Not that I’ve stopped blogging, in fact I’m writing more than ever on my technology learning blog, thoughtshots. The goal of thoughshots and its accompanying YouTube channel is to present really well made instructional content for newbies. There’s loads (and I mean loads) of information about technology on the web. The problem that I’ve noticed is that very little of it is focused on teaching you how to solve a problem or do something with that technology – there’s far more content (probably because it’s more easy to monetize) that is focused on reviews, previews, and spyshots of the latest gadget. When there is content that shows you how to do something, it’s usually a post on some obscure forum, or a video by a 14 year old who starts every sentence with “uhh.. this is pretty cool.”

Not that I’m hating on fourms or 14 year olds making tech videos, but sometimes when you want to know how to do something, you don’t necessarily want to spend an afternoon wading through them. When there is really great technology learning content, it’s generally held back behind a paywall or a registration – some of the best examples of these come from lynda.com, Don McCallister’s Screencasts Online, and the Goodwill’s GCFLearnFree.org. These sites offer incredibly in-depth content on certain technology topics, but hold them back from the casual knowledge-seeker (I should be clear that these sites have been an inspiration for this project, so I’m not hating on them, either).

So how does thoughtshots solve these problems?

It’s free. I’ve got ads on the site in the hopes that I can one day monetize it, but I do not plan on ever charging anyone to look at any of the content produced for this site.

It provides just-in-time training. So if you type a technology related problem into your favorite search engine, it’s my hope that thoughtshots will have a solution for you within a few minutes (obviously a very long term goal).

It won’t waste your time. This means no unnecessary information, and things are kept brief. Also, there’s no lengthy time commitment – you won’t have to wade through a graduate course’s worth of material to get what you need.

It’s not intimidating. I’m focused on helping the beginner, so I’ll be going through things in detail and keeping it jargon-free.

It’s not annoying. My videos are “ah” and “um” free. The site is free of popup and click through advertising.

Also, I’ve really gotten into reading every single thing that Cory Doctorow has ever written. Eventually, I’m certain to mine some of the wonderfully weird and amazing things that he brings up in his books for this blog.

Getting really annoyed, however, always seems to inspire something for this blog, and it’s no different this Sunday morning. My employer recently distributed some really nice coffeemugs to everyone in the company. Normally, “really nice” is not a word combination I’d use to describe a coffeemug, but this one earns it due to its extra big handle that affords room for 4 of my fingers as I hold it.

The only problem is, I can’t train myself to actually use all 4 fingers. Since 99% of all the coffeemugs I have ever used have been designed for only 3 of my fingers, I instinctively grab this one in the same way. It’s uncomfortable as hell, and I am made aware of this mug’s (supposedly) accomodating design everytime I reach for it.

Even though the designer of this coffeemug has intended a comfortable, (dare I say) luxurious beverage experience for thier end user, it fails miserably because the user has developed an adaptation for living without it that simply cannot be unlearned.

Maybe when human evolution has gifted us a sixth finger, I’ll be okay. For now I’ll just have to use this mug for a pen holder.

Moore’s Law still a law: electronics get cheaper, faster, smaller, etc. Was it really a surprise that this age-old law pretty much kept pace? There were a couple pundits on the most recent episode of TWiT who brought up how Moore’s Law has managed to continue. I suppose it is personally mindblowing that I can buy a 1 TB drive for about $100, or that broadband internet has finally reached a price that I can afford (at the start of this decade I was still slumming it in 56K). But I really hate it when people start saying stuff like, “back in my day sodas cost just a nickel.” Just because people do it with tech doesn’t really make it interesting. So I’ll leave this one alone.

The power of “good enough”: I suppose this is not as surprising, given the shambles our economy has been in, but it’s interesting how it has changed the computer industry. Nearly all non-Mac computers sold in the past year falls in the super low-priced and small-sized netbook category, from which we can probably infer a couple things: 1) When it comes to computers, people (aside from gamers and the one or two graphic designers who haven’t had their jobs outsourced) don’t really need much power. 2) The web/cloud has taken over much of what we do on our computers. I won’t go so far as to say application-based computing has been completely replaced by the cloud (I doubt it ever will be), but it’s likely that the more interesting things that come out of the next decade will be cloud-based.

It’s also interesting what this will mean for the education space. Historically, the drive is towards bigger, better, faster, but I think this move towards “good enough” may drive down the desire for more complex, immersive learning spaces. Whenever there is talk about the future of learning, it almost always ends with some discussion of virtual reality, Second Life, etc. (I know I have been guilty of writing some papers that end like this). It’s not surprising, since I think we all yearn in our hearts for that super-cool holodeck experience that science fiction has taught us to hope for (we all yearned for the flying car, and look how that turned out). But reality is a bit more complex. Second Life is not exactly the most intuitive system – both for the end-user and the developer – and it demands a computer with some power behind it. The few Second Life classes I have been in have been in were so wracked with technical difficulties, I barely got anything out of it. I think by the end of the next decade, we’ll drop the hype surrounding immersive learning and realize that it’s only worth the hassle for a few specific applications.

Of course, this doesn’t apply if you happen to be a student athlete at USF, where they give away computers for nothing.

The ubiquity of mobile devices: This is probably the single biggest change that we’ve experienced in terms of technology. Cell phones were already pretty common back in 2000, but now they’re everywhere (case in point: I now have one), and they do far more than just make phone calls. For this, we can probably thank the iPhone for making simple and user-friendly what was previously complex. Browsing the web with Mobile Safari is nearly identical to browsing on the computer, and it is a far cry from the clunky, tiny, text-based mobile sites that you would have to access on a dumbphone. Additionally, the growth of low-cost applications for the iPhone platform has transformed the phone into what is essentially a handheld computer. There’s some interesting movement in the education space with this aspect, as some medical schools are using iPhone apps to provide instruction and Stanford is using iPhones to make music.

In terms of cost of access, however, the cost of a mobile data plan is still to high for the likes of me. This is probably the reason that, despite its impact on technology as a whole, the use of mobile devices in an educational context is still fairly limited. There’s been a lot of hype about podcasts, mobile applications, etc. in this space, but it hasn’t amounted to any significant change. A lot of podcast in education research found that even though students can listen to them practically anywhere on their mobile phones or media players, most of them still listened to them at home, on their computers. In order to take advantage of the mobile nature of these education technologies, the context still has to be right – if you’re just listening to a lecture, you’re probably going to get more out of it while listening in a quiet room than anywhere else. With some of the more advanced GPS capabilities on Android phones, I’ll be intrigued to see if educators will take advantage of these technologies for more location-based instruction.

That’s a video from Penn State professor Christopher Long (via Cole Camplese). Nothing new, but it efficiently sums up everything there is to know about the use of blogging as a teaching tool.

I’ve read multitudes of blogs for years, but the motivation for doing one myself came out of a Distance Learning course I took several years ago. If nothing else, I’m grateful to have learned that the web is a powerful medium for not only consumption, but also creation.

There wasn’t anything about them that was particularly awful, but I definitely noticed a tendency for them to turn into hour-and-a-half ramblings that involved dropping as many buzzwords as humanly possible.

Web2.0openlearningsocialnetworkingfacebooktwittergoogle.

So it was a pleasant surprise to hear this talk by Jim Groom, Brian Lamb, and Tom Woodward from the recent NMC symposium. In the format of a late-night call-in show (a la Art Bell), they host a chat with a man from the “future” to discuss where education is headed. In a word, that future is: insurance.

Just like health care, insurance becomes a necessity for obtaining an education, given both its skyrocketing cost and its importance of education in determining one’s success. Additionally, you’re protected if you can’t finish your studies, or your degree turns out to be useless in landing you a job.

*coughcough*artdegree*coughcough*
*coughcough*studentloansfromprivateschool*coughcough*

Excuse me.

During the discussion, future man also manages to rip to shreds the arguments of every wacko caller who drops all those buzzwords that we know and love.

Open education? Sounds wonderful, but higher education generates such an incredible amount of money, that it doesn’t make sense for institutions to open things up and provide instruction for free. In fact, they profit primarily from their exclusivity, the source of their prestige.

Innovation in teaching? Beaten down by standardized testing (as well as the divestiture of funding after the Zombie Apocalypse of 2012).

Technology? Google owns everything.

It’s an unsettling vision, and one I hope never comes to pass. And as silly and entertaining as it is, the sad thing is that it’s certainly plausible.

I just hope the deductible’s low.

Some more info from Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo about design thinking.

For the record, I don’t own any turtlenecks.

Despite all the pontification about how learning online is “THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION,” this SNL sketch (as well as the comments section on any article regarding online education) certainly points to a continuing belief that anything short of a face-to-face education is somehow second-rate.

This is rather curious, seeing as the University of Phoenix (the logo of which is spoofed in the sketch) is the largest institution of higher education in the U.S. by enrollment. Add to that Kaplan University’s brilliant ad campaign arguing for education on-demand and the popularity of the state-supported, entirely online Western Governors University.

I bring this up mainly to compare it with my own recent experience at a large public university. The mix of classes between online and face-to-face was roughly 50/50, and I honestly wouldn’t give an edge to one or the other. This despite the pretty obvious bias I have favoring the online side (given both my academic concentration and the content of this blog).

I’ve never taken a class at an entirely online university, but I highly doubt this fact is necessarily an indicator of quality. Many state schools even tout the fact that they have entire academic programs online to appeal to those who live too far to commute to campus.

The thing about the SNL sketch that really caught my eye was the bit about them sending your diploma via email. A few days after my graduation this summer, I got an email with a link to a website where I could see my diploma in a choice of lovely yet ridiculously overpriced frames. Of course, the company that made this website used a CSS trick to try and keep me from downloading it.

I’d rather have the printable diploma, but I guess I should just be happy they made the university font legible. Thanks University of Mumblemumble!

When I heard how they were used in the class, I thought it was brilliant. Students, instead of just passively absorbing content, are forced to interact – primarily through answering multiple choice questions. Answers are then graphed out so the instructor can see what percentage of students is understanding the material. At the end of the story, they go into some detail about the more “advanced” clicker that allows for open-ended responses.

Wha? I’m sorry, that last sentence seems kind of odd to me, seeing as I was able to type it on a laptop, which if you enter a college classroom, everyone seems to have. Which makes me wonder why on earth these developers are trying to reinvent the wheel. Cole Camplese had a post on his blog recently about using Twitter in the classroom. Wouldn’t that be so much simpler (and cheaper) to implement? And wouldn’t it allow you to do more than just pick from a predefined set of answers?

Ah yes, I forgot. The point of higher education is to get students to think, but not too hard. They are, after all, preparing us to enter a challenging world where how far we go in life is determined by how well we answer multiple choice questions.

My mistake. Does this mean I don’t get a treat?

I was told 4 years ago to have my wisdom teeth taken out, which I put off (a brilliant move on my part) taking care of until today, when I found myself sitting in an oral surgeon’s office watching a video that is to inform me all about the process. At the point that the presenter is discussing possible complications, a bullet point list comes up on the screen. Here’s what I see:

• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• POTENTIALLY FATAL

WHAT???!!!!

At its best, the bullet point list is an easy shortcut that helps to properly organize your ideas – particularly for presentations, which are all about talking points. At its worst, the bullet point list is for lazy bastards with no imagination.

Dan and Chip Heath had a related column in Fast Company a few months back (yes, I realize I reference this magazine a lot, but it’s the only one I read on a regular basis):

We’ve all had the experience of being in the audience as a presenter clicks to a slide with eight bullet points. As he starts discussing the first one, we read all eight. Now we’re bored. He’s lost us.

He’s lost us? Or killed us?