Note:
I’ll be travelling for the next two weeks, so links would be sporadic. During this time however, I’ll be experimenting with some new concepts for elearningpost, especially with regards to the types of weblog content—as usual, trying to play with some recent developments in the field!

Unbound Spiral: Site List - Social Networking
"My continuing review of social networking tools and software has lead me to many sites each with slightly different functionality twists. This collection listed today is in no particular order merely a summary to explore. My key interest is in the functionalities and how they are impacting on consumer experiences and benefits."

Nature: E-mail reveals real leaders
"The researchers have developed a way to use e-mail exchanges to build a map of the structure of an organization. The map shows the teams in which people actually work, as opposed to those they are assigned to."

Journal of Digital Information: Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects
"Content developers have traditionally conceived content from the point of its use. Since use is context and instruction specific, content intended for one particular use is generally invalid for other purposes. The reusable LO - organized content for pedagogical purposes - is a new way of thinking about content creation and its instructional use... Genuine reusability and optimum functionality of a LO can be achieved only when the LO attains a high level of abstraction. Abstraction provides the LO independence from use and strong performative ability, enabling it to join other LOs for instructional intentions."

KM World: Knowledge on the run: Sales reps, suppliers and customers need mobile access to KM
"And it's not only the salespeople and the field service reps who need mobile access to a company’s knowledgebase. A retailer, for example, should know the moment that a supplier cannot fill an order for the hot, new skirt of the season. Even an hour or two delay in sharing that knowledge can mean the difference between profit and loss. That same retailer could receive an alert on a mobile phone, BlackBerry or PDA and tap into the information as it happens, quickly adjusting and finding a new supplier."

KM World: The Net as rhetoric
"The emergence of new rhetorical forms shouldn't surprise us, for new forms always emerge when technology enables new types of connections. Telegraphs created their own rhetorical form—one favoring brevity as surely as cell phone-based instant messaging does—as did telephones. Even answering machines have given rise to a type of rhetoric, one that follows the beep. But the Internet is different because its openness means it has no one form of discourse it prefers and enables us to invent new ones. And we are doing so at a rapid pace."

Tactix: Somewhere a place to learn
"For many learners, neither the desktop nor the home is a suitable base for e-learning. Perhaps you don’t work with a desktop PC or find the office environment too intrusive. Perhaps you don’t have a PC at home or struggle to compete for access with other family members. The answer is a tailor-made self-study environment – the learning centre."

CRM Assist: Adding Excitement To E-learning
"Fun and employee training aren't usually words that companies use in the same sentence. In fact, much of e-learning is e-boring, but several computer training companies are aiming to lighten up the learning process with games and simulations that are anything but dull..."

Workforce: Making E-Learning More Than "Pixie Dust"
"E-learning can be a flexible and cost-effective alternative to classroom training, but it can also be a colossal waste of time and money if not implemented correctly. The reasons why some e-learning projects go down in flames while others flourish are varied. There are those who attribute the problems to lack of employee motivation. Others point to poor course marketing, or training time restrictions, or the human fear of unfamiliar learning environments... Three organizations show how to do it right."

HBS Working Knowledge: Carly Fiorina: Heed Your Internal Compass
In their careers, she told the students, they will need to forge ahead using business fundamentals, not relying on stock price or headlines to guide them. Every manager also needs a strong "internal compass," she said. This compass can be calibrated in three ways:
- Constant interaction with colleagues at all levels of the organization.
- Talking with customers... And don’t just talk with the CEO of a customer company, she advised. "Talk with the vice president who runs the data center. I ask, 'How are we doing?'"
- Actively encouraging an environment at your organization in which people speak up.

CMSWatch: A Metadata Primer
"Unified content requires two types of metadata: categorization and element. Users tend to find information based on categorization metadata, whereas authors tend to retrieve information based on element metadata..."

elasticspace:Reading List
"The following books cover many disciplines, from Interaction and Visual Design to Filmmaking to Architecture, but all relate loosely to the various processes, ideologies, visions and practicalities of Experience Design."

theOtherMedia: Why you need your very own taxonomy
"Making a taxonomy is an act of communication. They basically capture an essence of the knowledge that resides in your organization. A conceptual short-hand overview that describes what's important and how things you are interested in relate to each other. Creating a taxonomy, like anything that worthwhile can be hard work, time-consuming and require considerable domain expertise and creativity."

LearnScope: What do we know about knowledge?
"No bit of knowledge, then, stands alone and in isolation from the rest. The accumulation of knowledge is fundamentally different from the accumulation of grains of sand, where each item could be acquired and stored as though it were a unique and distinct entity. In any form of knowledge, there is a process not only of acquiring some new experience, but also of assessing it and placing it in its proper location in the larger system. Knowledge exists in what Quine would call a ‘web of belief,’ a network of related ideas, each referring to and depending on the rest for their meaning, truth and value."

Useit: Do Productivity Increases Generate Economic Gains?
"Usability improvements can save time-on-task, but critics argue that this is not the same as saving money. Others worry that productivity gains cause unemployment. Neither is correct: usable design saves money and saves jobs."

InfoWorld: Technical trends bode well for KM
"The challenge was and is to make more of the routine communication flowing through the enterprise available — for data mining, social network analysis, and general awareness. What's obviously good for the enterprise, however, is not so obviously good for the individual, and therein lies the rub. Knowledge is power, and many people are (not surprisingly) reluctant to share that power. Somehow we've got to engineer environments in which the sharing of knowledge feels like an empowering behavior. There's no silver-bullet solution, but current technological and cultural trends provide clues that point toward a brighter future for KM (knowledge management)."

Discover: Who Loves Ya, Baby?
"For most of the past 50 years, computers have been on the side of the granfalloons, good at maintaining bureaucratic structures and blind to more nuanced social interactions. But a new kind of software called social-network mapping promises to change all that. Instead of polishing up the org chart, the new social maps are designed to locate karasses wherever they emerge."
Related Information:
- Roland Piquepaille: New Social-Network Mapping Tools Are Emerging
- Roland Piquepaille: More Social-Network Mapping Tools

terremoto: Kansei Engineering: incorporating affection and emotion into the design process
"Kansei is a japanese term where the syllable kan means sensitivity and sei means sensibility. It is used to express the quality of an object for producing pleasure through its use... Kansei Engineering is especially interesting for us, who work in designing interactive products. There is an increasing claim for taking into account subjective issues (emotion, affect, perceptions, sensations...) in user experience, trascending the pure visual design."

Digital Web Magazine: Three approaches to Intranet Strategy
There are a number of different methods to how an Intranet can be used to benefit a company. However, the three most popular and most valuable are:
* Knowledge Management
* Collaboration and Communication
* Task Completion
For companies just starting out creating an Intranet, or for companies that have an Intranet but are not quite sure what to do with it, one or more of these approaches may be appropriate.

The Chronicle: Ball State U. Tests Interactive System for Answering Students' Health Questions Online
"The clinic is testing a system that will allow nurses and patients to interact not only by telephone, but also through their desktop computers. Using the system, a student who calls the health center for advice will be able to go to his or her computer and see the on-duty nurse. The nurse will not be able to see the student but will be able to present pictures, video, or documents in the student's Web browser to help discuss and diagnose the student's condition."

BBC: Fossil Fun
Cool Infographic: "Imagine how hard it is to reconstruct animals from fossil bones where many of the pieces are broken up or lost. This is what it is like for real scientists where a 50% complete fossil is exceptional"

World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else
"All we need to do is pay attention to what the Internet really is. It's not hard. The Net isn't rocket science. It isn't even 6th grade science fair, when you get right down to it. We can end the tragedy of Repetitive Mistake Syndrome in our lifetimes — and save a few trillion dollars’ worth of dumb decisions — if we can just remember one simple fact: the Net is a world of ends. You're at one end, and everybody and everything else are at the other ends."

HBS Working Knowledge: Education, Technology, and Business: What’s the Catch?
"We need a major social investment in training," in order to avoid the risk of technology not being used to its potential, argued Fishman. Schools must also break down the ways they teach, encouraging team teaching in the classroom and other constructivist models that sometimes use technology to build meaning in the classroom."

SXSW: 2003 SXSW Web Awards Winners

Harvard Medical School: Evolving a Mob: Wireless Communities of Practice
"Based on experiences with Hiptop Nation, it appears that by having ubiquitous mobile data communication devices and a successful communal blog, it is possible to create an ideal environment within which a smart mob can grow into a goal-oriented mobile community of practice. Communal blogs play a critical role in the creation of three essential elements of community: the establishment of social capital, the creation of weak ties that foster creativity, and the formation of a sense of "place" within which everything can happen. The final crucial ingredient is a complex goal."
[Note: PDF, 170Kb]

Business 2.0: Sharing the Wealth of Knowledge
"There are dozens of companies designing tools that extract knowledge from individual employees and make it available to the rest of the corporation. A few weeks ago, at Demo 2003, I saw three of these companies, each of which takes a fundamentally different approach to the problem."