smug sense of intellectual superiority. How rediculous those predictions were! How primitive the science!

But are we really any better today?

I hear a lot about innovation in the workplace, but I doubt we have mastered the creative thinking that is required to forecast beyond our immediate future with any sense of confidence.

If we don’t wrap our minds around the stuff that doesn’t yet exist, our “innovations” will become the latest examples of charming vintage.

TEDxCanberra 2010 in brief

I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural TEDxCanberra last weekend.

Whenever I attend an important event like this, I like to distill it into a series of 1-liners that give any unlucky non-attendees a bite sized synopsis.

So here goes…

Dawn O’Neil kicked off with a jolting exposé of the sorry state of suicide prevention in Australia, a country that does so well in the face of other crises.

Mitchell Whitelaw advocated the show everything model of information discovery, instead of the presumptuous search model. (This was my favourite talk, and I will blog about it in more depth.)

Kevin Bales opened our eyes to modern slavery. (Pre-recorded talk from TED2010)

Miriam Lyons posited that a successful society relies on a mix of self interest and altruism.

Mark Pesce illustrated the allure of hyperconnectivity over maternal instinct, which should scare the bejesus out of all of us.

Kristin Alford called for ideas of the future to be linked to action via integrated stories.

Simon Taylor demonstrated the theory of mind with a simple magic trick (and a Freudian slip).

Temple Grandin explained why the world needs all kinds of minds to work together, especially autistic ones. (Pre-recorded talk from TED2010)

Marco Ostini described how Lunar Numbat is using open source technology to win the Google Lunar X-Prize.

Ash Donaldson advised us to use evidence to reach conclusions, not vice versa.

Francis Owusu claimed our dreams can come true if we overcome the fear of embarrassment and failure.

William Dejean spruiked the success of AVID in turning mediocre students into high achievers.

Melinda Gates crystallised 3 lessons that non-profit organisations can learn from Coca Cola. (Pre-recorded talk from TEDxChange)

Pete Williams recounted how social networking aided the residents of Flowerdale after the Black Saturday bushfires.

Ed Bosworth explained the GFC in an Australian context.

Sunny Forsyth exemplified how passion can solve some of the world’s most serious problems.

And finally, Professor McGorry (yes, the 2010 Australian of the Year) outlined his revolutionary approach to the treatment and prevention of mental illness.

These ideas are well worth spreading!

Pearls of wisdom from LearnX 2010

This week I attended the 2010 LearnX Asia Pacific Conference in Sydney.

While I jotted down reams of notes, I’m a big fan of one liners.

So here are some single-sentence pearls of wisdom that I gleaned from the sessions I attended…

Jane Bozarth – Pre- or post-questioning your learners via Twitter stops them from rambling.

Philip Roy – Massey University uses pre-recorded presentations and realtime web conferencing to reduce the transactional distance among their geographically separated students and instructors.

Roger Courville – Twitter can support informal learning outside of formal training sessions.

Miriam Scurrah – Technologies like iClone can make safety training enjoyable.

Ruth McElhone – Rapid authoring tools make in-house development a feasible option.

Chad Outten – Moodle is the #1 LMS among eLearning Guild members.

Tania Tytherleigh – The connection you make with your learners is more important than your experience or your expertise.

Rhys Moult – A little bit of HTML goes a long way.

Helena Popovic – Excitement is food for your brain.

Ramesh Nava – The fundamentals of assessment are validity, reliability and fairness.

Dawid Falck – User generated content is really powerful.

Anne Moore – Don’t think a degree will get you a job; it might get you an interview.

Eric Shepherd – Identity impersonation during e-assessment can be combated by invigilation and microcertification.

I can’t wait for the next one!