Learning is basically a double work, to understand why the world is at it is based on what people did and found. It cannot be based on a snapshot of current status.

It’s very interesting what declared at “Twitter tool could help educators” as it shows how the education process is changing, due to modern technologies.
No doubt, learning is much more effective and fun now that students have the Net and all the modern collaboration tools: finding information and even knowledge sharing is much more easy than in previous times.

But let’s see it the opposite way.
This continuous information flow can hide the relevant and make all the synthesis process even harder, as students have access to information sources but are lacking of knowledge aggregators.
That’s why Need4Feed came up as help to filter the mass, … but it cannot do it the way educated men do.

Yesterday I had another dialogue with a master student asking for my judgement on trends in marketing theory. We contacted me as he saw all my contributions and links and thought I could give him some suggestions on books to read.
This is the obvious question of someone searching for synthesis and facing a lot of information and having no clue to understand its real meaning and value.

That is our current flow of information on Twitter (and others).
And IMHO no software can provide what’s useful for education. Mainly if that “elaborates” something which is mainly news for updating and not information for educating.
The education collaboration could be the right medium, as humans interact with other humans in sharing content for education.
But that’s another issue, still in testing phase and without a practical business model to come to reality.

Even if I use automatic systems, I’m facing the big dilemma on how can I efficiently follow more than 6,600 people online: it seems impossible, but it’s not.

I “physically” entered the social networks exactly one year ago.
I already had a few profiles on some of them, but on Oct. 6th 2008 I started managing 13 profiles on 13 social platforms (you can see an almost complete list at http://mario.soavi.com).
After a couple of months I concentrated on three of them (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn), which are now “my social presence” on the web.
All my “social activity” (I brought here a lot of the email activity I was doing) let me have now more than 6,600 net contacts on social networks.

Now, that’s a problem.
If you don’t consider the contact list as a popularity index (which is not) and you wish to have a “real” social activity, so many contacts are a big problem.
In fact, taking into considerations the statistics at “The Inside Numbers on Twitter“, following 6,600 people means reading an average of 2,442 messages per day, which are (if we make it simple and imagine they are only 140-character tweets) nearly 228 pages of unorganized, time-scattered and often uninteresting texts.

Well, obviously any platform has its characteristics and I use those three as I have three different goals to perceive.
And that’s the main clue one should use: find your goal, focus your activity, gather your consequences, rate the content, read the most relevant based on a semantic screening of all (well, the latest is rather an exclusive way I use).

But one cannot just sit back and read; s/he has to originally contribute to the information flow, trying to share knowledge.
So here come all the redemption data one could retrieve from the networks (RTs on Twitter and comments on Facebook and page views on LinkedIn) which, put together, will allow to understand if one is “in” or “out” the flow and if one’s original contribution is valuable or not.

Simple?
Time consuming, but very effective.

What to know more?
Ask me

The problem of contextual learning is strictly linked to another issue: response to current situation.

On Online Spin for Thursday, January 29, 2009, Dave Morgan wrote “It’s impossible to avoid the constant flow of news, criticism and finger-pointing related to the financial crisis. [...] In a discussion on this topic yesterday with a close friend of mine, we were speculating how the country’s business schools were coping with this crisis. Certainly, many of them have suffered significant losses in their portfolios. Of course, many of them may also be seeing record numbers of applications as laid-off workers and jobless recent college grads look to business schools for a two-year respite from the crisis. But most importantly, how many business school leaders are looking past these two looming issues and asking themselves the really hard question, which is: Where did they go wrong in training the last generation of business leaders? [...]”

In my opinion the current is a moment when the learning systems should stop and rethink its nature:

• the system is still based on what set by European Jesuits in 1800, when books were rare and only high class people could be educated; now education is formally available to everybody and books are less important due to the “big library”, the Internet;
• courses are centrally set and rarely revised on the current social and economical situation; we have to admit that all schools and colleges are settled in our global system and should react to it, leaving behind the “educational standardization” that is more negative than positive;
• Dave’s question should make us realize that social, intercultural and ethical knowledge should be more important than standard educational knowledge. It’s true that you cannot understand the first without knowing the last one, but the system shouldn’t stress on the last one leaving the real understanding of the first one to personal or to specialized education.

To make a personal example, I waited my 21st year and second year in college to understand the Medieval times, with all the relevant links to West and East European and Muslim cultural collision. But, still, nobody went on telling me how all that could have a link to current cultural impact.
And that’s not due to the fact I was educated in Italy.

PS: great John Robb’s post on the same issue:
“Education, in its current form is an admixture of industrial and artisan processes. While the quantities of product (graduates) produced and the facilities resemble industrial processes, the actual production is most closely akin to artisanship (with guilds, no less!). Regardless, this process has become an albatross of cost and stagnating quality. For example, costs for collegiate education have increased 4.39 times faster than inflation over the past three decades and has now eclipsed affordability for most households (median incomes have stagnated during this same period) with no appreciable improvement in the quality of graduates. Worse, there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree. Since nearly all of the value of an education has been extracted by the producer, to the detriment of the customer, this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade.
Fortunately, with the implosion of this bubble, the opportunity to introduce improvements will emerge. The most interesting of these improvements is the ability of collaborative online education to replace much, if not most of in person teaching.”

The main point is not (as anybody would say) the “new” opportunity to free lectures (instead of paying $50K/year in class). The issue that struck me was the use of “context” related to “lectures”, arguing that only in class one can get the most of it.
I see that the opposite way:

• I was educated a few decades ago, when information was not available the way it is now through the Web;
• I had to search for it on books, either buying them or reading them in libraries;
• I just finished lecturing in one of the local universities, seeing that:
  • the students mainly used digital information and I myself used much of it as references in my lectures;
  • but the nature of these references were on current issues, practical cases, examples, thoughts, opinions, news, … a lot of information tightly linked to the current moment, to today’s issues, … a lot distant from all information one could get from books (that naturally do have month’s delays from the current moment);
• so my opinion was:
  • the class I was lecturing in was merely a practical location where students were gathering to listen;
  • any other reason (i.e. research) was linked to the ability of the university or the lecturer to link its speech to outside context (either inviting companies to let students work on their projects in the campus or letting students have a learning stage in companies).

My personal conclusions are those:

• education is half information and half experience transmission: the first part could be gathered by using the Web, the second part could be achieved by interacting in professional networks;
• the real contextual education (now that specialization is extremely important) has a logic if only companies start to lecture within their organizations, to get the ability they need from the people they choose;
• maybe we all should go back to ancient Medieval times, when headmasters were lecturing their juniors, who could start their experience with hard work and could eventually start their own activity as soon as their ability was ready to let them do their way.

Welcome to online lecturing: it that is another universities’ marketing activity I fear it will develop into the start of a new way of educating our children, one that is potentially current and needs only those contents to become reality.

http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/management/e3iea611acf871335b6445df43da1889bcc

When you harness the energy of healthy anxiety you can help yourself and your organization successfully ride the waves of change.

Imbrigliando l’energia positiva dell’ansietà, può aiutare il manager e la sua organizzazione a cavalcare con successo l’onda del cambiamento.

Uno dei partner di MarComm.info tiene la terza edizione di un corso di scenario sul webmarketing.

Il corso è rivolto a chiunque voglia conoscere l’argomento ed averne una visuale non meramente pratica ma che inquadri la pratica nello scenario della realtà d’oggi. Il vantaggio di questo approccio è che chi assiste esce con una serie di nozioni e capacità di associazione che permettono di affrontare il WebMarketing con una consapevolezza che va ben al di là della conoscenza superficiale di alcune sigle di moda. Proprio per questa ragione non è richiesta alcuna preparazione precedente sull’argomento, ma è essenziale da parte dei partecipanti una disponibilità ed un’apertura mentale a comprendere logiche di business non consuete.

Saranno trattati i seguenti temi:
- lo scenario accesso/distribuzione/pubblicità/contenuti su Internet/radio/tv/stampa/outdoor/mobile;
- la “New Economy”;
- One-to-One, Misurazione, Sviluppo Virale, Flusso Informativo, Integrazione;
- le tendenze per il Web Marketing.

Il corso è organizzato da TP – Associazione Italiana Pubblicitari Professionisti e si terrà il giorno 13 marzo 2008 dalle 09:30 alle 17:30 a Milano.

Maggiori dettagli sono disponibili a http://www.associazione-tp.it o telefonando al 02.858628.

http://www.adgabber.com/video/video/show?id=546804%3AVideo%3A23998

Anthro professor Mike Wesch has perfected his text-based thesis on the evolution of the word, technology and ourselves in Web 2.0.

Mike Wesch, antropologo, ha perfezionato questa tesi testuale sull’evoluzione della parola, della tecnologia e nostra nel Web 2.0.

Il 22 marzo UCSI e TP, Unione Cattolica della Stampa Italiana e Associazione Italiana Pubblicitari Professionisti, organizzano un incontro molto particolare, unendo in un grande calderone responsabili ed esperi di comunicazione giornalistica e pubblicitaria del settore pubblico e privato.
Anticipiamo alcuni aspetti del seminario con Alberto Comuzzi, giornalista e presidente lombardo dell’Unione Cattolica Stampa Italiana.
Qual è il vostro obiettivo? “Le sembrerà eccentrico, ma l’unico vero obiettivo che con gli amici di Tp abbiamo da subito condiviso quando, ormai due anni fa abbiamo cominciato a dialogare, è quello di unire le persone che vivono di comunicazione.
Viviamo in una curiosa società nella quale ogni categoria, ogni gruppo o comunità è avviluppata a se stessa.
Siamo così calati nei nostri mondi autoreferenziali d’avere praticamente perso il senso critico.
Ci citiamo addosso pronti a vedere negli altri i difetti, ma non ci interroghiamo mai sui nostri.
Proprio noi, comunicatori di professione, che dovremmo essere ipercritici, a cominciare da noi stessi, finiamo per seguire le esperienze ormai collaudate e proprio per questo anche le più logore”.
Pensate che possa essere uno stimolo di dialogo tra realtà e persone diverse? “È proprio ciò che ci aspettiamo.
La presenza di colleghi – ci piace definirli così – impegnati in istituzioni e apparati dello Stato come i Carabinieri, l’Aeronautica Militare, la Guardia di Finanza, i Vigili del fuoco, assumono un rilievo importante e, ci pare, innovativo.
Diciamocelo con franchezza: il nostro mondo, quello della comunicazione, ha troppo spesso irriso le istituzioni dando di loro immagini sovente parziali.
Il fatto di vedere, in carne ed ossa, uomini con le stellette che con la loro stessa divisa annunciano i valori di cui sono portatori dovrebbe aiutare a far cadere qualche pregiudizio e, ce lo auguriamo, a superare dannosi stereotipi.
Ci piacerebbe che la nostra iniziativa aiutasse a far conoscere meglio i tanti attori della comunicazione”.
È la funzione sociale della comunicazione che vi interessa esaltare.
Ma è possibile che questa sia perseguita da singoli professionisti, anche nel caso ciò non coincida con gli obiettivi primari richiesti dalle rispettive organizzazioni? “Le nostre sigle UCSI e TP si sostanziano se dentro ci sono persone con cuori che pulsano e cervelli che brillano.
Non c’è dubbio che le organizzazioni hanno una maggiore forza aggregante se propongono delle iniziative rispetto ad un singolo professionista.
Anche se non è sempre possibile avere un’esatta coincidenza tra le aspettative del singolo e gli obiettivi generali dell’organizzazione in cui opera, è pur vero che quando le istanze personali (leggi, per esempio, i valori veri in cui una persona crede) rappresentano punti di vista largamente condivisi, gli obiettivi del singolo diventano realtà”.
Quest’incontro segue il convegno del giugno scorso, quando avete messo giornalisti e pubblicitari a confronto con esponenti della Chiesa Cattolica.
Non vi pare di esagerare, mettendo sul tavolo valori forse troppo alti rispetto a quelli di uso quotidiano? “No.
I valori cui tendiamo sono la genuinità, la sincerità, la semplicità, per citare quelli su cui la riflessione comune è più avanzata.
Si tratta di istanze avvertite oramai da molti comunicatori.
Non possiamo fallire perché sta diventando patrimonio acquisito comune che la comunicazione sia costretta a ritornare virtuosa.
È nell’aria, da tempo, e solo i più sprovveduti non si accorgono che in giro c’è grande desiderio di freschezza, di autenticità, di acqua che disseta e non di bollicine che illudono…Insomma le coscienze si stanno risvegliando dal loro torpore.
Un comunicatore che non avverte questo nuovo clima è destinato a fallire nella sua professione”.
Un’ultima domanda.
Negli ultimi tempi giornalisti e pubblicitari sono stati più spesso su sponde contrapposte, anche con tensioni molto alte.
Perché voi cercate il dialogo, con che obiettivi e, soprattutto, con che prospettive? “È vero: i mondi dell’informazione e dell’informazione commerciale si sono a lungo osteggiati.
Errore clamoroso, da parte di entrambi.
Il punto è proprio questo: se è vero che i giornalisti intendono “servire” onestamente il cittadino/lettore attraverso un’informazione corretta e veritiera e se è vero che i pubblicitari intendono “servire” il consumatore in modo altrettanto onesto e veritiero, non si vede perché si debba rivaleggiare, tanto più che tutti siamo contemporaneamente cittadini e consumatori.
È dalle sinergie che nascono le grandi opere.
Pubblicità e informazione sono complementari.
Un po’ come il rapporto d’amore: basato sulla competizione è destinato a finire, sulla complicità ad irrobustirsi”.

Mario Soavi