| Blogs and e-learning By Donald Clark, Epic Group plc Blogs Paradigm shift in learning Blogs and business Blogs and learning Learning 2.0
For other White Papers by Don Clark, check his blog at http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/ |
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| Ó Epic Group plc 52 Old Steine Brighton BN1 1NH Tel: +44 (0)1273 728686 Fax: +44 (0) 1273 821567 e-mail: marketing@epic.co.uk web: www.epic.co.uk |
Contents
Blog!
What is a blog?
What makes a good blog?
Why has blogging exploded?
Paradigm shift in learning
Copernican revolution in learning
Blogs and blended learning
Scalability and replication as drivers
Blogs and business
Manager, expert and employee blogs
Barriers to business blogs
Blogs and learning
Blogs – formal or informal?
Blogs and formal learning
Formal teacher blogs
Formal learner blogs
Informal learning and the spending paradox
Blogs and informal learning
Learning 2.0
Appendix 1 Blog Policy
A blog is an online diary, open to others to view. It’s personal and allows others to come in and comment on your published thoughts. Most blogs appear as a scrolling series of text entries, the most recent first and and you scroll down to go back in time to view other entries. Previous months and years may be archived and still available. Additional features abound and can include pictures, video, audio as well as links to other blogs and websites.
They are unashamedly honest and personal. It is this that makes them so readable. Gone is the formal prose of exposition and in comes the personal and authentic voice of the author. In many ways the unpolished prose is what makes it work. We can concentrate on the content not the style.
People have always felt the need to express themselves and cave paintings are arguably the earliest blogs. We now have tens of millions of blogs on what is the biggest, most exciting, expanding cave we have ever seen – the web.
The now famous four-letter word ‘blog’ first appeared in 1997 but 1999 was the turning point when Pyra Labs launched their Blogger software. It was to change the face of web publishing. There are now tens of millions of bloggers worldwide and every person can become a portal, not by simply posting their diary, but by creating their own personal space on the web.
Political blogs are now an accepted vehicle for campaigning. TV hit politics in the sixties and led to televised debates, interviews and soundbites shaping campaigns and even determining, sometimes the winners, but also the losers. Nixon and Reagon both used it to win. Some would argue that Bush used Fox to steal the election. On the other hand, Monsdale’s collapse and Dean’s scream led to them lose.
This is the internet age and the candidates blogs may have more weight than their TV appearances. You may see more of the real person. Blogland may even produce a surprise candidate. This is the view of Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager. An even stronger view is that the voice of the people is stronger because of the web and blogging, and that this democratisation of publishing is good for democracy, which some see as being in a trouble.
Military blogs have caused a the Pentagon to control content. If you really want to know what’s going on at the front line do you trust Fox News, embedded journalists or blogs from real people on the real front.
Business blogs have allowed senior managers, experst and emplyees to find their voice, both internally and externally in organisations. Blogs can also built the success of good products, and destroy some bad products.
‘Freedom of the press is limited to those who have one’ said Liebling, and now we all have the potential to have one, at least electronically. The blogosphere is growing exponentially as we start to take up that freedom. Blogs now exist in the media, business, government and politics. Blogs and blogging in the blogosphere is huge, with blog search engines, like Technorati, reporting a doubling every 5 months. Whatever you may think of blogging – it’s big.
Traditional top down printing has taken a bit of a jolt from this newcomer. Anyone can have a printing press and more importantly a voice. The technology doesn’t have an opinion, it just allows you to publish, and here’s the rub – it’s mostly free. It’s also easy to use – yes really easy to use, giving millions access to publishing, and they do.
Of course, blogs should not be seen in isolation they are part of something much bigger – the democratisation of publishing. It is participatory publishing using a whole range of tools and technologies, including wikis, blikis, podcasting, videocasting, RSS and so on.
Some see this as the start of a new era where real citizenship is enable by true freedom of speech and participatory democracy. At the very least it is a phenomenon that is now mainstream on the web. Whatever its impact, it is truly a ‘killer application’.
According to Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s infamous blogger, a blog needs to be authoritative and passionate.
Here are some pointers from his brilliant Blog Manifesto:
· Tell the truth
· Post fast on good news or bad
· Use a human voice
· Have a thick skin
· Talk to the grassroots first
· If you screw up acknowledge it
· Under-promise and over-deliver
· Know the information gatekeepers
· Never change the URL of your weblog
· If you’re life’s in turmoil don’t write
· Link to competitors - say nice things about them
Nick Denton, who runs blogs as businesses, sees brevity and personality as important. John Batelle, cofounder of Wired magazine, thinks it’s all about personal voice, authenticity and honesty. People are often more interesting than content as it is people that give content context and credibility. This is why so many blogs are named after the blogger.
Personality matters. Blogs need charisma and a voice. That voice can be serious, ironic, funny but it must be authentic and must stimulate interest. Blogs are not lectures, they’re personal pronouncements by enthusiasts and experts. It’s this enthusiam and passion that makes them different from personal web pages.
Of course blogging is not restricted to text and images. Video and photo blogging are common, even drawing blogs through artrage.com. Mobile blogging is also coming of age, as the need to post new information fast has become a hallmark of successful blogs.
Diarists have always been around in print. More obvious examples are Leonardo da Vinci, Samuel Pepys, Boswell, Kafka, Steinbeck, Waugh; all were the paper bloggers of their day, but the diary has now freed itself from the confines of the page, bypassed the publishers, and given voice to millions of citizens. This has freed us from the tight knit community of journalists, and even tighter number of media organisations.
Blogs are more than mere diaries, not locked away for personal perusal but open to public comment. They are written by people who want to share their thoughts and discoveries with others, for whatever reason. It is this untapped need for individuals to express themselves that pushes the expansion of the blogosphere.
Blogs are easy to build. The tools are simple, often free and require no more than some simple registartion and the ability to type. They are also easy to find. Google does its usual brilliant job and specialist search services such as Feedster.com and Technorati.com focus on the blogosphere.
Then there’s the syndication, i.e. the aggregation and feeds. RSS (Really Simple Syndication), Atom and email feeds are as important as the blogs themselves they aggregate and accelerate distribution. Then there’s the links to other blogs and web sites, and the ability to track traffic and links. On top of this there’s Flickr, Furl.net and Del,ico.us that all build and expand on blogging.
Blogging is an emergent phenomenon, the voices of millions on the web freely expressing themselves without interference from any authority. Blogs have ousted politicians and media pundits and brought down companies selling defective products. But above all they have added to the richness of the web and our lives by giving anyone who wants to publish, the opportunity to do so, for free.
Blogs are just one example of bottom up innovation. Blogs turn the publishing business model on its head. Bloggers actually spend time and sometimes money to publish, and don’t get paid when people read them. And here’s a fact– the publisher’s industry blog publishersmarketplace.com has double the number of subscribers than the 150 year old Publisher’s Weekly.
Blogging is true ‘freedom of speech’ as anyone can say anything that can be read anywhere by anyone.
For those who may still be puzzled by blogs and blogging, here’s a practical starting point. Check out Jay Cross’s blog:
http://www.internettime.com/wordpress/
Jay often blogs from e-learning conferences around the world, usually wirelessly from the very room in which the presentation is being held. I’ve sat next to him as he positions himself on the front row with his digital camera and laptop, and off he goes.
As the guy who invented the term ‘e-learning’ he has oodles of experience in the University of Phoienix and other e-learning organisations. His is therefore a voice worth listening to, and that’s what a blog is – a published voice.
It’s basically a diary of his thoughts, full of text, photographs, diagrams and useful links. What makes it special is the style in which he writes. He doesn’t ovesrstructure the material, most of the entries are short and he draws from a wide range of sources. These are the things that characterise a good blog. He’s a real person with real thoughts which he expresses in an authentic way. It’s his blog.
Jay is not trying to formally teach anyone. He is simply expressing himself on the most important medium of the age – the internet. He is also an expert and pioneer thinker on informal learning. This is the recognition that informal learning has always and will quantifiably be the most important form of learning. He has exposed the learning paradox, that although informal learning is quantifiably more important then formal learning it receives almost no funding. In other words, we’re spending all of our learning budgets on less than 20% of the learning. There’s an important idea here, as blogs have become an important species of informal learning.
Learning has suffered from being too tied to formal instruction. This has led to an over-dependence on classroom instruction. There has been no step-change innovation in learning, as we’ve been working within this same paradigm since Greek and Roman times.
Unlike politics, science, medicine, psychology and many other disciplines, there have been no major paradigmatic shifts, as Thomas Kuhn would define them, namely fundamental changes in how the discipline is seen by its uses and practitioners.
Despite general agreement that learning has to be learner-centric, there has been no Copernican revolution placing the learner at the centre of the learning world-view. On the whole the existing paradigm has put teaching, not learning, at the centre of the model. This means that formal, as opposed to informal, learning is perceived as being the core learning model.
However, this existing paradigm, formal learning, is really an illusion. All of the research points towards an obvious truth, that most learning does NOT take place as the result of formal instruction. Teaching is not a necessary condition for learning, and most learning is through informal learning, without the conscious intervention of a formal teacher or course. The ratio of informal to formal in organisations is around 4:1 in most studies (see my White Paper on Informal Learning).
The training market is stagnant and flat, yet most people have to learn more and more to perform both in life and in their jobs. How come? Well, in addition to other people, teams, TV, radio, books, magazines, newspapaers and other existing forms of informal learning, the majority now have the tools to enhance our informal learning via the internet. We have the largest educational resource on the planet at our fingertips. We can find content, create content, distribute content, discuss content, store content, track content use and communication way beyond what many expected and in ways that no one predicted.
The true paradigm shift is towards technology-based informal learning. This is where the true action is in e-learning, not in formal courses, but in informal learning, tools and content. In practice, learning is being reshaped by this Digital Reformation, where the priesthood of learning is being taught a thing or two by the democratisation of content and tools.
Don’t imagine that the blended learning debate took us very far down this route. In practice it got stuck in the old paradigm, simply appending e-learning to existing classroom delivery. This ‘velcro’ model simply stuck two existing formal methods together (classroom + e-learning). Some went further with truly integrated programmes, but the great majority of blended solutions simply dice up courses using a few formal learning techniques. Blended learning is therefore deeply rooted in the old paradigm of courses and formal learning.
A rarer form of blended learning argument is the blending into knowledge management and offline and online techniques that take us beyond traditional course structures, and the dominance of the classroom, but this has yet to have any major, practical impact. A blend is more likely to vigorously defend the classroom component and other formal techniques than point to their redundancy.
Blogs, wikis, podcasting, file sharing and other web-based forms of learning and knowledge sharing get missed, either because they are not known or, more commonly, simply ignored. The default is almost always back to what is known, traditional learning delivery channels. Blends are simply old cocktails of known, formal channels of learning. They’re an improvement on monolithic delivery, but rarely ground-breaking.
The shift to the new paradigm has taken place because, for the first time in our history, we have the technology to free ourselves from traditional methods of knowledge creation, searching and sharing. The paradigm shift is happening because of technology, and it is pointless to try to excise technology from the equation. It is now the primary driver behind informal learning.
While billions get spent in propping up the old traditional methods of education and training, with marginal improvement, the technology continues to deliver. Hardly a month passes without another exciting innovation on the internet that is entirely supportive of learning. As with all fast-moving, innovative environments, there are ideas that survive and others that die. On the whole, those that’s survive often explode into supernovas of activity.
Within this new paradigm, new phenomena arise with startling rapidity. We have had web sites, email, messaging, discussion boards and now blogs, wikis, blikis, podcasting, RSS, file sharing, open source, online gaming and who knows what in the coming months and years. There’s an explosion of cheap, often free and easy to use software that helps democratise the sharing of knowledge.
The scale of these pehenomena is breathtaking, and it is this scalability and replication, at marginal cost, that accelerates the growth of informal learning. This scalability takes place on two levels, one is to replicate traditional formal learning and scale it up through e-learning courses, the other is to allow knowledge creation and sharing to emerge from the bottom up. The latter is way more powerful than the former.
Blogging is big business. Both Fortune and Business Week have run blogging front covers last year, the Business Week title being ‘Catch up…or catch you
later’. With Fortune it was ‘Why you can’t ignore bloggers’.
Google owns Blogger.com, Microsoft have invested heavily with MSN Spaces and will include blogging and RSS software into their new Office Suite, Yahoo was the first to integrate RSS blog feeds into home pages and have bought Fickr. Murdoch bought Myspace’s parent company for $500 million and all of the major IT companies have made blogging software a strategic issue. Venture capitalists have invested hundreds of millions and some major blogs are now attracting advertising revenue. One business shares the advertising revenue 50/50 with the blogger. The web landscape is being massively influenced by these new ideas and the IT giants now routinely include bottom-up tools such as blog software and RSS in their offerings.
Businesses obviously have communication barriers, and these often impede their progress. There are barriers between the CEO and senior managers, the managers and employees, the company and shareholders, the company and customers, and on it goes. Blogs break down these barriers.
Businesses now need to keep an eye on what is being said in the blogosphere as it can both drive or damage their success. The Hollywood studios are using blogs to track early movie interest while bands launch themselves first in social environment of the web, then through word of mouse, blogging playing an important role.
In September 2004 a guy mad for bicycles posted that he was able to open the famous U-shaped Kryptonite locks with nothing more than a Bic pen. Within 5 days all hell had let loose and the story hit the New York Times. By the 19th it was estimated that over 1.8 million customers had read the story. By the 22nd the company had to state that it would replace all of these locks for free at a cost of $10 million. So don’t let anyone tell you that blogs are nothing more than idle doodlings.
The wonderful thing about blogs is that their honesty is their best defence. When the marketing people at Dr Pepper thought they could hijack the phenomenon to promote their new milk drink by setting up a pretend blog ‘Raging Cow’, paying kids to post, bloggers smelt a rat and counter-launched a boycott campaign. Mazda made the same mistake with their ‘Kid halloween’ blog, but their videos were too slick, a dead giveaway. It was quickly removed.
Of course, it’s not just that there are now millions of bloggers, but that bloggers have a disproportionate effect on the market. They are often the opinion makers and leaders. If you want to launch or check on the progress of a product, you now need to know what bloggers are saying, and there are now companies that will sell you this service.
Companies that use blogs within their organisations include; Disney, Sun, IBM, Yahoo, Gooogle, Intuit, Monster.com and Microsoft and there are thousands more where individuals blog away.
Learning blogs within an institution and organisations can include:
· Manager blogs
· Expert blogs
· Employee blogs
Although rarely seen as training or learning blogs, each has a different role to play in learning, and all can be used to enhance learning and the growth of intellectual capital in an organisation. Sharing lies at the very heart of blogging and because it relies on the willing participant of the blogger. It is driven, not by some management memo, but by real motivated people with real voices. In this sense it is sustainable, unlike so many formal learning interventions.
Some argue that CEO and senior manager blogs would solve many of the common communication problems that exist in large organisations. What better way to communicate than straight to people honestly and regularly.
Jonathon Schwartz, Sun’s COO made waves by becoming one of the first senior management bloggers, and Sun have since encouraged blogging across all of it employees. He sees the authentic communication as a fundamental senior management skill and he extends this view of authenticity beyond employees to customers. Arrogant marketing and aggressive selling need to be replaced by trust and authentic communication, even if this means true transparency. He argues, that far from being difficult, it actually saves him time as he’s instantly communicating with large numbers of people simultaneously.
Expert blogs are more common in the blogsphere as people want help from experts, whether it be technical or otherwise. There is hardly a discipline left that doesn’t have its expert bloggers. Perhaps the most famous of these is Robert Scoble, a Microsoft employee. His blog, the Scobleiser put a human face on what was perceived as an arrogant organisation. So successful was this blog that he has been given the unofficial title of CHO (Chief Humanising Officer).
The key to getting experts and others to contribute to blogs is identifying evangelists and making the content worthwhile. A good general example is Microsoft's Channel 9, named after the United Airlines in-flight audio channel that allows passengers to listen in on cockpit communications. It’s a group blog for the Microsoft developer community. The Web site, called Channel 9, uses blogs, mobile blogs, wikis and forums as well as other technologies to reach out to developers. Created by a group of five engineers and technology evangelists at Microsoft, it has proved a great success.
Site: http://channel9.msdn.com/
Feed: http://channel9.msdn.com/rss.aspx
Blogs are so easy to use that they can also be used as open company noticeboards, where people can log social events, new products, sports news and anything that may be of interest to the organisation as a whole.
There’s no reason why all employees should not be encouraged to blog. Think how much easier a new starter programme would be if all employees has a personal web presence. However, the real advantage is in simple knowledge sharing. In a world of digital abundance, we can all suffer from overload. The filtering and discovery of relevant learning by others is always useful. Project blogs, or progs, are more specific to a project, which could be a course or specific project. This is where we enter the world of the Bliki, a combination of blog and wiki, where blogs can be edited by anyone or authorised editors.
By this time it will have occurred to you that this is all very well, but some serious problems lie in the way of blogging within an organisation, and you’d be right.
HR would undoubtedly ask for a blogging policy, along with pages of legal restrictions and, perhaps, an official body to check and censor all blogged content. This is only natural in our litigative age. To save you time, I’ve included one from Sun as an appendix.
Others may be frightened off by the growth of ‘splogs’, spam blogs which take content automatically from other blogs and web sites, then sign up to affiliate programmes for fraudulent revenue.
However, these are not the real barriers to blogging. Blogs are, quite simply, likely to be an anathema to those who see it as their business to control from the top down, rather than encourage from the bottom up.
It’s clear, that the company PR people must stay away from blogging and only the most sophisticated of marketing managers be allowed to participate, namly those who understand double-loop marketing, where community leads to commerce. Manager and expert blogs polluted by press releases and corporate-speak die a quick death.
The only ripost to the top-downers is the fact that a number of very senior and successful executives and experts in the employment of some very successful companies and organisations now blog. They do so, because they see that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. You can’t ignore bloggers, as Fortune magazine stated on its front cover, because they are now part of the business and learning landscape.Blogs and learning
Most of those who write blogs see it as a form of learning in itself. They benefit from the experience as it forces them to give structure to their thoughts, as well as the discipline and motivation to research, reflect and refine their thoughts.
So can we use them for learning? Well, they form a very personal story. Their informal, dynamic nature means getting to know the person as the context for the content. That person may be blogging conferences you can’t attend, reading books you haven’t read or interviewing experts you’ve never met. It’s a human approach to knowledge sharing. Intimate is not too strong a word. Above all blogs are time sensitive and date stamped. forming a diary of a person’s reported experience. It’s a record, as much as a store, of their knowledge and learning.
So let’s see how blogs can be used in the context of formal learning.
Blogs that arise within an educational institution or organisation, that are linked directly to learning interventions, are likely to be one of two forms:
· Teacher blogs
· Learner blogs
For teachers they could release more authentic voices and therefore better teaching. For learners they could play a role in releasing the inner potential of a learner by focusing their own thoughts on the process and subject of their learning.
Above all, blogs need to be personal, honest and authentic. Blogs can therefore turn teachers, learners, lecturers and others into real people. In this sense blogs demystify learning, education and training.
In a blog the teacher is no longer the font of all knowledge, but an authoratative voice open to debate and dialoge. Blogs expand but expose. They demand a form of expression that is different from traditional educational content. So the adult-child voice, so common in poor teaching becomes unacceptable, along with posing and posturing. It forces teachers to be themselves. The quickest way to kill your blog is to play ‘teacher’ with dry, dull and didactic postings. In many ways a ‘teacher’ blog can be a contradiction. You must come across, not as a teacher, but as a person.
The good news is that blogging also forces you to be communicative, concise and passionate, usually always virtues in teaching. It gives your learners timely feeds in a digestible form. Assignments and advice, along with subject content, can also be put across in a personal manner. Students want to know, not just what their mentors are teaching, that they can often get in textbooks, but what they’re thinking.
Educators should also be able to enhance their reputation and status through blogs by being more honest and open with their learners. Many teachers and academics live with the fear of being ‘found out’ and are therefore guarded in their communications with students. Other welcome the freedom it brings to the relationship. Blogs open up the teacher to the learner and vice-versa. It moves both beyond the Victorian ‘master-pupil’ model to a more mature teacher-learner relationship.
Learner blogs, written by the learner of course, can be used to improve reflection and retention. Simply writing newly learnt material down in the learner’s own words increases retention. It adds a motivational dimension, setting up the expectation that the learner has to keep the blog going. It also provides structure, not the structure of the curriculum but the real structure of their own learning experiences. All learning is ultimately personal. It’s the learener’s brain that observes, reflects, adjusts and builds mental models of the world and it’s their brain that forgets. A blog aids learning and remembering.
It also gives visibility of the learner’s real thoughts to others, such as their teacher or tutor, who may be able to step in to advise, supplement and correct when necessary.
Ultimately it may also be a good revision guide when it comes to being assessed, either as a record of their learning or as a tool for exam revision. It is, after all their record of their own learning in their own words. It would also be a good counter-measure to cheating and plagiarism ( a real problem in current essay-based assessment). The learner would find it hard to fake or plagiarise a blog.
Motivational theory in learning points towards the need for learners to feel that they are the origin of their action, have self-confidence, are goal driven and benefit from feedback. Blogs do all of this in their own sort of way. There is no more autonomous phenomenon on the web that the autonomy of an individual being his or her own publisher. The self-esteem that bloggers gain from their effort is inestimable, and the freedom to express themselves and access unfathomable learning resources and useful feedback could give learners undreamt of choices (see my White Paper on Motivation in e-learning).
Why spend so much on formal learning when we know that most learning is informal? This is topsy-turvy.
Informal learning is in fact the dominantform of learning, quantifiably more important than formal learning interventions. Over a lifetime, most of what we learn is not within the context of a college, classroom or course. We learn our first language and social skills before any formal schooling. Then continue to develop daily through natural exploration, exposure and encounters with knowledge and people.
What do we mean by informal learning? The terms are not mutually exclusive, like true and false, they are a matter of degree, like hot and cold, a continuum. For the moment, however, it is enough to see informal learning as being free from formal learning events, learning professionals and learning institutions.
So, to understand the role of blogs in learning, one must understand this distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ learning. There is certainly a role for what one could formally define as ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ blogs. These may even be encouraged and supported by formal academic institutions and training departments, but this is NOT where the real action is, nor is it ever likely to be the centre of gravity in blogs and learning. Blogs are many times more powerful in the sphere of informal learning.
It is not that blogs have no role to play in formal learning, just that it is a relatively minor role. For every formal teacher or learner blog there will be tens of thousands of other blogs expanding the sphere of knowledge and learning.
The dominance of formal, institutional teaching and learning has already been diluted (not devalued), by blogs. A wider range of experts are now available for research and learning from across the globe. One can access blogs from anywhere. It doesn’t matter where they are, what matters is what they have to say. Indeed, the most useful blogs in e-learning, education and training tend not to be from people within formal institutions, who often have to toe an editorial line. It’s the free thinkers that lie outside of the system that push the boundaries through this type of publishing.
The blogosphere lies almost wholly in the sphere of informal learning insofar as it is blissfully unconscious of the role it plays in learning. Not being tagged as formal learning has proved to be useful. Blogs are an example (one of many), of informal learning leaping beyond formal learning as the dominant delivery mechanism for learning. Indeed, if blogs were to be labelled as learning or training, they’d suffer the fate of those forced, marketing blogs from Dr Pepper and Mazda – they’d be ridiculed or, more likely, simply ignored.
Unlike most formal learning interventions blogs do not fit into the structure of a course or curriculum. They are on-going conversations. They begin where the fixed course ends or more likely where courses don’t exist.
The few exceptions to this are those academics and individuals, who have the academic freedom or independence to voice their opinions and share freely. We have seen how some learning and e-learning voices are contributing to debates on learning. Interestingly, most of the innovative blogs in learning and e-learning focus on informal learning through blogs, wikis, podcasting, feeds, games and other web phenomena.
The real action is the massive growth of the blogosphere, where interested, motivated individuals continue to contribute to the democratisation of knowledge by sharing their thoughts with whoever wants to listen, engaging others in debate. Blogs are at their best when they come from individuals, not necessarily organisations, companies and educational institutions. Rather than contributing to formal learning they sharpen the contrast between informal and formal learning. They are the informal voices of informed individuals.
We have to ask ourselves why millions of people have chosen to blog and read blogs. One driver is the simple need to learn. Joi Ito, the popular Japanese Blogger identifies the ‘fun of learning’ as a key motivational factor in blogging. They’re fun because they’re informal, informative and often fascinating to read. Nick Denton who runs blogs such as Fleshbot and Gawker sees blogs and blogging as addictive, ‘As with addicts, the more you give them, the more they want’.
Web 2.0, the new breed of web services, easy to use, often cheap and free, will result in Learning 2.0, a paradigm shift that is already well underway. Google is now the primary interface for knowledge acquisition and e-learning, and this process continues to accelerate.
Blogs, wikis, podcasting, videocasting, feeds, file sharing, online games, online simulations, messaging all contribute to a revolution that makes the creation and sharing of knowledge cheap and easy. Every person can be a portal, every person a teacher and every person a learner. The old distinctions are fading fast.
In fact, formal teacher and learner blogs are unlikely to play a significant role in learning 2.0. They are a mere drop in the ocean of knowledge sharing. In any case educational institutions and training departments are often ill-equipped to encourage this type of knowledge sharing. They are far more likely to discourage this uncontrolled form of learning, seeing it as heretical to existing top-down, formal learning.
Blogs are time sensitive. They deliver and amplify dynamic and leading-edge knowledge. Innovation and fresh ideas come not from the centre but from the periphery. This is where blogs belong. Education and training largely delivers past knowledge that has been codified and packaged for safe consumption. Far from being at the frontline of knowledge sharing, education and training is usually at the rear, far from the action.
What is clear, is that the paradigmatic shift to learning 2.0 will result in the shrinking of formal learning in the face of increasingly innovative informal learning. The difficult part is not the innovation and technology, it’s the ability of people to change. As the cover of Business Week said, ‘Catch up…or catch you later’.
Advice · By speaking directly to the world, without benefit of management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards. We don’t want to micro-manage, but here is some advice.
It’s a Two-Way Street · The real goal isn’t to get everyone at Sun blogging, it’s to become part of the industry conversation. So, whether or not you’re going to write, and especially if you are, look around and do some reading, so you learn where the conversation is and what people are saying.
If you start writing, remember the Web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you’ll be doing your readers a service, and you’ll also generate links back to you; a win-win.
Don’t Tell Secrets · Common sense at work here; it’s perfectly OK to talk about your work and have a dialog with the community, but it’s not OK to publish the recipe for one of our secret sauces. There’s an official policy on protecting Sun's proprietary and confidential information, but there are still going to be judgment calls.
If the judgment call is tough—on secrets or one of the other issues discussed here—it’s never a bad idea to get management sign-off before you publish.
Be Interesting · Writing is hard work. There’s no point doing it if people don’t read it. Fortunately, if you’re writing about a product that a lot of people are using, or are waiting for, and you know what you’re talking about, you’re probably going to be interesting. And because of the magic of hyperlinking and the Web, if you’re interesting, you’re going to be popular, at least among the people who understand your specialty.
Another way to be interesting is to expose your personality; almost all of the successful bloggers write about themselves, about families or movies or books or games; or they post pictures. People like to know what kind of a person is writing what they’re reading. Once again, balance is called for; a blog is a public place and you should try to avoid embarrassing your readers or the company.
Write What You Know · The best way to be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun is to write about what you know. If you have a deep understanding of some chunk of Solaris or a hot JSR, it’s hard to get into too much trouble, or be boring, talking about the issues and challenges around that.
On the other hand, a Solaris architect who publishes rants on marketing strategy, or whether Java should be open-sourced, has a good chance of being embarrassed by a real expert, or of being boring.
Financial Rules · There are all sorts of laws about what we can and can’t say, business-wise. Talking about revenue, future product ship dates, roadmaps, or our share price is apt to get you, or the company, or both, into legal trouble.
Quality Matters · Use a spell-checker. If you’re not design-oriented, ask someone who is whether your blog looks decent, and take their advice on how to improve it.
You don’t have to be a great or even a good writer to succeed at this, but you do have to make an effort to be clear, complete, and concise. Of course, “complete” and “concise” are to some degree in conflict; that’s just the way life is. There are very few first drafts that can’t be shortened, and usually improved in the process.
Think About Consequences · The worst thing that can happen is that a Sun sales pro is in a meeting with a hot prospect, and someone on the customer’s side pulls out a print-out of your blog and says “This person at Sun says that product sucks.”
In general, “XXX sucks” is not only risky but unsubtle. Saying “Netbeans needs to have an easier learning curve for the first-time user” is fine; saying “Visual Development Environments for Java suck” is just amateurish.
Once again, it’s all about judgment: using your weblog to trash or embarrass the company, our customers, or your co-workers, is not only dangerous but stupid.
Disclaimers · Many bloggers put a disclaimer on their front page saying who they work for, but that they’re not speaking officially. This is good practice, but don’t count it to avoid trouble; it may not have much legal effect.
Tools · We’re starting to develop tools to make it easy for anyone to start publishing, but if you feel the urge, don’t wait for us; there are lots of decent blogging tools and hosts out there.
