Thoughts on Google Maps changes and use in MOOCs

A few years back, I was a big fan of using custom Google maps.  I made a few, including ones for my employer at the time and to record things such as walks and day-trips:

Paris day trip map

Recently, if you made such maps in the past, you will have seen them appear in your Google Drive (obviously that is if you use Google Drive as well).  This makes sense in that the custom maps tool was one of those Google hid away a bit and it was not obvious from the standard Google Maps that they were possible.  Indeed I had probably presumed that my custom ones had died/been retired in one of Google’s purges of services, possibly when the Google Maps UI changed.

The latest MOOC I have signed up for are making use of the Google Tool to compile a map of participants.  This is a nice idea but immediately raises a number of issues with the use of Google/public tools in communities/courses:

  1. Something as important as personal address is, at best, riskily shared on a public site – I would be happy to put the town centre of where I live but probably not the exact Google Map location.  Sure, someone can probably get this information easily enough but for personal ID fraud I wouldn’t want to post my exact location.  I would be more willing to do this in a traditional online course when you get to know the majority of your cohort and faculty (as I did with my MSc).
  2. The instructions given for populating the map don’t actually appear to work for me.  It looks like they have been compiled for ‘classic’ maps and the new UI doesn’t work the same.  If I cant work out how to do it in the new model I doubt many others can (although the map is well populated).  I did try adding the classic maps suffix to the URL but that has not helped.  Potentially an example of the risks of using non institutional tools that may change out of your control and no longer be suitable.
  3. Predictably, there seems to be a certain amount of spam listings for shops and the like, although this might be participants putting up less open posts (due to concerns such as mine in point 1).

Overall, I remain a huge advocate of open and free tools over building in house or over engineering.  However, in this case it doesn’t not seem like Google Maps was the best option.

Explaining my tweet on those two tweets

Don’s original post (link in the tweet above) brings together two tweets that, as he says, nicely summarize the state of L&D.  My tweet’s comment around the difference between L&D and external ‘training’ really comes from my own background – having moved from working for a training provider in the HE space to L&D.

I think we need to a much better job, as learning (technology) professionals working in different sectors to explain the value in continuous learning via:

  • day to day work activities (that will happen anyway and L&D can help support develop unconscious learning)
  • specific learning activities (with their added value of being a distinct activity away from work and often with some form of accreditation)
  • personal learning networks (for many graduates these will start to be built at university and everyone in formal/informal learning roles should be supporting PLN development by our people).  I would argue reflection is key in this, making people aware of their unconscious learning and adding value for others by communicating around this learning.

In 2015 we need to ensure the above all continue to develop and learning professionals support them appropriately to stay relevant.

Microsoft Sway: first impressions and possible uses

I first mentioned Sway back in October when I requested access.

Well, I’ve had access for a week or so now and have been able to spend about an hour on it.  First impressions:

Pros

  • it does what it is says it aims to, being an easy design tool for authoring/converting documents into a more appealing format
  • the inclusion of options to import Creative Commons licensed media are nice – it might be of most use for schools in keeping pupils away from images they should not be copying
  • offers a more web friendly format than the traditional document (to Flash) conversion tools, Yudu having been my tool of choice in the past
  • options between document forms (one of the promoted examples here) and more of a pinboard style (my first Sway embedded below).

Cons

  • private/public limit for published content realistically limits corporate use beyond marketing or personal use for presentations
  • still beta speed at times whilst it searches, imports, etc.
  • advanced search options would be appreciated when looking for content
  • clearly is deliberately limited in options, to the point where you suspect “oh that’s a Sway” will be a phrase that becomes as common as “well its a Prezi just for the sake of it”
  • my one attempt of an import (from an old PPT file) doesn’t seem to have worked very well – although there would be scope for tidying it up it seems like text and imagery should be imported separately
  • I have been using it on a Mac where you have other options such as iBooks – there’s no doubt a full comparison piece to be done, albeit it a tricky one as Sway develops.

Overall, yet another example of a tool the industry would see as ‘productivity’ (the excellent Mary Jo Foley’s thoughts are here) but certainly has capacity for learning uses.
https://sway.com/s/OP4b1UXKafYRJqFx/embed

Here comes 2015 – implications for L&D

My last two posts looked at some of the recent reports around L&D and some possible future learning technology trends.

Catching up today on my Old Reader RSS feedshas thrown up a multitude of other points related to both of these (as tends to always be the case).  Of the more interesting ones:

A survey by CEB

Donald Taylor’s 2015 L&D priorities

  • What will be big in workplace learning 2015 vote
  • My idea for the evolution of peer learning really cuts across KM, curation and collaborative learning but I think it will be key – we need to make peers open to each other and avoid the feeling that attempts to ‘move up the ladder’ lead to risk adversity.  Organizational cultures need to be doing a better job of rewarding those who support organizational development, not just those in money making roles.

Patents show the way forward for the learning landscape?

One entertaining approach to future gazing is keeping an eye on what is happening with patents. I’m never sure how much value they really add to my current awareness but it is interesting what pops up.

These curious beasts have made headlines a few times in recent years, not least in ed tech/learning technology circles when Blackboard took the battle to D2L.  More recently, I’ve most commonly heard them discussed in relation to the mobile phone industry, including contributing considerably to the value of Motorola (twice) and Nokia.

Now I must admit I do not remember the specifics, but when at Information School one of the careers talks from alumni was around a career in patents.  I remember being perplexed and not particularly enthralled by the careers described.  As has become the case with mobile phones, they seem (to the untrained eye) an increasingly petty tool used in corporate legal battles.  New Zealand, for example, has banned software patents and many supporters of open source software will support the advantages it offers over this route.

One criticism around patent wars, not least in Blackboard’s case, was the use of patents describing potentially universal uses of technology that should not be restricted to use by whoever got to the patent office first.  Some recent examples touch upon similar ground:

  1. Instructional design and development interface (Pearson Inc).  A sensible idea in seemingly looking to bring together LCMS, authoring tools, publishing and other functionality.  However, on the surface, this has crossovers with tools such as Xyleme and LAMS.  Overall, there is probably a need for something like this, if you buy in to the need for ‘courses’ and related materials continuing, the tool itself hinting towards the continuing struggles of organizations to manage IP and publish course materials quickly,
  2. System and method for providing answers to questions (IBM).  Suspect that we may see more of this kind of thing, effectively smart tools to further improve information retrieval and replace the need for intermediaries, such as Q&A services.  These are the kind of inventions people are thinking about when they say knowledge workers face mass redundancy – just imagine how much time you’d save if your corporate systems always found you the answer you were looking for 😉
  3. Thinking your knowledge/L&D job is safe as people will always need help using these systems?  Then maybe think again: Techniques for automatic generation of instruction-set documentation (Synopsys, Inc.).  You just have to hope for the inventors that the instructional material developed is easier to understand than the legalese of the patent report: “a plurality of rules grouped by common convergent instructions. Each rule describes an instruction path through the hierarchical structure that converges at a corresponding convergent instruction”.
  4. Finally for this random selection the very grand sounding: “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENHANCING INTERACTIVE ONLINE LEARNING TECHNOLOGY” (LoudCloud Systems).  Which effectively sounds like a tool to automatically produce xml documents in a repository from source material?

Reminds me of the film title: “The Future Is Unwritten”.