How do we learn and pass on knowledge in the workplace? A recent project to come my way involves setting up a web-based tool for various operation manuals used by students service in professional work assignments in our program. The perception from faculty and staff is that students have stopped really studying the manuals and that perhaps a move to a digital format would allow easier searching, and reduce the need for thorough reading, and make the guides more useful. Yes I say, we need to make this happen as quickly as possible. But I wonder if simply moving the text on-line will make it any more likely to be read. A recent article at A List Apart offers the notions of narrative, interaction and discoverability as crucial for successful sites for learners.
Maybe what we really need is to require all student workers to blog as then encounter challenges and solve problems. Deploy these blogs in a WordPress Multi-user setup so that it is easy to aggregate them, search, and re-mix the contributions. Use categories such as “help needed”, or “a success to crow about” to deliver a running stream to the whole community, and make it easy for those who have already solved a problem to pass on their knowledge. Perhaps our current problem isn’t one of the medium — print vs. digital — but one of style — static versus dynamic/social.
Designing websites for learners
Most websites are not learner-friendly. Web creators might aim for beautiful, accessible, usable interfaces to house their smart, web-native content, but they don’t often have learners’ goals or needs in mind—if they even know what those needs are.
Educational Video Games With a Mix of Cool and Purpose – NYTimes.com
The difference in many of today’s educational games is that they are online and social, allowing children to interact and collaborate to achieve common goals…Newer games work concepts of math, science or language into the actual game mechanics, rather than stopping for something that feels to the player like schoolwork, experts say.
Online education is a runaway best seller. Its growth rate — 12.9 percent — dwarfs the overall pace of academe’s student expansion.
Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning
How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organization?
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RodeWorks » Blog Archive » Getting Social with Website design on Nov 23 09 at 11:20 am[...] been thnking quite a bit lately about the merging domains of traditional, static web site design, and social networking. Jay [...]
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Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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