Tag: trends

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Education Globalization Milwaukee Reading Technology

Latest read: Blink

Following the successful read of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and learning of discussions underway on the internet regarding his follow up book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking it was clear Blink had to be the next book I picked up the night I finished The Tipping Point. And its another success for Gladwell.
blinkSo what is the truth about instantly making a decision in the blink of an eye? We have the ability for rapid cognition…but do we use it in our daily lives? It should tell you a lot about the situation at hand regardless of the outcome:

For instance Gladwell shares these situations: Can you tell the forgery of an ancient piece of art or can you tell the difference between two musicians playing behind a curtain during an audition with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra?

And can you instantly recognize when a professional tennis player will fault on serve even before the ball is struck by the player’s racket? Gladwell shares how rapid cognition can work to your advantage and how we have unfortunately conditioned ourselves to look beyond the ‘gut’ feeling because our eyes can play visual tricks … often for the worse.

I was impressed to learn of police organizations who study facial recognition patterns to develop rapid cognition between a frighten citizen and a hardened criminal … all in the blink of any eye, when life or death can hang in the balance.

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Education Globalization Internet2 Milwaukee Reading Rich media Technology Virtual Reality

Latest read: The Tipping Point

A long and exciting summer with Maxwell has taken me away from my daily reading. But I have just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and learned its just as great as reviews have suggested.
Chapter 3 (The Stickiness Factor: Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues and the Educational Virus) is a really great read and made a real impact in approaching a thread that is currently underway on Internet2‘s Teaching and Learning listserv.

The discussion is about the impact of SecondLife in K12 education. There are real questions about the validity of SecondLife.

After the initial hype of SecondLife (for higher education) peaked, colleges now find themselves in the same rut about really embracing SecondLife when virtual visits never really materialized. A lost leader? Probably.

Many including Wired‘s Chris Anderson are openly debating the ‘stickiness’ of SecondLife. Does it provide solid learning outside the classroom or studio?

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Design Education Globalization Reading Technology

Latest read: A Whole New Mind

Daniel Pink’s second book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future is a great, easy read for everyone. In today’s very competitive business market, college or non-profit Dan’s new views on tapping creative minds will ensure success moving forward.

There are several examples of how business must change in order to not just compete…but survive in today’s globalized economy.

It was somewhat refreshing to basically see Tom Friedman‘s influence from The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century stitched into Pink’s writing. And he could not be more accurate.

GM’s well publicized struggles continue. But their struggle is not against Japan. They have new competition on the automobile producing block…from India and China.

Why? Well lets start with the fact that both India and China can begin building state of the art robotic assembly plants with cheaper labor resulting in India producing brand new cars for only $2,500.

This actually points to another Friedman reference from The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization where we learned only a small handful of humans produce Lexus cars…robots do the rest. So India and China can move past the hurdle of long standing contract, benefit and retirement costs bogging down GM to win the race to sell their products on the American marketplace.

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Design Education Globalization Reading Technology

Latest read: The Ten Faces of Innovation

This book by IDEO‘s found Tom Kelley is a good, interesting and fairly quick read. In his book The Ten Faces of Innovation Kelley has outlined the opportunity to identify, empower and reward the ten types of employees you may have in your company.
10 Faces of InnovationWho can make your organization think differently and succeed in today’s marketplace or school?

This is a refreshing look at the demands of today’s aggressive business climate — regardless if your in a Fortune 100 company, small non-profit or educational institution.

While some elements are a bit over-hyped (examples are IDEO’s clients — surprise!) the basic message is to look and empower new thinking.

I was surprised to learn his brother knew about .mp3s before Napster….but so did millions already on the internet finding them in newsgroups.

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Design Education Globalization Milwaukee Reading Technology

Latest read: Death to PowerPoint

At WiscNet’s 2007 Future Technology Conference I presented an Internet2 end-of-year review as Co-Chair of their Internet2 K20 Workgroup. My presentation was modeled after Edward Tufte’s approach to PowerPoint called The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. The New York Times calls Tufte “The Leonardo da Vinci of data” and even NASA has asked for his assistance with visual analysis of space shuttle data from both Columbia and Challenger.
cognitive style of powerpointHis research is really amazing. While re-reading his excellent 2005 brief The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint I wanted to make sure my presentation was right on the mark and tuned for the best possible visual reception.

As we are all aware, PowerPoint emerged (okay it was bundled with Word and Excel in the Office suite back in the day) as the most used slideware program regardless of location: conference room, classroom, gallery or boardroom. We all use this tool yet many presenters do not realize how PowerPoint actually kills your messages.

Can you imagine The Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint presentation? Click here for an example of how a powerful message gets lost in a bad slideware program. So how is PowerPoint killing your messages?

If you care how you communicate, this is simply a must read. Tufte’s lessons are so important to learn and implement. He challenges you to communicate as effectively as possible while living in a dull, boring slideware world. For the most part our messages miss the mark and our audiences are bored … could there be anything worse?

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