editorial page 2002

The Business Will Be Bloggerized

David Weinberger, author of Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization, writes that his zine is inevitably merging with his weblog. "Much of this issue reprints blogged material ('bloggerini'). This merging will continue in ways I haven't yet entirely determined."

The same is true at InternetTime.com. Why?

• As eLearning matures, our role and our interests are shifting. A few years ago, we were defining eLearning. Now we're tracking variations on the theme.
• Monthly updates once sufficed. Today the pace is daily.
• When Internet Time came to life, only a handful of sites touched on eLearning. These days we're sifting through ten times more information. Our scope has broadened to include eBusiness, marketing, cognitive science, sociology, and other realms.
• Time has trumped meticulousness. Blogs are easy to update and maintain. Also, blogs set readers' expectations for informal style, personal observation, and occasional whimsy. No need to dot all the "i's."
• Since Google indexes our pages, we no longer have to organize everything into topic pages. Seek and ye shall find.

Our weblog on learning

About weblogs

Which standard?

SCORM is mil-spec, designed for military apps where standards can be rigidly enforced, and where performance outweighs price much more than in the commercial sector. SCORM comes from the same place as $1000 hammers and $10,000 toilet seats.

Corporations may find it faster, better, & cheaper to standardize learning with the Semantic Web. It's XML, interoperable, flexible, and will soon be the underpinning of business transactions. What better way to integrate learning and work? The Semantic Web would enable us to build performance support directly into the job (rather than as an add-on.)

The U.S. News E-learning directory definitions:

eLearning -- See Distance Education.

First book on the eLearning Bookshelf at U.S. News

The U.S. News section concludes with "Locate the best corporate E-learning providers for your company's needs with our new corporate E-learning search and our customer satisfaction rankings (see categories below)."

Now if any of you believe that there's a "best" LMS regardless of context, please give me a call so I can tell you about my special consulting services. Maybe you didn't realize that the best LMS is Virtual Training Assistant. Or that the best authoring tool is ReadyGo Web Course Builder. The list of fifteen Strategy Consulting firms fails to mention the Big 5. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Want to buy a bridge?

Robo-teacher has left the building

eLearning was born during the dot-com frenzy. Like many start-up ideas, the first descriptions of eLearning were oversimplified, extreme, and wildly optimistic. Otherwise rational people defined eLearning as putting all learning on computers, as if it had to be all or nothing.

Imagine the savings in plane fare, instructor salaries, and keeping people on the job instead of at the class! Employees could learn anywhere they could plug into the net, whenever you wanted. Learners would save time by studying only what they needed. They would learn at an optimal pace, neither held back nor bypassed by the rest of the class. Cool.

The only problem was that this sort of eLearning rarely worked. Learning is social. Even in the classroom, lots of learning takes informally, between students. Workers learn more at the water cooler or coffee room than during classes.

Learning requires much more than exposure to content. Most people drop out of 100% computer-led instructional events. These same people learn well when computer-mediated lessons are combined with virtual classes, study groups, team exercises, mentors & help desks, off-line events, and on-line coaches.

As the hype cools down, we find that learning hasn’t changed; it still requires a variety of activities. Computers can make aspects of learning more convenient but they don’t eliminate the need for human intervention. The presumption that eLearning would automate every aspect of learning today seems irresponsible. That dog won’t hunt.

How Others See It

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
--Albert Einstein

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."
-- Lao Tzu

"Learning how to learn is life's most important skill."
-- Tony Buzan

"Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival."
-- W. Edwards Deming

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
--Eric Hoffer

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso

"It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned."
--Leslie Jeanne Sahler

"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe."
—Abraham Lincoln

"To me, the blended buzzword is overused, for all it means is 'apply common sense,' use the appropriate tool for the job.

To help people learn, you use the best means for that particular subject. You don't learn to drive from a book; you don't learn chemistry by trial-and-error. A multiplicity of means always works better than just one. The only folks I know who are really going "Ah ha! Blended!" are people who duped themselves into thinking they could do everything with a computer (unblended) in the first place. I've never been party to that line of thinking."