I'm posting this fresh off the back of last night's stimulating #lrnchat on Twitter. I don't watch Grey's Anatomy, but Jane Hart shared this fantastic extract from a recent episode, showing the use of Twitter in surgery. Just look how the walls of the OR melt away and surgeons and hospitals from hither and yon get on board to save a patient's life!I still have friends who tell me that Twitter is a space for the idle chatter of egotists. I wish I could just show them its potential.

Rod discusses why he thinks everyone should learn to code. I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think. - Steve JobsLearning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains. - Bill GatesDon’t just play on your phone - program it. - President ObamaWe answer the questions:Rod with his TRS-80 circa 1977Why am I interested in coding?Why do I think that everyone should learn how to code?What's the best approach to start learning how to code?Learn the BasicsHow to Design Programs, 2nd Edition - Good programming requires thought, but everyone can do it and everyone can experience the extreme satisfaction that comes with it. Google CE First - K-8 Computer Science Club program from Google.Google Computer Science for High School - Google grant program to teach K-12 science teachers how to program and bring it to their students.Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, CodingShould All Majors, Not Just Computer Science Majors, Learn to Code?Why You Should Learn To Code (And How To Actually Do It!) 9 coding schools higher ed should keep an eye on10 Places where anyone can learn to codeLearn CodingBento - A guided tour through curated, free coding tutorials on the web.Code.org - Offers a number of excellent free beginner’s tutorials for learning how to code.Code Academy - Learn to code in HTML/CSS, Javascript, PHP, Python and Ruby on Rails for free.Code School - Learn By Doing. No setup. No hassle. Just learning.Girls Who Code - To inspire, educate, and equip girls with computing skills.Khan Academy - Program drawings, animations, games and web pages.SkillCrush - Become a Ruby-on-Rails developer.Thinkful - With 1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts.Udemy - Your place to learn real world skills online.w3Schools - Teach yourself for free.Build Mobile AppsAppceleratorBuzzTouchMIT App InventorXamarinLinkswww.PharmPCS.com - The author's pharmacology calculation software. Podsafe Music Selection There's nothing impossible by Deus, a techno-classical musician from the Ivory Coast.Duration: 20:58

Interview with Greg Golkin, Head of Platform Innovation, Echo360, Inc. This is not your father's lecture capture system!We answer the questions:Learn more about Echo360 ALPWhat is an Active Learning Platform?Lecture Capture:software or hardware?live streaming?cloud?Instructional Content Managment:content & assignments?replaces LMS?integration or just SSO?Student Engagement:discussions, polls and quizzes?audience response?polls within videos?Analytics and Dashboards:engagement scores?success metrics?LinksRPP #71: Blackboard World Interview: Mark Jones of Echo 360RPP #27 Educause Interview: Apreso CourseCaster Interview: Geoff Allen, Chairman and Founder of Anystream Inc.RPP #6 Bb World Interview: Wes Barnes, Systems Engineer, Anystream Inc.Podsafe music selection from Music AlleyKiss This! (Hey IRS)" by Robert Lund of the Funny Music Project, a parody of Faith Hill's "This Kiss"Duration: 29:55

I often come back to this topic, because time and again I am struck by how unpredictable and subjective the issue of value is.This was brought home to me by something that happened on the 365 project. I don't pretend to be a photographer and my decision to sign up for the project was part of my self-help initiatives after the annus horribilis that was 2010. I decided not to try to take brilliant photographs, but instead to create a photo journal, publishing a photo that recorded something meaningful about each day. The results are of varying quality. Yesterday, I discovered to my my surprise that one of my photographs has been 'favourited'. Not the one with the accidentally excellent mood lighting, or any of the passable ones of historical buildings in my town. Not the one showing the symbolic snowdrops blooming bravely, or the accidentally good shots of my pets. Nope. Instead it's the shot with which I was least satisfied of all.I was trying to do something interesting with the water in the bottles, but I have neither the camera nor the skills to succeed. If I had taken a single other shot worth using that day, this one would have been binned. But this is the one and only photograph in my collection to have been favourited. I don't know why. I don't know what the person in question saw in it. Maybe it serves as a 'what not to do' example for a photography course they're delivering. Who knows?If you think about it, diamonds have no intrinsic value, but because of their perceived value, a whole industry... several whole industries have built up around them. People die in the quest for them. And yet they are solid carbon, just like coal, which we hardly value at all... until we are in danger of freezing to death, that it is. Then, suddenly, a diamond is worthless and coal is inestimable.Wall-E, the animated feature film, shows a (semi?)sentient robot coming across a diamond ring in its little box. He throws the ring out, and keeps the box, because it intrigues him... and because he wasn't programmed with our value system.We seem pre-programmed to think that anything or any skill we possess must ipso facto be of lower value. And, for those of us looking to develop a learning culture that is a hive of user generated content, this means we are going to have to work really hard at spotting the nuggets, the treasures, the diamonds in the rough and encouraging their owners to see their intrinsic/potential value to someone else.That trick that you learned in Excel/Photoshop; that activity that you do with your class; that piece of advice you give your staff members; that lesson you learned the hard way... these are the things that people can use. Because you discovered/developed them, you assume either (a) everyone knows how to do them or (b) nobody would be interested.I think you'd be surprised! I once developed a wiki to be used by a group of people embarking with me on a new venture. The idea was that we would develop a glossary of new terms related to the shared endeavour, as well as a recommended reading list, with reviews. When I mooted the suggestion, it was greeted with much enthusiasm: everyone was mad keen to have such a resource. However, once it was created, very few people were bold enough to add to it, and those who did tended to make additions in the form of questions: adding a word with a question mark after it... which no-one replaced with anything helpful. And yet these people were reading voraciously, and debating matters in class (an on the online discussion forum), they were each applying their own perceptions of the terms we were learning on a daily basis. They were more than happy to help one another on a 1:1 basis off-line, but actually sharing something in a space where others could see it? Not so much.This culture of undervaluing the things we know/can do is going to take a long time to overthrow, and we're going to have to work hard at. Until then, if one more person tells me "if we build it, they will come" I think I might scream. If we build them (up), then they might just come, but we have a long way to go, methinks...

Interview with John Baker, CEO, D2LD2L (formerly Desire2Learn) announced the next generation of its learning platform, Brightspace. By featuring a new faculty user experience and bringing adaptive learning to the masses, D2L says that Brightspace is more flexible, smarter, and easier to use.We discuss D2L and their next generation LMS, BrightspaceWe answer the questions:Does it replace "legacy" D2L?What is adaptive learning and LeaP?What features can be used in-class?What about student retention support and e-portfolios?What's the new faculty UI?How is it delivered? Multi-tenant Cloud? Hosted? On premise?LinksD2L Launches Next Generation of Learning Platform BrightspacePodsafe music selection from Music Alley"Fly Fly Fly" by singer/song writer Adrina Thorpe - Influenced by Sarah Mclachlan, Tori Amos, and ColdplayDuration: 27:12

I was recently at an event planning meeting in which I heard that the local doctors in our town find it very hard to live up to the expectations of the very large Polish population we have. Apparently, "Their expectations are very high," and their confidence in British doctors very low. I was the only non-British person present at the meeting, and it was pointed out with some surprise that Poles know "the names of all the different types of doctors" and expect to be able to access these directly.It sounded rather as if the Polish medical system was not dissimilar to the one I knew in South Africa. If you have a skin disorder, you make an appointment with a dermatologist. If you're a woman, you make a routine annual visit to your gynaecologist. Until your kids are 12, you are just as likely to take them to the paediatrician as the GP. You know your radiologist from your oncologist, and your ear, nose and throat specialist from your cardiologist.In the UK, the practice is that you go, in the first instance, to your GP. Always. You will then be referred to a consultant. And that process can take months. Been there. Done that. Nine months for me, last time.When I expressed surprise that the well-educated, otherwise knowledgeable people present at the meeting didn't know "the names of all the different types of doctors", one person rather proudly pointed out that, with the way the NHS works "we don't have to!"I had often wondered why all specialists were rather generically referred to as 'consultants', but this explains it. You see a generalist. The generalist refers you to a specialist. The specialist's secretary sends you the details of your appointment. You attend. The specialist reports back to your GP. Your GP reports back to you. You don't ever initiate contact with the specialist. So you don't need to know what sort of specialist s/he is. I find this approach quite disempowering. I don't feel the need to be looked after in this way. I feel quite capable of identifying the specialist discipline needed in each instance and making an appointment. I feel quite capable of providing said specialist with an accurate history and conducting a conversation about my ailment/condition.Many Poles obviously experience the same frustration, because they are quite prone to taking their ailments back to (as one Polish woman puts it) "a proper doctor" for a diagnosis that they feel they can trust. This doesn't really help, though, because when they come back from Poland, and feed the information back to the local doctor, the local doctor will not accept histories or diagnoses from abroad, and wants to go back to the start of the process again.I can think of so many situations in which traditional workplace practices reflect a similar approach. I would far rather see individuals given the freedom to run their own initial diagnostics and then to access to the resources they believe they need in order to get the information/support required, apply it and move on with the day job. Of course they will get it wrong from time to time. That's part of learning, too.Too much second-guessing can result in a culture where people are waiting to be taken care of, to be told what to do next, have no idea which kind of person/resource holds the solution they need, instead of taking charge of their own lives and figuring out their own 'what nexts'.Sometimes, taking too much care of people is even worse for them in the long run than taking too little care of them!

Interview with Mark Strassman, Senior Vice President, Industry and Product Management, Blackboard Inc.Mark Strassman oversees the company's product and integrated portfolio strategy to ensure Blackboard continues to build solutions that serve institutions, administrators, educators and students. We discuss the new Blackboard Ultra:What are Core, Essentials, Insight, Student Retention?What is the update roadmap for hosted systems?Versions of Ultra SaaS, multi-tenant, single-tenantNew web REST APIIs Ultra completely adaptive/responsive? New Bb Student appUltra workflows subset for CommunityMobile compatibility; adaptive designFuture of Mosaic"Persona Apps" New Collaborate UltraLinksBlackboard Inc.Bb Student AppWhat's the Ultra Experience for Bb Collaborate?EdTech ConnectionPodsafe Music SelectionConcerto No. 2 in G Minor (Summer) by the American Baroque Orchestra. Purchase the full CD: The Four Seasons by Vivaldi Duration: 35:26

Over the past few weeks, in a range of different situations, I have bumped into a few assumptions that I have had to challenge. Working as a consultant, I regard it as part of my job to challenge existing mindsets where necessary. I also have no qualms about doing so within my community of practice.So let's take a look at some of the issues I've addressed... and how:"We need to track learning"First of all, you can't track learning. The only way you can tell whether somebody has taken something on board is to observe their behaviour in the workplace. If it changes to incorporate the new material/process/whatever... then they have learned something. The best thing you can do is track access to learning materials. This is no indication that learning has taken place. If person X simply clicks 'next' every few seconds and keeps going right to the end, your LMS is going to tell you that they have successfully completed the course.It is true that certain levels of tracking will allow you to check how long a user spent on each page, from which you can draw realistic conclusions about whether or not they actually read the material on each page, but whoa! Who is actually going to do this job? Whose time can you afford to allocate to this task when there is so much real work to be done? And once they have identified that person X failed to spend long enough on pages 12, 45 and 67, what then? Are you really going to go after them with a big stick and force them to go back and do those pages again?"We must have an assessment"Let's just make one thing totally clear: a series of multiple choice questions with options such that even the average Joe from off the street could select the correct answer, is not an assessment. It's an attendance register. Okay?If yours is a regulated industry and you are obliged to have some kind of butt-covering tick box, then fine. But let's not pretend to each other that it is anything other than that. If this is not the case, why exactly do you want an assessment? You could provide a few thought provoking scenarios. I'm all in favour of that, but do you really need to record some kind of test score? Would something along these lines not suffice?Once again, the best way to assess whether people have learned anything is in the form of observable behaviour change on the job."People need to know this"Really? Why? Because they need to observe it? Ah. So what you're actually after is not that they should know something, but that they should do something, right? Can we agree that knowing is not necessarily linked to doing? How many people know what the speed limit is in any given area? How many people observe it? Knowing isn't the goal.Besides, let's face it, most 'policies' are pretty much common sense recorded in formal language with too many commas. In cases like this, I refer people to Cathy Moore's action mapping post. I've lost count of the number of people with whom I've shared that post!"We need a half-hour elearning course on xyz"Mostly when L&D people get this sort of request, they just nod and get on with it. I'd like to encourage them to push back. C'mon people: add a little value, already! Ask these questions:Why?What is it for?What will people do differently afterwards?Which of the organisation's strategic goals are being addressed, here?Do you really need an 'elearning course'? Could not just distribute a pdf? When I suggest this, I am often told that the people don't read pdfs. Well, let me share a little secret with you: people don't read information dump-type elearning courses, either. So don't go that route. This takes us back to the Cathy Moore post I referred to above - a far better way of addressing policy changes."How can we design this so that it fits with what we can do in Articulate/Packager/X-tool?"I get really uncomfortable when people adopt this approach. When they have a hammer and try to figure out ways to turn everything into a nail. Does it have to be shiny? Sometimes the answer is absolutely yes, but not as often as we are led to believe. Sometimes all you need is a simple roadmap diagram, or a list of procedural steps with a list of links to user generated screen capture videos or testimonial video clips taken with web/flip cameras.

So I recently got some new specs. Two pairs. Because I'm that old. One pair for reading. One pair for getting through the day without falling over or having a car crash.The latter pair cost an arm and a leg, and comes complete with designer label... among other things.Starting from top left of the picture and working our way down we have:The case, with a Velcro strap thingy which can convert into a nifty little handle (although I can't think of a single situation in which I would need to use a handle to carry my glasses case!),the specs themselves, all gorgeous and pink,a little booklet, containing the guarantee information in about a gazillion languages,a little lens cleaning cloth, pristine white (with logo, of course) in a little plastic bag, and...???Let's take a closer look at the mystery item.It's a little resealable plastic bag containing:Here we have about 25cm (10" give or take) of cat gut and about 15cm (6") of 4mm wide, white florist's ribbon. There are no instructions, no labels.I have posted that last picture on Facebook and Twitter, but no-one has yet said, "Oh yes! I know what that is. It's a...." One person did suggest that it was meant for running repairs in the future, which is entirely possible, but I can't imagine what repairs I might carry out using these bits and bobs. I have visited the D&G site (which takes quite a while to load), but there doesn't seem to be a page on which I can find the purpose of these items.I hate not knowing stuff!Do I throw these things away? Do I store them in my jewellery box?Any suggestions?

As I muddle along through this lifelong, lifewide learning journey, I find that the toughest lessons are the ones about being human. About human experience.A friend of mine recently lost her sister to cancer. She had been doing very well, and then suddenly she was gone. My friend and her family are grieving. This is the normal way of things. Hard as it is to deal with, this is how we more or less expect it to happen. Which is not to say that it's neat and tidy. Far from it. But it's more or less 'the norm'.Another friend miscarried twins and then, just as she was coming to terms with that loss, lost her father. Once again, her sense of loss was in step with the loss itself (although some of her friends considered the extent and duration of her grief over the twins to be self-indulgent, and broke contact with her). On Facebook and Twitter, she started discussions about the different models of loss and grief, and the stages one goes through. But that got me to thinking about the times when the grief is out of step with the loss.I recently learned that a friend of mine from college days died of drug abuse (I haven't had all the details) about 15 years ago. The fact that I only learned about it now is an indication of the fact that we had lost contact. But we were friends, once. So I found myself... 'grieving' is perhaps too strong a word, but I did experience sorrow, about 15 years after the event. It felt odd being out of step with the people who shared the news with me. They had been there at the time. They had grieved when it happened. For them it is a healed wound. For me, the process is just beginning.It made me think of the experiences of one woman I knew whose (widowed) mother had dementia. Whenever she visited the nursing home, she found her mother anxious to get home to prepare her husband's dinner. Initially, she would gently remind her mother that her father had died many years previously. But the staff at the home advised her against this approach. They explained that, because of the dementia, every time she heard the news was like the first time, and the grief was sharp and present, rather than a memory. Instead, they suggested that she simply reassure her mother about her late father's dinner requirements and move on to other topics.On Friday, I learned that another friend has terminal lung cancer (note the ubiquitous cigarette in the photo in the link) and lymphoma . Although we are Facebook friends, it has been many years since we were the sort of friends who spent easy hours in each other's company, and who performed musical revues together. I will probably never see him again. So, although he is still alive, I find that my grieving process has already begun.Grief is a slippery thing. It doesn't colour inside the lines, and it doesn't progress as it should. Just when you think you have a handle on things, something happens to open that Tupperware cupboard, and it all comes tumbling out. It was fully ten years after my maternal grandmother's death before I stopped thinking, "I must ask Granny..." She was the person to whom I turned with all my questions about cookery and needlecraft. Even twenty years after she was gone, I made a mess trying out her Christmas cake recipe and was in floods of tears because I couldn't ask her what I had done wrong.Being human is very complicated, very messy and somewhat unpredictable. But we insist on coming up with models to try to tidy it up.If you're grieving today, whether it is in step or out of step, whether it is appropriate or not, and even if your friends have utterly lost patience with your inability to 'pull yourself together', consider yourself hugged.