It is a good time to be a virtual musician, especially if your platform of choice comes from . This past weekend saw the release of versions of the popular and game franchises for the and the , respectively.
brings the guitar strumming fun to the DS. I had a chance to try it out over the weekend and it is, in the words of my niece, “freaking sweet”. Like the console versions, GHOT has a custom guitar controller.
“But the DS doesn’t use separate controllers,” you say? Check this out:
That in combination with a pick-shaped stylus and the DS touch screen make for very cool game play. Check out the for all the details.
The Wii version of Rock Band is, I’m sure, quite similar to the and versions in terms of music and playability. Since I already have Rock Band for PS3 (working my way through a “Hard” solo tour), I doubt if I’ll get the Wii version, but I know my brother’s kids are already hounding him for the Wii version.
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… gas prices always include “9/10″ cent as part of the price? What this means in real terms, of course, is that if someone says that gas is now at $3.99 per gallon, what they really mean is that gas is $4.00 per gallon.
This has actually been a question of mine since I was very young (6 or 7 years old), when I tried to apply my newly learned multiplication skills to figuring out how much a tankful (10 gallons, since 10 was easiest to multiply by 
) of gas would cost. It was only when my dad informed me of the extra “9/10″ that I understood my error.
But even he was at a loss for why it was there.
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Dave Snowden, with whom I share a general dislike (maybe distrust is a better word) for lessons learned / best practices, has a post from about a year ago on the . I’m revisiting these ideas after sharing my thoughts about and the with the group.
Before someone can start working in a craft, they must first learn the basics of the craft. Part of this learning is traditional learning of the facts, procedures, and techniques that have been learned and passed along by those who have gone before. While not “lessons learned” in the usual sense, this type of lessons learned (or best practice) can be of value.
In fact, I think that assimilation of this knowledge, obtained from lessons learned by others, is a key early step in helping people become able to learn their own lessons later on in their career. Without a solid foundation of what has already been learned, the apprentice is destined to “reinvent the wheel” more than is necessary. (Note the “more than necessary” caveat: I believe that it is important for the novice to attempt some reinvention of their own; this gives them an understanding of the importance of those early lessons.)
The journey of an apprentice to the realm of the master is, in many ways, a journey from knowledge consumption to knowledge creation. As an apprentice, the reliance on existing knowledge is very high. The journeyman learns to understand the knowledge in use and apply it in creative, new ways. The master, while grounded in the existing knowledge of the craft, is not constrained by that knowledge as he creates new knowledge for use by the next wave of apprentices.
The same progression can be seen in many aspects of knowledge work. Most will start off in college, accumulating that basic information they need for their chosen field, then move on to a “journeyman” stage in a company (or their own company) where they will learn how to apply that accumulated knowledge. For most, this is the stage they will remain at for most of their career.
If they are lucky, and of course diligent in continuing to develop their own work literacy, they will progress to the “master” stage where they can re-write what is taught to students in college.
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…if you are looking for someone to help you get the word out about your innovation. At least, this is the message I get from a quick read of from at the .
Dr Rogers persisted thinking, if only he could get one farmer to try it out and then they could influence everyone else. After a time he did find someone to try out the new corn, a hipster dude who wore Bermuda shorts and fancy sunglasses. He enjoyed a bumper crop but the other farmers were unimpressed. This maverick farmer derided their way of life, he was an outsider and there was no way they were going to adopt anything from a Bermuda short wearing weirdo.
The story Shawn is discussing comes from , which has this to say in regards to the story:
Rogers learned that the first people to latch onto a new idea are unlike the masses in many ways. He called these people cheap viagra online canada. They’re the guys and gals in Bermuda shorts. They tend to be open to new ideas and smarter than average. But here’s the important point. The key to getting the majority of any population to a adopt a vital behavior is to find out who these innovators are cheap viagra online canada. If they embrace your new ideas, it will surely die.
Though I hate to say it, this explains a lot. I don’t know if I buy into it completely, but I think anyone who fits the description of “innovator” given above can probably recount more than one story like this from personal experience. Shawn goes on to say that the recommended approach is to approach “early adopters”, but I must admit I’m not sure I understand the difference between an “early adopter” and “innovator” in this context.
I also can’t help thinking of this in the context of Michele’s recent question in Regardless of whether you stake out your target as the workers themselves or the organization’s leadership, it seems that you should maybe avoid targeting the people who already embrace the concepts of Work Literacy.
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If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that one of my big interests is in the area of Personal , or PKM. cheap viagra online canadaKey to this is an interest in and exploration of the various available today to help individuals improve their ability to perform their work.
Thanks to a , I now have a term that very neatly (and concisely) describes what my interest really is: . From the at Work Literacy:
Work Literacy is based on the beliefs that:
- With the growth of new technologies, explosion of new information, and accessibility of experts around the world, there’s a growing gap between the skills that most knowledge workers possess and the resources available to them.
- As knowledge workers we need practical skills, methods and tools that will improve our effectiveness and help us stay on top of our game.
- This is an issue that’s evolving quickly and we need a way to start discussing the implications, sharing ideas and learning how to better manage our work and learning.
Work Literacy will:
- Inspire action
- Pull together a wide variety of individuals who will collectively help provide content that is meaningful to the “average knowledge worker.”
- Provide a hub for the discussion of this topic by knowledge workers.
- Provide access to resources such as workshop providers, presenters, information, etc. offered by people in the network.
This one is definitely going into my feed reader, you should take a look at it as well. cheap viagra online canada
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Nearly 10 years ago now, I was responsible for customer training for a new piece of equipment we had produced. (Actually, I assumed responsibility about 1/2 way through the project.) After training our first customer, I sat down with the training crew to see how we could make the next session better, as I had seen and heard some things that weren’t correct, or could be better.
Silly me.
Our training vendor politely informed me that the training material was what it was, and it couldn’t be changed after it had been approved. In fact, they seemed shocked that I even brought the idea up, as if it were some sort of training community heresy. I was not, and am not, a “training person” so the attitude was a bit surprising to me.
“What do you mean, you don’t want to make your training product progressively better as you learn more about it” was what was going through my mind. (In fact, I went to my project manager and told him he needed to fire the training vendor we had and get someone who “knew what they were doing.”) I’ve since learned that this was not an isolated incident; on the contrary it seemed to be the standard.
In a post today titled , Harold Jarche makes the case for content developers to take a lesson from what’s going on in the rest of the digital world.
However, there is one principle that is not taught or followed in instructional design that would really reflect the nature of the Web. There should be a principle of making learning content , so that it can change with the times, the needs of instructors or learners. Licenses such as would allow remixing. Perhaps we need a special “cheap viagra online canada” license.
Anyway, if you want your content to live a long, healthy and even diverse life; make it easier to hack.
Good advice for any content developer, but especially for learning content developers.
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