CBC Radio – Precursor to Internet Communities of Practice

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When I was in graduate school I wrote a paper on educational radio programming on the CBC during the 1930’s and 1940’s. I wish that I had kept that paper, as the achievements of early radio have similarities with the current proliferation of communities on the Internet. Two of the more popular programmes on early CBC radio were the Citizens’ Forum and the Farm Radio Forum [search CBC archives for “farm radio forum” and “national citizens forum” – without quotation marks in search query].

“Farm Forum innovations included a regional report-back system, whereby group conclusions were collected centrally and broadcast regularly across Canada, occasionally being sent to appropriate governments. In addition, discussion – leading to self-help – resulted in diverse community ‘action projects’ such as co-operatives, new forums and folk schools. Farm and community leaders claimed that the give-and-take of these discussions provided useful training for later public life. In 1952, UNESCO commissioned research into Farm Forum techniques. Its report was published in 1954, and consequently India, Ghana and France began using Canadian Farm Forum models in their programs.”

Radio is a one-way medium but innovations such as programme guides by mail one week in advance, local discussion groups, and national feedback on individual responses kept people actively involved. Imagine a group of farmers gathering at a neighbour’s house, bringing food for a communal supper, and then discussing issues of great social relevance,  like the possibility of medicare. This was real public radio, not just commercial-free airwaves. Today, the CBC produces programmes such as Cross-Country Checkup and the Radio Noon Phone-In for similar purposes.

Therefore, after more than 30 days of the CBC lock-out, I feel that it’s time to speak up. The locked-out employees have been doing an excellent job without pay at CBC Unplugged. The problem is that the legacy of the CBC in community-building is being undermined by years of inconsistent government financing and what appears to be misguided CBC management. I blame the politicians, the bureaucrats, and management — in that order. A nation of our size and diversity needs a strong public broadcaster. I really appreciated the CBC when I was serving with the Armed Forces in Europe, and I’m sure that our troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere could do with some good programming from Canada. So please get off your butts and get the CBC back on the air, for all our sakes.

Is this a “real” blog?

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Just received this note from the folks at Blogflux, as I was adding this site to their directory (thought it was good idea at the time):
Hello hjarche,
Your blog has *not* been added to the Blog Flux Directory. Due to the amount of submissions, we cannot explain the reasons for each. Most likely it is due to one of the following:
        – site is not a blog
        – site contains nudity
        – site is a shill site intended to simply promote products/affiliates
        – site construes something illegal
 In its simplist form, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a Blog as, "Blog (noun, short for Weblog): a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the writer".
But I guess this isn’t a "real" blog according to the wise folks at Blogflux. Tell me it isn’t so …
Update – only a few minutes later. BlogFlux tell me that I had two entries (one for jarche.com and one for /blog/1). They only deleted one. My response was that their form letter didn’t exactly strike the right chord for me ;-) I must say that I’m impressed with the speedy response :-)
All’s well that ends well, says the Bard.

Listening Outside the Walls

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Still not sure that the web has any influence on your organisation or how it does business? Even if you work behind a firewall and many external sites are blocked by your IT department (you know who you are), the outside world is still talking about you, so you should get involved in the conversation. I’m not saying that you should try to control the conversation, because you can’t, but hiding inside your Intranet won’t help either.
Look at these two cases. First, a few technology-savvy folks set up a web site called Rate My Professors, and over time this site becomes the place for students to check out profs as well as their universities. Conversations about your institution are happening all the time and no one can hide from them. Does this site have more influence than the famous Canadian MacLeans Magazine poll?
A more recent service is the UK’s National Health Service’s Patient Opinion that lets you see what patients are saying about local healthcare facilities and providers. Word of mouth (or word on the Net) can influence many people. Some of those people could be the politicians who approve healthcare budgets.
That’s why it’s important for those inside organisational walls to understand what’s happening outside and the technologies that enable these conversations.

Knowledge-worker jobs, health insurance & education

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William Draves at Nine Shift talks about the end of the middle class, with fewer jobs offering a middle class wage, so that workers feel that they have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. According to Draves, the three keys to keeping a strong middle class are – knowledge worker jobs, health insurance and education. It seems that Canadian politicians are on the right track at both the federal and provincial levels, though I’m not sure if all of their methods are adequate or well-targeted. At least we don’t have to convince them about the importance of these three pillars.
So what will replace the corporation as the source of middle class jobs? I’m not sure, but there’s a good discussion of this at Mark Federman’s blog.

Search Tips

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Yesterday, Eliiott Masie stated that Google was one of the best learning tools around (anyway, that’s what he says he told Bill Gates). Following his presentation, Ben Watson said that Google search results are information overload and that he doesn’t find it a useful way to get just-in-time information. I use Google a lot (it’s how I’ve developed my limited skills with HTML) but I think that there are many people who do not know how to maximize the full potential of a search engine.
Marshall Kirkpatrick has just republished ten tips for searching the web, so now there is a ready performance support tool for anyone who wants to improve their search skills. That’s the power of networked communities. I Furled it too!
You can also go to Google’s advanced search tips.

Masie on Learning Trends

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Elliott Masie spoke via video-conference to the LearnNB – CSTD gathering in Fredericton yesterday. There was not much new for anyone who is closely following the learning field, but that’s not Elliott’s audience anyway. I see Elliott as someone who is there just as new methods and technologies cross the chasm, explaining them for the majority, not the innovators. Here are some of the points that I noted from his presentation on extreme learning:

  • Velocity is increasing in the learning field. This means that production (such as e-learning development) has to get quicker as the pace of technology, business and cultural change increase due to our interconnectivity.
  • Personalisation is being demanded for just-in-time learning (even staggered over time instead of a one-time intervention) that is aligned with learner motivation (just-for-me).
  • The mobile device is becoming the learning platform of choice, especially outside of North America.
  • Content is becoming democratised, as evidenced by the growth of blogs and wikis.

Being absorbed in this field, you sometimes forget that not everyone is a blogger or uses wikis for collaborative work and learning. Listening to Elliott is a good indicator of where customers/clients/users are in terms of willingness to try something new. I enjoyed Elliott’s anecdotes the most, as he’s a great storyteller.

Two other points that he made, which are not new but worth repeating, are that we need to create “sandboxes” for people to experiment and fail in a safe environment and that “War Games” can be good practice environments for the real world. Few work environments seem to have sandboxes to fool around with. At Mancomm, we have always created a sandbox (bac à sable) for ourselves and clients, before and during the implementation of a learning or collaboration environment. They work well, and with open source software, they’re cheap.

During my +20 years in the military I was involved in many war games, from ones inside a building with only a map, papers and a few radios to large scale operations with thousands of soldiers. A lot can learned from these “simulations”, which can be quite low-tech. We even had a popular technique called an “in-box exercise”, where you pretended to be in your office and were given an in-box of notes and memos that you had to sort and deal with. The instructors played the roles of various people whom you needed to talk to. Such an exercise could take all day but was a much better learning environment than sitting in a lecture.

The main lesson for me is that we have a lot of techniques and methodologies that can enhance learning. The trick is in matching the right one for the context.

SCORM 2004 Enhancement for Moodle

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Ohio-based DigiLore has released enhancements to make the Moodle open source & free learning management system compliant with the defence sector’s SCORM (sharable content  object reference model). This combination of private sector development with an open source community platform should be a winning combination and I think that we will see more of this model in the LMS/LCMS field. Basically, it’s cheaper and more effective to only develop the specific modules that you cannot do without, and then use open source modules to handle the more generic tasks.

Bureaucracy = Death

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Seth Godin’s quotable Bureaucracy = Death raises a number of issues on why preventive actions are seldom taken by bureaucratic organisations. Seth talks about the effects of bureaucracy on marketing, but it also results in inertia in healthcare, education, et al. I doubt that his idea of a Chief No Officer would be embraced by many companies or institutions.
My belief is that it is the basic nature of managerial organisations that is the prime contributor to a reactive versus a preventive mindset. Why were the levees around New Orleans not maintained? Why is there no funding for programmes such as Canada’s Participaction, but we continue to add more expensive acute care machinery to our hospitals? Why is early childhood education ignored when it is a prime contributor to healthy, contributing citizens? And finally, what can we do to change this?

Atlantic Canada Code Camp

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Attention geeks and coders. The first Atlantic Canada Code Camp will be held in Moncton on 15 October:

A CodeCamp is a community-driven, all-day event for developers. Speakers are local or regional developers. Topics are based on community interest. Sessions are original and feature a heavy technical focus (no marketing fluff).

This is much too techie for me, but I know many others who may be interested. They’re still looking for presenters for this free event.