eLearning or e-Learning vs. learning

Thanks to Big Dog, Little Dog saw an article/post from Donald Taylor on Training Zone - It's Time to Drop E-Learning - a horrible title given that the author is only calling for dropping the "e" from the front of the term. I found a few things interesting about the article:

I would have to register to leave a comment, thus, I'm posting instead. Likely they won't have trackbacks. So, people who read the article probably won't find this information.

There's been a LOT of discussion around this topic and related topics. While the author cites a few related pieces of information, they don't point to various sources on the same topic and consider what they have to say...

• eLearning or Learning? - More to It
• Is it e-Learning or eLearning?
• E-Learning: Will We One Day Lose the E?
• Is the Term ‘eLearning’ Going to Become Extinct?
• The end of "e"-Learning!!Europe’s E-Learning Industry Group Revamped, Renamed

As I said back in May 2007 -

Do a search for "drop the e" elearning and you'll get 74 results, but there are literally thousands more out there. Including an earlier article from CLO itself: What's in a Name? and a post by me: What to Call Ourselves and Our Industry?

In terms of specific content - Donald argues -

The ‘e’ in e-learning is all about delivery. Gutenberg didn’t rave about the b-learning his printed books provided; I’ve never heard a lecturer enthuse on v-learning for voices, so why the ‘e’? Even as the concept of e-learning was being slowly re-habilitated in the Learning and Development profession, the term itself was still flawed.

And, he's right that the "e" is about delivery. Of course, the terms "email" and "ecommerce" seem to be fine. And these certainly are delivery based terms.

Donald also discusses that eLearning is associated with cost cutting measures. I would agree that we need to move people beyond that. Especially with the potential value offered with the network effects in eLearning 2.0. Just as email and ecommerce open new possibilities, so does eLearning.

Donald tells us:

Too many see e-learning as yesterday’s fad.

I would tend to agree with this, but without another term such as eLearning 2.0 or something like ePerformance to describe the broader mix of solutions, then we are better off trying to refine the meaning of the term than we are to drop the "e" and hope that people understand what we are talking about.

Interestingly, Donald suggests we get rid of the term, but doesn't suggest an alternative. Get people to start using an alternative, and I think you've got something. But just suggesting to get rid of the term is not all that helpful.

Tracking Social Media for Possible Confidentiality Violations

Found via FastFoward blog -Attention Business Bloggers: Big Brother is Watching
- Techrigy is a new start-up that focuses on:

Real–time social media management for enterprises with SM2.

As blogs and wikis spread throughout enterprises, organizations must deal with compliance and risk-management issues that are created from communications through these media. Not only are employees communicating through these media at work, but they are also doing so at home. Is your organization aware of what employees are communicating through blogs and wikis? Are communications through these media that are affiliated with the organization or company being monitored for liability risks and being retained in case of litigation?

Techrigy’s SM2 is an enterprise–level management tool that helps organization control and monitor blogs and wikis that employees are utilizing. SM2 discovers and inventories all blogs and wikis being used in an organization, records these communications and monitors them for risks and liabilities.

SM2 can help your organization implement and utilize social media by providing a tool for monitoring these media and enforcing your organization's compliance policies.

Yes, that's right it watches what employees do to try to determine if there are risks. At first, this might seem like a really bad thing, and I'm sure that Stephen Downes won't be happy. On the other hand, it may help address the common objection that is often raised by organizations around this very topic. I personally don't think this is different than email or IM. Anything put in an email can possibly be leaked out. If anything email can be worse. Of course, you can't see what people are putting in their personal email right, so at least you have more visibility.

Reading More - But Differently

Several bloggers have picked up on a BBC News Piece - 'More reading' than in 1970s. The report's main point is that reading as a whole and reading of books has gone up:

One of the researchers, at Manchester's school of social sciences, Dale Southerton, said there was a popular perception that people were reading less but all reading had gone up, reading books had gone up the most - and there were 17% more people reading them.

One of the more interesting posts about this comes from Ewan McIntosh - We're reading more than ever before - no surprise for bloggers?. He first points out that he as well reads more books than before. But, also adds:

The thing is, I get just as much quality and enjoyable material from my blog browsing on the old feedreader as I do from the printed books I get stuck into (and have to pay for). Some of those even have their own blogs, with development of the content taken further. Many of the books I read are also ones sprung from the writing of a blog I've followed for a while.

I think that most people who regularly read blogs and even more so if you write a blog, you find that you start to read differently including when you read a book. Probably the two biggest differences are:

• Skim to find interesting content and then dive in.
• Capture what make sense for me and likely for blog readers.
• Fish around for other stuff on the same topic.

But what you find doing this is that books and even more so magazines often have very little content that has any depth. It's not a surprise to me to skim right past a bunch of blog posts looking for things that will be interesting. It is a surprise to skim through a whole magazine not finding anything worth capturing. Or even worse when it's a book. (Actually the worst is an hour long presentation - because you can't skim.)

My gut tells me that most everyone finds this experience over time, but I'm not sure I've ever had this discussion.

Writing, Learning, Knowing - Help Needed

I'm preparing some future presentations and articles. One thing I've really struggled with in past is how to get across the power of writing a blog as a tool that forces you to learning, especially to synthesize knowledge. In the past, I've used the analogy of the challenge during school of writing and how it forces you to really understand something. I've also talked about seeing my kids writing and how it shows important gaps. But, somehow this doesn't really capture this effect.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to capture that power?

Why does Karyn and Barry tell us - Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog - "I’ve learned more via blogging over the past year than I learned in the preceding several years!"?

Those of us who blog have experienced this, how can I translate that into a description that is meaningful for someone who is considering whether it makes sense to spend the time and effort to blog?

Help!

Conference Thoughts

Hate to post again around better conferences but two things:

1. I just saw a fantastic post - Do We Need NECC that discusses a lot of the same issues. And there are some fantastic comments/trackbacks there.

2. On the original post - better conferences - there's been a call for moving this to a Wiki. I'm not really sure what the Wiki would look like, but it seems that there's an opportunity to have something along the lines of a Conference Patterns wiki. It would discuss different patterns that can be used for conferences as a whole or elements of a conference.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to pursue this right now. Maybe someone wants to pick it up. Feel free to continue to discuss on the original post.