Honest to goodness, its not the burger that scares me... its the fact that someone saw it and thought, "you know, it'd be great if it was a double." C'mon, Aaron, let's go get a couple.

We are on the brink of the launch of the one conference I really want to go to but probably never will. This isn't to say that I want to go this conference more than any other but rather that I can't imagine ever using my own money or getting an employer to pay the $3500 registration fee. One of the great ironies is that the theme for this year's Pop!Tech is "Scarcity and Abundance." Really? I need to know more about how this is put together...the site says "Since its earliest days more than ten years ago, Pop!Tech has grown almost entirely through the contributions of a community of volunteers who donate their time, expertise and energy to help convene this unique gathering. Pop!Tech is a true labor of love: the speakers and most of the organizers are unpaid, and the organization itself is a not-for-profit." Under the category of 'a little knowledge being a dangerous thing' ...I just have to ask...what in the world then costs $3500 per head?I will say this....Pop!Tech is brilliantly free with its content. You can watch a huge range of Pop!Casts here. While watching is great, the site also extols the virtues of being there.."The breathtaking content, beautiful setting, intimate scale, and informal tone make Pop!Tech an experience like no other. At the end, you’ll leave with dozens of new ideas, a better sense of where the world is headed, a new network of relationships and a lasting inspiration to create a better world." So in the end, I am left to my jealousy and to wonder...what must those 3 days be like in Camden? 

George Siemens (elearnspace & CCK08) asserts that P2P University is "foreplay when we need consummation." I think he's right. The good news is that at least we're dating. So P2P University says that it offers: "scheduled "courses" that run for 6 weeks and cover university-level topics. Learning takes place in small groups of 8-14 students. Each course package contains the syllabus, study materials and a schedule. See this page for more detail on what it is like to learn in a P2PU course. Most materials are stored on other servers and linked to - the P2PU does not want to become a content repository. Once they have been designed, course packages can easily be duplicated. This way, one structured set of materials can spawn many learning communities." Now I'm thinking a couple of things...first...having just come from the SCORM 2.0 workshop, this kind of model really tears at existing learning industry biz models doesn't it? Second, I like the small groups, the ability to copy and distribute the packages...but then comes this..."Courses are designed by someone with expert knowledge, a "sense-maker", and facilitated by a "class tutors" who is familiar with the content, and can support the group of students. Sense-makers identify the key readings, pose the big questions, and structure the content. For sense-makers the P2PU offers an opportunity to do what they feel passionately about - share knowledge. Tutors could be graduate students or amateurs with expertise in a particular field. They seek out a sense-maker to develop a course, and do most of the preparation work. Once the course starts, the tutors act as guides, facilitate discussions, answer questions, and providing feedback." And this is where George argues (and where I agree) that the model starts to fall back on the old ways. "Sense-Makers"? Really? First, sounds a bit like "Learning Shaman" or something but really feels like "teacher" or instructional designer. If the intent is to establish a peer-to-peer university (yes, just like George says - we centralize accreditation)  then wouldn't sense-makers just be the peers? Wouldn't you seek out your own "sense"? Who establishes the credentials of the sense-makers? Shouldn't the community? I'll close for now but I do want to say that I think P2PU is onto something here (and its good to see David Wiley on their Advisory Board) and I applaud their getting to this point...I just want to urge them to put out more. ;-)

(story link)This is an additional article that has spun off from Nick Carr's piece in The Atlantic Monthly, Is Google Making Us Stupid? (my post here) While I think James Bowman has done a great job with this article, I also think that Carr's article is important in that it has forced us to think more deeply about the issue of what we do. Bowman's article is really a dissection of the book which Carr used as a key resource in his article - Bauerlein's "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future". I think what Bowman does so well is to establish a larger, richer context for Bauerlein's book. Locating both it and the author's place in a cultural context that has at times attacked the idea of the same "culture" that Bauerlein laments the demise of at the hands of YouTube, MySpace, etc. Nicely done and this should become, along with Kuhlmann's piece, a canonical referent point in looking deeply about what we do as an industry concerned with 'learning" and at least tangentially, 'education."

Phew. You guys did an INCREDIBLE job of responding to my plea for assistance. First, let me say that I hope that the family medical emergency that knocked out one of my presenters, has resolved itself in a HUGELY positive way - -there are design challenges and then there are important things right?Now, before I get to the community submissions, let me profusely thank Deborah Todd and Bob Hone - our 'in room' contributors. They both did a fabulous job and brought some amazing insights to the session. <you know its going well, when you look around the packed room and everyone is taking notes>So to recap - the challenge was to design a game that would reveal the 'ethical truth' of a person...so let's get beyond compliance training and get to actual performance right?Also let me thank the people who sent in slides <you folks are awesome and your efforts were all greatly received by the packed room!) ..and let apologize to the folks who sent in stuff that I just was not able to get to...Joe Sullivan (Web site/slides): "Finding Out Who’s Naughty or Nice?" Joe was one of the first ones to jump into the mix and did a great job - bringing us the idea of using Karma and multiple lives as a game mechanic. Sure, you could win the game in one lifetime - by being a real SOB but then that wouldn't exactly set you up well for your starting position in the next world. Alan Levine (Web site/slides): "Who the *#@% can we  Trust?"  Alan, a past ILS designer himself, brings us the latest in ethics detectors - featuring possibly the first use of canine technology in a corporate setting. Clive Shepherd (Web site/slides): "The Ethics Game" Clive's submission is well-thought out and brings up the idea of how can we apply weights to various risks/rewards in ethical situations that differ from person to person. Karl Kapp (Web site/slides): "an untitled work" :-) Karl does his typical great job and brings up the design point that the game really needs some high stakes to start eliciting hard ethical choices from people. Noah Falstein (Web site/slides): "Stealth Ethics" Noah, an amazing designer and game consultant, weighs in with an entry that trumpets one of the main and ironic themes of this challenge - namely that you may well need to hide the fact that people are actually being assessed on their ethics in order to get an accurate assessment of their ethics. Dan Bliton (Web site/slides): "Welcome back Representative Oehlert" Dan does an amazingly in-depth job in this "ripped from the headlines" exploration of ethics in a Congressional setting including possibly the first use of the word "Deontological" I've seen in a PPT deck. Dan also touches on something akin to Joe's "middle path" - this idea that there may not be a pure, ethical path for a person to follow. B.J. Schone (Web site/slides): "Designing a Game to Reveal an Individual's Ethical Qualities" I like B.J.'s idea of creating an open game where play is longer and more free-form. I also like the idea of creating an "accidental" ethical situation - something mirrored in a couple of the other presentations....OK...those are just the slides...I wanted to get those out and now I'll go and sift through all the narrative stuff I got on this...let me know if there is any problem getting to any of the slides....

I am noticing a hockey stick-like moment for ning lately - at least in my circles. Brent stood up one for our summer session on 2.0, the folks behind Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations are using it as a framework for all the good they are doing and now its even getting picked up by 'unofficial' segments of the U.S. government. Meet GovLoop. A full-on ning site designed for: "gov't employee (fed/state/local), public policy student/professor, good gov't organization,  gov't contractor with good intentions."I am really digging this particular implementation and kudos to Steve Ressler, GovLoop's founder - for going forward with this idea. I have worked for the federal government for about a decade now but as a contractor/consultant...I have only been a full-on federal employee for about 1.5 years now. I will say that one issue that  the Fed MUST address as more and more newbies like myself enter its workforce to replace the wave of retirees...is ensuring that there is powerful mentoring system in place. The U.S. federal government  - as a company to work for - is HUGE and career advancement paths and opportunities for learning and growth -while plentiful and varied - are often hard to figure out how to find and access. This is just the sort of site that could help with that.

Getting pretty psyched about this....my colleague Brent Schlenker and I, along with the great and powerful Dr. Will Thalheimer, are putting on 4 days of workshops covering everything from Web 2.0/Collaborative Learning to Immersive Learning Simulations (aka Serious Games) to Creating and Measuring Learning Transfer. We're doing it all in Washington DC from December 8-11 and we'd love to see you there.

So yesterday I posted what I thought was a fairly innocuous sentiment that I had namely, that Twitter was now more important to me than my inbox. I was a bit taken aback at  - let's just say the tenor of the responses I got. I was politely asked for more detail on that statement (which I haven't yet really provided) and I was also told that I needed "perspective" - I actually asked for more detail on that last one but haven't gotten it yet.I did want to explain a bit further since those comments really made me think a bit more about the statement. My thinking goes something like this...my Inbox has always been important but from Day One, its importance has not increased. I still get tasks, attachments, requests...all the same stuff I have always gotten in my Inbox since the beginning. Twitter on the other hand, started out wwaaaayyyyyy down below the Inbox in terms of relevance to my work, to my professional development, to staying connected with my peers...but that trend line took a hockey stick-shaped turn north for me about 6 months ago. Now I just came back from a conference. I can only access my work email via a Citrix client on one laptop using a CAC (Common Access Card)..so during the day, I really wasn't able to see my work email. I didn't really experience any great sense of loss. I was however, checking my Twitter stream constantly throughout the day and updating when possible. Why? Why was the latter more important to me than the former? Maybe its something to do with the just the psychological impact of the phrasing - people "follow" you on Twitter...that feels like it carries some responsibility to be follow-worthy...to give something back to your asymmetric community. I certainly don't feel any community coming out of my inbox. Maybe its the more near real-time aspect of Twitter. If there is a dynamic of asymmetric follow in twitter then email has a corollary dynamic of something like a temporal asymmetry. That is there is now definite match between your timeframe and the people sending you email.So as my inbox importance has stayed flat, Twitter's has risen and in some cases, eclipsed the Inbox. I also knew that people could call me...;-) follow moehlert at http://twitter.com