10.30.2008

Web 2.0, Models, ISD, Trends, Hiring, LinkedIn, & Media

Columbia River

Web 2.0 Learning - eLearning Technology

Software is being used to allow JetBlue faculty to share around broader topics that just improvements in learning & development such as sharing photos from family vacations, weddings and birthdays. This allows faculty to get to know each other socially in order to be more effective sharing and working together later. They also use the technique of posting provocative topics in order to engage people in discussions.

Dangerous Models - The Frontal Cortex

People love models, especially when they're big, complex and quantitative. Models make us feel safe. They take the uncertainty of the future and break it down into neat, bite-sized equations. But here's the problem with models, which is really a problem with the human mind. We become so focused on the predictions of the model -- be it the cod population, or the risk of mortgage derivatives -- that we stop questioning the basic assumptions of the model.

This directly ties in with a recent link I posted, False advertising statistics effective, in that our preference or judgement is often influcenced more by specifications or numbers, that what we actually perceive through our other senses.

Designing for the ISD Life-Cycle - as Measured by Return on Investment and Economic Value Add - The Pursuing Performance Blog

"Having it your way," for each ISD'er with their unique approach to ISD, keeps the barn door open and the horses running free. The engineering community addressed this decades ago and "closed the barn door" with CAD/CAM systems (computer aided design/computer aided manufacturing). Additionally, standard parts inventories, design rules, and other tools and templates helped them speed design and ensure greater quality of those designs.

20 Education Technology Trends to Watch - Educational Technology by IQity

  • Online Learning Opportunities
  • Access to School Related Software Applications and Projects from any Computer in the School Network
  • Unlimited Internet Access
  • Online Communication Tools: Global Social Networks

Can an Army General Whip NBA Refs into Shape? - Time

Interesting story on hiring "outside the Box:"

"Credibility in this position has nothing to do with my ability to be an expert referee. I believe that in my heart," says Johnson, "Throughout my Army career, I've been promoted and moved around a lot, and never had time to master one thing," says Johnson. "I've really focused on leading and managing on a strategic level. So I guess you can say I feel comfortable with a broad range of ignorance. But I'm a quick study."

LinkedIn Applications: Your Resume Just Got More Dynamic - New York Times

Up to this point, LinkedIn has remained focused but - apart from those invitations to connect - not especially social or dynamic. No matter what the economic conditions, people will always be looking for new jobs. If LinkedIn continues to add features and applications that facilitate that inevitable searching and hiring, they're sure to succeed. And this new application platform appears to be right in line with that focus.

Mourning Old Media's Decline - NY Times

At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism - the trusted news sources readers have relied on - were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a "cesspool" of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings.

But in this case, it wasn't an old journalism hack lamenting his industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.

10.28.2008

Typing, Talent, eLearning, Google, & Multitasking

Typewriter

Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world Boing Boing & LA Times

But the typewriter part of Flores' business never went away. In some ways, it's even made a small resurgence. The simplicity of the typewriter is alluring to writers who may be overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) by increasingly elaborate technology. A typewriter is also appealing in its transparency -- whack a key, and watch the typebar smack a letter onto a piece of paper. Try figuring that out with a laser printer. Many people also find typewriters charming ambassadors of a bygone era. One recent customer asked Flores to fix her mother's college typewriter so she could type letters home when she went off to college.

Typewriter Keys

Why talent is overrated - Fortune

A number of researchers now argue that talent means nothing like what we think it means, if indeed it means anything at all. A few contend that the very existence of talent is not, as they carefully put it, supported by evidence. In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before the individuals started intensive training.

By contrast, deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them. Tiger Woods - intensely applying this principle, which is no secret among pro golfers - has been seen to drop golf balls into a sand trap and step on them, then practice shots from that near-impossible lie.

Benefits and Challenges of E-Learning in the Call Center - CIO Today

e-Learning is effective and efficient for learning systems, hardware, software, phone, Internet, anything technical, rules, regulations, protocol, principles, anything rote and repetitive-it can be referred to again and again, as a reference, a resource, and/or a refresher. They are self-directed. People can learn at their own pace.

What e-learning is least suited for is soft skills training, specifically anger diffusion, conflict resolution, communication and listening, rapport building, as examples. Anything that deals with the 'human.' Why? Because impactful training of soft skills is live, highly interactive, experiential, and in real time.

Is Stupid Making Us Google? - The New Atlantis

The "F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content" is the technique of reading horizontally across the first few lines of text, then halfway across for a few more, and finally vertically the rest of the way down the page; e.g., go to Google, type keywords, download three relevant sites, cut and paste passages into a new document, add transitions of your own, print it up, and turn it in. This is information retrieval, not knowledge formation.

Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus - N.Y. Times

When it comes to Multitasking, it depends what you're doing. For some people, listening to music while working actually makes them more creative because they are using different cognitive functions. But despite what many of us think, you cannot simultaneously e-mail and talk on the phone. I think we're all familiar with what Dr. Hallowell calls "e-mail voice," when someone you're talking to on the phone suddenly sounds, well, disengaged.

10.26.2008

Instructional Design, Training, Statistics, Web, 2.0, & New CEOs

Instructional Design in a Connected World - Brainstorm in Progress

Much of what has been said characterizes instructional design as mechanistic, linear, and formulaic. To an extent, there is some truth to this because instructional design has many problems to solve - one of them, for instance, might be that factory workers may need to know how to operate a specific piece of equipment or billing coders in hospitals may need to know some legal procedures.

Business leaders urge firms not to slash training - People Management

Now is precisely the time to keep investing in the skills and talents of our people. "It is the people we employ who get us through. When markets are shrinking and order books falling, it is their commitment, productivity and ability to add value that will keep us competitive. Investing now in building new skills will put us in the strongest position as the economy recovers."

Connecting the instructional design dots - Virtual Learning Worlds

From an instructional design standpoint, we talk a lot about "Just in time" learning, or JIT. The design field has struggled with this for many years. How do you get that critical information to your employees or students exactly when they need it the most?

False advertising statistics effective, say 9 out of 10 cats Mind Hacks

Even when consumers can directly experience the relevant products and the specifications carry little or no new information, their preference is still influenced by specifications, including specifications that are self-generated and by definition spurious and specifications that the respondents themselves deem uninformative.

The long nimbus - The Economist

Firms have at last begun to embrace Web 2.0 technologies in earnest, a trend predictably called Enterprise 2.0. By 2013 companies around the globe will spend $4.6 billion on such tools, according to Forrester Research.

Companies may not have much choice but to open up, says Mr Mulholland. Employees will increasingly resist constraints on their use of technology, and they will have a growing need to reach beyond the corporate firewall. Twenty years ago, he argues, 80% of the knowledge that workers required to do their jobs resided within their company. Now it is only 20% because the world is changing ever faster. "We need to be open to new and unknown connections with people and content," he says.

The Seven Things That Surprise New CEOs - Harvard Business School

The CEO must learn to manage organizational context rather than focus on daily operations. Providing leadership in this way - and not diving into the details - can be a jarring transition. One CEO said that he initially felt like the company's "most useless executive," despite the power inherent in the job.

10.20.2008

Training, Creativity, Corporate Transparency, Telecommuting, &Internet

Plastic Prints

Where is Training Going?

1. Iterative & Collaborative - Catherine Lombardozzi

As we continue to morph and flex the ADDIE model, we need to think about iterative design and development and creating teams of people to complete projects (rather than creating teams of people responsible for one function). It isn't just about creatively implementing a design and development model to generate different kinds of solutions. It's about a different kind of working relationship between and among designers, developers, artists, programmers, media specialists and - yes! - even clients - to pool creative energies and decision making.

Also, see Catherine's Learning Environment Design

2. Personalization and Contextualization - Harold Jarche

Good trainers know how to personalize and contextualize their sessions, but social media can reinforce this continuously, not constrained by time or space. Successful organisations will move from a training focus, and even beyond a performance improvement focus, to a connecting and facilitating one.

3. Informed Learning Support - Dave Ferguson

Most people don't want to stumble around in the basics. If they don't know anything, they'd like to get quickly to where they do know something, so they can try to do something. The factory learning model doesn't fit every situation, but neither does everyone want to build his own auto engine, let alone smelt the steel to make it with.

4. Blended - Clive Shepherd

Only the most motivated and independent learners can sustain prolonged periods of self-study, however good the materials; and only a minority of topics can be handled by self-study alone. All of which brings us back, of course, to blended learning, which is where I'd recommend any organisation to start their journey of transformation.

5. Txtng rcks (mLearning) - Donald Clark (Plan B)

Its strengths are that it's cheap, immediate, direct, personal, not in real time and unobtrusive. I think every company and organization that has staff using mobile phones should be forced to do a course on texting, then forced to text more often than talk on the phone. Texting cuts to the quick. It would save them all an absolute fortune.

6. Learnscapes - Jay Cross

Convergence of work and learning -- tell people what you expect them to do; then make it easy for them to learn how to do it. It's not rocket science, but it does turn the usual way of looking at corporate learning on its head.

How to Unleash Your Creativity - Scientific American

There are four different skill sets, or competencies:
  • The first and most important competency is "capturing -- preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them.
  • The second competency is called "challenging" -- giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas.
  • The third area is "broadening." The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections -- so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things.
  • And the last competency is "surrounding," which has to do with how you manage your physical and social environments.

Is Corporate Transparency Always a Good Thing? - Harvard Business Review

The modern example that has long been held as the standard is Johnson & Johnson's response to the Tylenol murders of 1982. By all accounts, the company handled the crisis brilliantly. By contrast, the corporate graveyards are marked with the headstones of many companies that were less forthcoming, or even deceptive, in their dealings with the public: WorldCom and Enron, to go back a few years, and Lehman Brothers and AIG to pick from recent headlines.

Let's look at a recent case: Daniel Bouton, CEO and Chairman of Societe Generale. Back in January, Daniel Bouton learned one weekend that a rogue trader in his shop had generated almost 50 billion euros in losing bets - a great deal more than the firm was worth.

Home Sweet Office: Telecommute Good for Business, Employees, and Planet - Wired

Time and again, studies have shown that telecommuters are every bit as engaged as their cubicle-bound brethren - and happier and more productive to boot. Last year, researchers from Penn State analyzed 46 studies of telecommuting conducted over two decades and covering almost 13,000 employees. Their sweeping inquiry concluded that working from home has "favorable effects on perceived autonomy, work-family conflict, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent, and stress." The only demonstrable drawback is a slight fraying of the relationships between telecommuters and their colleagues back at headquarters - largely because of jealousy on the part of the latter group. That's the first problem you solve when you kill your office.

The Internet is no 21st-century boob tube - cnet

It turns out the Internet isn't exactly following the model of the boob tube in co-opting family discourse, according to a new national survey of 2,252 adults from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "We were surprised to see that lots of families treat the Internet as a place for shared experiences," Tracy Kennedy, author of a new report about the survey called "Networked Families."

10.19.2008

eLearning, mLearning, Tech Terms, Google, & iPods

People Not Allowed

US Corporate eLearning Market Reached $5.2 Billion in 2007 - Ambient Insight

The US corporate market for Self-paced eLearning reached $5.2 billion in 2007. Although overall growth is slowing due to the recession, the recession is also acting as a growth catalyst for certain types of products and services.

The research indicates that the current demand in the enterprise has a negative growth rate of -5.5%. In contrast, the demand in small companies doubled from 4.20% in the 2007-2012 forecast period to 8.51% in the 2008-2013 period. The demand in the large and medium-sized companies is relatively robust at 16.3% and 26.7% respectively.

mLearning Pilot (Learning on a Blackberry) - Learn-Learn-Learn

A critical key to our success is that we decided that we had to be successful with our very first project ... and that we needed to eat this elephant one bite at a time. There are so many ideas and possibilities - which folks have been more than happy to raise and ask - yet we're just starting out and don't want to set ourselves up for an "oops" moment. So, our first project has been developing a Performance Support Tool for a group who are always on the road and who are now being asked to be more consultative in their client contacts and interactions. In a nutshell we created this tool in HTML and controlled the layout through style sheets.

Tech Terms to Avoid - New York Times

David Pogue's list of pretentious pet-peeve words to avoid, "I used to consider plain-English writing a competitive advantage, so I've never leaked this list to potential rivals. But at this point, forget it; any tips that might contribute to clearer writing deserve to be free."

Googling and intelligence - Nicholas Carr

The average young person spends more than eight hours each day using technology (computers, PDAs, TV, videos), and much less time engaging in direct social contact. Our UCLA brain-scanning studies are showing that such repeated exposure to technology alters brain circuitry, and young developing brains (which usually have the greatest exposure) are the most vulnerable ... More than 300,000 years ago, our Neanderthal ancestors discovered handheld tools, which led to the co-evolution of language, goal-directed behavior, social networking, and accelerated development of the frontal lobe, which controls these functions. Today, video-game brain, Internet addiction, and other technology side effects appear to be suppressing frontal-lobe executive skills and our ability to communicate face-to-face. Instead, our brains are developing circuitry for online social networking and are adapting to a new multitasking technology culture. - Gary Small, M.D. Director, UCLA Memory & Aging Research Center

iPods for Learning

Semour Papert once said something to the effect that anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models. Thus for designers to see podcasts as a learning tool, then they must expand their set of models. Design guru John Thackara wrote that new technology normally works best when helping people to interact across time, rather than space. For example, it is helpful that I can listen to podcast from experts from any place. But what truly makes them invaluable is the ability to shift them to a time that suits me, thus I get an instant knowledge network principally on my own making.

10.15.2008

Poverty, Brain, Far and Near Transfer, Web Design, & Web 2.0

Blog Action Day 2008 – Poverty

“The USA likes to be #1 in everything, and when it comes to the percent of children in poverty among the richest nations in the world, we continue to hold our remarkable status.” – David Berliner

America has one of the highest childhood poverty rates among industrial nations. Berliner, the Regent's Professor of Education at Arizona State University, dug into the data of high-stakes testing (No Child Left Behind) and poverty. He discovered that if you take the scores of the poverty stricken areas out of our national school averages, we rate among the best in the world (to include math and science). Leave them in and we plainly suck — we are near the bottom of the heap as compared to other industrialized nations. See: Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform – David C. Berliner

Elizabeth Gould discovered that when the brain is put under stressful conditions, it starves itself by failing to create new cells. There are severe social implications with this. Environments that are boring, have stressful noises, poverty, etc., have playing fields that are no longer level when compared to enriched environments. The brains that live in impoverished environments never have a chance as poverty and stress are no longer just concepts but are actual parts of a person's anatomy. See: The Reinvention of the Self – Jonah Lehrer in the Feb/Mar 2006 issue of Seed

“When a brain is worried, it's just thinking about survival. It isn't interested in investing in new cells for the future.” – Christian Mirescu

Our answer to poverty is high stake testing in education. We believe that if we educate children living in poverty, they will become productive members of society. Yet, this is backwards — we are trying to test a disfigured brain, hoping that it will somehow work. What we should be doing is eliminating poverty in order to relive stress, so that the brains will once again become interested in producing cells for the future. Yet all too often . . .

Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died

Wanna tote guns and shoot dice.
all mah life i've been considered as the worst. lyin' to mah mother even stealin' out her purse crime after crime
from drugs to extortion
i know my mother wish she got a abortion

Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died
Hold Ya Head by the Notorious B.I.G. (featuring Bob Marley)

In the end, poverty becomes both nature and nurture, which helps to ensure that it stays a visious circle.

Internet use 'good for the brain' – BBC

The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet's wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.

However, they suggested that newcomers to the web had not quite grasped the strategies needed to successfully carry out a web search.

Professor Smith said: "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older."

Getting to far transfer – Dave's Whiteboard

If you want people to handle customer complaints or improve work flow or advise high school students, then the training requires increasing approximations of realistic situations. The design element involves identifying high-value or high-importance cases – even though the universe of cases is vast – so as to strengthen a person's ability to transfer what he's learned to a new situation.

Why light text on dark background is a bad idea – Enter the Tatrix

If you want to be really good, use an offset grey on a light background like #222 on #fff as it's a bit nicer on the eyes.

Is Web 2.0 Living on Thin Air? – Tom Davenport

British think-tanker Charles Leadbeater published the book Living on Thin Air. It was both an appealing notion and a scary one: that we no longer have to produce anything but ideas. And that was even before Web 2.0 — a platform for everyone to share their ideas, opinions, favorite tunes, and relationship statuses with each other.

Instead of finding more ways for us to all yap at each other, in this more sober economy we may want to emphasize other priorities. What new products and services will make for better, healthier lives and relationships? How can companies improve their performance? How can teenagers improve their math and science skills, instead of their texting skills?

10.14.2008

Content, Training, Productivity 2.0, & What's New?

The Warehouse

It's Not About The Content - Tony's Brain

When developing a course of instruction for delivery online, content is the last thing to be collected and assembled; the Learning Activities are always the first. Once the learning activities have been designed and "mapped" to a Learning Outcome, only then can the process of content collection begin. Use of the word "collection" is deliberate. One doesn't develop content, one collects it in such a manner that it ultimately provides the reference and instruction necessary to complete a Learning Activity.

IBM invests in business partners' training - C/NET

IBM, which expects to unveil better-than-expected quarterly figures, has announced it will spend some of its cash on incentives to encourage some of its largest partners to invest more in training and other areas.

Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game - Zenhabits

For years, books and articles and blogs on productivity have been showing us how to be more productive: crank out the tasks, multi-task, work faster, be organized. In short, they've taught us to be a good part of a corporation that wants more out of us. But that's old-school productivity, or Productivity 1.0.

What's new?

280 Slides
There is a new online presentation creator in town -- 280 Slides (Beta). Create presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world. With 280 Slides, there's no software to download and nothing to pay for -- and when you're done building your presentation you can share it any way you like.

Kaltura
Add interactive video capabilities to your blog!

SearchCube
Search results are presented in a 3-D cube that you can spin and tilt by using your Arrow-Keys. It is not really all that useful, however it does demonstrate that there are more than one way to preset information and data.

Oamos
This has been around for a while, but in case you missed it, Oamos presents search results in a compleatly different manner.

10.11.2008

Design, Negotiation, Reflection, & Web 2.0

Icihro

preparing to be wrong - Reflective Design

Why is this instructional design insight - big concept teaching and learning - important for interaction design? For one, every interaction, every interface, must be learned. A design will be easier to learn if it is consistent (shares critical properties) with other designs. For example, we can learn to operate a new Mac application if we know how to operate other Mac applications. Certain menus are positioned in the same way making it easier for us to learn the fundamental controls. The designed consistency creates a big concept design for the user-learners.

Are you a good negotiator? - Fortune

1. After a job interview, HR calls to offer you the job. The staffer names a salary 15% higher than you're making and says the benefits are generous.

She doesn't have time to negotiate the terms right now, but wants to know if you're going to accept. Since you really want the job, you should say yes now and hammer out the details tomorrow.

Critical Reflection

It is often difficult to encourage reflection among learners. Gustafson and Bennett (1999) found that promoting reflection among military cadets by means of written responses in "diaries" was difficult. Cadets across three different years generally did not produce responses indicating any deep reflection. Although the results were disappointing, they are consistent with the research literature on promoting reflection that generally indicates it is difficult to accomplish (Stamper, 1996).

In their work, Gustafson and Bennett identified eleven variables that affected the cadets' lack of reflective behavior.

The End of Web 2.0, Beginning of Web Infinity - Web Monkey

Business Week's Rob Hof, on the other hand, takes a more modest approach. He argues the ideas and momentum of Web 2.0 continues and pundits' words should be supplemented with a dose of skepticism. Just because a social network or video site may not make it through a recession doesn't mean the end to Ajax, APIs, widgets and the continuing design theories of big buttons, graphs, tabbed menus and large text.

An Ignoble But Much Needed End To Web 2.0, Marked By A Party In Cyprus - TechCrunch

Goodbye, Web 2.0. I hope I never have to type those words again. Now can we please get back to work? There's still a ton left to do before we get to Matrix-style virtual reality, the Singularity, and mobile phones with batteries that last a whole day.

Also, watch the video, it has Facebook Connect Dave Morin, his Google girlfriend Brittany Bohnet, Facebook product design lead/former Macster developer Aaron Sittig, Apple producer/designer Jessica Bigarel, WSJ tech reporter Jessica Vascellaro, Drop.io founder Sam Lessin, Blip.tv cofounder Mike Hudack and they are all lip-synching to Journey's Don't Stop Believin.

10.09.2008

Memory, Web 2.0, Reading Level, Case Study, Audio, & Productivity

Bubble on Grass

Speaking of Memory: Q&A with Neuroscientist Eric Kandel - Scientific American

Human memory reinvents itself all the time. Every time you remember something, you modify it a little bit, in part dependent on the context in which you recall it. That is because the brain's storage is not as exact as written text. It is always a mixture of many facades of the past event: images, pictures, feelings, words, facts and fiction -- a "re-collection" in the true sense.

The Web 2.0 Wave - HR Online

Technology is only an enabler -- that it allows functions to happen faster, easier and over longer distances. "The business issues of engagement, setting goals and alignment are still big gaping holes in most companies." "Because of technology, it's easier to solve these problems." For example, networking is generally considered to be a good thing.

How to get everyone to write like Ernest Hemingway - Making Change

Probably everyone on your team agrees that elearning should be concise and lively. But does everyone agree on what "concise and lively" looks like? Here's one way to get everyone on the same stylistic page.

Is the case study method of instruction due for an overhaul? - Jay Cross

Case studies can serve as a touchstone for discussions of real-world situations in organizations.

Information Architecture for Audio: Doing It Right - Boxes and Arrows

Content today is increasingly delivered by audio both online and in the real world. We have radio shows and newscasts, and in recent years, podcasts, audio books and navigation/car assistance systems have been added to the field. Audio is more emotional, as sound effects and acoustic atmosphere enhance content to help deliver its messages. It also affords users the opportunity to interact with content while their hands and eyes are busy (i.e. when doing physical work, driving, walking, etc). However, the inclusion of audio often results in usability issues that make it difficult for users to access and understand content. That is why we need new tools to organize linear content like audio.

The growing productivity divide - Seth Godin

Can you imagine someone who works in a factory that processes metal not knowing how to use a blowtorch? How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things...

Let's Get Persian - Change This

Herodotus, the Greek historian, reported that the ancient Persians always made important decisions twice -- first when they were drunk, and then again when they were sober. Only if the Persians reached the same decision, drunk and sober, would they act on that decision. The approach apparently worked -- the Persians dominated the much of the Middle East and Central Asia for three centuries.

10.01.2008

Twitter, Txtng, & Blended Learning

Twitter and Texting

The New York Times reports that cellphone subscribers are now sending more text messages than phone calls: 357 text messages verses 204 cellphone calls.

And we can be sure that Twitter accounts for some, if not many of those text messages. But how valuable is Twitter to learning professionals?

Jane Hart recently posted 100+ (E-)Learning Professionals to follow on Twitter and Tony Hirst immediately followd it with a Yahoo pipe that aggregates the tweets from Jane's list.

Tony Karrer tested the pipe, but left with the thought that there was no real need to follow it and wonders if he is missing something?

And I do not think he is alone. Businessweek's article, Twitter Distracts and Annoys, notes that, "Twitter is the ultimate in self-centeredness. To imagine that anyone would want a running commentary of every moment of your life puts you - as a businessperson - at the center of your world when in fact that's where your customer should be.

Yet not everyone sees it that way. Jay Cross writes that, Twitter is like pointillism. Up close it can be meaningless. Back away and a pattern emerges.

And yes I'm on Twitter: IOpt. And I'm scratching my head also. Is Twitter a worthy learning tool or just a means to "comment on every moment of our lives"?

While texting is not Twitter, it is related. David Crystal released his book, txtng: the gr8 db8. Hw writes that we could not be good at texting if we had not already developed considerable literacy awarness as in order to write abbreviated forms effectively and play with them you need to have a sense of how the sounds of language relate to letters. For a review, see Donald Clark's (of Plan B), txtng (the gr8 db8).

Effectiveness Of Traditional And Blended Learning Environments Science Daily

Strickland compared the course delivery methods in two respiratory therapy courses taught by the same teacher. One group of students completed the course in a traditional environment, while the other group completed the course in a blended environment. The method of course delivery, the final examination grade and the course grade were recorded for each student. Strickland studied the students' satisfaction with the course through the information provided by each student on a standardized student evaluation of the course.