What has the field of Instructional Design added to education?

Joel Galbraith at Penn State started a blog, it appears, to ask and debate one post (hopefully he'll continue blogging afterwards! :-). It's a good discussion. Joel gives this background to the discussion:

"I got a question today from a friend asking what the most "innovative teaching methods in higher education" were these days. I had to stop and think, and felt a bit frustrated that I had no quick response. Furthermore, as I asked fellow INSYSers, I got the impression that no-one had a good handle on an answer that didn't sound like we were treading water, and grabbing at straws."

He then asks the following three questions for us to debate:

1. What are the most "innovative teaching methods in higher education" these days?
2. What are some innovative (effective) technology uses in higher education these days?
3. What are some recent (you decide) significant developments/contributions of our field to teaching and learning?

I have a hard time with questions like this, and I get asked these all the time just like everyone else in our field. What I usually say is something along the lines of,

"I don't think it's possible to answer that question in an easy way. Why? Because education is about people, not things, and as Josh says, we're really talking about systems or communities of people. Anytime you deal with people, you deal with too many variables. Answers don't fit neatly in little boxes. And that's actually okay. That's why research in our field is so important -- so we can find as many answers for as many possible variations as possible.

I mean, asking us what the "best ways to teach someone" are is like asking a sociologist the "best way people form relationships." Or asking a therapist the "best way to resolve disputes" or asking a child development professional the "best way to raise a child." These questions don't work, and they shouldn't be asked. We are not scientists looking for the one great truth, we are technologists (in the broad sense of the word) looking for ideas, tools, and solutions that may work, sometimes, with some people in some contexts."

Personally, this is why I think many people in our field struggle with defining what we should be doing and publishing about. We have too many people trying to be scientists, when really we are technologists (see an articles by Andy Gibbons in TechTrends and other places about this topic).

Anyway, a couple people in the discussion didn't like my answer. They want clean, simple answers to the questions. I don't think it's possible, but if you do, please go over to Joel's blog and add your ideas. I'll keep an ear tuned.

Odeo: Upcoming new podcast tool

I heard about Odeo a while back -- a work in project designed to make podcasting easy and free for everybody, much like blogging is. I signed up on their list to be notified about the project when the beta was ready.

Well, it's ready! Got the email today.

I only had a minute to look over the site, and it seems to be fairly easy to navigate and use. However, it doesn't have quite the slick and easy feel of iPodder, which I love, but seems to crash on me all the time.

But I'm only talking about Odeo's listen and sync features. And to be fair, I did only spend a minute looking it over. But to my next thought: Odeo seems to be exactly what the internet needs to push podcasting further to the masses. It is planning to have easy, create-your-own podcast features. By easy, I mean upload-your-mp3-and-it's-done easy. That's how easy it should be, and that seems to be the vision Odeo has.

That's cool. REALLY cool. Once we get tools like that out there, we'll get more podcasts from more of the smart people in the world who are smart about things besides technology. People with brilliant things to publish, but not knowing how to set it up themselves. Think of it: What if podcasting was as easy as talking into your telephone or computer, and hitting "submit"? What would that do to the young podcasting trend?

I'm excited! Way to go, O-D-E-O!

Tips for effective blogging

Sometimes people ask me, "how do I become a better blogger or increase my readership?" My first answer is, "Why are you asking me? Have you looked at my blog lately? :-)"

Here's a few tips from Sharon Housley about how to be an effective Blogger. Thanks to Mike Barbour, and a bunch of other people to tipping us off to this. Here are the tips in brief:

1.) Stay on topic.

2.) Stay informative.

3.) Old news is not news.

4.) Adhere to a schedule.

5.) Clarity and simplicity.

6.) Keyword-rich.

7.) Quantity matters.

8.) Frequency.

9.) Spell checking and proof-reading.

10.) RSS.

My, how things change

Well, I know things changed quickly on the internet, but ...

I saw this today:
"thought I'd give the old podcasting a whirl"

Old? OLD?

Man, maybe I'm getting old. I'm losing my memory or something. I thought podcasting was up and coming!

BSOD, RSOD, or NSOD?

There's been some pub lately about Windows' Longhorn incorporating a Red Screen of Death to mean REALLY bad errors, to separate these from the mere Blue Screen of Death errors. As KairosNews reports, "Chilling," before going on to say,

My guess is that this is a bad move. The Blue Screen of Death isn't nearly as alarming; that blue tone is almost peaceful. Red--well, do we really want people seeing red everytime their Windows crashes? The only people who'll be happy about this decision are the monitor manufacturers who'll get to replace those broken by aggravated Longhorners.

Here's a new idea that I can't find anyone mentioning. How about No Screen of Death? How about something that works for a change? If cars broke down as often as Windows did, there'd be outrage. Why are we content with higher failure rates for some technologies than we are for others?

My blogging weakness

Ahhh. Finally I feel validated for not being the blogger I should be. This from Brian Lamb:

"My great deficiency as a weblogger is that I never write the posts I really want to write. If I feel genuinely engaged with a topic, I defer the actual writing of it endlessly -- mulling it over, adding elements, seeing linkages elsewhere"

That is exactly how I feel! The most exciting and (hopefully) important ideas that I have I do not write on my blog, but tuck away to blog about later. Or they turn into articles that seem too big to summarize for a blog post. So my blogging becomes more knee-jerk, thoughts of the moment instead of developed ideas that I DO have on occasion, whether this blog is evidence of that or not.

I'm glad to hear I'm not alone. I'm all for open sharing of ideas and using the new web technologies to spread ideas around quicker, so I'll try to do better.

Really, I'll try.

Change is constant

An interesting idea from Don Ely here at PIDT:
"Any statement of philosophy regarding instructional technology is tentative."

He is also commenting on the fact that the only constancy in our field is change. How exciting ... and how stressful at the same time! This is a field where it is constantly important to be up to date, involved in the recent conversation, and working towards new thoughts. There's no standing still, because technology development is not standing still.

Like I said, exciting ... and stressful at the same time!

A few statements from Don Ely that we voted on by raising our hands:

- Will the field be destined for extinction unless we take the opportunities afforded by new information technology?
- Is the field and the process of instructional design largely the same as it was before, despite new technologies? Or do the new technologies require new paradigm shifts?

The voting? Very evenly divided among the audience of professors and students in instructional design technology.

PIDT05 - Retrospective and Prospective

Well, I am currently at the 2005 PIDT conference (Professors of Instructional Design Technology) in Estes Park, Colorado. This is really what a conference should be, in my opinion. There is no schedule -- the concurrent sessions are decided on the fly as people decide they want to group together to discuss certain issues. We're also spending about half of the time hiking, horseback riding, swimming, and just getting to know one another.

OK, maybe structured, organized conferences are useful too, but there is some benefit in an informal arrangement like PIDT. How many of us have been at other conferences and when the speaker didn't show, we just circled the chairs and talked about the topic at hand and left feeling that was the best session of the day?

The theme of PIDT this year, being the 20th anniversary of the conference, is looking back and looking forward in the field. The guests of honor are the legendary Don Ely and Tom Schwinn. I'm excited to hear them live!

I'm also excited to be here together with Sandie Waters from USU and Sanghoon Park from FSU. We're working together on a project doing case studies of students about their first year in an IT department. Even though we've been working together through email and the like, I have never actually met Sanghoon, so it was great to visit with him the last couple of days--I wish I had met him earlier, he is an outstanding person and scholar!

Anyway, sorry to disappoint, but I'm not going to blog this conference too much. We're here to socialize, discuss, and work on projects together, so I'm going to try and cut myself loose from the computer most of the weekend. Oh, yeah, and the wireless is unreliable in our lodge ... that may have something to do with it as well ... :-)

But for a fuller recap, go to http://scottadams.blogs.com/, or look for the Flickr tags about PIDT.

What will be the usability needs of the future?

Well, I haven't posted in a long time -- finals will do that to you. Speaking of finals, in my human computer interface design course, one of the questions on the final was to consider what the design challenges will be for future interface designers. I thought this was a very difficult question to consider -- it's always difficult to predict the future-- but here was what my stab at this question turned up!

I'd be interested in hearing any comments--what will be the interface design challenges of tomorrow?

My exam answer:

This is a very difficult question! It’s easier to know what needs to work or be designed to meet current needs with current available technologies. It’s much harder to think of what the future technologies will be, and what the future needs of users will be. Trying to predict this is usually futile—because technologies develop so quickly that it’s hard to anticipate what will be available! However, this is a great question to think about, and I’d love to hear what others in the class have to say. I guess I’m giving a disclaimer that I almost feel foolish trying to guess what the future designs will/should entail!

One thing that is interesting is that in the past, the biggest design challenge has been to provide more in less space. For example, how to provide more computing power, more speed, and more memory in smaller boxes. However, this really isn’t as big of an issue now, and will be even less so in the future. The cheapest laptops still have plenty of computing power for 95% of the users. Only the most demanding users need more computing power and memory. So I believe future designs will focus less on “this computer (or technology) is faster/more powerful/etc” and more on what unique things the technology can do. These are some of the issues that I think tomorrow’s designers will face:

1. Developing ways to handle large amounts of information
It’s becoming pretty obvious that the major dilemma of our decade is not having access to enough information, but being able to handle all of the information available. More and more we’re going to need technologies designed to help us find what we want and need instantly (and not without hoping that what we want is in the first 20 results of a possible million). We also need technologies that help us find things we don’t know we want, but would be glad to have if we knew about. Here I am not talking about commercial products—although businesses have jumped onto this idea more quickly than other services—I am talking about finding the article I didn’t know existed, but which would be just the thing I’m looking for, or being alerted to the weather in a town I plan to drive through next week.

The potential of the Semantic Internet, and of artificial intelligent computing, will allow for more customizable searching and handling of information. What we will need are interface designs that provide more information for users without providing too much. These designs need to be very intelligent, and intuitive so they fit users’ minds like a glove, so that everything is where they would expect it to be and they can find the right article, image, etc. more quickly.

2. Developing ways for people to have access to what they want/need at anytime/any place
The iPod and other mp3 devices are extremely popular right now. Why? Because you can have any of your 200 cds or 50 audiobooks available anytime, anywhere, with only one restriction—that you have the iPod with you and a way to listen to it. The biggest rush right now is to develop the best desktop/internet search engines. Why? So people can find what they need, when they need it. I think this will continue to be one of the biggest design challenges in the future because we are still hindered from the goal of “anything, anywhere, anytime.” For example, I have an iPod full of music, but when it’s at home and I’m at school, I have no access. I may have TIVO full of favorite movies … but only available at my home. I may also have every document I have ever created … but only on my hard drive.

We need less limitations in getting the media that we need or want! I think future designs will allow you to put earbuds in your ears (without cords) and through Bluetooth or wireless technology be able to access music from your iPod at home. Another example is to have one iPod stream wirelessly the entire database of music to little speaker/receivers in every room of the house. So I could be upstairs listening to Bach while my wife is downstairs listening to Rock—all from the same iPod. I’d like remote desktop type of technologies to become more powerful, but also more secure, so I can access any document on any of my computers (home, work, wife’s computer, etc.) from any other computer, palm, portable, etc. I’d like to be able to access the commercial software that I’ve paid to have installed on my home computer, but be able to access it from other computers (such as at school).

Soon we will need portable video to be as accessible as portable audio and photos. Perhaps a device that will store hours and hours of video, and then display through a small screen, or better yet, project onto flat surfaces or connect through wireless/Bluetooth technologies to small, paper-thin screens that can be kept in your wallet. You could then stick these screens on any wall, table, car seat—anywhere you wanted to view your video.

3. More secure access to private information
Security and privacy may be the most important design and technology issues of the future. Already we are at the point where the potential is available to do a lot of neat things that many do not do because of security issues. For example, there are many things I am reluctant to participate in online because I am concerned about the security of my private information. Making online interaction more secure and private will be THE most important issue in the near future, because I believe we can’t really progress much more until this issue is resolved. We need technologies and designs that can recognize who we are, and match us with our profiles. This may seem Star Trek-esque, but what I’m thinking about is being able to sit down at any computer, and having the computer somehow know who I am, so I can do anything online at that computer and have the interaction be secure.

4. Phones have got to be more usable!
The newest innovation I see is a phone that is actually easy to use for anything other than calling people. We have the technology to make phones be computers, complete with all our media, hard drives, anything you want! We can stick 40 gigabytes on something as small as a phone, so the potential is huge to make one device that does everything you need—including call people (I know we have palm pilots that can call people, but they’re not very popular). Why don’t we have this yet? Because phone number pads are the most unusable thing on the planet for anything except calling people. Someone’s going to get smart and design a really usable phone/mobile device that will become as popular as the iPod is now. Speaking of iPod, why not throw a scroll wheel on a phone—that would be a start!

I know I have talked a lot about technology design, more than interface design. It’s really hard sometimes to divide the two because all technology needs an interface for us to be able to use it, and all interface designs are useless unless they have the backend technology available. So they are in way the same thing. I have talked about the future of technology design because the technology needs to be there first, and then once we know what we can do, we can design interfaces so humans can use the technology.

HS bans blogging

This was bound to happen--and has probably happened many times without being published in an article. Will points to an article in the Rutland Herald about a principle banning a blogging site from being used at school. Why?

1) "because blogging is not an educational use of school computers."
2) "he found the prospect of students putting information on the Internet, potentially available to predators, was a serious concern."

Well, let's not throw out the technology when it's not the technology causing the problem! First, blogging CAN be an educational tool. ANYTHING (almost) can be an educational tool if used and applied the right way. Can cell phones be educational? Sure--if students use GPS-enabled phones to go on a virtual scavenger hunt. Can spoons be educational? Sure--if they are used in an object lesson of some sort. Almost anything can be educational--you just have to be creative!

I believe blogging is an especially powerful educational tool for encouraging reflection and discourse, both of which are well-researched principles of effective learning. You may not agree with me, but even if you don't, I maintain EVERYTHING can be an educational tool if used right. So if you don't think blogging is an educational tool--then dig a little deeper.

Point 2. Why ban blogging because kids put their info on the web? That's a problem with the students, not the tool! You might as well ban phones, email, a lot of things...

I always find it interesting that there is a backlash with new technologies--immediately accusing them of being bad because they are not understood.

Use Google Maps to create walking tours

Just saw a post on Edugadget about a cool use of Google Maps to create walking tours about places. An example is Jon Udell's screencast, and a recipe for doing this is available on Engadget. This is really cool. You need to have to have the right gear, such as a GPS device and some scripting ability, and I'm not sure how difficult that will be. It would be great if teachers could create tours to guide students in field trips, if websites could give visual directions to find places, if tourist websites could show me how to get from one place to another.

Another "yay!" from Google!

Useless Conference Baggage

Cogdogblog has this great photo about where all conference bags go

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/6054905/

SOOOOOOOOOO true. I just got back from SITE and have one more worthless bag and worthless propaganda to trash. They even gave me a water bottle. What is that supposed to be for? Who needs a water bottle? Who needs another bag? The only thing I needed in the bag was the conference proceedings CD. Now that's somewhat more useful.

AECT is the same way. I still have their bag (although I don't really need it). No more! Conference-goers revolt! Demand that they take our hundreds in admissions fee and give us something useful!

How can we get them to stay?

Whoa! I knew the first few years of teaching were tough--they were for me--but not this tough. Edutopia reports that nearly half of all teachers leave the profession within five years. Half! Wow. This begs the question of what we can do for teachers to have a more positive experience. Edutopia suggests that first year mentoring programs help. I'm sure more pay would help too :-). I also think it's a simple fact of overworking teachers. To expect a new teacher to come in and carry a full load is setting them up for frustration. They should be given less workload and more time for preparation and reflection. Even with more experienced teachers, I think the lack of time for reflection makes the educational system suffer. I know everyone's on a tight budget, but we should be aware of what it's costing us. When teachers don't have time to reflect on their methods, to explore new technologies and pedagogies, and to follow-up with troubled students, then teachers will burnout and students suffer.

SITE05: Our 2nd presentation on Blogs/wikis

I presented with Charles (Graham) and Geoff (Wright) today about our implementation of blogs and wikis in our instructional technology for preservice teachers course. We've been to several presentations on blogs and wikis here at SITE and have been somewhat disappointed so far because they have been very basic and focused on questions like "what is rss?", "what is a blog", "what is a wiki?" and stuff like that. Hopefully we'll get past these types of issues and move more quickly into questions of application.

Anyway, we were quite pleased to see about 50 people show up for our thing. I wish we'd had more time to talk and have some discussions and questions--it sounded like several people have had experiences that we could have learned from as well. I think it just goes to show that there is a lot of interest in trying to understand how to use these tools. I feel the research is only beginning here.

In an effort to model the tool that we were talking about (as well as get away from the PowerPoint thing), we used wikis to structure our presentation. We passed out the URL and password to those attending and encouraged them to add their ideas, student/teacher examples, and questions to the presentation wiki.

I'd love to see what other application ideas people have for these tools. If you have one, go to http://ipt.byu.edu/~wiki/515/Main/SITE05WikiBlog and use the password "BYUIPT515" (we use a password to dissuade spammers).

SITE05: Platform decisions, PC or Mac?

Anyone who knows me knows I love my Mac. So I was interested in a presentation about a college struggling with the decision about whether to buy/support macs or PCs. They had PC people and Mac people work together to evaluate the advantages of both platforms. Here's some of their findings:

Servers
Mac servers were more reliable. One person claimed to run with Mac servers for three or four years without ever rebooting because of problems.

Security
59,940 Windows-based identified viruses
60 Macintosh viruses, based on OS 9 not OS 10
'Nuff said.

iEverything
iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iPages, and a bunch of other free, easy-to-use programs that are ideal for schools and students on a budget.

Software
PCs have more freeware and software available. (very true-but that is changing with more opensource Apple stuff coming out)

Other issues
PCs computer of choice in some careers and some high schools
Support infrastructure was greater with PCs

The dean's decision was to use both Macintoshes and PCs. He wanted to terminate the Macs, but there was enough convincing evidence to still include them.

Good for him! :-) I'll agree that there is definitely advantages to both platforms, and personally feel students should be taught to be able to use both, in case they ever need to.

Random SITE notes

Yesterday was the poster session here at SITE, and they have an excellent model for poster sessions that I WISH AECT WOULD DO (did I get anyone's attention?). At SITE, all of the poster presentations are the same day, same time, in the same room. The benefit of this is more people come to your poster presentation. At AECT, I rarely go to poster presentations because they are often not the most-developed ideas and research studies. That's okay, and that's not necessarily a criticism, that's just the way it is. The same is true at SITE, but because I can quickly look at 116 poster sessions at one time, it makes it worthwhile for me.

At AECT, it seems people rarely go to poster sessions, and consequently, people rarely stay by their posters because why should they if nobody comes? But at SITE, EVERYBODY goes to the poster session because it's a quick way to take in many ideas all at once.

I wish AECT would do this.

_____________________

Last night I went with some friends to the Mesa LDS temple. That was a wonderful experience. What a beautiful building and temple grounds! Talk about aromatherapy--we walked around for a little while and just drank in the blossoming flowers and lemon trees. I actually quite like Phoenix and Mesa--more so than other large towns. If only it wasn't so awfully hot for half of the year.

_____________________

Charles Graham from BYU posted on his blog about a presentation he went to yesterday on Internet safety. It's at http://ipt286.blogspot.com/2005/03/internet-safety.html#comments

_____________________

One thing that AECT does do well that I wish was here at SITE (sorry to directly compare conferences, but these are the only two conferences I've attended for two years in a row), is how AECT members are open, friendly, and wanting to meet and talk to new people. At AECT I've never had trouble finding groups of people to go socialize with or with whom to go out to dinner. SITE participants don't seem to be quite that way, and if you don't come with a group, you might be spending some time alone. How (not) fun is that?

SITE05: Our presentation on Tech in Higher Education

I'll reflect briefly on our presentation yesterday (Dr. Charles Graham and I). I'd post up the conference paper here, but I can't get my server to work while I'm here in Phoenix for some reason.

Anyway, it was a roundtable reporting a project Charles and I worked on together last year that will be published in Educational Technology in a few months. Basically, we asked instructional designers on campus and department chairs for recommendations of the most "innovative" technology-using instructors on campus at BYU (admittedly, "inovative" is very subjective and means different things to different people, but what can you do ...). We interviewed about 40 of the most creative/succesfull of these teachers (based on their perceptions of success and our perceptions of creativity--again very subjective), and tried to identify some global patterns indicating how technology was impacting learning in this classrooms. This was exploratory research, and we wanted to just get an idea of what the "master" teachers were doing across campus.

We found many exciting and interesting applications of technology, and five overall patterns that seemed to span multiple colleges and departments:

1. Technology helped learners to visualize content
2. Technology facilitated learner/instructor and learner/learner interactions
3. Technology supported meaningful learner reflection
4. Technology involved learners in authentic, real-life learning activities
5. Technology improved the quality and quantity of learner practice

Anyway the upcoming article gives case study snippets and support for how teachers were using technology in these five ways. But I won't go into that now.

I felt the presentation went well--I counted about 25 people attending. A couple people were questioning at first about what our terminology meant, what our criteria for selecting cases were, and ideas for applying this research. Admittedly, those are issues with this project because of the focus of the project. Charles explained it well: This was exploratory research--so our methods were not clearly defined but more flexible and developed as we moved through the project. Basically we wanted to see what was happening, and get ideas for future projects. In fact we've delved a little deeper into a couple of the issues we identified and will address those in future articles that we're working on right now.

Now we've got to try and nail down what exactly we will be presenting on Saturday, but does anyone even stick around until Saturday?

SITE05: Using video models to train teachers to use Technology

SITE05: "From Text to Video: The Evolution of Video Case Study for Teacher Professional Development"
Pamela Redmond, Univ. of San Francisco

I was interested in this session because as we have tried to help preservice teachers get the vision of how to integrate technology into their teaching, we have found that the use of models is very important. We have used both video case studies, and “live” modeling where the instructor roleplays an effective lesson with the preservice students. In fact, I’m presenting on this on Saturday.
This group is creating a website database of video case studies at http://www.teachinginterchange.org.

They asked: Should video cases show authentic classroom footage, exemplary footage, or what?

Comment: I think some of both is good, but they should be clearly marked. I think we’re all interested in best cases most of the time, but my interviews with preservice teachers concludes that many do not pay attention to video case studies or give them much credibility because they know they are best cases, and in their minds, not realistic. So it’d be useful to have some authentic classroom footage, to give credibility to the students that something positive—even if it’s not the best practice and has a few minor problems—CAN happen in a classroom. This would also help them see “what is really happening” so they can reflect on what they want to do differently.

“You can send students out to observe classes, but they don’t know what they are looking at—they don’t know how to deconstruct.”

I’ve found this is true. No matter how good the model, students often don’t know how to learn from the model. How do you teach these tacit skills? They are crucial to truly learning and becoming good teachers, but it’s hard to teach students to reflectively learn from video case studies and other models.

SITE: Maybe unfinished studies CAN be valuable

SITE05: Christopher Sessums, Univ. of Florida
"Examining the teaching styles of online instructors: A proposed research study of online instructors at the university of Florida."

Quoted Marcel Proust
"The only real voyage of discovery ... consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes."

How do we help teachers to think differently about education online, so they realize that teaching online is not just using old methods with a new tool, but means actually changing your methods to match the new tool?

He is proposing using an instrument to track how teachers interact online, and how students perceive their teachers interacting online, and overlay Grasha's metaphors on these results:

Grasha's metaphors, or orientations: (think in terms of a continuum)
Expert
Formal authority
Personal model
Facilitator
Delegator

Research questions:
1. will the two sets of perceptions be aligned?
2. determine reliability/validity of results

Comment: Unusual that a research proposal was accepted, when not only is the study not completed, but it hasn't even begun! He hasn't even begun to collect data! But, I'm glad he was accepted and that I attended. He has some good ideas for how to research online teaching, and his presentation was engaging and well-prepared, and I'd like to work with him on a project like this.

This brings to mind the discussion going round about whether AECT should accept projects that aren't yet completed. I think we should--IF THEY ARE GOOD. We can learn as much from good ideas and research methods as we can from results because we all need to research and publish anyway.

Survey Instruments
http://insight.southcentralrtec.org/ilib/delesi/delesi.htm
http://insight.southcentralrtec.org/ilib/delesa/delesa.htm

The lady next to me in this session said this is a valuable website, that stores other instruments available for use.

Balance between learning and applying

Paul Allen of Infobase Ventures wrote an interesting column in connect-utah.com this week. He made the point that we all knew, but it's good to be reminded:

"The paradox for knowledge workers is this: the more time you spend in gaining knowledge, the less time you have to apply it. The reverse is also true. We must strike a proper balance between learning and doing. Most people have their nose to the grindstone. Very few spend enough time, energy and money in a quest to gain and process knowledge. But maybe the Web can change this. With the Web, each of us can make a list of all the experts in our field and track their every move and their every word."

With over 100 feeds to my Bloglines account; gigabytes of books, podcasts, and talks on my iPod; and papers all over my house that I should be reading striking the balance between gaining knowledge and taking the time to reflectively apply it is tough. That's a needed skill in the information age that I still need to hone.

I wish I had been taught information literacy skills in school--remind me why embracing the digital age and emphasizing the skills needed for this new era isn't taught more in schools? :-)

Another clip from the article, basically saying we need to spend some time and money teaching employees (and I'd say students) how to use the information available for professional development:

"Why pay someone $50,000 a year and not spend 3 or 4 percent more to help them stay sharp?

Good point, Paul!