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UberNoggin: Big Brains - Big Ideas

Web 2.0 in Marketing and Education

Converting F2F Activities into SLYesterday

It’s not always easy to see how Second Life can be useful for training. In many cases it’s just not the best tool for the job but sometimes a training need just matches perfectly. Kelley Executive has a great face to face training program to help companies understand the differences in generational management needs. In their current sessions, participants learn how each generation’s views on management, technology, employer feedback etc can be different and how to work around those differences to leverage strengths. But we wanted to be able to offer the training to geographically disparate groups while maintaining the interactivity so I translated it into a SL experience.

Introducing the Work Style Totem Activity. Participants get a copy of the totem (as seen above) which asks eight questions related to their preferences for management, collaboration, and technology in the workplace. Darker colors represent more traditional views; paler colors match Millenial workstyles. After each participant had completed their totem the group has an easy to understand visual representation of their preferences and a great discussion ensues.

It’s a simple activity. The totem was easy to build. And yet, t

Faceted Classification of Virtual WorldsNovember 25

Several people have asked to see the chapter from my dissertation that I referred to last week at ReLIVE 08 so I thought I’d post the draft HERE. Please note, though, that this is NOT a finished chapter. It’s still a working draft and has errors here and there, a few incomplete citations, missing charts, and some other work to be done. The full draft should be ready this spring.

I’m happy to share it but don’t think it’s all finished

Relive 08: Reflections, Reactions, RevelationsNovember 23

WOW! ReLIVE last week was an awesome time. So many incredible, smart, innovative people in one place. I was blown away. Not only was I impressed with everyone I was lucky enough to meet, the conference organizers did an amazing job putting it all together. I have pages and pages of notes so I’m going to try to cook them down into some bullet points and provide links to handy things in hopes of providing some goodies for those of you who coulnd’t attend. Pardon my bullets but it seems the easiest way…

Me, Mark (Roo) and Ted laughing at Relive

• Open University: I didn’t know much about the school before I was invited to help with the conference but the more I learn the more impressed I am. They have a quarter of a million students, spead out across the globe, learning at a distance. If anyone has a need to innovate it’s these folks and they seem to be getting it right. The campus in Milton Keynes is full of bright folks who think about distance ed all the time and are coming up with great ways to make it work better.
• Citing my work: For the first time ever my work was cited in a presentation that I actually got to attend Margaret Derrington gave a talk about t

Twistory: Turning your Twitter history into an online diaryNovember 17

I love Twitter almost as much as I love coffee…and that’s A LOT! But I dislike that I can only go back in my own Twitter history a certain amount.  Well, no more thanks to Twistory! Now I can turn my Twitter history (or any public Twitter account for that matter) into an online diary on my google calendar.

With a couple of clicks I was able to convert my Twitter history into a calendar as you can see in the pic above. This would be super useful for organizations who use Twitter for announcements, students using Twitter to post project updates and many more great applications.

Go check it out!

Also…still in alpha but Tweeple Twak looks like it’s going to be interesting too!

Google rolls out voice and videoNovember 12

You probably already know that I’m a full-blown Google junky (all praise our technology overlords) but their latest tool makes me especially happy. Voice and Video in gmail chat!

Skype has saved lots of folks lots of high phone bills but all it has ever done for me is suck down my memory and processor. It’s done this with every computer I’ve used it on and I’ve been looking for a suitable replacement for a while now. Now I have it!

Go! Sign up and embrace the goodness. Need to know how? Aliza Sherman over at Web Worker Daily has a great post about how to use it.