Lately I’ve been digging into blogs, books and wiki entries about informal learning and communities of practice. This clip by Jay Cross makes everything click for me.
It seems, though, that the ideas presented by Mr. Cross fly smack in the face of the beliefs of 90 percent of the people with whom I interact in both my professional and academic lives. They need to see this video, though–not only to begin thinking about what Mr. Cross has to say (I love the “training” vs. “learning” part), but also to show that you don’t need fancy equipment, expensive production crews, or complicated distribution networks–you just need compelling content. We can’t use technology or economics as excuses any longer.I know none of this is new–but it is new to the majority of people I deal with daily. How do I introduce them to these concepts without coming off as threatening? I mean, this is pretty paradigm-shifting stuff, for lack of a better buzz phrase–
Everyone’s heard about the iPhone by now. I’ve already had to field a common question a few times–”Why would anyone pay $500 for a phone?”
I think Apple has done this potentially amazing product a disservice by labeling it a phone. When you think about it, the iPhone is really a tiny, feature-packed computer. One of those features happens to be mobile telephony. Maybe the pending patent infringement suit from Cisco over the name will be a blessing in disguise–and just as Apple gave meaning and ubiquity to a previously meaningless word (ahem, iPod), they could come up with the new word and the new standard to which all other mobile communication devices are compared.
Anyway, when the day comes that I pick one of these up for myself (it really is a question of when, not if), the phone function is probably the one I’ll use the least–though it is a necessity these days. In the end, I’m looking forward to dumping my Palm, phone, iPod, and point-and-shoot for one convenient device. The drawback is that I’d have to switch carriers. I’m not particularly in love with my current carrier, but I hear negative after negative about Cingular. The timing’s not great, either–I’ve got about two months left on my current contract and could go month-to-month until the iPhone’s release. But my current phone is on its last legs. Do I keep it together with paperclips and duct tape or settle on a Windows-based smart phone for a year or two?