"Nothing is more important to business success than the knowledge and know-how of workers. ... Organizations that fail to leverage informal learning leave buckets of money on the table. In a knowledge era, it is irresponsible to disregard the prime means of creating, sharing, and replenishing intellectual capital."

"Informal learning is effective because it is personal. The individual calls the shots. The learner is responsible. ... Informal learning is the path to organizational agility and profits. It also respects workers and challenges them to be all they can be."

"Learning is successful adaptation to change. Informal and formal learning are the end points of a continuum. On one end, formal learning is like riding abus: The driver decides where the bus is going, while the passengers are along for the ride. On the opposite end, informal learning is like riding a bike: The rider chooses the destination, the speed, and the route. The rider can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or use the bathroom."
Author: Jay Cross, May 25, 2012

"Learning & working are interconnected in the network era. If learning support is not connected to work, it’s rather useless. Learning is the new black – it’s everywhere; and that’s exactly where learning specialists should be. Net workers need more than advice (training), they need ongoing, real-time, constantly-changing, collaborative, support."
Author: Harold Jarache, May 21, 2012

Author: Clark Quinn

Free, online book by Stephen Downes, May 19, 2012.

Research article.
What's more motivating to learners?
* linear video that consisted of video taped presentations
with demonstrations of techniques and principals discussed
* lecture presentations by experts on the subjects that included use of overhead projector as well as demonstration of skills
* computer-based instruction that utilized an interactive multimedia format
Learners who used the computer-based instruction (CBI) had higher motivation in all of the ARCS areas (attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction) than learners who used other media. That's probably because the CBI had simulated scenarios that provided instant feedback. The other methods didn't have opportunities to practice.
Author: David L. Rodgers and Beverly J. Withrow-Thorton, International Journal of Instructional Media Vol, 32(4), 2005

The researchers "decided to study “fake” exercise instead, using two specialized drugs that had been tested several years ago by scientists at the Salk Institute in San Diego. The drugs had been shown to induce the same kinds of changes in sedentary animals’ muscles that exercise would cause, so that even though the mice didn’t exercise, they physiologically responded as if they had. ... After a week of receiving either of the two drugs (and not exercising), the mice performed significantly better on tests of memory and learning than control animals that had simply remained quiet in their cages. ...The results, published in the journal Learning and Memory, showed that the drugged animals’ brains also contained far more new neurons in brain areas central to learning and memory than the brains of the control mice, an effect found by microscopic examination."
Author: Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, May 9, 2012

"Call it the 'learning paradox': the more you struggle and even fail while you’re trying to master new information, the better you’re likely to recall and apply that information later."
"The learning paradox is at the heart of 'productive failure,' a phenomenon identified by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore."
Author: Annie Murphy Paul, Time, April 25, 2012

Gamification for learning -- done wrong.
"In recent times, I’ve seen a trend towards adding superfluous animations, extra bits of pseudo-points, rewards, collection and leader boards. This is then proclaimed to be a gamified experience. What actually happens is, you start with a module that should take about 10 minutes to go through, but because of the extra “gamified” elements actually takes closer to 40 minutes."

Author: John Paul Titlow, ReadWriteWeb, April 23, 2012

Mashable

Describes how using action mapping changes the design process.
Author: Cathy Moore, Jan 18, 2012

"Many capable, hard-working students perform poorly on exams because they’ve overtaxed their 'working memory' — the mental scratchpad on which we combine information from our long-term memory with the specifics of the problem in front of us, in the service of finding a solution.

IgniteCast a presentation tools that allows easy integration of PowerPoints and media. You have to download the application.

For Becky Splitt and Christopher Klundt, founders of StudyBlue, mobile technology comes first. Their main objective is to create a seamless experience across every device  to view their concise, one topic centric, user generated note cards. Students have been jumping at the opportunity to create content on this free service, with over 50 million note cards and counting. 1.4 million people are studying and learning collaboratively, and the trend is not slowing down."
Others:
* BookRenter.com - renting textbooks
* InternMatch - match students with internships
* Bright Frontier Financial - works with banks and lenders so that graduates receive affordable loans from lenders in their communities
* Entrepreneurial education
Author: Brad Hart, Forbes, April 18, 2012

Author: Jane Hart, April 16, 2012

Author: Jane Hart, April 20, 2012

Review of Karl Kapp's book "The Gamification of Learning and Instruction".
Author: Judy Unrein, Onehundredfortywords, April 21, 2012

"A mouse that runs all the time is smarter than one that doesn’t. Probably true for people, too."
"For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower. But the newest findings make it clear that this isn’t just a relationship; it is the relationship. Using sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons — and the makeup of brain matter itself — scientists in just the past few months have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility. Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does."
Author: Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, April 18, 2012

Describes each level and provides a series of links.
1. Mad Libs
2. Photo stories
3. Comic Strips
4. Storyboards
5. Animated Films
Author: James Taylor, Digital Play, March 30, 2012

"Malcolm Knowles is generally considered to be the originator of the term 'informal learning' through his book published in 1970: 'Informal Adult Education: A Guide for Administrators, Leaders, and Teachers.'"

Description of Merrill's component display theory.
"Merrill proposed that you could divide instruction into four primary categories:
* Expository generality - present a general case (e.g., a rule)
* Expository instance – present a specific case
* Inquisitory generality – ask the student to remember or apply the general case
* Inquisitory instance – ask the student to remember or apply the specific case"
Author: Dianne Rees, Instructional Design Fusions, April 11, 2012

To see if student can maintain focus, observers watched "300 middle school, high school and university students studying something important for a mere 15 minutes in their natural environments....
The results were startling. First, these students were only able to focus and stay on task for an average of three minutes at a time and nearly all of their distractions came from technology. [By the way, other researchers have found similar attention spans with computer programmers and medical students.] The major culprit: their smartphone and their laptop were providing constant interruptions. ... Not surprisingly those who stayed on task longer and had study strategies were better students. The worst students were those who consumed more media each day and had a preference for working on several tasks at the same time and switching back and forth between them. One additional result stunned us: If they checked Facebook just once during the 15-minute study period they were worse students. It didn’t matter how many times they looked at Facebook; once was enough."
Auothr: Larry Rosen, Psychology Today, April 9, 2012

Story on how Steve's son learned how to repair a broken iphone using a YouTube video from DreRandom. "But then it hit me – without DreRandom, and without YouTube, how could my son ever have accessed the knowledge to get inside the guts of this electronic device? I went looking, and quickly it was clear that he wasn’t alone."
"Dre is a whole new class of content entrepreneur, who’s built a following and a business by gathering knowledge – and sharing it on YouTube. Without him, half a million people would have been scraping and poking, and probably breaking their iPhones just to repair a cracked screen."
"The more I thought about what my son was able to do, and how he was able to connect with shared knowledge – the clearer it was to me that this is more than a story about how to fix an iPhone. There are some things that just need to be taught with video. Things where ‘showing’ is far more effective than ‘telling’. ... video makes it universal, and sharable."

"This is something new. And important. And powerful. Which leaves me to ask two key questions. What can you learn better and faster by plugging into the global brain of video? And what do you know, and can you share, using video to accelerate knowledge distribution. It could be that your most valuable asset is one YouTube video posting away."
Author: Steven Rosenbaum, Forbes, April 14, 2012

"Plutarch: The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be ignited."
Author: EdGalaxy

"Which of the following procedures do you think would produce the most accurate representation of an object: tracing the object; looking at the object while drawing it; or, with your eyes closed, touching and feeling the object and then drawing it, without having ever seen it?"
Author: Kenneth Wesson, BrainWorld, March 29, 2012

"A brain-mapping study, published in the Apr. 11 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, has found that people’s ability to make decisions in novel situations decreases with age and is associated with a reduction in the integrity of two specific white-matter pathways that connect an area in the cerebral cortex called the medial prefrontal cortex with two other areas deeper in the brain."
Author: Vanderbilt University, April 11, 2012

Can video really accelerate knowledge? This TED talk by Chris Anderson makes a strong case in favor:

Are we creating a ‘fast food’ standardisation mentality with e-learning courseware?

The top 5 educational technology trends that the author Rob Reynolds is watching: curriculum, OER learning platforms, learning analytics, smart mobile devices, e-books and digital reading.
Author: Rob Reynolds, the Learning Lot, March 29, 2012

A list of Twitter Chats for Learning Professionals.

"Mobile is a strategy more than a technology. And its potential use is far greater than what mobile learning can offer."
Author: Connie Malamud, the eLearning Coach

Academic article
1-1-2002
by:
Bradford S. Bell
Cornell University, bb92@cornell.edu
Steve W. J. Kozlowski
Michigan State University
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the ILR Collection at DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles
and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR. For more information, please contact jdd10@cornell.edu.
Please take our short DigitalCommons@ILR user survey.
Bell,

Academic article
1-1-2008
by:
Bradford S. Bell
Cornell University, bb92@cornell.edu
Steve W. J. Kozlowski
Michigan State University
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the ILR Collection at DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles
and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR. For more information, please contact jdd10@cornell.edu.
Please take our short DigitalCommons@ILR user survey.
Bell,

Author: Jane Harg, March 23, 2012

"Social media change the way we communicate. Write a blog for a year or more and your writing will change. Use Twitter for some time and get a sense of being connected to many people and understanding them on a different level. ... Transparency is a necessity for cooperation and collaboration in networks. A major benefit of using social media is increasing speed of access to knowledge. However, if the information is not shared by people, it will not be found."

Has simple "how work gets done in networks" diagram: Knowledge sharing through transparency fosters innovation through diversity, which reinforces openness through social networks, which enables knowledge sharing.

Communities of practice "can be bridges between work teams and open social networks, with narration of work an enabler of knowledge-sharing. One determinant of effective professional communities is whether they actually change practices. "
Author: Harold Jarche, Feb 12, 2012

"Is there something unique about certain brains, which allows some people to speak and understand so many more languages than the rest of us? The answer, experts say, seems to be yes, no and it's complicated."
Author: Emily Sohn, Discovery News, March 19, 2012

Lists multiple layers to curation:
* "Aggregation: Gathering and sharing relevant content. It releases the individual worker from needing to seek out the content.
* Filtering: Instead of simply aggregating content, filtering shares only those resources that are most relevant and valuable.
* Elevation: Recognizing a larger trend in the sea of seemingly less important content.
* Mashups: Merging two or more unrelated pieces of content to form a new message.
* Timelines: Organizing random pieces of content in chronological order to show the evolution of an idea."

"Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don't. ... The [7- to 9-year-old] kids performed addition and subtraction problems while their brains were scanned using fMRI. In the children with high math anxiety, the scans showed heightened activity in the amygdala, the brain's main fear center, and also in a section of the hippocampus, a brain structure that helps form new memories. They also had decreased activity in several brain regions associated with working memory and numerical reasoning. Interestingly, analysis of brain connections showed that, in children with high math anxiety, the increased activity in the fear center was driving the reduced function in numerical information-processing regions of the brain. Further, children with high math anxiety also showed greater connections between the amygdala and emotion-regulating regions of the brain."
Author: Science Daily, March 21, 2012

Good article about the many types of writing that are often needed for elearning.
Author: Connie Malamed, the eLearning Coach, undated (probably Nov 3, 2011 based on the comments)

“'To a great extent PKM [personal knowledge management] is about shifting responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from a company to individuals and this is the greatest challenge for both sides.'” ~Lilia Elimova
Author: Harold Jarache, Aug 2, 2010

Author: Will Richardson, March 18, 2012

Notes from John Seely Brown's presentation on entrepreneurial learning.
"Cultivate the Entrepreneurial Learner in the 21st Century" at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in 2012.
Author: Sarah Vaala, March 2, 2012

Pinterest collection of images on what learning looks like

Building stories using StoryLine webinar on 7/12/2012

Talks about the value of Twitter for personal learning networks (PLN).
Author: David Kelly, ASTD Learning Circuits, March 6, 2012

A disaster simulation game from the UN/ISDR

Graphic illustration of concepts based on Clark Quinn's learnlets

Links to articles on games and gamification
Author: The Upside Learning blog, Feb 1, 2012

While is not the ultimate guide, it provides summaries and YouTube videos on using Twitter in Education.
Author: Jeff Dunn, Eduemic, Sept 12, 2012

Studies show that sleep enhances learning, memory, and problem solving"
Author: Sherrie Bourg Carter, Psychology Today, March 4, 2012

Judy Unrein's blog

Author: Sarah Baldauf and Angela Haupt, US News & World Report, March 5, 2012

"'Education is the world’s largest data industry, by far,' says Jose Ferreira, who knows this because he runs a firm called Knewton that’s building what could become the world’s most valuable repository of the ways people learn." Knewton uses data mining to create adaptive learning.
"Students go at their own pace, and the software continuously adapts to challenge and cajole them to learn based on their individual learning style. As individual students are correlated to the behaviors of thousands of other students, Knewton can make between 5 million and 10 million refinements to its data model every day. Psychometricians use similar principles to build standardized exams, but Knewton harvests way more data than testmakers ever will. Someday it will know what kids will get on the SAT, so they won’t have to take it.

"'Online education,” says [Jose] Ferreira [who runs Knewton, 'is on the cusp of massive change, and only 100 cognoscenti know about it.' A passel of other tech companies, such as Aleks, Grockit, Blackboard, Coursekit and 2tor, are also working to speed up education’s shift online."
Author: Bruce Upbin, Forbes, Feb 22, 2012

"... there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge."

"Say you take a person with a performance orientation ("Paul") and a person with a mastery orientation ("Matt"). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. ...Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle."

"While a performance orientation improves motivation for easy challenges, it drastically reduces it for difficult ones. And since most work worth doing is difficult, it is the mastery orientation that is correlated with academic and professional success, as well as self-esteem and long-term happiness."
Author: Pixel Poppers, Nov 23, 2009

"Both expertise and intelligence matter for creativity, but expertise does a much better job."
Author: Dr. John Baer, The Creativity Post, Mar 2, 2012

A course for K-12 teachers "Neuroscience & the Classroom: Making Connections". There are a series of videos.

Author: Shelley Terrell, Teacher Reboot Camp, March 3, 2012

#5 - Conducts "an analysis avoiding reliance on interviews as research shows that up to 70% of what a Master Performer or Subject Matter Experts knows is sub-conscious"
Author: Guy Wallace

About the book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design".
Author: Judy Unrein, Learning Solutions Magazine, Feb 23, 2012

"As consumers acquire more and more mobile technology, they are pushing organizations (especially their employers) to deliver information and services via that technology. Unfortunately, not all information and services are appropriate for a small, mobile, format. Online training and support is often a case in point."
Author: Anita Rosen, Learning Solutions Magazine, Feb 27, 2012

"Rhymes are very compelling for young children, and their brains seem to process them even better than they process the meanings of other words. In one 2004 study, researchers read lists of words to young children and then asked them to recall and recite the words they'd heard. The words on the list were all related: A child might hear "nap," "bed," "rest," "peace," "wake," ... for example. When adults take this test, they often inject the word "sleep" into their recitation, despite the fact that it appears nowhere on the original list. ... Young kids responded differently, however. ... 5-year-olds added new words that rhymed with the words on the original list. A kid who heard "nap," for example, might throw in "gap" or "sap." In their brains, the rhyme overrode the meaning." Rhyme is crucial for kids learning to read.
Author: Stephanie Pappas, Mother Nature Network, Mar 02, 2012

We acknowledge that students need independent learning skills that enable them to enter society confident in their abilities to adjust to changing circumstances and equipped with skills to learn and relearn as new needs arise ... yet many of our technology applications keep drawing education back into the model of content delivery."
What if instead we had students learning by curating content?
Lists 4 curation tools: LiveBinder, MuseumBox, Evernote, and Instapaper.
Author: Sam Gliksman, Feb 28, 2012

Slides for 5 Warmup exerices for brainstorming.
* Choose 3 random words and come up with their opposites.
* Take ordinary objects and come up with new uses.
* Pose a silly question. (How did the legless chicken cross the road.)
* Present an everyday object and come up with as many uses as possible.

Author: David "Dock" Dockterman, NBC News, March 2, 2012

We hardly ever have the luxury of focusing on one thing anymore. No matter where we are, our gadgets are there, too, ready to beep, ping, display an alert, or serenade us with our chosen ring-tone. So we live with it all. But do we realize how much we're losing this way?

There is mounting evidence that the cost of constant interruptions is huge.

Webinar on Games and Gamification for learning
Title : Games, Gamification and the Need for Engaging Learners
Date : 21st March, 2012
Time : 10.00 AM, Kuala Lumpur (Check Time Differences)
Venue : Online (WizIQ)

Website of Julie Dirksen, the author of "Design for How People Learn" book