Dave’s Whiteboard

Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have said, “Never confuse motion with action.” That advice bubbled up this morning as I was browsing online, musing on posts I found in my NetVibes reader.

I’ve been working on my own lately, rather than as part of a team, and so online exchanges are a major channel for professional information, insight, and challenge. Just today, a Stephen Downes link led me to this post on Rob Wall’s Open Monologue.

He talks about the torrent of information available to anyone, and stress that it’s a river, not a reservoir. “I don’t need to worry about collecting and hoarding [information] because I might need it someday. With a river, I can go to it as often as possible and take what I need. ”

When I was around 12 years old, I thought I’d collect coins — after all, I had a paper route, and got all kinds of change every week. But as I started filling in my U. S. penny album, I did some research. I learned that certain pennies, like the 1909 S VDB, cost over a thousand dollars.

I didn’t think one of those would turn up in my weekly take. I dropped this short-lived hobby.

With information, the “price” is a matter of time, availability, and value to you. Participating in a community of practice involves engaging with that community. But as Steven Wright noted, “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” So for me, treating what’s available as a river — something flowing, something continuous — is helpful. I don’t need to master everything in the river any more than I needed to read everything in the library.

The second part of Wall’s comment makes sense as well: I have to go to the river. And just as it’s possible to sit idly on the bank, watching the water stream past, it’s possible to noodle away an hour or six just reading online.

Nothing wrong with that, but it overlooks advice from the Dick and Jane books of my childhood. I might be thinking about what I’m reading, at least while I’m reading it, but I’m not doing anything.

In fact, the advice may be backward. The key may be to do, and then to think. (Maybe both versions are true, but I’m on a rhetorical roll.)

At the start of the year, I thought about what this blog has done for me. I decided that the oftener I post (short of posting for the sake of making a post), the more conscious I am of issues, ideas, and notions. And in the last month or so, I find I get the most benefit from my reader by doing two things: clicking three links out, and commenting.

By “three links out,” I mean following a chain of ideas and references. If Cammy Bean posts a link to Cathy Moore, Cathy’s posted a link to Tom Kuhlmann.

That’s a simple example, moving from instructional design to presenting information. Often three links out will take me to unexpected places, like the surprisingly engrossing conversation you can have with the right stranger during a long flight.

As for the commenting, that’s another part of doing, and probably the beginning of thinking. When I comment, I’m accepting an invitation to join in a conversation. I think the act of commenting is part of the learning process. I don’t want to leave just a “great idea” comment; I want to say what was great, what was happening for me, what I know or what I’ve heard that might relate.

Thanks to Jay Cross’s Internet Time Wiki, a link to a 1999 National Research Council report: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School.

From the executive summary:

As a result of the accumulation of new kinds of information about human learning, views of how effective learning proceeds have shifted from the benefits of diligent drill and practice to focus on students’ understanding and application of knowledge…

Major sections of the report include:

• Learners and learning
  • How experts differ from novices
  • Learning and transfer
  • How children learn
  • Mind and brain
• Teachers and teaching
  • The design of learning environments
  • Effective teaching (examples from history, math, and science)
  • Teacher learning
  • Technology to support learning
• Future directions for the science of learning

The report is 8 years old. Sadly, I doubt much has happened to change one gloomy conclusion: “Much of what constitutes the typical approach to formal teacher professional development is antithetical to what promotes teacher learning.”

After a false start with a competing product, I’m happily using the Jabra BT500 Bluetooth headset with my cell phone.

I’m not big on talking while in the car (especially since I have a 5-speed), but I’ve been making two-hour drives lately. The headset allows me to receive the (rare) incoming call.

Then, earlier today, I read this post at Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project. The post told me about Jott, a service that turns voicemail into email.

Since I’m even worse at writing notes in the car than I am at dialing the phone, I really like the idea of being able to record a short message to myself and have that message show up as email.

I registered on the site, confirmed my email, indicated the phone number I’d use, and then called Jott from the cell phone to send myself a message.

There are other features, like creating a list of people so that you can record a single message and send it to all those on the list. There are probably others, but the key for me was: could I send a message to myself using the headset?

Yep.

Christy Tucker’s links the other day the other day included WikiMatrix, a site for comparing, choosing, and discussing wikis. It includes a wizard to help you decide which wikis to consider.

Of course, WikiMatrix is a wiki itself, so you can contribute to its resources.

The New York Times asks, “How sticky is membership on Facebook?”

It seems Facebook “is still trying to find a way to monetize its popularity.” That translates to making it extremely difficult to have all your data disappear when you leave.

I sent the club a wire stating,
“Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

– Groucho Marx

Facebook’s not using Marxist thinking. One disgruntled user has described 2504 Steps to Clpsing Your Facebook Account.

Apparently Facebook didn’t hear its members clearly enough after the Beacon fiasco.