So here we have the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards winners. If you don't know about the Open Web Awards, here is the skinny from their site: "Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories."Question #1: Geez. How did so many of these slip past my radar? I need to do some serious research.Question #2: Is is shocking to you or not that a competition that deals with "major innovations in web technology" has really only one site that I could construe as a "learning" site (eHow)? What about Udutu? Anybody else's app I'm missing? Are we as a community of so little commercial or creative worth that we need to just accept that the learning/training community will forever be locked out of contests like this? This is not a rhetorical question. I am looking for an answer here. Seriously. How do we view ourselves as a community in relation to some of these other communities represented by these winners?

If I don't say it enough - thanks for reading and I hope you and yours have a great and positive 2009!...and I hope you like this little video I found via twitter....

So, I started picking this up on Twitter -apologies for not remembering the original Tweeter - but certainly Global Nerdy is where I first landed. I posted before about how the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has made steps toward bringing 2.0 capabilities behind its firewall, but now it looks like it the USAF has a full-scale social media press going on. We'll get to the other stuff but what impresses me most is that they have a Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon by the name of Capt. David Faggard. That's impressive to me since I know a little bit about what it takes to billet someone into a new position - it represents a certain committment to the medium. The breadth of USAF's involvement also indicates a certain level of committment and awareness. There is the USAF blog, the USAF Twitter feed (does it bother me that one of the uniformed services has more followers than me? no.... ;-)), the USAF YouTube Channel, the USAF Widget, of course, the USAF Podcasts. Check out this great article from David Meerman Scott on all of USAF's activities and some addtl. military+social media acitivities. I also find it telling that Capt. Faggard pops up quite soon after these posts are made...one interesting note that a commenter made on David Scott's post regarded the ability of individual Airmen to access the world of social media - there is a definite asymetry in the evel of involvement coming from the PA (public affairs side) and the ability of rand-and-file to engage. I face this on a daily basis w/in my own organization. What really interests me is Capt. Faggard's response, not only acknowledging the situtation but insisting that the USAF is "completely dedicated to creating a truthful and transparent discussion on-line." Great answer.So fair warning to Capt. Faggard...I may be reaching out to you to help me with my ongoing social media efforts w/in my own small neighborhood of the DOD.   

Reflect on that for a moment. The 123rd annual meeting. 123 years. Impressive. The program itself is also impressive. Thanks to Twitter pal @nwjerseyliz who is attending the conference and who reminded me that the whole program is online. I started digging through the program and I must say, having not been a grad student in a history program for a while or a practicing historian, the sessions make me miss it. I should also say that I think from a conference standpoint, its a remarkably well done and well organized schedule - conference organizers take note!I've included a list of the sessions I found interesting below but I did just want to say why just reading this program made me a bit wistful for my old discipline. I know, just by reading the synopsis, how much work went into the papers being presented at these sessions. I know how important it is professionally to the speakers that they had a paper accepted at the AHA Annual Meeting. I also know that no matter if it is Bernard Bailyn or Gordon Wood that is presenting, there will be people in the audience who will challenge their assertions - vigorously. As a discipline, history welcomes new ideas albeit with the caution to never bring a knife to a gun fight. By that I mean that as a historian, you know that if something you bring forward reaches that critical mass where someone else actually pays attention...then some of the toughest critical examination you have ever faced is sure to follow. Your conclusions will be dissected for bias. Your research methodology will be judged for its completeness. Your arguments will be tested for integrity and cohesion. Your very own original sources will also be judged to ascertain their worthiness as informers of the historical record. So kudos to the work and effort and intellectual courage of the authors presenting at this conference. We may disagree but my fondest wish for the learning/training field would be that as a discipline, it can focus some of its considerable intellectual firepower on testing the foundational, canonical assumptions of events and levels and scales that we rely on daily to serve our clients and learners. I don't suggest that we should tear into theories or models simply for the sake of it as an activity but as a way of making our industry as whole, sharper, stronger and more able to defend itself and its work. I think that could begin at the professional level, with the more popular conferences in our field but I think that the faculty in our Instructional Design programs have an additional responsibility, one that they are probably well aware of, to make their programs more inclusive and interdisciplinary. Here is a quick list of the sessions I really found interesting:Globalizing Historiography: Reciprocal Integration and Future Directions The Past of the Future or the Future of the Past? Perspectives on Digital Historical Monographs from Gutenberg-e Authors Teaching Historiography: Approaches, Resources, and Issues Culture, Military History, and Global Historiography The Future of Memory Studies Building the Future of History and Computing History Education and Technology in Our Middle and High Schools Teaching History in the Digital Age Sites of Encounter: Thinking Historically about Early Human History Putting Historical Skills to Work: Careers beyond Academe The Marriage of Theory and Praxis: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Medieval Grand Narrative Crossing Borders: Technology and Globalization in Historical Perspective

 

So I just got back from ASTD's Tech Knowledge 2009 in guess where? The usual suspects did their usual great jobs (Brent Schlenker, Tony Karrer, Michelle Lentz) - I'm not trying to slight any other speakers - just don't want to name the whole program. (FYI - I did upload my slides here.) (Double FYI - You can also look at the slides for the ILS Design Challenge that I mentioned here). I also think that Linda David at ASTD is probably one of the hardest workers in this industry and that Bob Mosher, et al served bravely on the conference committee. ASTD also stepped up and took a brave swing at extending the actual conference by having an ASTD Virtual Conference .That's actually further than a lot of conferences go. They also had Michelle Lentz (@writetechnology) pushing hard for a Twitter presence for the conference. You can go here and check out the associated Tweets.  I am also excited about the upcoming eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering and Game Developers Conference - both of which have been tremendously valuable experiences in the past and both of which I assume will be greatly valuable this year as well. I think I am just really beginning to want more out of my conferences. Here's a short list: Social media should be the default and should kick in as soon as I register and continue past the conference I should have the option to NOT get a printed guide that weighs 10 LBs. I know why you do it, for the ads not for the attendees - figure out an alternative model and save some trees - get creative w/ an iPhone app or a Flash app or something. Whether or not I'm a speaker or an attendee, I want input into what will be session outcomes. Asking me to pay, go to a session and then fill out an eval so that NEXT YEAR will be better is a little backward isn't it? FIGURE OUT WIRELESS!!!! I don't give a rat's ass how you do it, just freaking do it. Do you understand the good will and PR you will reap? Do you? I know this diff between simple and easy - this one might not be easy but it sure is simple - get it done. Keep the Expos. I actually like them. Do the vendors feel like they are getting value though? I don't know. Consider NOT holding a 'cutting-edge conference' on how we'll all learn in the future with everyone seated theater style or at rounds for 45, 60 or 90 minutes. Try some difference configurations - not all will work - jettison the ones that don't and use the ones that do to re-shape the face-to-face experience.  I'm also going to risk some wrath here and say NO to Vegas as a location. I'd actually rather be in Chicago or New York or San Francisco or Atlanta - if you want to hold a conference somewhere that has tourist appeal, then hold it somewhere with broader tourist appeal. Let's see that's all for now...so kudos to ASTD and eLearning Guild and GDC for doing some really hard work to pull off these incredibly complicated logistical events...I just want it all.

(link) "According to Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University, education is evolving "due in large part to emerging information and communications technologies." And that's got him excited. According to Dede, that challenge can be met by utilizing a range of tools and technologies that kids are already using and, in many cases, already very skilled at. He broke those tools down into three--albeit loose--categories representing "ways of empowering people individually and collectively to: Think Create Share and do." I think the part where my blog gets a very passing mention is especially good. ;-)

Get your twitter mosaic here.

(Article Link)"Gregorio Convertino, who recently joined ASC research area here at PARC, have been looking at how Web2.0 tools like Wikis support workflows within the enterprise. By workflow, we mean activities that are important enough to be documented in the enterprise (either because it is an important client, or that it is an activity that is often repeated.)For this purpose, we have been doing an overall review of structured Wikis available in the marketplace (either thru open-source, hosted solution, or supported-installation). By "Structured Wiki", we mean wiki engines that are enhanced with lightweight programming features and database functionalities. The focus of our review is primarily, but on only, on the user interface and interesting new functionalities to organize content such as templating and database functions. Important criteria for us are ease of use, power of end-user-programming/organizing functionalities, and licensing"