Robin Good

Do you know what ad networkdefaulting, pass-backs and daisy-chaining are? Are you looking for solutions that would help you eliminate the serving of PSAs or empty ad slots on your web site? Unsatisfied with the amount of unmonetized ads even when leveraging multiple ad networks?Photo credit: lunschenAd defaulting or pass-backs refer exactly to that. When an online ad network leaves an empty impression slot or serves a PSA on your web site instead of serving a paying advertisement, ad defaulting and pass-backs are at work.The emerging problem with typical, static ad network defaulting and daisy-chaining is that even with multiple ad networks, there\'s no way you can be completely sure you won\'t see a blank ad spot again. In fact, even with multiple ad networks at work, you are not going to get any ads unless each specific ad slot on your web site pages meets some precise campaign criteria.The issue is that "although static daisy chains help to reduce the number of blank impressions, they are cumbersome to setup and manage and they are based on historical, not real-time data."The staff at PubMatic has been collecting data for the last two years, researching what defaulting is, why it happens, and how to get around it by dynamically optimizing the ad serving process along some new lines and criteria. For them the solution lays in creating a dynamic "chain" of ad networks, rather than a static one, to ensure each and every time web publishers get the best price possible for every ad slot they have available. "This dynamic chain must be created in real time and uniquely for each and every ad impression."Here all the details:

Death to the Ad Network Daisy Chainby PubMatic
Executive Summary Up to 80% of online ad space goes unsold from direct sales. Online publishers that want to maximize the revenue they get from their unsold ad space generally work with ad networks to fill that space. Savvy publishers typically choose to work with multiple networks in part because of a problem known as defaulting.Defaulting, sometimes referred to as pass-backs, occurs when an ad network is unable to fill an ad impression on a website with a paying ad. Often, a non-paying public service announcement or a blank spot is shown. Many web publishers chain several ad networks together to reduce the chances that a non-paying ad is served, but these methods are far from perfect. This white paper describes in detail what defaulting is, why it happens, why the current method of daisy chaining is inefficient, and how to solve the problem.The information in this white paper is based on over two years of data collected by PubMatic's team of 30+ engineers that have worked towards solving this problem; defaulting leaves billions of dollars in revenue on the table each year that could have otherwise been collected by publishers and ad networks.

Defining Ad Network DefaultingAd networks are becoming increasingly selective about the type of impressions they monetize. If an impression doesn't match the desired criteria of an ad network's advertising campaigns, then it either shows a public service announcement, a blank spot, or returns the impression to the publisher. All three of these actions are known as defaulting, as the ad network has chosen not to display an ad for which the publisher will be paid. By working with over 5,500 publishers and 300 ad networks, PubMatic has found that ad networks default 56% of the time on average and as much as 87% of the time.

Why Ad Networks DefaultAn ad network's campaign mix can vary significantly depending on the type of advertisers it has relationships with and gets campaigns from. The goals of these advertisers' campaigns could themselves vary significantly from simple brand awareness, to lead generation, to converting into a sale on the other side of the click.Therefore, it is normal for an ad network to have a mix of campaigns running at any given time, including CPM, CPC and CPA campaigns. To ensure that these campaign goals are met, advertisers typically have specific criteria associated with their campaigns, including:

• User Targeting Criteria - Some of these include having frequency capping limits per user or per site, geographic targeting, and demographic targeting. With more and more user information available for targeting, advertisers are also looking at retargeting and behavioral targeting tools.
• Website Targeting Criteria – Many advertisers choose to target contextually, that is finding websites that have content they believe is attractive to the audience they are trying to reach. In these cases the advertiser cares more about the website content than the user and their criteria often includes editorial control such as avoiding adult content or websites with user generated content.
• Performance Criteria – For performance-oriented campaigns, such as CPC or CPA campaigns, advertisers would also have measurable performance goals like target click through rates and conversions rates.
• Temporal Pacing Criteria – Depending on the duration of the advertiser's campaign and any specific event associated with it, advertisers would like to ensure that the user's attention and corresponding campaign's spend is spread out over the desired time period. Advertisers ensure this by pacing out the impressions and imposing hourly, daily, weekly or even monthly impression limits on their campaigns.

It is due to these specified criteria, among others, that ad networks default on a particular impression from a particular user on a particular website at a particular time.

Current Online Advertising Trends Indicate Even More Defaulting to Come Prevailing industry trends clearly underscore publishers' growing need to work with many ad networks and find a better way of dynamically managing their default impressions in order to realize the full revenue potential of their inventory. These trends include the following:

• Growing supply of inventory but quality inventory is hard to find – With ever-increasing online content and growing Internet usage, online inventory has been growing tremendously and is expected to continue to grow at a rapid pace. Additionally, the level of user engagement associated with the inventory has changed as well. It is becoming even harder for advertisers to find quality inventory that matches their advertising goals.
• Increasing number of ad networks – With the continuing shift of offline advertising spend to online advertising, more and more ad networks have emerged (currently 300+). Those Ad networks expanded from 5% of inventory monetized in 2006 to 30% in 2007. In order to compete, these ad networks must differentiate their focus area and the type of advertisers they have relationships with. The display advertising landscape has become increasingly fragmented and will continue to do so for some time to come.
• Increasing preference for targeted performance advertising – With the current economic downturn, advertisers are increasingly motivated to seek measurable return on investment (ROI) on their advertising spend. As a result, there is a significant shift towards performance-oriented advertising, in which ad networks selectively monetize specific impressions that they believe will perform for advertisers.

How Publishers Are Currently Dealing with DefaultsA publisher sets up a daisy chain by guessing which ad networks will pay them the most and orders them accordingly, so when one defaults, the next highest paying ad network can deliver an impression. the problem is that ad networks change their prices frequently, but the chain remains static. It's common to see medium or large US publishers working with 10 or more ad networks. These publishers might use 3-5 major US ad networks, 3-5 international ad networks, and several vertical ad networks. Currently most publishers with significant inventory manage their ad networks' default impressions by setting up a ‘static' daisy chain of ad networks based on expected eCPM from these ad networks. However, setting up a static daisy chain is a very manual and cumbersome process that consumes a lot of a publisher's time and resources. More importantly, the daisy chain is far from optimal because it is static in nature and is based on historical, not real-time, data. A daisy chain is usually set up once a week, or at most, once a day depending on how frequently publishers monitor their ad network earnings. Furthermore, most publishers cannot afford to spend that much time and resources on optimizing this manually and end up getting blank ads and losing significant revenue.

The Ideal Approach to Default Management - Dynamic Default OptimizationAd networks pricing changes constantly, therefore adjusting static daisy chains weekly, or even daily, isn\'t enough to maximize the yield. Dynamic Default Optimization updates the daisy chain in real time, for every impression, which ensures that the impression goes to the highest ad paying network. An ideal approach to solving this problem and to maximizing publishers' advertising revenue would be to implement dynamic management of defaults across multiple ad networks in real-time. To make this a reality, the following would need to be monitored and measured in real-time:

• Default characteristics of ad networks – Default characteristics of ad networks vary significantly depending on the type of ad network. For example, one ad network may default 60% of the time based on its mix of advertising campaigns and network of websites, while on the flipside there are ad networks that are almost always guaranteed to serve an ad impression such as Google AdSense.
• eCPM trends of ad networks – Ad networks' eCPM trends vary significantly depending on the type of user, nature of the website, and demand from the ad network's advertising clients. Even for a given publisher, the eCPM it receives from an ad network could change significantly throughout the day.

Based upon these two observations, a real-time mechanism is needed to dynamically figure out the most optimal daisy chain of ad networks for each impression.

Benefits From Implementing Dynamic Default Optimization

• Increased revenue for publishers – Dynamic Default Optimization ensures that the publisher can maximize the value of every impression.
• Reduced complexity and ease of management for publishers – It would remove the need for extra resources publishers allocate to manually managing a static ad network daisy chain so that they can focus on their core business of providing online content to the user.
• Cost reduction and more access to good inventory for ad networks – Ad networks would save on ad serving costs by getting quality impressions and filling more of the impressions they receive with ads.
• Better user experience – Users would be shown more relevant and better ads that load on a web page in a more timely fashion, and will therefore enjoy a better user experience.

Examples of Publishers that Have Used Dynamic Default Optimization Over the last year, PubMatic has developed, tested, and fully deployed a Dynamic Default Optimization solution for its publishers. There are numerous examples of publishers of varying sizes and verticals that have enjoyed demonstrated success with PubMatic's Dynamic Default Optimization feature. Our publishers have achieved revenue increases of 30% to 300% over their pre-Dynamic Default Optimization eCPMs.

Fitting Dynamic Default Optimization Into the Overall Framework of Ad Revenue Optimization An overall ad revenue optimization framework that would optimize revenue for each impression in real-time would be composed of the following key components:

• Ad network selection for each impression: First, given a set of ad networks with which a publisher has relationships, the eligible ad networks need to be selected that match the impression characteristics such as geography, vertical, type of content, and user frequency among other factors.
• Real-time decision-making for each impression – Second, based on the eligible ad networks, PubMatic makes a real-time decision for the specific impression and routes the impression to the appropriate ad network.
• Dynamic Default Optimization – If the ad network defaults then the Dynamic Default Optimization solution ensures that at runtime this impression is given to the next appropriate ad network in the dynamic daisy chain. Within the dynamic daisy chain, an ad network that is guaranteed to fill every impression is utilized to ensure that an infinite chain is not created.

The aforementioned framework, when executed in real-time for each publisher impression, ensures optimal overall revenue to the publisher for their inventory.

ConclusionThe status quo for how publishers deal with the problem of ad network defaulting is by setting up a static daisy chain of ad networks; that should be viewed only as a temporary solution because it doesn't fix the inherent problem of protecting and increasing the value of a publisher's ad space.Although static daisy chains help to reduce the number of blank impressions, they are cumbersome to setup and manage and they are based on historical, not real-time data. As a result, publishers leave billions of dollars in ad revenue uncaptured every year. Due to the volatility of online ad pricing, and because no single ad network can guarantee the highest price for a publisher's ad space all of the time, creating a dynamic "chain" of ad networks, rather than a static one, is the only way for a publisher to ensure that they can get the best price possible for their ad space. This dynamic chain must be created in real time and uniquely for each and every ad impression. Ad networks also suffer from excessive defaulting. Their ad serving costs are significantly higher because they have to serve unpaid ad impressions, and they may suffer from increased ad serving latency. Dynamic Default Optimization is the biggest step to date for solving the current static daisy chain solution. More and more savvy publishers are making the move towards utilizing Dynamic Default Optimization as a solution, with over 5,500 publishers currently using this propriety technology developed by PubMatic. Publishers who utilize Dynamic Default Optimization can see anywhere from 30-300% increase in ad prices (eCPM) as a result.

Originally written by the PubMatic team and first published on March 4th 2009 as "Death to the Ad Network Daisy Chain".

About the authorPubMatic is an ad revenue optimization service that helps web site publishers run the highest paying ads from top ad networks. Founded in 2006, PubMatic is currently in BETA status and free for publishers to join.

Photo credits:Defining Ad Network Defaulting - Gunnar PippelWhy Ad Networks Default - Chris LamphearCurrent Online Advertising Trends Indicate Even More Defaulting to Come - Kirill AlperovichBenefits from Implementing Dynamic Default Optimization - Craig JewellFitting Dynamic Default Optimization into the Overall Framework of Ad Revenue Optimization - Elnur AmikishiyevAll other images by PubMatic ...

Is it true that the same method of peer and open production that has been dominating the world of open source software and freely available (often user-generated) content on the internet, is now also deeply influencing the way we think about designing and even making things?Photo credit: itestroPeer productionoccurs when communities of volunteers create open content that is meant to be usable, shareable, and freely redistributable by everybody. Though this approach has proven to work great on the Web (think of Linux), is peer production ready to subvert the economic models of the physical world?The capitalistic-based market, which is the economic system where you and I live and work inside, works pretty much this way: "Means of production are privately owned, corporations are internally organized as hierarchies, and resources are allocated through the signals that are given through market prices. If the profit is interesting enough, corporations will allocate resources in that direction and pay the necessary staff."Peer production instead, promotes a different system based on open knowledge, software and design communities. Members are first-hand connected with production companies, and fund their members directly. But not only. Companies indirectly support the infrastructure of cooperation of the commons on which they depend, sharing back the benefits with the open design communities.For an in-depth view of P2P-based, peer production, and how open communities and open design work, follow Michel Bauwens, the world P2P evangelist inside this explanatory article and decide for yourself whether this an emerging reality or just a dream.Here all the details:

The Emergence of Open Design and Open Manufacturingby Michel Bauwens
IntroReaders of WE Magazine will be familiar with the emergence and proliferation of a new form of value creation, peer production (as first defined by Yochai Benkler), in which communities of volunteers (but also in fact mostly paid creators and programmers once a project is successful) create (open) content or (free) software, that is usable and accessible by everybody. Typical for peer production is that the producers create products (with both concepts being essentially misleading in this case!) in such a form that they form a commons which can be used and modified by others, who return it improved to the same common pool. These producers can be volunteers or paid programmers or authors, often both operating as a cooperative ecology between communities and the companies that create market-based spin-offs from that same commons. As a typical example, Linux and its derivatives come to mind, which have created a $36 billion economy.It is very tempting to limit such emergence to the field of immaterial production, but we want to show in this article that the same method of production that has come to dominate the world of open source software and freely available (often user-generated) content on the internet, is now also deeply influencing the way we think about designing and even making things.Before we describe this emergence, a few definitions as well as a basic explanation of why the peer production makes so much sense.

The Emergence of the Internet As Enabling Peer ProductionBefore the advent of the internet as a tool that can now be used by at least one billion humans, there were already three ways to conceive of production.

1. The first is the, now almost-defunct, state-based system that was typified in the Soviet system, in which the productive resources were state-owned, and where the state organized production and allocated resources based on centralized planning.
2. The second is of course, market-based capitalism, in which the means of production are privately owned, corporations are internally organized as hierarchies, and resources are allocated through the signals that are given through market prices. If the profit is interesting enough, corporations will allocate resources in that direction and pay the necessary staff.
3. The third and minor form was cooperative production, in which workers or other members would own the collective capital, and have some form of internal and more democratic decision-making. However, such cooperatives would still generally operate in the marketplace and subject to the same external dynamics as corporate firms. In our context, I will therefore not consider it as a separate mode of production, but rather as a variant to the market.

Peer Production Can Be Divided in Three Distinct ProcessesPeer production however is a genuinely new form of production, which is based on what I call permission-less self-aggregation around the creation of common value. It can be divided in three distinct processes:

1. On the input side, we have voluntary contributors, who do not have to ask permission to participate, and use open and free raw material that is free of restrictive copyright so that it can be freely improved and modified. If no open and free raw material is available, as long as the option exists to create new one, then peer production is a possibility.
2. On the process side, it is based on design for inclusion, low thresholds for participation, freely available modular tasks rather than functional jobs, and communal validation of the quality and excellence of the alternatives (I call this peer governance).
3. On the output side, it creates a commons, using licenses that insure that the resulting value is available to all, again without permission. This common output in turn recreates a new layer of open and free material that can be used for a next iteration.

Incomplete variations on this model are possible. For example, contributors could be paid, and even work for hierarchal corporations, but still put the resulting work in the commons, where it is available for further peer improvements. In fact, for Linux and many free and open source software projects, this is the main reality, with nearly three quarters of Linux programmers being paid by companies.This mode of production works because certain technical conditions have been created for immaterial production.

1. First of all, contemporary knowledge workers, unlike factory workers, basically own or control their own means of production: i.e. their brain, computers, and access to the socialized network that is the internet. Since they control their own contributions, they are able to voluntarily contribute them.
2. Because content and software can be digitally reproduced, and the cost of such reproduction is marginal once it has been produced a first time, it can be universally available through digital copying, is therefore not scarce, and thus operates outside the supply and demand tension necessary for a market.
3. Because of the internet, it is now possible to cheaply coordinate a multitude of individuals and small groups on a global scale, without needing centralized command and control hierarchies. It is not difficult to conceive why such form of production is highly productive.

Peer Production As a Different Economic ModelPre-capitalist modes were essentially coercive (slavery, serfdom, etc…), therefore requiring an expensive apparatus of coercion. Such fear-driven processes were very detrimental to motivation and innovation, breeding fatalism as a general attitude in such civilizations. Capitalism on the other hand, based on self-interest and the exchange of equal value, creates a positive external motivation based on the expected return. However, in terms of motivation, it is absent when such return is not available. Innovation in a for-profit driven system can only be relative, based on the need to outcompete rivals, but staggers as soon as a monopoly situation is achieved. Finally, actors in the market look only at their own interest, and are structurally unable to take into account external factors. In other words, the aim of the market is not to innovate per se, nor to make a good or best product, and in fact much energy in corporations is devoted to make their products sub-optimal. For example, typical for closed source or proprietary software is that you are prohibited from improving the product!!The contrast with the dynamics of peer production could not be greater. It is based on passionate individuals, and open communities strive for absolute quality and innovation, not just relative quality or innovation. The aim of the Firefox browser for example, is to make the best possible browser on an ongoing basis, and because it is non-proprietary, it allows anyone to improve it through a great variety of plug-ins.In practice however, most peer production allies itself with an ecology of businesses. It is not difficult to understand why this is the case. Even at very low cost, communities need a basic infrastructure that needs to be funded. Second, though such communities are sustainable as long as they gain new members to compensate the loss of existing contributors; freely contributing to a common project is not sustainable in the long term. In practice, most peer projects follow a 1-10-99 rule, with a one percent consisting of very committed core individuals. If such a core cannot get funded for its work, the project may not survive. At the very least, such individuals must be able to move back and forth from the commons to the market and back again, if their engagement is to be sustainable.Peer participating individuals can be paid for their work on developing the first iteration of knowledge or software, to respond to a private corporate need, even though their resulting work will be added to the common pool. Finally, even on the basis of a freely available commons, many added value services can be added, that can be sold in the market. On this basis, cooperative ecologies are created. Typical in the open source field for example, is that such companies use a dual licensing strategy. Apart from providing derivative services such as training, consulting, integration etc., they usually offer an improved professional version with certain extra features, that are not available to non-paying customers. The rule here is that one percent of the customers pay for the availability of 99% of the common pool. Such model also consists of what is called benefit sharing practices, in which open source companies contribute to the general infrastructure of cooperation of the respective peer communities.Now we know that the world of free software has created a viable economy of open source software companies, and the next important question becomes: Can this model be exported, wholesale or with adaptations, to the production of physical goods?

The Expansion of Peer Production to the World of Physical Production"The Bug is a general-purpose Linux computer designed and manufactured by Bug Labs. A completely open hardware, it can be customized with different additional modules (GPS, camera, Wi-Fi adapter, USB, etc.)" (Source: TechCrunch)The general rule to understand these dynamics and the separation between the immaterial and material world is the following:For any immaterial project, as long as there is a general infrastructure for the cooperation, and open and free in-put that is available or can be created, then knowledge workers can work together on a common project.However, to produce physical goods, there are inevitable costs of getting the capital together, and there needs at least to be cost recovery. Indeed such goods are by definition rival, i.e. if they are in possession of one individual, they are more difficult to share, and also, once used up, they have to be replenished.Because of this essential difference, we can easily see that the same process cannot be used for both aspects of production of material things.Nevertheless, and this is a key argument: anything that needs to be produced, first needs to be designed. And designing a physical object, whether it is a car, a solar roof or a circuit board, is an immaterial software-based process depending on collaborating brains. So the first thing that comes to mind is a collaboration between open design communities on the one hand, and producing factories on the other hand. This is indeed what is happening and emerging on a global scale.Eric von Hippel, in his landmark book on The Democratization of Innovation has documented massive levels of such cooperation, at many levels in the industrial world, and with some sectors, like extreme sports, mostly consisting of voluntary tinkerers associated with production workshops.Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that there are much greater difficulties to achieve this.

1. First of all, there are much more serious feedback loops necessary between design and production, as real products need to be tested in the physical world.Also, the tools are different, and required that 3D-based design tools such as CAD / CAM be available, that video should be used to show the practicalities of usage, and much more distant real-time collaboration needs to take place. But difficult does not mean impossible!!
2. The other main difference is that capital is needed for physical implementation and production. So open design communities need to be much more closely allied to existing players. What good is it to design an open source car, if nobody is willing to make it??

But I hope the readers can intuitively sense how much sense this approach makes, for much of the same reasons than free software and open knowledge do: the physical products can be improved by everybody, not just paid employees, and such contributors have no fundamental reason to design products sub-optimally, i.e. less good than they could be.For this major transformation to take place however, it is also necessary to conceive of physical production in a much more modular way. This is the approach undertaken for example by Bug Labs, who offers an electronic device that can be modularly compose, with the customer choosing particular pieces that need to be put together. So rather than imagining one community working with one company, as is done in a lot of co-design and co-creation projects, imagine rather a global community of tinkerers, but also a global community of physical production houses, that can download the design and can produce things much more locally.Achieving such a fundamental change in the conception of how we make things, would require a fundamental redesign of the whole global supply chain, and as improbable as it sounds, it is in fact already happening.Recall that peer to peer requires that producers can voluntarily congregate around common projects. In physical terms that means that we need such a miniaturization and distribution of physical and financial capital goods, that producers can also congregate and say, let's do this, here's my piece of capital.

The Distribution of Open ManufacturingManufacturing is indeed subject to the same process of miniaturization that computers once were. Consider the following underlying trends:Mail-order machining means that you can design your own product, and a company will then deliver the item at your doorstep (spreadshirt, threadless). Desktop manufacturing means that you can design your own product, but also basically produce it yourself. This is already possible because of developments in 3D printing, whereby plastic designs can be produced with cheaper and cheaper machines. Industry itself is increasingly using rapid and flexible manufacturing techniques, which require a fundamentally new philosophy concerning machines: not so much hyper-specialized, hyper-expensive and needing centralization, but rather conceiving as production through a universal machine that can be adapted quickly and inexpensively to new needs and processes. As such machines become smaller, more distributed and cheaper, then their available for more local production will increase dramatically. Personal fabrication, as being developed through the FabLab communities and the RepRap, is the culmination of such a process.

P2Peering The Physical WorldWe see the same innovation in financial capital. After the Peak Debt breakdown, we see a strong push to make finance more available in a distributed fashion. One of the trends is of course social lending, allowing individuals to lend to each other. Another is a strong revival of complementary currencies based on mutual credit. The advantage is that credit is created through the participants themselves, without having to depend on the more scarce official money, and that an independence is achieved from centralized banks. Complementary currencies are also known to keep more of the financial flow within local communities. So the new picture becomes clearer: cheaper production tools, coupled with peer-to-peer financing and peer-to-peer money, allows us to conceive of physical production as occurring much closer to the point of need. Such potential re-localization is not regressive however, but high-tech, and does not create isolation, because it is equally dependent on global tinkering and open design communities that operate on the scale of the world.So the vision becomes clearer. We already have a peer-to-peer technological and media infrastructure, and we have new organizational models based on open collaboration regarding know-ledge, software, and design. We have increasing access to more distributed machinery allowing us to conceive of more localized production of such open designs. We have much lower capital requirements, but when we do need capital for cost-recovery of physical production, we have access to much more distributed capital through mutual credit and social lending. None of these trends is fully realized, but, though they can be conceivably derailed, there is very strong evidence that they are moving and evolving in that direction.

P2P EnergyWhat else do we need? Well, the missing piece is not difficult to guess, it's a distributed P2P Energy Grid!!The rationale for distributing energy is pretty straightforward since allowing people the tools to generate renewable energy also means an independence from centralized utilities and to sustain more localized production, which is the important aspect in the context of this article.Excess energy can be given, traded or sold, having the additional benefit that those of us who use demonstrably less energy will receive an income from those that use an excess of energy.

In ConclusionI hope readers of this overview can now have a clearer picture of how a peer-to-peer world may be fashioned. It would consist of open knowledge, software and design communities, whose members are connected with production entities (companies, cooperatives), who fund their members directly, but also indirectly support the infrastructure of cooperation of the commons on which they depend, practicing benefit sharing, so that the benefits flow back to the open design communities. Productive entities would be more enabled to produce locally, using energy from a peer-to-peer oriented grid, and using peer-to-peer money for the exchange of rival goods, while immaterial and culture goods would be freely exchanged and shared by the whole of humanity.This is not an utopia, but the very necessity for the survival of our planet.Indeed, we only do two things wrong, and we have to reverse them:

• We think that nature is infinite, which is false, and so we practice a pseudo-abundance which destroys the planet.
• We think that intellectual and cultural goods should be made artificially scarce, thereby crippling the sharing of innovations.

If we can overturn both, i.e. combining a recognition of the real scarcity of physical goods with the real abundance of immaterial goods, we have a new and sustainable civilization, based on peer to peer principles.

Originally written by Michel Bauwens and first published on WE Magazine on February 1, 2009 as "The Emergence of Open Design and Open Manufacturing".

About the authorMichel Bauwens (1958) is a Belgian integral philosopher and Peer-to-Peer theorist. He has worked as an internet consultant, information analyst for the United States Information Agency, information manager for British Petroleum (where he created one of the first virtual information centers), and is former editor-in-chief of the first European digital convergence magazine, the Dutch language Wave.To know more you can visit these sections of the P2P Foundation wiki:

• Energy and Sustainability -http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Ecology
• Open Manufacturing - http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Manufacturing
• Open Money - http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Money
• Open Design - http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design
• Open Design projects - http://p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking

Photo credits:The Emergence of the Internet As Enabling Peer Production - Natalia LukiyanovaPeer Production Can Be Divided in Three Distinct Processes - Rafael Angel Irusta MachinPeer Production As a Different Economic Model - Sunagatov DmitryThe Expansion of Peer Production to the World of Physical Production - Bug LabsThe Distribution of Open Manufacturing - Vasyl YakobchukP2Peering The Physical World - Ilin SergeyP2P Energy - Zing Studio ...

If you are trying to keep yourself informed about the subtle transformations happening and slowly affecting your work and the way you exchange and communicate with others, this short, weekly new media report may contain some interesting news for you. Check it out.Photo credit: silenseIn this issue ofGeorge Siemens\' Media Literacy Digest, the need for tools to manage your online life, a model for technology adoption, back channels as an educational resource, and the ideal number of friends one should have, are the fascinating topics captured and analyzed."Where are the tools that help us to make sense of distributed (fragmented) information from multiple sources and interactions with many different people, networks, and organizations? They don't exist."George Siemens is right. It\'s not just a matter of information overload anymore. Now it\'s all about gathering and filtering all of the information you manage and receive from different parts of the Web.What is really needed, are tools that help you aggregate all your online networks, collecting and filtering the specific information you really need, and allowing you to take advantage of such data in the easiest and most direct way possible. If you are passionate about new technologies and the impact they have on society and on in the overall educational landscape, you can use the pointers and open questions in this weekly digest as a compass to navigate the disruptive changes transforming the way we live, learn and interact with each other.Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

Information (Sensemaking) Tools Are PatheticIn spite of dramatic changes in information creation, sharing, dissemination, and validation, tools don't yet exist to help provide images and patterns of what information means. Fragmented information means that the act of coherence making now rests with individuals, not with linear (or centralized) structures like newspapers, books, and courses. Innovation has been limited in conceiving new tools for the task of helping individuals make sense of complex information patterns. Visual browsers such as KartOO help a bit with information. FriendFeed helps with tracking people. Where are the tools that help us to make sense of distributed (fragmented) information from multiple sources and interactions with many different people, networks, and organizations? They don't exist. CognitiveEdge's SenseMaker looks interesting, but it looks like I have to get accredited first (when are you coming to Winnipeg, Dave? Better yet, why not offer it online? I'll help.). Bill Ives reviews Filtrbox - a service that offers more functionality (primarily as a market intelligence tool) beyond "basic, free services as Google Alerts". We're still a long way off from where we should be with information tools. We'll see much more innovation / progress in this area (I hope) over the next several years.

IRIS ModelClick above to enlarge the imageI've had many enjoyable conversations (i.e.arguments) about what is not suitable in technology adoption. In many instances, it's a matter of misunderstanding (determining the context from which different speakers are arguing). In my new found desire to communicate visually, I propose the following: IRIS model of technology adoption.When we encounter a new tool or a new concept, we are experiencing technology at the innovation level. We're focused on "what is possible", not what can be implemented. We're more concerned about how a new idea / tool / process differs from existing practices. After we've had the joy of a shift in thinking and perspective about what is possible, we begin to research and implement. This is a cyclical process. Attention is paid to "how does it work" and "what is the real world impact". At this level, our goal is to see how our new (innovative) views align with current reality. If a huge disconnect exists, reform mode kicks in and we attempt to alter the system. Most often, that's a long process. I'm not focused on that option here. I'm making the assumption that many tools can be implemented within the existing system. Finally, once we've experimented with options and we have a sense of what works in our organization, we begin the process of systematizing the innovation (UCalgary blogs appear to have largely followed this model).

Educational Uses of Back ChannelsAback channelis a secondary conversation stream that occurs simultaneously with a primary conversation. If you attend a conference, back channel conversations may be happening on Skype, Twitter, BackNoise, Today's Meet, or similar services. Back channels during live events in Elluminate can be more valuable for participants than the actual presentation. Some attendees (especially in Elluminate) find the side conversations distracting, at first, but most people warm to them after a period of time. Continuous partial attention is alive and well!What makes a back channel successful? According to Museum 2.0, a low barrier system (such as Today's Meet) has greater participation than a registration service like Twitter. People who are already on Twitter will gravitate toward each other through conference tags. People who are not yet using back channel tools find low barrier tools more appealing. I'd be interested in seeing an analysis of the quality of conversations and information sharing (especially after relationships / connections have been established) in both open access spaces and those that require registration.

What's the Ideal Number of Friends?Dunbar's numbersays we can maintain relationships with about 150 people. Which then prompts people to consider What's the ideal number of friends? Questions like this - and Dunbar's number - are vague and almost useless. First, what's a friend? The article quotes Aristotle's statement friends as people who've eaten salt together (what if you have high blood pressure?). Social technologies have changed, for me at least, what it means to be (or have) a friend. When I travel, it's rare that I don't meet people I've only known online. And yet, when we sit and chat, our shared interest in educational technology makes for a very fluid conversation. Add Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other tools to the equation… and suddenly it appears that 150 is very small. Ultimately it comes down to how the word "friend" is defined. Is a friend someone who knows you well - i.e. your likes, dislikes, things that stress you out? If that's the case, I'd suggest Twitter - with the daily life stream of inconsequential and consequential happenings - completely alters the notion of "friend as familiar".

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on March 5th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:Information (Sensemaking) Tools Are Pathetic - Barbara HelgasonIRIS Model - IRISEducational Uses of Back Channels - USFWhat's the Ideal Number of Friends? - Jose Manuel Gelpi Diaz ...

Looking for a free service to host your first blog site? Doubtful about which hosted blogging service to choose? If you are still not ready to code and configure your blog by yourself or do not have the budget to hire a webmaster, a free hosted blog publishing service is positively the best road to take for the time being. In this mini-guide I have personally identified and reviewed the best free hosted blog publishing services out there.Free, hosted blog publishing services are very easy to set up and configure and generally require you only a few minutes to get you fully started. You create an account, choose a pre-designed template, set your own site name and key content elements, adjust privacy settings and you are ready to roll.

• The key advantages of having a hosted blogging service instead of a self-hosted solution to be installed on your server are basically the advantage of having a software tool, at zero cost, that gets automatically updated without any intervention from you and which allows you to start blogging immediately.
• The down sides are generally a much lower ability to customize and control the look and feel of your site, and to do other advanced customizations which may include adding specific functions or features to your site.

In choosing a free hosted blogging platform you should be careful in checking how easy it will be, if and when you will want to, to move your contents and site structure to a self-hosted, server-based blogging platform. You should also check and make sure that if you later decide to move on a more platform, you will be able to keep your site name and domain. The more powerful, among such free hosted blogging platforms also allow you to do web traffic analysis, spam filtering, mobile posting, and a lot more.To help you choose your ideal free blogging solution, I have here selected a few basic criteria that you can use to help yourself differentiate and evaluate your ideal hosted blogging service:

• Look and feel: how much control you have over looks and how many pre-designed templates are offered.
• Privacy settings: how much can you control the setting of restrictions for who can access what on your blog.
• Traffic Analysis: the ability to see the traffic statistics relative to your site. How many visitors, page views, time spent on the site, and so on.
• Mobile blogging: the ability of your blogging platform to host blog posts coming directly from your mobile phone.
• Domain Name Mapping: this feature allows you to have any domain name for your blog and to have to settle down for a generic or blog-platform branded site name and domain.
• Content Export: the ability to easily export your site structure and contents to another blogging platform at a later time.
• Support Forum: a community forum where you can freely pose technical support questions.

Here all the details:

Create a Blog

1. WordPress
   
   WordPress is by far the most popular free service on the Web to create a blog. Highly customizable thanks to the impressive quantity of plugins and themes you can install, WordPress blogs can also take advantage of a good spam filter, RSS, real-time traffic statistics, and an impressive community support that helps you sort your blogging issues. But if you need an ad-free blog, a customized domain, content-export features, or advanced privacy options, you can upgrade to WordPress premium features. Prices available on the site.

   http://wordpress.com

2. Blogger
   
   Blogger is a free service from Google to create a blog. You can start building up your blog immediately if you have a Google account, and also use your AdSense and Analytics settings inside it to check ad earnings and traffic statistics. Blogger also supports multi-authors to create community blogs, RSS, several template customization features, post-via-mobile, and adjustable privacy settings. You also have a big support community behind you to sort your blogging issues out. Blogger, though, doesn\'t support unique domains. No premium accounts available, as well: you get all the features available at a free level.

   https://www.blogger.com

3. Windows Live Spaces
   
   Windows Live Spaces is a free service from Microsoft to create a blog. You can access Live Spaces with your Windows LiveID, and integrate inside your blog the content you have on other Microsoft services, like SkyDrive. Your blog, or "Space", is organized in re-arrangeable modules around the page. Advanced customization modifying the CSS or HTML code is not available by default. Advantages are: you can set privacy settings, use RSS feeds, post from mobile, and have limited traffic analysis features. A drawback is you cannot have a unique domain name for your blog or export your content at a later time. Great support provided by the Live community. Premium accounts not available.

   http://home.live.com

4. LiveJournal
   
   LiveJournal is a virtual community where registered users can create a free blog and receive constant support from other members. Inside LiveJournal you can build your own list of friends and read their updates (and / or let them read yours) via RSS feed. There are several customization possibilities either you want to mess with your CSS or not. With a paid account you can also protect your updates selecting the users who can access your blog, or even be the only one who can read it. Traffic statistics or customized domains are not available by default at any level. Paid accounts with pro features, like exporting your blog content to another platform, or use the "phone to blog" option, that allows you to post directly from your mobile. Starting from $5/2 months.

   http://www.livejournal.com/

5. Vox
   
   Vox is a powerful free service that helps you to create a blog. Powered by Six Apart (the company who owns the MovableType blogging platform) Vox only needs your registration data to get you started. Just choose one of the very essential templates, add your content (text, video, images or audio), set your privacy settings and you\'re done. A powerful feature of Vox is the integration with video and photo sharing sites like Flickr or YouTube. No premium plans available, mobile posting, nor traffic analysis feature, or having a unique domain name. But robust SixApart customer service is at your disposal to solve your blogging issues.

   http://www.vox.com/

6. Xanga
   
   Xanga is a community-supported blogging service that allows you to create a blog for free. Simply register and start customizing your blog layout with one of the several templates offered. Then share your content via RSS syndication. If you have the skills, you can even customize the CSS of your blog. You can also protect your updates by selecting the people who will have access to them. No traffic analysis, customized domains, or mobile posting features available. Good problem-solving forum support Premium accounts with more features are starting at 4$/1 month.

   http://www.xanga.com/

7. tripod Lycos
   
   tripod Lycos is a popular online service to create a RSS-syndicated free blog. If you already have a Lycos account, you can start right away managing your blog online, or take advantage of the integration with Microsoft FrontPage. No traffic statistics, mobile posting, export your content, or privacy settings features available. Also limited forum support. Other advanced customization features (like having a custom domain), are available in the advanced plans starting at 4.95$/month.

   http://www.tripod.lycos.com/

8. blog.com
   
   blog.com is a free service to create your own blog. After a simple registration process you can create an ad-supported blog you can syndicate via both RSS and Atom feeds. You can purchase a premium account starting from $ 4.95/month for the Plus option. Premium accounts also allow you to get other advanced features like setting the privacy settings of your blog, or customize the CSS (which is advisable since free blogs have scarce theme selection possibilities). No traffic statistics, customized domains, content-export or mobile posting features available. Scarce forum support.

   http://int.blog.com/

9. Yahoo! 360°
   
   Yahoo! 360° is a free service to create your own blog. You need a Yahoo! account in the following countries: USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, France and Germany. To start, log in, choose the colors of your blog (available templates are pretty much all the same), set your privacy settings, and then begin sharing your content (RSS syndication available). You can even post from your mobile using the free Yahoo! Mobile option. Yahoo! 360° has no premium accounts, customizing domain possibilities, nor traffic statistics features. Robust support available from the Yahoo! community and experts.

   http://360.yahoo.com/

10. blogr
    
    blogr is a free service that helps you to create a blog and share your own content right away. Currently in Alpha (development) status, blogr has a very simple interface where you can post your writings, photos, and videos with the minimum effort. You can organize your content in one of the (few) available templates and syndicate via RSS. Drawbacks are the very limited set of feature you have: no traffic statistics, mobile posting, privacy settings or customized domains. Good forum support. Premium accounts are not available at the moment.

    http://www.blogr.com/

11. Squarespace
    
    Squarespace is a powerful solution to create a blog. Thanks to its easy-to-use interface, you can adjust, set, and even drag&drop elements in your layout with no technical knowledge. Additional features include privacy settings, traffic analysis, RSS, and explanatory tutorials to get you started right away. No mobile posting. Registration is needed. You can try Squarespace for free for 14 days, and then switch to one of the paid plans starting from 8$/month that also allow you to customize your domain name and receive support from a dedicated customer service.

    http://www.squarespace.com/

12. TypePad
    
    TypePad is a full-featured service that helps you create your own blog easily. There are more than a hundred templates to customize the look and feel of your blog. TypePad main characteristics include: post from mobile, post from Facebook, RSS, traffic statistics, spam filtering, ads management, and much more. Good forum support, but no content-export features. You can try TypePad for free for 14 days, and then select one of the additional pricing plans starting from 4.95$/month.

    http://www.typepad.com/

Other Great Lists of Free Blog Publishing Hosts and Services

• SherifAbdou - 10+ Websites that offer free blog hostingSherifAbdou puts up a recent list of the top 10 blogging services that allow you to create a blog free of charge. Description provided for each service.(Updated January 26, 2009)
• The Times - 40 Free Blog HostsThe financial blog of the South African newspaper The Times lists the 40 most popular service (and provides a brief description) that offer you free space on the Web to create your own blog.(Updated May 29, 2008)
• Mashable - 40+ Free Blog HostsThe popular tech blog Mashable proposes its own list of free hosted blog publishing services. Services are divided in four categories and a brief description is provided for each one of them:
  • Danga Software Powered: LiveJournal and otehr platforms that use similar software
  • Themed blog sites: blog services that allow you to create a blog focusing on a specific niche
  • WordPress powered: services to create a blog based on the WordPress platform
  • Various platform: general free blogging services with popular and less popular picks.
  (Updated August 6, 2007)
• Stephen Miller - 190 Free Blog HostsProgrammer and entrepreneur Stephen Miller makes a big list of 190 free blog publishing services for all tastes. Unfortunately, Miller provided no description, so you have to check out each service for yourself.(Updated January 1, 2007)

Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 9, 2009 as "Create A Blog: Best Free Hosted Blog Publishing Services - Mini-Guide". ...

How do you increase dramatically the number of users in your community? Building an online community is not as easy as it seems, but Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, has some specific advice on how to effectively start-up your online community.Photo credit: IreneKPeople love to be part of something. That\'s why your users, and the ability to have a relationship with them beyond the numbers in the traffic stats, mean a lot more than any new content or feature you release. Having a passionate online community behind your content or products is strategically vital. Think of it: Not only your users can suggest improvements to your products, or help your business grow. They can also be your best marketing agents once you enable them to be so.In this guideline, excerpted from a 2006 event, Wordpress Matt Mullenweg distills his best advice on how to grow your community and how to make people love your stuff. Be passionate, listen, pay attention to details, focus on your user\'s need, are just some of the critical actions and attitudes Matt suggests if you really serious about your rapidly growing your online community.Here his advice:

The First 100k Users Are Always the Hardestby Matt Mullenweg
1. Be Your Most Passionate UserIf you can\'t spend hours a day using your product, you can\'t expect anyone to. You really have to think about and interact with what you\'re doing everyday, if you are going to any perspective for moving you forward.Also, this is very important from a business point of view, because if you\'re the first employer, the first volunteer, if you\'re personally leading the project, you have to be the most passionate person, because anyone you hire, anyone that comes on is going to be less passionate than you.You have to set the shining example.If it is not something you can get really passionate about, maybe it\'s not the best thing to devote your life to, or devote a significant portion of your time.

2. Pay Attention to DetailsAs you move on, as you\'re using your product for hours a day, you have to pay attention to every single little detail. Typography, punctuation, emails, favicons on your web site, bookmarks.The things that are really obvious to new users, stop being obvious to you. Be a new user everyday.

3. Get Off the ComputerWhat I found, is that anything I do on the computer is a barrier. There\'s something between me and the ideas I\'m trying to get the flow out.You got to find pencil and paper, be offline, find some place away from your daily distractions. It\'s really the best place. If you\'re designing a web site sketch out what the web site is going to look like. Forcing yourself to slow down I found is very valuable.

4. Do Your Own SupportIn the beginning strategies of launching something new. Your best feedback is going to come from those 100k users. Too often than not, people launch things, put them out there, and they don\'t interact with the followers, with people having problems.Another advantage of doing your own support is you intensively feel the pain of anything your users are feeling.This kind of feedback is so valuable. The more things are between you and your users, the worse the products are going to be. Try to eliminate those barriers at every step.There will be a moment if you\'re successful, that you won\'t be able to do the support anymore. And as soon as you see yourself starting to get too behind, as soon as you\'re not providing the best possible, most personal experience for each person contacting you, seek help immediately.You get to find someone who\'s really passionate and has a lot of patience for that sort of thing.

5. Have a TaglineYou should be able to distill whatever you\'re doing, whatever your vision is in less than 5 words.If you can\'t maybe it\'s time to simplify what you\'re doing. Scale it back a little.It\'s also good to have differenttaglines for the different folks that you talk to. If you\'re talking to a librarian, political active people, or normal users. You have to use different keywords that resonate with different folks at different times.

6. "You" Not "Me"Every corporate site in the world has these about pages with "me, me, me", "we\'re so great, we do this, we do that..." That\'s bad business.You should relate to the person you\'re talking to. Tell what are you going to do for them. Frame it in terms of what they care about.The truth is: no-one except for you cares about you. People care about themselves and what they\'re doing. That\'s the way the world works.

7. Get Out of 1.0Nothing beats real users using your product. You would never imagine the things that they would think of and feedback they would have, and the places they will take you.Most people make their successes on something different from where they started. So it\'s very important to get out of version 1.0 of your product as soon as possible, even if it sucks.Don\'t let yourself be too led by your first users. Listen to the silent majority. Keep the majority in mind.

8. Have MetricsHave metrics for everything you do.If you\'re not measuring the things that your users are doing, and the metrics of your success, you\'re never going to know when you get there.Whatever your product is, decide what is that people want more or less of.

9. Listen But Don\'t FollowListen to what people want, but don\'t follow them too closely.Understand the need of your users could be tricky. Oftentimes people speak inside their frame of reference, so they be might asking for something when they want someone else.Try to get what people really want from your product.

10. Simplify the AccessPeople don\'t come to your homepage anymore. People come to the pages of your site that have the keywords they are looking for.Maybe your page is not as attractive and informative as your homepage. You have to stay strong with every single person which is newly experiencing whatever you have to offer.

11. Be a Painkiller, Not a VitaminIf you\'re thinking to create something new, if you want people to spend time with it, you have to keep in mind that everyone has a life. Your website is probably the last thing on their mind.They just want to do things, connect with their friends, spend less time in front of a computer everyday.Again, think about the people who are visiting your site. You have to think: "How am I making them happy?"

Originally recorded by Matt Mullenweg for BayCHI and first broadcasted on August 8, 2006 as "The first 100k users are always the hardest".

About the authorMatt Mullenweg is an entrepreneur and founding developer of the open-source blogging software WordPress. He also writes for his own blog ma.tt. After quitting his job at CNET, he has developed a number of open source projects and is a frequent speaker at conferences. In late 2005, he founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet. Mullenweg attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts where he studied jazz saxophone.

Photo credits:Be Your Most Passionate User - Pavel LosevskyPay Attention to Details - Irina TischenkoGet Off the Computer - tupikovDo Your Own Support - Thomas MounseyHave a Tagline - Gunnar Pippel"You" Not "Me" - Nikolay OkhitinGet Out of 1.0 - madmaxerHave Metrics - PaulPaladiListen But Don\'t Follow - Igor DutinaSimplify the Access - Mikhail TolstoyBe a Painkiller, Not a Vitamin - vacuum3d ...

The use ofmashups in learning, serialized feeds, the value of lectures, and crowdsourcing are just some of the topics George Siemens explores in this new issue of the Media Literacy Digest.Photo credit: CourosaThe idea of serialized feeds, explored with Stephen Downes, is a fascinating one, and a potentially useful one in the delivery of online trainings as RSS-based courses. Serialized feeds are basically the RSS counterpart of email-based "autoresponders" and are characterized by posts being arranged inside the feed in a linear pre-established order, rather than in a standard reverse chronological one. In this way RSS subscribers of such a serialized feed start reading always from the first post and not from the latest (chronological) one. This allows for specific sequences of information, such as those to be provided in standard training situations to be more effectively delivered via RSS feeds.If you are interested about new technologies and the social impact they have on the educational landscape, this weekly digest is a good source of pointers, facts and resources to make sense of the disruptive changes that are affecting our lifestyle, both on the Web and in the real world.Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

Handbook of Emerging Technologies For LearningOver the last year or so, Peter Tittenberger and I have been working on a Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning. We're done with version #1. The wiki is now available (will continue to be updated), and if you prefer to read paper, a .pdf version of the handbook is also available. Questions, comments, and reactions are most welcome.

Course: Virtual WorldsWe are offering a new course in our Certificate in Emerging Technologies: Immersive Worlds, Avatars, and Second Lives. A schedule of upcoming courses is available here.

Why TV LostEducation has three components that provide value to learners: content, interaction, and accreditation.

1. Content creation / validation has moved sharply (but not exclusively) to learner control… and where still under institutional control, it's often available for free.
2. Interaction with peers and experts outside of universities is not confined to classrooms anymore. Blogs, podcasts, mailing lists, etc. offer learners the prospect of connecting with others globally.
3. Which leaves accreditation as the main value offered by institutions to learners.

As educators we can look to other information and interaction centric fields for glimpses of what our future holds. Consider the future of news: "smart content, smart sensors, avatars reading the news to you from your television and even interactive newspaper boxes that print out a personalized paper and automa[t]ically orders your customary drink at a nearby Starbucks."…or take a few minutes and read this post on Why TV Lost. Read the article with the view of education and learning (i.e. why education lost (will lose) and learning won (will win)).

Snowflake EffectHere's your irony for the day: BECTA's site on emerging technologies only lets you read the Snowflake Effect article in MS Word. Very well then.I heard Erik Duval speaking on the snowflake effect last year at E-Learn Las Vegas. Wayne Hodgins describes the snowflake effect: "We now have the chance to invert our design assumptions from mass markets of similarity to singular markets of unique solutions for individuals. We now have the opportunity to adopt an approach which focuses on design for mass personalisation and uniqueness called the Snowflake Effect."The article goes on to describe mashups as the means to personalize education… and introduces a variety of mashup "types". Midway through the article, a Gartner quote states: "web mashups, which mix content from publicly available sources, will be the dominant model (80 per cent) for the creation of new enterprise applications." Does anyone believe Gartner? They have a habit of offering insane forecasts. Someone needs to research their accuracy. I think it's dismal. Anyway, Hodgins article is well worth the time. The personalization of learning through mashups is a welcomed concept.

The Burden of Proof: What Does Education Research Really Tell Us?I appreciate the spirit of articles like thisThe burden of proof: What does education research really tell us?. Various discussions are presented on the value of hands-on science education in contrast with lecture-based. It's difficult to defend lectures in today's participatory media environment. But I like lectures when they are delivered well with stories, examples, and even a few metaphors. It's a mistake to conclude that lectures are passive. Carl Bereiter has argued that, based on Popper's three worlds, interacting with ideas is a form of active learning. I agree. When interacting with ideas, we build, we contrast, we compare, we argue… call it "minds-on learning". I find as much satisfaction from a good book or lecture as I do from hands-on learning. A steady diet of either, however, and fatigue does set it.

The CCK08 SolutionI'm delayed in highlightingStephen Downes' comments on our Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course from last fall. It's a good overview of how the course was setup, the challenges we encountered, technical details, and learner involvement. Stephen casually references a new initiative that partly developed in CCK08: Serialized RSS Courses. This concept is developed more fully here: "A serialized feed is one in which posts are arranged in a linear order and where subscribers always begin with the first post, no matter when they subscribe to the feed. This contrasts with an ordinary RSS feed, in which a subscriber will begin with today's post, no matter when the feed started". Be sure to read through to comments by Tony Hirst. I think this is an important concept and one that deserves more attention. The next stage is to find ways to allow subscribers to find, and connect to, each other. Information without social interaction is a reduction to MIT's OCW.

Forgetting Things…IfNASA can forget (ok, "lose knowledge") how to return to the moon and the US can forget how to make certain missiles, I'm sure we can be forgiven for our daily absent-mindedness. I am, however, surprised information of national, even global, importance can be just… lost. And it makes me wonder what we are losing today. Or, are we losing anything? Does Google (and enterprise data management) capture all? Obviously, once we capture everything, then we're faced with a new range of problems: how to make sense of abundance, how to recognize what's important in different contexts, etc.

Pushing the Limits of CrowdsourcingStories of the value of "crowdsourcing" (opening your content, code, information to the creative (and destructive) moods of the masses) are fairly common. Pushing the Limits of Crowdsourcing:From around the world, almost 20,000 people chipped in on a five-minute animated film that features a love story between a guitar and a violin. You could have been one of them. All you needed was a Facebook account and an itch for computer-generated animation. The Mass Animation project, led by Yair Landau, is showing how much further crowdsourcing can go, and how traditional production methods may get left behind.Crowdsourcing, as with any activity that pulls on and requires attention is subject to network phenomenon. Which means some initiatives will get lots of love and others will languish. In an ideal world, we would have many small dedicated projects carefully attended to by a passionate core. LTCreleased software used for developing our Virtual Learning Commons. The masses didn't come to improve the software. I think this is more frequently the case than projects that succeed in gaining numerous contributors. That's why we don't hear much about competitors to Wikipedia.Divergent attention and effort could possibly diminish the value of all projects. Does this mean crowdsourcing reduces diversity? I'm not sure. Need to think about that more.

Imminent Changes in Higher Education and Its DeliveryOver the last several years, I've been trying to communicate the basis for educational change: don't change education based on an instantiation of change (web 2.0, participative web)… change education based on foundational change. What is the foundational change? As this article - Imminent Changes in Higher Education and its Delivery - states, it's related to how information is created / shared / validated / disseminated :The term education is no longer bound by the traditional concepts that shackled it for so long - we don't have to rely on the traditional methods of information access and content delivery that formed our staple learning diet all these years. Thanks to the Internet and associated technology, there have been rapid advances in the way we access and assimilate information. What was earlier available only at a premium cost is now open to all at no cost at all, what was earlier limited to the heavy, printed and bound version is now digitized and easier to access.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on March 11th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:Why TV Lost - Paul BodeaThe Burden of Proof: What Does Education Research Really Tell Us? - Miroslav TolimirForgetting Things… - James SteidlPushing the Limits of Crowdsourcing - Miroslav TolimirImminent Changes in Higher Education and Its Delivery - brunoil ...

To write a blog post when you are not connected to the Internet, offline blog editors are the official solution. With these tools you can easily write, edit, spell-check and manage the content of your blog even though you are not connected to the net. In this mini-guide I have selected for you the best offline blogging tools available out there.While most offline blog editors support features like visual-preview, text-alignment, adjustable font styles and so on, there are a few capable also of managing your trackback pings, your Twitter notifications or your ability to publish to multiple blogs.But how do you select the most appropriate offline blog editor among so many possible choices?To help you identify your ideal offline blog editor, I have selected some basic criteria you can use to evaluate and select your ideal offline blogging solution. These the elements that can help you decide which could be your favorite offline blog editor:

• OS: Supported operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Blogging platform: Supported blogging services (WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, etc.)
• Media embed: Feature that allows media content to be embedded inside a blog post.
• Spell checking: Automatic check of grammar mistakes and typos.
• Multi-blog posting: The ability to post simultaneously to different blogging platforms.
• Ping: Notifications to multiple search engines after your publish a blog post.
• Tagging: Notification in Digg, Technorati, or other similar services once the post has been published.
• Notification via Twitter: Automatic notification on Twitter after publishing a new post.

Here all the details:

Best Offline Blog Editors And Web Publishing Tools

1. Bleezer
   
   Bleezer is a free offline blog editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Bleezer works with any blogging platform, allowing you to create your posts without being connected to the Internet. Spell check, media content embed, pings, and tag features up and running. No Twitter notifications, or multi-blog posting.

   http://alchemii.net/bleezer/

2. Thingamablog
   
   Thingamablog is a free, cross-platform offline blogging solution that works with Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Thingamablog does not require a third-party blogging host, but just a FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server, and Java 1.4.2 or greater installed. Spell checking, ping, multi-blog posting features available. No Twitter notifications, media embed content, or tagging enabled.

   http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/

3. Flock
   
   Flock is not a proper offline blogging software, but a free web browser based on Mozilla Firefox (thus multi-platform) with blog-posting features built-in. The main advantage of Flock is the complete integration with media content you can embed in your blog posts. You can simply drag&drop your preferred media and publish them to one of your blogs with a simple click. Flock works with WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, and others. Spell check enabled, but no ping, tags, or Twitter notifications features.

   http://www.flock.com/

4. Scribefire
   
   Scribefire is a free Firefox extension (multi-platform) to manage your blog offline. Scribefire supports Typepad, WordPress, LiveJournal, Live Spaces, Tumblr, MovableType, Blogger, and others. You can easily insert Flickr and YouTube media inside your blog posts, ping sites and add tags online, and manage multiple blog accounts, but not publish the same post to your blogs. No spell checking functionality, or Twitter notifications.

   http://www.scribefire.com/

5. Windows Live Writer
   
   Windows Live Writer is a free, Windows-only offline blogging software that allows you to manage and also create a blog on the major blogging platforms: Windows Live, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, Live Journal, TypePad, and more. Fully integrated with other services of the Live family, Live Writer supports spell checking, and the embed of any media content. Not supported: tags, pings, multi-blog posting, and Twitter notifications.

   http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

6. BlogJet
   
   BlogJet is a free, Windows-only, offline blog editor. BlogJet supports all major blog publishing platforms like WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, Drupal, Blogger, Live Spaces, etc. Main features: spell check, multi-blog posting, pings, tagging, integration with online services like YouTube and Flickr, and music software like iTunes or Windows Media Player to add media content to your blog posts. No Twitter notifications available.

   http://www.codingrobots.com/blogjet/

7. BlogDesk
   
   BlogDesk is a free Windows offline blogging platform optimized for WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine. BlogDesk lets you embed media content inside your posts, spell check them, take advantage of Technorati tagging, and post to multiple blogs. Ping and Twitter notifications not supported.

   http://www.blogdesk.org

8. w.bloggar
   
   w.bloggar is a free offline blogging service for Microsoft Windows. w.bloggar works with WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, Blogger, Live Spaces, and others. Main features: spell check, media content embed, multi-blog posting. Not available yet: Pings, tags and Twitter notifications.

   http://wbloggar.com/

9. Raven
   
   Raven is a free desktop blog editor for Windows 2000 / XP. Raven supports WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, Live Spaces, LiveJournal, and many others. You can easily write, add media content from your preferred sites, spell check your writings, and even publish the same post to multiple blogs with a single click. No pings or Twitter notifications features available.

   http://www.zoundryraven.com/

10. Post2Blog
    
    Post2Blog is a free offline blogging editor for Windows that supports WordPress, TypePad, MovableType and Blogger. Post2Blog sports an integrated spell check feature, and supports media embeds. You can also send pings and insert tags to your preferred online services. No Twitter notifications or multi-blog posting. Firefox and IE plugins available, along with a MS Word toolbar, for an easier posting experience.

    http://www.bytescout.com/post2blog.html

11. Qumana
    
    Qumana is a free offline blog editor available for both Windows and Mac machines. Qumana supports WordPress, MovableType, Live Spaces, Drupal, TypePad, Tripod, Blogger, Squarespace and some others. Main features are: media embed, multi-blog posting, spell check, send pings and tags. No Twitter notifications available.

    http://www.qumana.com

12. ecto
    
    ecto is an offline blog editor for Mac machines. ecto is completely integrated with Mac operating system as it can use data from iPhoto, iTunes or Address Book. Works with WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, Blogger, Squarespace, and many more. Spell check, media content embed, pings and trackbacks, and tag features also available, but no Twitter notifications or multi-blog posting enabled. You can try ecto for free for 21 days, and then decide whether to buy a copy of the software for $19.95.

    http://illuminex.com/ecto/

13. MarsEdit 2
    
    MarsEdit 2 is an offline blogging service available for Mac Users. Works with WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, Vox, and others. The new beta version supports Tumblr as well. MarsEdit 2 has an integrated spell checking, and media embed features. Pings and online tags are supported but not Twitter notifications. Multi-blog is also not available. You can try the software for free for 14 days and then buy it at $29.95.

    http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/

Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 16, 2009 as "Best Offline Blog Editors And Web Publishing Tools - Mini-Guide". ...

How do you monetize free? Can you make money by giving away your very best ideas and content? In this video, publisher Tim O\'Reilly makes an argument for open publishing, and explains how can you earn money from giving away your stuff without selling it.Photo credit: OplIf you consider $15.000.000 a year a good deal, then Tim O\'Reilly has a point to make here. That revenue has been created initially by publishing and distributing books for Open-Source software and then later by building upon the interest generated by the Web 2.0 free paper, downloaded a million times or more to this day. By organizing and hosting prestigious events, and creating new opportunities around a vision shared with everyone for free, O\'Reilly has literally been making a fortune around some key free resources."One size fits all" is no longer a working approach in business. "We are living in a wonderful world, in which there are many answers... This wonderful spectrum from free and ubiquitous, to scarce and valuable, gives us so many possibilities. Our job as inventors of businesses is to explore that range of possibilities and to create new music with it."Here the video with a full English text transcription:

How Do You Monetize FreeDuration: 4\'
Full English Text Transcription
Be An AmplifierWhy should publishing be open? How many ways can I tell you this?First off, because our mission is to inform, to educate, to transform the world by passing on good stuff. The more we do that, the better off we all are.We are connectors, we are amplifiers. Our fundamental mission is about passing on what we have. Why the devil would we want to lock it up if we don\'t have to? That\'s reason number one.

Give Your Products AwayReason number two: The pragmatic reason. We have found through years of experiments, that we can actually make a pretty good living even when we give our product away. We have published books on Linux where the authors have said: "I want this to be put under free documentation license" and we still ended up selling in some cases millions of dollars worth of copies of those books.In many cases it was less than we would have made otherwise. But there are other books, where a topic was legitimized by the free content, and by getting millions of people to read it online, we were then able to commercialize them after the fact.

How to Monetize Open PublishingI gave a keynote last year called: "Free is more complicated than you might think", and one of my most compelling examples is the paper I wrote called: "What is Web 2.0?" It\'s free, it\'s been probably downloaded about a million times. One of my most widely read pieces. It has helped give a name to the industry. How do you monetize it?I put together a series of events in which a relatively small number people, a thousands at a time for the Web 2.0 summit, maybe ten or fifteen thousands for the Web 2.0 Expo, come and give me a fairly substantial amount of money.I\'ve generated from that free paper a business that\'s worth, I think, about 15.000.000 dollars a year, as part of my business.There are models if you can use the amazing power of the Internet to spread ideas, you can then say: "How can I monetize this?" Because there\'s something that is intrinsically limited. Only so many people can fit in a room, and for an executive-style event you can charge a lot because because you\'re limiting saying that only people above a certain kind of level of influence will let in. Or you can have a big event where many of the attendees are coming free like in an expo, and there you get money from sponsors who want to reach those people. So there are all kinds of different ways to monetize free.

"You Pick the Hat to Fill the Head"I remember many years ago, when I was about 14 years old, I remember talking to this teacher of Sri Aurobindo yoga, in San Francisco. I was asking about reincarnation. I was saying: "How do you reconcile self-reincarnation with genetics?" And he said with this big beaming smile: "Oh, you pick the head to fit the head." That was a wonderful phrase, and I often remember that. I think about that in the context of business models. "You pick the hat to fit the had". You don\'t go for "one size fits all."So many people are looking for just one answer. But we are living in a wonderful world, in which there are many answers. How good is that? This wonderful spectrum from free and ubiquitous, to scarce and valuable, gives us so many possibilities. Our job as inventors of businesses is to explore that range of possibilities and to create new music with it.

Originally published by OPL on February 23, 2009 as "Tim O\'Reilly answers the question "Why Open Publishing?"".

About the authorTim O\'Reilly is the founder of O\'Reilly Media and a supporter of the free software and open source movements. He is widely credited with coining the term Web 2.0. After graduating from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics O\'Reilly became involved in the field of computer manuals. He defines the job he does with his company: "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators."

Photo credits:Be An Amplifier - Stephen CoburnGive Your Products Away - motorolkaHow to Monetize Open Publishing - Nikolai Sorokin"You Pick the Hat to Fill the Head" - lilyr ...

The Paradox of Web 2.0 is the realization that the big transformations and changes sweeping the worlds of communication, marketing and new media, from bottom-up participation to sharing and open collaboration are light years ahead and as distant as a far away galaxy from the education and schooling worlds where we supposedly prepare and nurture our kids to become the bright minds of our future. Photo credit: Markus AngermeierIn this second part of my presentation at theEVO 2009 Multiliteracies event, I focus on further exemplifying what learning really is by showcasing my personal experience with Seymour Papert\'s Logo turtle, a fantastic tool to learn math and geometry, as well as my frustration in learning to play percussions with my own music teacher. From these two simple stories you can see how much the diving into, the being part of, the loving of something are so essential components of the learning process. Actually, I would even venture to say that those extra factors characterize a true, deep form of learning, vastly distant from what, although normally called learning, is just rote memorization with little or no understanding. I then explore again some of what, inspired by Stephen Downes\' own list of true critical things to learn in life, should be some of the core topics of mandatory learning curricula everywhere. It is in fact, by realizing how distant the topics we force our kids to study are from those skills and abilities that can effectively help any human to communicate, listen, be creative and move swiftly through the many perils and surprises that life has in store for us.Here Part 2 (Part 1):

The Paradox Of Web 2.0 - Part 2: What You Really Need To Teach Your Kidsby Robin Good

Robin\'s Speech - Audio Duration: 23\' - The audio is edited to play Robin alone. Full audio (65\') available here.

Full English Text Transcription
Do You Know About the Turtle?Let me take some real-life examples, which I think can be quite illuminating for supporting my topic.The turtle first of all. What is the turtle? Many of you may know about the turtle from the language LOGO developed by Seymour Papert, a great computer scientist, educational scholar and researcher, who over 20-30 years ago, developed this programming language that would allow kids to learn mathematics, and geometry in a way that was very engaging, playful, and which allowed them to discover those things by themselves and become one with them.For those of you who haven\'t had the experience to try this, it may sound a lot of abstract good thinking. In reality, I had an experience which showed me with my own kid how powerful this is, because he is going to school, and he was going for a while to a private teacher, and the mathematics teacher have him to do a lots of assignments, and getting a little bored on this, and so one day on the motorbike, we were just talking about the turtle, and I say: "Do you know about the turtle and what it does?", and he said: "No, I don\'t know." So, i said: "Let\'s download it when we are at the office."So, we downloaded this tool, there are many different versions available for all you to use, and they are all free, many open-source, and you get a very simple interface where you can give some simple task commands, and there this apparent turtle, it\'s just a circle in some cases, that moves. You say "forward 100", and the turtle goes for 100 steps leaving a trail. So, by moving forward, right, left, top and down, you can actually design shapes, geometrical shapes, and so it was very easy for him to create a triangle, by learning a few commands, and then a square. And then I asked him to do a square had some extra-sides, a bunch of extra-sides. Don\'t do me just four sides, do me a square with ten sides.I then said: "Oh, why don\'t you do a circle?", and my son Ludovico said: "I don\'t know how to do a circle, because there must be a command to do a curve, and I don\'t know that command unless you tell me." I said: "Look, there\'s no command to do a circle. You can discover it yourself. Just look at the square you just did with ten sides. Doesn\'t it look like a little circle, tough a little rough? What if you wanted to make it more circle-like?"And so, he lit up in a second, and he said: "Daddy, not only I know that I can make a circle now, but I also know how many sides it has to be. And the number of sides is 360." He had that number sitting in there, inside his head, from before, from school, and so he decided that those two things now finally made sense if you create a 360 size of 1 pixel each, you are going to get a circle. He tried out and blam! There he had a circle.In that moment, my son had created a circle himself, and he was one with that circle, knowing that he had created a circle, and knowing perfectly how it was made. In fact, it became an enjoyable game from there on to go on with things like: "Now let\'s make it bigger, let\'s make it half the size...", and while we were doing this we were learning lots of formulas but without that dry, cold feeling of learning stuff that you\'re just memorizing but has no meaning. We were creating and changing reality, though abstract reality, with our own thinking, and that was very powerful, enjoyable, and certainly a memorable experience, whereby mathematics for him is not now anymore for him something dry to memorize.

My Percussion Teacher Is WrongLet me take you also to another place. I myself am a buddying percussionist. I love Latin music. I love soul music, I like very much the rhythms that come from Africa, and so since I was a kid I liked to bang on something at the rhythm of the groove. So, on and off, I started at applying myself to it, and recently I signed myself to a percussion music school. I broadcast very often what we do there, if you go from the Qik.com/RobinGood platform where I use my little portable video camera. You can see some of our playing couple of times a week.Anyway, I have there a private lesson with a teacher, and once a week we sit down in front of each other in sound-proof room, and we try to learn something.My teacher is a great musician, is really charismatic. I really like him, but he teaches just like a very traditional teacher. He has no 2.0 stuff. So what he will tell me is: "There are four beats in this, and on the up of the second beat you\'re going to hit with your right hand with an angle of 45° down this way, and then as soon as that finishes you see there\'s an up note so you\'ll have to go "pick, pick" with the other hand, while you hit the bass with this. So, it\'s 1, 2, and then there\'s a third one like we saw... ok, now do it".When he says: "Now do it", I can\'t do nothing, nothing at all. Because my brain when it comes to music, doesn\'t work like that, and for most people that I talk to, those who have made their brain work that way, it has take them a lot of effort, and they really have had to re-wire their brains; or they\'re great musicians, who have had the opportunity to learn this technical know-how straightforward, serialized learning, after they had learned music through personal direct learning.So my music teacher goes mad. He goes mad because he knows that I have a good ear, good sense of music, good rhythm, good timing, and I\'m not just a stupid guy. He knows because he sees, and he\'s a human being.But when he sees that I cannot make a step, that I\'m all blocked, he just doesn\'t know what to do. So, I take over subliminally, and I use all my smart brain technology and I say to myself: "Look, if he\'s going to get mad, he\'s going to try to play that rhythm back to me. So, I just wait for the time he\'s going to get so mad, that he\'s going to play it again for me. And when he plays it for me, what do I do? I just listen and record. I just simply record with my brain." It\'s a function you have by default, you don\'t have a driver to install, you don\'t need a plugin there. You just say to your brain: "Record." That\'s it. It works.Then, as soon as he stops, or while he\'s going, you start playing back the recording, and then you tell your hands to do that rhythm. PU-PU-PA PU-PU-PA-PA. You don\'t know that the third beat is done with a 45° degree angle, and... but you can do it.Again, here learning is very much getting into the music, many of you know this, and it\'s not transmittable by way of words, diagrams, or charts. Those can be of great help, ONCE YOU KNOW the rhythm and can play it, and then these can give you great extension of your vision, and more in-depth understanding, but not without FIRST getting your hands dirty.And so my teacher puts in a very frustrating situation many of the learners, because he doesn\'t realize this.

What Do We Really Need to LearnAnother point ifStephen Downes would be here now, reminding us of the little time left would be: "Robin the approach of teaching is evidently not right, and if we look at learning, and the way it happens, in real life, just like you have made examples now, you\'ve modeled for us now, it really looks like something different."So, one thing that we have set aside is that the paradigm shift is made up by realizing, in acknowledging, that teaching is not equal to learning in very deep, meaningful ways.But what do we really need to learn is very much about what we would teach our kids on that spaceship we have left before, and that certainly again is not going to be very much about the seven kings of Rome, or some other dry notionistic stuff.It\'s going to be more like something that they can bring anywhere they can go. Any country, any region, any planet...

1. Live HealthyBiologically, how am I made up? How do I work, is it good if I drink 20 Coca-Cola everyday or not, what difference does it make?Knowing a little bit of the biology, chemical made-up of your organism, what makes you feel good, what makes you feel bad, what you need to put inside to get outside energy, coming out of your pores, and bloods, and veins? That\'s what we need to know. What is good food and what is not without having to be sold to anyone line of thought, nor medicine, pharmaceutical, nor alternative, but understanding the information and where to get it so I can make my own choices without having to depend on prescriptions from somebody else.That would be number one for me.

2. Know How to ReadNumber two, because we know that without health we can\'t really do nothing, Stephen Downes suggests, and I take directly him up on this, understanding really how to read things. Not how to read for the sake of knowing the letters and the words, but being able to read in a way that is the exactly the opposite of what my kids are being taught in school, which is to memorize flawlessly what is written there, and specifically the terms that are in the books.This is completely useless. Because if it\'s then asked them what they just said, and they don\'t know what those words mean, and why things should be that way or another. It\'s just self-brainwashing. They are not being brainwashed. They allow themselves to brainwash themselves with word that have no meaning.Stopping and understanding all, to read in a meaningful way, and what are the techniques, the methods, the approaches, the strategies to do that, it\'s very very valuable, and that\'s something we should learn, in the time we dedicate to what we now call school.

3. How to LearnSame thing would be how to learn. How to learn is not sitting in front of a teacher and listening, and looking quiet and educatedly posed with your body.It\'s about learning a very extended number of approaches, about exploring, trying out, making mistakes, summarizing, reviewing, sharing, planning out, using techniques that whereby you have a piece of paper and a pen you can do a thousand useful things with other people, to explore new grounds, to inventory new ideas.I didn\'t get any of this when I went to university in Rome, Italy, or San Francisco, California. Very little of this. Maybe one per cent of the overall curriculum is dedicated to that, but if you\'re going to another planet, don\'t you think this would be quite useful, to be able know how to learn? I\'m sure I\'m not the first telling you this, and I\'m sure you\'re more convinced than me since earlier times.So, what else would me or Stephen Downes bring in here?

4. How to Be CreativeHow to be creative and understanding! This is not a gift sent by God into your DNA, this is a faculty that anyone can develop by learning about the fact that creativity is all about knowing, enjoying how to solve problems.Then, if those problems are more in the visual or auditory reality you tend to fall in the more classic, artistic fields, but you can be very artistic and very creative also when you fix some of your kitchen problems or electricity ones. Creativity is everywhere, and it can be measured by your ability to think differently. To think outside of the box, to think with your lateral thinking as Edward De Bono would say. That\'s something else I would like to teach my kids on the spaceship.And then what else?

5. How to EmpathizeThis is one of the things we miss the most, that is: Being able to put myself inside the shoes of whoever I\'m talking with.We\'re here conferencing, chatting, and this and that, but many times, many of us, when confronted with another two eyes, and a mouth in front of us, are just competing for time in which they introduce their own words and share their ideas, but that sharing is very much one-way.The ability to listen-in and listen-in between the words is really all about understanding pro-actively what the other is saying and what the other is craving for. Not just adding up: "Oh you know this, and this..." sometimes gets to be a little arid.It\'s not a competition for who has the last word, or for whoever knows most. It should be an exchange, and the exchange should be dictated by curiosity or by desire to help others. And so by stopping and looking at what it\'s not been said, one can see where the other is wanting some gratification, reward, or wants to establish himself even if the others don\'t want to and can be proper way with that desire if the setting and opportunity allow it. Isn\'t that much better than wasting lots of words for nothing.And so to empathize is to put oneself in the shoes of the person in front of you. We dedicate so very little time to this, in a practical, pragmatical way, so that we exercise this function and master it in our daily life, we could have lot of less hassles in our living rooms, without families, with boring friends, and girlfriends... how much frustration would we save ourselves in our lifetime just by mastering a little more of this discipline instead of knowing when the... whatever.

6. How to Tell Truth From FictionLet\'s take a few more of these key topics that we never cover in the ideal learning classroom.How to tell truth from fiction. The media literacy that many advocate today is very much important.We have the situation all around where many people have a very hard time separating truth from fiction, propaganda and the protection of self-interests and so on. It becomes very hard for people to tell with their own heads how things really went, whether that is Gaza or whether that is 9/11 tragedy.People are less and less equipped to evaluate by themselves the information that is given to them, and they have sold their beliefs system to newspaper, television, and radio mainstream channels.I think this is very bad for this planet in general, not because of the news being brought forward or what they represent, but because it takes away from the thinking muscle. If you don\'t exercise that muscle, is going to get loose, is going to get weak, is going to get like a mozzarella. In a world that keeps changing and where mainstream media is more powerful than ever, if Fox is your God, go for it. But if it\'s not, think about it.

7. How to Predict ConsequencesLook at the future is now what am I advocating, to look in the crystal ball, but many of our kids do very stupid things. Not because they don\'t listen to us. I think they have all of the right not to listen to us and verifying things, but they don\'t have the frame of mind, have not given the frame of mind, to think about what is going to happen next.We ourselves sometimes don\'t do it. Quite often. It doesn\'t matter if you\'re publishing a blog post, or if you\'re shooting some firecracker out of the windows for new year\'s eve. What are the consequences of doing that? Too many times we act like actors in a movie, like Tom Cruise\'s of the situation, but the situation doesn\'t warrant us to act like Hollywood stars, because there is no end of the movie, and the consequences are real. Way too many times we just don\'t think.So what about training a little bit myself and everybody around me in thinking a little more, in stopping and thinking before doing something. Yes there are some of us are very undecided in life, and that is not the point we\'re trying to cure. We\'re trying to cure when we act too much out of impulse, when we act not thinking about the consequences, whether that is electricity we\'re wasting, or pollution, or doing sex without thinking, it makes a big difference what type of human being and civilization we create for the future. Having that skill coming up as a key one and not just as a secondary "I happen to learn abut this during my life" would be really valuable.

8. How to Value YourselfLearning that is not a matter of getting good grades, but learning how to give yourself the opportunity to explore new grounds independently of the judgement of others and maybe sometimes against the judgement is very important.Try also to question, and question, and and put yourself in front of the question forever: "Where the hell am I going, and why am I going there?" It\'s got to be some of the time that I spend if I have an ideal classroom or space ship that I\'m on to, and that I want to use to make my time useful. Where the hell am I going? Trying to answer this question and putting your energies and slotting your time so that you can fulfill it in your lifetime, I think brings great rewards. Not all the time great money, but I don\'t think that\'s the key to living a successful life, or to really learn what is key to survive in any type of situation.

9. How to Communicate EffectivelyLast but not least: How to communicate effectively.I think myself that this is probably the one most important thing and most approachable thing to learn.Spending time learning, mastering, discovering, exploring how to communicate better. To the person next to you, with voice, as well as with the most sophisticated technologies: from video to blog, RSS, P2P, whatever that is.Mastering this allows you not only to live a better life, but to build opportunities for survival, that have been unthinkable of until today.Because tomorrow many of us are going to be teachers, and guides, and many will be paid for doing this. So it\'s not that it is going to be a commercialization of the teacher, but in this world of fast change and of knowledge economy it\'s evident that there is going to be a lot more learning that is going to happen, and it\'s not going to take any place in the classroom.So someone is going to got to go and do it. And unless these people can communicate clearly including showing me the rhythm by doing PU-PU-PA PU-PU-PA-PA instead of telling me, we\'re not going to learn very much.

10. How to Ask Good QuestionsLast and closing.I think we got to learn very well how to do what we just did until now, which is to keep asking ourselves great, fastidious, tremendously fastidious, uncomfortable questions so that we can open new gateways, new doors, new roads, make some mistakes, and find where we really want to go and how to get there.
End of Part 2 (Part 1).

Robin Good Shares the Key Resources For Good Learning - Video
Duration: 23\' 26"

Originally recorded by Vance Stevens for Vance\'s GeekSpeek on February 26, 2009 as "The paradox of 2.0, an EDUPUNK perspective". ...

Social networking sites, e-portfolios, the value of online meetings, and the crisis of newspapers are just some of the hot topics inside this week George Siemens\' Media Literacy Digest.Photo credit: D\'Arcy NormanImpression management is the process through which people try to control the impressions other people form of them. (Source: Wikipedia)Among this week fascinating pointers: How social networks impact the way you introduce yourself to other people?

1. First, your private and public lives are no longer completely separated. They just can\'t be anymore because as the dividing line between them tends to become more and more blurred. A business speech you made and which has now been uploaded to YouTube by one of those attending it, a Flickr photo album with your kids at the beach, a tweet about a new tool you have just discovered, or a business comment you made on Facebook. You\'re not a father anymore, a businessman, a friend, a peer: You\'re all of this together.
2. Secondly, you\'re not the only one that builds up your online presence. Your peers, friends, and maybe even people you don\'t know about, contribute to shape your social profile on the basis of the connections they make with you. Others too, participate in defining and making it known, who you really are.

Whether you are interested in how new technologies are changing our society or in the impact new media have on the educational landscape, each one of these weekly digests provides a consistent set of pointers, facts and resources to stimulate your ability to analyze, anticipate and make greater sense of the changes awaiting us.Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

Social Networking Sites and Social TheoryThe internet, specificallysocial networking tools like Twitter, assaults the boundary between our private and public selves. The many representations of "George" - father, son, brother, employee, friend - move toward one on Facebook. Social networking and social theory explores this blurring of identities through Erving Goffman's (a connection to Manitoba!) work: "front stage" and "back stage" concepts have been a useful way to understand social life. Goffman wrote in 1959 of how we keep certain information private, part of the process of impression management."Impression management is not solely under our control. If you have presented at a conference, commented on a blog, or had someone take an image of you and post (and tag) on Flickr, you exist online. Others participate in defining and broadcasting who we are.

IBM Casestudy of Second LifeIBMreports on aconference held in Second Life (.pdf): "The meeting in Second Life was everything that you could do at a traditional conference - and more - at one fifth the cost and without a single case of jet lag".Benefits reported: reduced cost and increased productivity (i.e. less time traveling to / from conference). The paper discusses how the conference was organized - not exclusively in Second Life, video conferencing / web casts were used as well - and the budget ($80,000).I've been involved in many online conferences over the last few years that have a far greater reach than the several hundred participants mentioned in here. Plus, we've generally done it with a budget of, oh, about $0. Still, it's nice to see organizations experimenting. New experiences sometimes offer their own reward. I know of colleagues who have been teaching a certain subject matter for decades… and when experimenting with blogs or wikis, suddenly find renewed enthusiasm.(via Tom Werner)

Workplace LearningTony Karrersummarizes views ofwhat workplace learning will look like in 10 years… and offers his own:Half of the current members of training departments will still be there. The others will have first jumped into these new departments. These will be the individuals who focus on performance, who get informal / pull learning, and who take the lead on understanding the role of technology.I would predict that this half becomes some kind of management consultant within the next 10 years.I think Tony is right. Organizational learning / training / development must ultimately be focused on capacity building (i.e. the ability of an organization to enact its goals and to adapt and change rapidly as external realities change). The current training and development function must be focused in this direction (and in the process, expand their service to the organization) or L & D will be subsumed by other departments. As I've stated before, learning can no longer exist as a distinct and separate function in an organization

E-portfoliosOf all the tools available for educators, e-portfolios have a pleasant mix of "great potential" and "very low adoption". When combined with Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR), eportfolios can bridge the gap between formal learning and informal learning. The Wired Campus is more effusive: "If we truly want to advance from a focus on teaching to a focus on student learning, then a strategy involving something like electronic student portfolios, or ePortfolios, is essential."

Media and NewsNewspapers are the current topic of interest on many blogs / news sites. Seattle PI announces it will stop publishing a paper-version, to focus on online resources (which it states will be more than only an online newspaper but will serve as a community platform). Then, the State of Newsmedia provides the happily bleak outlook: "Journalism, deluded by its profitability and fearful of technology, let others outside the industry steal chance after chance online. By 2008, the industry had finally begun to get serious. Now the global recession has made that harder" (for more, but equally depressing info, read their 700 page report).Steven Johnson states that the financial crisis has taken what should have been a ten-year evolutionary process and reduced it to a one to two year process. Traditional news can't make the adjustment.Clay Shirkyoffers his views: "Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals." On a side note, this article has been referenced by many blogs. I have yet to encounter one strong critique.If journalism is important, but newspapers aren't, why aren't these so-called new journalists critiquing Shirky's article? At best, it's being referenced by people who agree with Shirky and ignored by those who don't. Zero critical dialogue doesn't hold much promise for "new journalism" as a valuable counter-balance to existing power holders in society. Even the typically cranky are swooning over the article.

Video of University of Calgary PresentationClick the image to go to the videoLast week, I was in Alberta for a series of presentations (in Calgary for ADETA and University of Calgary, and in Edmonton for a full-day workshop with Athabasca University). It was great to meet up with colleagues and friends like D'Arcy Norman, Alec Couros, Norm Vaughan, Terry Anderson, Jon Dron, Cindy Ives, and many others.D'Arcy Norman has posted a video of my presentation at U of C as well as images and links (Thanks D'Arcy!). My intent, and I think I explored too much territory in the talk, was to present how changing information interaction is (will be) mapped into the future of universities.

Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of ScienceClick above to enlarge the imageGoogle founders discovered the value of citations (connections) in pagerank, which was based on Garfield's citation index. Now, armed with better data-crunching capabilities, the same principles of extracting value from exploring connections between articles can be applied on a much larger scale: Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science: "Maps of science resulting from large-scale clickstream data provide a detailed, contemporary view of scientific activity and correct the underrepresentation of the social sciences and humanities that is commonly found in citation data."The data is current provided as images. It would be useful to navigate the resulting "map of science" in an interactive application.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on March 19th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:IBM Casestudy of Second Life - IBMWorkplace Learning - Suprijono SuharjotoE-portfolios - Dana NicolescuMedia and News - Voices.comClickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science - PLoS ONE ...

Do you want to automatically translate all of the pages of your web site into the most popular languages and facilitate foreign visitors get an insight into your content without hiring a pro translator? Here is MasterNewMedia guide to the best tools and services to automatically translate your web site in multiple languages. Photo credit: Guy ErwoodMore than 65% of people around the world don\'t speak English, so having a web site that can be read in multiple languages is crucial if you don\'t want to lose any possible extra traffic. Also, offering your visitors to read your web content is a great way to stand out from your typical competitors. With the tools and services I have selected for you in this guide, you just need to pick your preferred web site translations solution, integrate their code into your web pages and the work is done. In most cases, your web pages will be translated on the fly when a reader will click on the language of his choice.It is also very important to keep in mind that such translations are made automatically, so don\'t expect them to be perfect. They should be intended to provide just a "guide" into your original content, and not certainly a formally correct translated version.So, since there is a plethora of different services to translate your web site, you have to decide first which kind of features you need. Many languages? Advanced customization possibilities? Embeddable widget? Or maybe just using a free solution against a more professional alternative?To help you make the best choice, I have identified some basic criteria you can use to evaluate and select the best automatic web site translation tool for your web site:

• Number of languages: How many languages your web site can be translated into.
• Languages supported: Which languages your web site can be translated into.
• Translated items: Which elements of your web pages are translated (just text, text and image captions, hidden texts...)
• Price: Price of the service, and premium accounts with extended features (if available).
• Widget implementation: Easiness of implementation of the widget inside the source code of your site / blog.

Here all the details:

Best Web Site Translation Tools

1. Google Language Tools
   
   Google Language Tools allows you to translate web pages or texts instantly. The service is completely free, and supports all the principal languages spoken across the World: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, French, Italian, Spanish, and many more. You can add a gadget (Google\'s for widget) to your site pasting just a line of code. Your visitors will then have a drop-down menu where they can choose their mother tongue, and have your content translated automatically (just plain text, no images or hidden texts). About the text translation option, Google Translation Tools has no special character feature, or offers to upload documents from your hard-disk for immediate translation.

   http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en

2. Yahoo! Babel Fish
   
   Yahoo! Babel Fish is a free online tool to translate web pages or blocks of text. Powered by the SYSTRAN translation engine, Yahoo! Babel Fish allows the translation of texts up to 150 words and web pages from and to a very large set of languages (Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and many more.) To take advantage of the translation capabilities of Yahoo! Babel Fish on your site, just choose between two simple one-line-code widgets, depending you need to translate your own web pages or offer your readers to translate third-party web sites or a text of their choice. Translation is performed on plain text only, not images or hidden text.

   http://babelfish.yahoo.com/free_trans_service

3. ConveyThis
   
   ConveyThis is a free translation tool that translates your web site to multiple languages. To let your visitors read your content in their own language, all you need to do is adding one of the themed ConveyThis buttons to the source code of your web site, or grab the free WordPress plugin. Very easy to implement, ConveyThis works with a plethora of languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, and many more), but does not translate other elements in your web pages outside of plain text.

   http://www.conveythis.com/

4. SWeTE
   
   SWeTE (acronym for Simple Website Translation Engine) is a free tool to translate web sites to multiple languages. You can add a small set of flags to the source code of your site / blog, and let users automatically get a version of your web pages in their desired idiom. The SWeTE code is very easy to implement and allows you to further customize the translations rendered on your web site, working also on links, images, or hidden texts. The service currently supports translations from / to English and some of the following languages: Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, and many others.

   http://swete.weblite.ca/

5. Applied Language
   
   Applied Language Solutions offers a translation tool that allows your visitors to translate your web site at a click of a button. Just register to the ALS site, select the language pairs you want to use, and grab the free customizable bar to add to the source code of your web site. Easy implementation, but plain text is translated only. The free solution from Applied Language works with the most spoken languages worldwide. Some examples: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and many more.

   http://www.appliedlanguage.com/trans/start_free_translation.aspx

6. ultimate website translator
   
   ultimate website translator is a free widget you can embed on your web site to have your readers translate your web pages with no effort. Translations available in many languages (Chinese, Japanese, Dutch French, Italian, and Spanish among many others.) ultimate website translator takes advantage of the translation engines of Yahoo! Babelfish, Google Language Tools, GTS, and WorldLingo. The widget though looks very poor (no flags to recognize a language at a first glance), and translation is provided only for the content, no hidden text or images.

   http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/ultimate-website-translator

7. SDL FreeTranslation.com
   
   SDL FreeTranslation.com is a free online translation service that you can use to translate web pages or blocks of text. SDL can convert from English to French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Norwegian via a widget that you can add to your web site after registering to SDL services. The widget is very small and easy to install into your source code, but translates just the text on your web site (no images or hidden text). Speaking of texts, each block can be up to 4-5 pages or about 4,000 to 5,000 words, which is about 8 or 10 pages of a fairly dense document. Worth mentioning is the special character feature that lets you add characters which you don\'t have on your keyboard without changing its layout.

   http://www.sdl.com/en/services/localisation_services/website-translation.asp

8. WorldLingo
   
   WorldLingo is an online language translation tool that allows you to translate texts, documents, web pages or even e-mails from and to a language of your choice. Web sites can be translated by adding a piece of (long) code to your web site which will display the flags of 15 countries. By clicking on a flag, your readers will automatically get a translated version of your page (links included). Different pricing options available, based on geographical packages. Regarding the text feature, just submit the text or files that you need to read in another language and let WorldLingo do the rest. Text translation feature is completely free to use, but the maximum length of the text you can convert is set to 150 words.

   http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products/instant_website_translator.html

9. ArtistScope
   
   ArtistScope is a web site translation service that helps your reader translate your web pages in their mother tongue via a handy drop-down menu placed at the top of your page. More than 25 languages available including: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Turkish, and many others. Easy installation on web sites hosted on Windows servers, such as those using FrontPage extensions with ASP support. ArtistScope works also with Cold Fusion, .NET and PHP but you need to modify your source code accordingly. No hidden text or other elements translated outside of plain text. Free trial avaialable and prices starting from €250 for a limited license.

   http://www.artistscope.com/artistscope_translate.asp

Other Web Site Translation Tools

1. Google Toolbar
   
   The Google Toolbar is another service from Google Language Tools that helps your readers get a translated version of your content in their mother tongue (along many other features). A good strategy to promote their content for software developers and online publishers, may be to provide a link to download the free Google Toolbar with their products or on their web sites, instead of adding a widget or a plugin to their source code. This is just another solution to provide different translated version of your web pages going the easy way. Google Toolbar translates from English into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

   http://toolbar.google.com/

2. ICanLocalize
   
   ICanLocalize is a tool that provides human or machine-based translation for your web site. Available for WordPress, Drupal, and static HTML pages. Installation of ICanLocalize requires you to add additional plugins or play with the code to make the translation facility work properly on your site. The service translates from and to most spoken languages like English, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and many others. Full translation of your content available, but no embeddable widgets. Prices start from 0.7/c per word or $5 per page.

   http://www.icanlocalize.com/website-translation.html

Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 23, 2009 as "How To Automatically Translate A Full Web Site In Multiple Languages: Best Web Site Translation Tools - Mini-Guide". ...

As the whole online advertising landscape struggles with the economic crisis, AdSense is no exception: online publishers are experiencing a persistent drop of ad revenues. But why is this crisis emptying your pockets? To find out, I\'ve brought together for you the best resources and articles to both make greater sense of the reasons causing losses in AdSense revenues and to evaluate effective strategies to compensate the economic downturn.AdSense eCPM Worldwide Trend from January 2007 to January 2009 - Photo credit: Rentabilizar WebSo why AdSense revenues are diving? It\'s dead simple. AdSense is based on contextual, relevant advertisements. Having a huge pool of advertisers allows Google to put ads on your pages that match the specific content of your articles. But since the economic crisis is forcing many advertisers to stop their advertising campaigns, AdSense is no longer capable to provide you with 100% relevant, contextual ads anymore. Less targeted ads result in less clicks. Less clicks, less revenues.The fact that AdSense is no longer able to provide the relevant ads you need, generates a chain reaction where both online publishers and AdSense are defeated:

• AdSense serves you less relevant content for your web site and makes your revenue drop.
• Less money is earned by online publishers, which also reduce the investments on AdWords campaigns.

But don\'t panic. There are still some small precautions you can take to avoid your AdSense revenues hitting the ground. Here are some valuable resources that can help you understand how much this crisis is damaging publishers, and how publishers can defend themselves.Here all the details:

AdSense Problems And The Economic Crisis
How Has the Economic Downturn Impacted My Blogging Earnings?Economic crisis has impacted bloggers very differently depending upon factors such as their blogs topics, the life stage of their blogs and many other factors such as the demographics of their audience.

Are AdSense Publishers' Revenues on a Slippery Slope, or What?For the time being, countless web publishers are getting hit head-on by the "financial crisis" and it's unclear when things will head back up… if ever. Though, what seems to be a must, is web publishers will need to take action to recoup their lost revenues.

Do Lower AdSense Revenues Make You Blue?To fight the financial crisisWall Street has engineered, publishers need to become even more creative in finding ways to stabilize and hopefully increase their revenues, as it may last for months, or even years. We\'re unable to tell now, so publishers must take immediate action.

The World Crisis Is Clearly Visible on AdSense eCPMAdSense eCPM Trend in France from January 2007 to January 2009 - Photo credit: Rentabilizar Web

AdSense eCPM Trend in the United Kingdom from May 2008 to February 2009 - Photo credit: Rentabilizar Web

AdSense eCPM Trend in Spain from December 2007 to December 2008 - Photo credit: Rentabilizar WebSpanish companyRentabilizar Web has graphically visualized the result of a study on the variations of eCPM on its sites during the last two years. The graphs refer to the trends in France, United Kingdom, Spain, and the general situation of eCPM fluctuations inside the Euro Zone.

AdSense Publishers in The Financial CrisisThe financial crisis will damage AdSense, but how dramatic the impact will be can't currently be said. What is certain, is publishers are unable to influence the negative advertiser trend, but some precautions might be taken to make sure that ads give the advertiser a high ROI.

AdSense Revenues Increase But Publishers Keep LessOn January 22nd, 2009 Google filed their 2008 Annual report which includes information for the 4th quarter of 2008. AdSense publishers will find these information interesting to make sense of the crisis of revenues.

AdSense Revenue Drop: Diagnosing The Possible CausesThe reasons for AdSense revenue fluctuations can vary a great deal, and learning which variables and factors should be monitored, can be of extreme value to any web publisher seeking greater sustainability and higher revenues.

The Effect of The Global Financial Crisis to AdSense and Affiliate Marketing and to Other Forms of Internet Advertising and Internet MarketingDespite the crisis, there is no reason for you to give up on your web site. If you are a blogger, continue blogging, develop your niche, and post relevant articles. Sooner or later advertisements will come, and maybe the ones that are relevant to your posts.

The Crisis Comes to Google AdSenseGoogle AdSense suffers like any other advertising service from the economic downturn. But in the short to medium term, due to its huge pool of advertisers and publishers, AdSense is also the service which is likely to cope with the crisis more effectively.

Google Reassures AdSense Publishers via EmailOn October 31st, 2008 Google sent all AdSense publishers a reassuring e-mail. While admitting the negative impact the economic crisis was having on online advertising they said they would work to boost publishers revenues.

AdSense Earnings Down?Many webmasters blame Google for increasing the negative effects of the economic crisis with its smart pricing, a feature that lets Google automatically evaluate the worth of clicks on your site ("advertisers don\'t gain as much ROI when paying for generic clicks as they do for quality clicks that come from interest in your content." - Source: Inside AdSense)

Forum Discussions
Is The Global Crisis a Threat to AdSense Publishers?From the forum: "Traffic is down a bit, CTR is down more, but average EPC is higher than I\'ve seen it in years. Overall, my answer would be "Yes, but things could be worse." "

Financial Crisis Affecting Adsense Earnings?Recession is causing serious damage (even more than 50% in some cases) to AdSense publishers earnings. From the forum: "Comparing October 2008 numbers to June the value of each click is down 75% for us."

Are You Noticing a Decrease in AdSense Revenue?From the forum: "[On November 2008] the early days do not look promising. Not at all. Free fall for total revenue and eCPM seems to have accelerated where I would have expected a slowdown. Now I am seeing figures that make me think of removing AdSense completely."

Financial Crisis Taking Heavy Toll on AdSense?From the forum: "[My eCPM on August 2008] has been a rollercoaster. $18 one day, $58 the next. [On July 2008] there were swings but not anywhere near like that. I think how bad you\'ll get hit depends on your niche."

Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 25th, 2009 as "AdSense Problems And The Economic Crisis: Guide To Making Sense Of Lost Online AdSense Revenues". ...

New education paradigms suggest you get rid of all pre-packaged, fixed approaches in learning, and develop your skills to adapt to as many different needs and situations as possible. Learning to be flexible has indeed become a key resource.Photo credit: Aleksandr Ugorenkov"[...] give up the idea that competence must exist within the person and expand our view that whenever possible it should be built into the situation - Gloria Gery"Back in 2004, Jay Cross already championed a different learning approach. He observed that while in the old days you just had to play a fixed role and follow a precise path, in 21th Century you "perform without a script. Everything\'s impromptu".That\'s what you need to realize. Your skills, what you need to do, is not to specialize in something, and follow the same modus operandi for the rest of your life. The real competence you want to learn is instead to harmonize yourself with different contexts, just as a fluid adapts its shape to the container it\'s poured.Here\'s Jay Cross sharing his original view:

Improv Educationby Jay Cross
IntroAll the world\'s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"The first wave of e-learning brochures invariably touted the benefits of focusing on the learner. Schools and classes had always been organized for the convenience of the faculty-one size fits all. In the e-era, learners received personalized instruction - just what they needed, just when they needed it. It was "learner-centric." But there\'s a problem with this approach. Walk into the sales department, the warehouse, the call center or the executive suite, talk with the people there, and you know what you\'ll discover? The members of the organization are known as "workers." They are blue-collar workers, knowledge workers, hourly workers, commission-only workers and contractors doing work-for-hire. Nobody calls them "learners."

Old Education Paradigm: Play a Fixed RoleThe rhetoric about learners lulled us into thinking that the job was to prepare individual learners. In the real world, superior performance more often results from the efforts of coordinated teams of workers who work well with customers. As Abraham Maslow famously said, "Give a kid a hammer, and every problem looks like a nail." In our case, it\'s, "Call them learners instead of workers, and every solution looks like blended learning."Executives don\'t see it this way at all. Have you ever read a proposal for a major project that didn\'t list executive support as a prerequisite to success? Want to know what will grab the attention of any executive? Execution. Getting the job done. Performance.Now, to the confusion of executives and CLOs alike, the very nature of performance is changing. In the old days, corporations hired people to play roles. Job descriptions contained stage directions. Training taught workers their lines. The costume was a blue blazer, or perhaps a gray flannel suit. The cast was composed of repertory actors, performing the same show with the same colleagues, one performance after another. An actor often stayed with the same show for an entire career, receiving a gold watch and a pension following the final curtain call. Those days are long gone.

New Education Paradigm: Adapt Your CompetencesToday\'s workers perform without a script. Everything\'s impromptu. Stage cues come from the audience in real time. Costumes? The dress code may be pajamas if you work from home. Rewards go to innovators who deviate from the expected. Success is measured by the take at the box office instead of seniority or past performances.Training was appropriate when actors memorized their lines. Today, it\'s OK to read from cue cards - you can\'t know everything. Good props help make a show great. As Gloria Gery pointed out long ago, it\'s time to "give up the idea that competence must exist within the person and expand our view that whenever possible it should be built into the situation."Instructional design purists say, "Information is not instruction." So what? If information helps me become a better performer, just tell me. Don\'t insist that I take an entire course. If I can add more value with a better connection to the \'Net, a subscription to a reference service or a direct line to the local expert, then give it to me. Give me a way to do my job better - I don\'t care whether or not you call it instruction.

The Improv ExampleTheImprov home page reports that the most popular form of improv today "is \'spot\' improv, in which performers get suggestions from their audience and use them to create short, entertaining scenes. No matter where or how it\'s performed, the essential ingredient in any improvisational performance is that the audience and the actors are working together to create theatre."When workers are actors, and customers the audience, CLOs must be more than drama coaches. They must prepare cast members to be agile, spontaneous and innovative. They must coax the audience into playing its part. CLOs must focus on optimizing the process of workers and customers performing together. The play\'s the thing. The show must go on. After all, life is not a dress rehearsal.

Originally written by Jay Cross and first published on Chief Learning Officer Magazine on September 1, 2004 as "Improv Education".

About the authorJay Cross is a champion of informal learning, Web 2.0, and systems thinking. He served as CEO of eLearning Forum for its first five years and has keynoted major conferences in the U.S. and Europe. He is the author of Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance. Jay Cross currently helps teams apply informal / Web 2.0 learning approaches to foster collaboration and accelerate performance. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

Photo credits:Old Education Paradigm: Play a Fixed Role - Paweł PacholecNew Education Paradigm: Adapt Your Competences - Dmitry Bairachnyi ...