Robin Good's Latest News

Browser Compatibility Testing Guide: The Best Tools And Services To Check How Others See Your Web Site

Daniele Bazzano — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:26:00 GMT

How does your web site look when seen with a different browser, operating system, or at a different screen resolution? Do you know that the layout, margins, font display and other visual characteristics of your web site may change drastically when viewed on a different browser, operating system, or screen resolution than the one you have on your own computer? Photo credit: tombaky In the effort to make your site look more credible, trustable and "professional", you may have been asking yourself what's the best way to do such browser compatibility testing analysis, beyond installing multiple browsers, having multiple PCs and Macs and joggling your monitor screen settings hundreds of times. And, indeed, there is a better way: browser compatibility testing tools are a set of tools and web-based services that you can leverage to test, check and verify how any web page of your web site is going to look when viewed on a different computer / browser / operating system / screen resolution. In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find the very best tools and services to check how others really see your web site. When it comes to browser compatibility testing there are at least three main factors that may affect how others see your web site on their computers:

Web browser: The type of web browser your viewers use (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc,) and also the specific version they have installed (Internet Explorer 6 is way different than Internet Explorer 7).
Operating system: The operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) your viewers have installed on their machines (Firefox on Mac renders a web page differently than Firefox on Windows).
Screen resolution: The screen resolution (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800, etc.) your viewers have set on their monitors.

Just by mixing the different options available on these three basic variables should help you realize how many possible different configurations your viewers may have. But how can you test such a broad variety of possible combinations? Install all the available web browsers and operating systems out there and then test each screen resolution your monitor can handle? No way. The sheer number of possible combinations you need to test go well beyond the imaginable: 15 basic setups tested at least at three different resolutions are scary enough to become your worst nightmare. Luckily, this is exactly where browser compatibility testing tools come to rescue. These are a handful of tools (either free or reasonably-priced) you can use to check the compatibility of your site across different web browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. How do these tools and services work? Browser compatibility testing tools generally work all in the same way. You need to provide the URL of the web page you want to check and then select the operating systems, web browsers, and the specific screen resolutions you want to test your page on. Your selected browser compatibility testing tool will generate a screenshot of that very page from a virtual computer set up according to your specified settings (operating system, web browser type and version, etc.). In this way, you can immediately evaluate what are the key layout issues to be addressed. Here below is a comparative table and a set of individual mini reviews to help you evaluate all of these browser compatibility testing services. Here the selection criteria used to compare them:

Operating systems supported: The operating systems that can be used to test your web site pages (e.g.: Mac, Windows XP / Vista, Linux, etc.).
Web browsers supported: The brand and versions of Web browsers available that can be utilized for your compatibility tests (Firefox, IE, Safari, Chrome, etc.).
Screen resolution testing: The specific screen resolutions you can utilize to check the look of your web site layout on different screen setups (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x900, etc.).
Unique features: Key characteristics that distinguish each browser compatibility testing tool.
Free trial: Evaluation period offered to try the browser compatibility testing tool.
Price: Cost of the browser compatibility testing tool.

Here all the details:

Browser Compatibility Testing Tools - Comparative Table

Browser Compatibility Testing Tools

Browsercam

BrowserCam is a browser compatibility testing tool that allows you to check how your web site is displayed using different browsers and operating systems. The service works on all major web browser running on Windows, Os X, and Linux Fedora Core 6. Also, minor web browsers like Konqueror, Camino or Netscape are supported. Testing of different screen resolutions (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x800) is allowed. Browsercam can also test how your pages are rendered on mobile operating systems like Os X Mobile, Android or Windows Mobile. Browsercam is priced at $19.95 for one day of use, but there are also additional pricing solutions if you need to use the service for a longer time. Free to try for 24 hours and 200 screen captures.
http://www.browsercam.com/
BrowserShots

BrowserShots is a free solution to test the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions. With BrowserShots you can test your web site on almost any browser and operating systems on the market (see comparative table for details). You can also test your layout at all main screen resolutions (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800). Unique feature is the option to test also color depth, Javascript, Flash and Java codes of your web site, to see how these parameters may affect the way your pages are displayed.
http://browsershots.org/
Litmus

Litmus is a browser compatibility testing tool that allows you to compare the rendering of your web site across different browsers and operating systems. All major browsers on Windows and Os X are supported. As a unique feature, the service allows you to test the layout of your online newsletter to see how it looks across all major e-mail clients. Litmus offers no trial period nor the possibility to test your site at different screen resolutions. Litmus is priced at $39 for 14 days of use. The service has also a Basic (free) version that lets you run compatibility tests on Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 with 50 screen captures.
http://litmusapp.com/
BrowsrCamp

BrowsrCamp is a browser compatibility testing tool designed for Os X-based web browsers. BrowsrCamp can test all major web browsers on Mac and also less-known alternatives like Sunrise, Demeter or iCab. The service supports screen resolution testing up to 1600x1200. Starting at $3 for two days of use, BrowsrCamp offers additional pricing solutions for longer testing periods. Free testing is available for Safari 3.12 only.
http://www.browsrcamp.com
Adobe BrowserLab

Adobe BrowserLab is a free cross-browser compatibility testing tool that allows you to make a side-by-side comparison of how your web site is rendered on different web browsers and operating systems. Still at a beta stage, the service works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome on either Windows and Os X. Screen resolution testing is not supported.
http://browserlab.adobe.com
Ie NetRenderer

IE NetRenderer is a free browser compatibility testing service you can use to compare how your web site is rendered across different versions of Internet Explorer (from 5.5 to 8). Screen resolution testing is not allowed. Unique feature of IE NetRenderer is the option to compare at a first glance any difference in the way your web site is rendered on Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer
Multi-Safari

Multi-Safari is a free browser compatibility testing tool that allows you to check the rendering of your web site using different versions of Safari, the default web browser of Os X. You can test Safari versions from Os X 10.2 up to 10.5. Multi-Safari does not allow screen resolution testing. The service is available either in English and French.
http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari
CrossBrowserTesting

CrossBrowserTesting allows you to check the compatibility of your site on a large set of web browsers including Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, and others. Operating systems available for testing are Windows, Os X 10.5, and Ubuntu Linux 7.10. CrossBrowserTesting also offers the option to switch between different screen resolutions, such 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200. Unique features are the option to test Javascript and Ajax on your pages, and also the integration of a remote control client to run browser testing from anywhere using the IP address of your machine. Pricing solutions start from $19.95 for 150 minutes of use. You can also test the service for a free trial period of 7 days.
http://crossbrowsertesting.com
Browser Photo

Browser Photo is a browser compatibility testing solution that tests your web site across different web browsers and operating systems. Browser Photo works with all main browsers on the market (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera) on either Windows, Os X and Linux. the service can also test your web site at two different screen resolutions: 800x600 and 1024x768. Browser Photo is priced at $15 for a one-time use. No trial period is available.
http://www.netmechanic.com/products/browser-index.shtml
Multi-Browser Viewer

Multi-Browser Viewer is a cross-browser testing tool that allows you to check the compatibility of your web site across different web browsers and operating systems. The tool tests all major web browser on the three main operating systems (Windows, Os X and Ubuntu Linux), and also less-known alternative web browsers like Epiphany, Konqueror o SeaMonkey. No screen resolution testing is available. Multi-Browser Viewer also lets you validate and auto-correct the HTML code of your web site to resolve compatibility issues. No screen resolution testing is available. Multi-Browser Viewer is priced at $24.95 for a one-time license. Free trial testing is available for 14 days.
http://www.multibrowserviewer.com
BrowserSeal

BrowserSeal is a browser compatibility testing tool you can use to discover any compatibility issue of your web site across major Windows-based web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari). Screen resolution testing is not available. BrowserSeal is priced at $28 for a one-time license and you can test the service for free on Firefox using three screen captures.
http://browserseal.com

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on November 23rd, 2009 as "Browser Compatibility Testing Guide: The Best Tools And Services To Check How Others See Your Web Site".

Media Literacy: Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media by George Siemens - Nov 22 09

George Siemens — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:05:00 GMT

In this weekly Media Literacy Digest, open education and connectivism advocate George Siemens, takes you to news and stories on emerging media, communication technologies and education-related trends, helping you make good sense of the many changes taking place around you and of how these directly impact your daily lives. Photo credit: Chris Harvey Inside this Media Literacy Digest:

The Brain Chip… - Consider the brain chip: "Intel researchers in Pittsburgh told journalists today that brain implants are harnessing human brain waves to surf the Internet, manipulate documents, and much more".
Chrome OS - Lots of reaction to Google's Chrome OS (web operating system, in theory, a means to do away with Windows, Mac, Linux).
Salesforce Chatter - Salesforce, like many other companies, is jumping onto the enterprise social media bandwagon with the soon-to-be-released Chatter.
Video Games: Modern Warfare - Controversy aside, Modern Warfare 2 is an interesting "sign of the times". In its first week of release, the game generated $550 million (in UK and North America).
LearnTrends Recordings - After three days of five+ hours work of presentations, we have (Jay Cross, Tony Karrer, and I) wrapped up our third annual LearnTrends conference.
Elearning Conferences 2010 - Clayton Wright publishes as complete a listing of educational technology conferences as you are likely to find anywhere.
Oslo Presentations - I am in Oslo. I have a total of four face-to-face presentations and three online presentations to deliver this week. We are also running the LearnTrends conference online. So it is a bit hectic.

Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends by George Siemens

The Brain Chip…

Our ability to do things with technology far exceeds our ability to understand implications. Consider the brain chip: "Intel researchers in Pittsburgh told journalists today that brain implants are harnessing human brain waves to surf the Internet, manipulate documents, and much more". This got me thinking about how far I would go to adopt technology. Or humanity as a whole. Do you have a limit? Is there a point at which you would say "no more". And if you (we) did, would it matter? Would it abate development? Is transhumanism our future? Will technology always lead and humanity simply follow where it goes?

Chrome OS

Lots of reaction to Google's Chrome OS (web operating system, in theory, a means to do away with Windows, Mac, Linux). Running Chrome OS at this stage is no easy task - it will be a while before it will be available for most users. And, once available, it is geared to the netbook market. Not surprisingly, since Chrome started its life as a browser, applications run as tabs. Without being able to cite any research, I think most people seem more comfortable with a browser than any other application on their computer. Google is targeting ease of use. For that matter, Google is seeking to do to the web what Microsoft did to the desktop. Video introduction to Chrome OS (note the 7 second cold boot) Mashup explores 5 ways in which Chrome OS is unique.

Salesforce Chatter

Salesforce, like many other companies, is jumping onto the enterprise social media bandwagon with the soon-to-be-released Chatter. Basically, Chatter introduces some of the functionality found in Facebook and Twitter into a secure enterprise system. Reactions vary (have a look at the comments on the article), including: "everyone is on Facebook already - why bother with Chatter", "this is great - just what I needed", and "Elgg does this better already and its free". Still, the best way to determine if a software has gained traction is to have someone develop it at an enterprise level. Sadly, it is also the best way to kill the transformative functionality of new software.

Video Games: Modern Warfare

Controversy aside, Modern Warfare 2 is an interesting "sign of the times". In its first week of release, the game generated $550 million (in UK and North America). What other media even comes close? What is a big weekend for a new movie release? $50-60 million? I have been looking for something approaching an authoritative figure on the cost of developing MW2. Figures range between $30-50 million. Again, considering block buster movies can cost in excess of $100 million to make, the movie industry is being significantly upstaged by the gaming industry. Plus, games run on a centralized device, so XBox can do things like this to prevent piracy.

LearnTrends Recordings

After three days of five+ hours work of presentations, we have (Jay Cross, Tony Karrer, and I) wrapped up our third annual LearnTrends conference. Scott Skibell of Skillcasting has completed and posted recordings of the event. Topics include:

convergence,
mobile learning,
design,
social learning,
managing information,
microlearning,
enterprise 2.0 and many others.

A great event - congrats and thanks to all involved in presenting / planning / attending! For some reason, these intensive online conferences are more exhausting than face to face events.

Elearning Conferences 2010

Clayton Wright publishes as complete a listing of educational technology conferences as you are likely to find anywhere. Tony Karrer has posted the list on his site, so I will just link to it… Thanks Clayton - an outstanding resource!

Oslo Presentations

I am in Oslo. I have a total of four face-to-face presentations and three online presentations to deliver this week. We are also running the LearnTrends conference online. So it is a bit hectic. I have posted two presentations on slideshare:

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on November 20th, 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About George Siemens George Siemens is the Associate Director in the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. George blogs at www.elearnspace.org where he shares his vision on the educational landscape and the impact that media technologies have on the educational system. George Siemens is also the author of Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and the book "Knowing Knowledge" where he develops a learning theory called connectivism which uses a network as the central metaphor for learning and focuses on knowledge as a way to making connections.

Photo credits: The Brain Chip… - Ktsdesign Chrome OS - Blogu Salesforce Chatter - Salesforce Video Games: Modern Warfare - Niki Crucillo LearnTrends Recordings - Ariusz Nawrocki Elearning Conferences 2010 - Elearningtech Oslo Presentations - Johnny Lye

How To Remember What You Forgot: Your Internal Google Comes To Rescue

Robin Good — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:58:00 GMT

How to remember what you forgot? Is there a way to instruct your brain to remember those things that are buried under hundreds of layers of memories? Yes there is, and you have it since you were born. Photo credit: ktsdesign edited by Daniele Bazzano How many times did you find yourself in the situation of wanting to remember something, but the more you tried, the less results you achieved? It is like you focus hard to remember a place, a name, but the answer never comes to your head. It is mainly our fault, as generally after a couple of minutes we give up and say: "This is useless, I am not going to remember this". We wrongly think that the answer we need will come to our head immediately, because we do not know how to command our brain.

We often hear how much our intelligence potential is underutilized. The main obstacle here is that we often don’t know how to operate our own bio-computer. Our brain. It’s like we had a powerful switchboard available to us but we were to operate it with our eyes covered. Not easy. But once you learn how you can trigger one of those invisible switches, it becomes a child’s play to do things that earlier may have appeared impossible to achieve.

One of these invisible switches is Google. Not the one you use to search for stuff on your computer though, but an Internal Google, as Robin Good baptized it. This Internal Google can help you get the right information no matter how old it is or how difficult it might be to find what you want to remember. Curious? Want to know how to leverage the power of your brain beyond its limits? Then read how Robin Good explains his idea of the Internal Google and how you can turn this magical tool to your advantage. At the end of this article you can also find a short video (with full text transcription) of a speech Robin gave at Girl Geek Dinner 6 earlier in 2009, explaining how the Internal Google helped him choose "Robin Good" as his pen name. Here all the details:

Internal Search Engine Now Available

by Robin Good
While search engines are really one of the great inventions of our times, helping you find just about any information you need in a matter of seconds, there is a fascinating and powerful search technology that is much closer and accessible to you. Even though you may have not heard about it yet, once you get to know this alternative search tool, you may find it even more useful than your favorite search engine, as this search tool can bring you back results you could not get anywhere else. We often hear how much our intelligence potential is underutilized. The main obstacle here is that we often don’t know how to operate our own bio-computer. Our brain. It’s like we had a powerful switchboard available to us but we were to operate it with our eyes covered. Not easy. But once you learn how you can trigger one of those invisible switches, it becomes a child’s play to do things that earlier may have appeared impossible to achieve. Today I would like to lit up one of these invisible switches for you. Your brain "search" switch.

The Internal Google

I am sure you have been in a situation where while talking with a friend you have tried to remember the name of a person you had recently met but couldn’t easily recall it right away. As you tried to recall that person’s name, you felt like you were close to remembering her name, while simultaneously realizing that your inability to control and act on this desire in a predictable way. In these situations, we often mumble things like: "Gosh, I can’t remember it!" or "...ah, I had it just here on the tip of my tongue!" while hoping to recover somehow that memorable friend’s name. But the forgotten name, doesn’t always pop back up. What we do not realize is how important are the words we inadvertently say while realizing that we are not able to recall a specific name or word to our own conscious memory. When, caught in this memory-fail situations, we can make a world of difference by realizing how effective it can be to voice some kind of positive input-request to your own brain memory department, rather than just a lament, a compliant or a full declaration of defeat. Rather than saying the often spontaneous "Oh, I can’t remember..." muttering some more positive statements can indeed make a difference, at least in my own experience. Try saying something like: "Oh, I’m going to remember it now..." or "It will come to me shortly..." only to see your self-invitation to your own memory banks turn into reality soon after. I must say, that I was quite skeptical myself at first, but after having tried this technique for a few years now, I must say that for me, this approach really works wonders. In fact, it is not only useful to help me remember more easily things I thought I had forgotten, but it is an instrument of creative research and brainstorming that has given me some really memorable results. Try your internal search engine at your next opportunity.
N.B.: Just to make sure I steer clear of any misunderstandings: I am not a doctor nor a neuroscientist and what I am sharing here with you is the fruit of my personal experience and discoveries and not something I have read on a science text. This doesn’t make it less real but you should check and verify your own experience before telling someone else.

How The Internal Google Worked For Me - Robin Good

Duration: 4' 19''
Full English Text Transcription
The second question people generally ask me before I give them the microphone is: "Why did you choose to call yourself Robin Good?" Robin Good! Robin Hood is my uncle. He lived in... did you know where Robin Hood comes from? Sherwood. S-H-E-R-WOOD. The wood of Sher. I'm Robin Hood nephew, and I come from a nearby village that's called Sharewood. But is spelled S-H-A-R-E, the forest where you share stuff. "Robin Good from Sharewood, you're really out of your mind Robin, how did you get all these stuff in your head?" You have to know that each one of us has a little Google engine inside his / her head. Most people don't know, they think that they have bad memory, because they don't know how to use their internal Google. One day I said:

"I want to use my internal Google, and I want to find out how can I make myself some kind of a brand, something that people are going to remember. One because the name is easy, and secondly because my name is going to tell them something."

Because my name, beside "Giggi", is really a lot difficult, kind of aristocratic name that nobody can say correctly, when I travel to other countries, they all reverse it all around. It's really displeasing. By the way, it's Luigi Canali De Rossi. So I get to be, Mr. Du Rossi, Mr. Luigi, Canali Di Rossi. They never get it right! I said to my internal Google:

"Listen, Google, I have to find a name that I can use over and over that it's easy to pronounce wherever I go and that is going to represent me. That when I say it, I feel I'm that one. It didn't choose my mother or my father, it's my choice."

Do you know how this Google works? You know when you say: "Shit, I don't remember that stuff, I have it here... it's not coming to me..." When you say "shit", you're telling Google: "Don't search for it. Forget it, I don't know it", so he just doesn't find it. Pay attention to this. Some of the time you say: "Oh, it's just there, hold it, it's going to come then you're going to say something else, and bang! It comes!" Because you said to the internal Google it's coming, so he's working there! he listens to your commands. "So, Google, I know you can work with my commands. I know it's going to take you some time, just go and do your job." And so he went and did his job, he completely forgot about it. Three months went by. Then one day, I was there on my motorbike, doing my own thing, looking at the red light... bang! "Robin Good from Sharewood." It just came, all done, in the package ready to use. How can you say no to such a great name? It represented me fully! I'm the person who likes to share with a lot of people, that is what gives me satisfaction. I didn't get into the web publishing business to make money, but because I enjoyed the sharing with other people. And Robin Good.. that's fantastic, he's the guy who's stealing from the big guys and giving to the poor, so "What's the correspondence in my world - I said - Maybe who do I still from? Microsoft?" At the time I would give to Google, but now... you don't know anymore who to steal from... but the idea is to get these fantastic ideas that are all over the place, and give them out to people, because to be successful online doesn't really take a lot of money, and a lot of investment, but a lot of good thinking and asking lots of questions, and looking around, and talking to people. That's what it takes.

Originally written by Robin Good for BingTweets, and first published on September 1st, 2009 as "Internal Search Engine Now Available"

Photo credits: Internal Search Engine Now Available - BingTweets The Internal Google - ktsdesign

Future Of Learning: A Video Interview With Curtis Bonk

Robin Good — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:03:00 GMT

What does the future of learning look like? What is going to change in the future of our education systems? What role will new media technologies play in the way you and I will share knowledge and skills in the near future? If you want to see a glimpse of how you can impact the way in which you and your kids are going to learn in the future, check out this video interview. Photo credit: Robin Good My highly qualified interviewee is this time Curtis Bonk, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University, and one of the most celebrated "hot heads" out there looking at the future of education and learning (he has recently published a great new book called "The World is Open"). According to Prof. Bonk, the key issue educators and teachers will face in the near future is how to engage and connect students. Traditional educational venues like schools and universities tend to institutionalize teaching, leaving little or no space to questions, creative initiative, or to sharing and collaboration approaches. How do we overcome these obstacles? Do we need to revolutionize the whole education system altogether? Professor Bonk thinks not. Though this may sound quite a challenge, he says that there are many ways whereby you and I can increasingly foster the adoption of a new learning paradigm. And new media technologies can indeed play a critical role in this process. Social networks, community-building platforms, online learning resources, mobile devices need to be re-purposed as the new tools that students and teachers worldwide will employ to connect with each other, share their skills and analyze data from multiple perspectives.

If [people] can learn from a boat, if Arctic explorers can learn from the ice at the North Pole and South Pole, if people can be learning from trains or on planes, we have taken learning and pushed it out beyond schools to so many non-traditional and informal learning venues. People can no longer ignore it, people can no longer say it is not worthwhile. We have to start exploring where it works and how to get the information out to as many locations as possible. That should be the goal of all politicians, of all educators, to spread beyond schools. Schools are important, but let's push well beyond, where human kind is gone, or wherever all the species are gone, we can learn.

In this video interview with Professor Bonk you can discover what may be really needed for a paradigm shift in education and what are the changes and the new approaches required for our kids to be blessed with a brand new way to discover and learn about the world they live in. Here all the details:

Future of Learning - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 1' 16"
Full English Text Transcription
Robin Good: Good morning Curt. How are you doing? Curtis Bonk: It is a lovely day in Bloomington, Indiana.
Robin Good: Alright then... and The World is Open! Curtis Bonk: It is not closed, it is open!
Robin Good: Fantastic. How is the weather there? Curtis Bonk: Lovely, but I have not been outside yet to really experience it.
Robin Good: But, I mean, are you guys getting into the cold part of the year? Curtis Bonk: It is been a bit chilly, it just got nice today. Trees are changing, all yellow all around me. I have a forest view, and I look this way, a little creek and a forest. But I will look at you for now.
Robin Good: Fantastic. How do you spend most of your time inside that room full of papers? Are you mostly still grading people or are you exploring the new universes of learning? What are you really doing? Curtis Bonk: I print and I put them in a stack, and then I run through them when I want to write a chapter. I just kind look at what I need, I grab something and... here we go!

New Teachers Must Be Social and Entertaining - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 2'
Robin Good: How much the interaction of your students is part of your new learning and discovery process? Curtis Bonk: I teach online. I teach with video conferencing, and I teach blended. All those things. Right now I have an online class, and my second class is actually being changed, so that I am creating videos for faculties to teach online: 27 videos, five to 10 minutes long, on different topics of online teaching and learning.
Robin Good: Fantastic. What are the new skills that are being learned by a teacher who wants to use video, for example, to help his students learn something? Curtis Bonk: Of course social presence: Feedback, how do you engage students, pedagogical stuff. How do you grab something on a remote site and shake it up a little bit. Debates, role-play and all those things. That is not new, but the notion of social presence maybe is. The fixation with our society, here in the US, is about having an instructor available. That is a big thing today. I think eBooks is a big thing today in the US It is being the summer of eBooks, and how we do we use them to engage students and then just flip through content. It is also being the summer of open teaching and open learning. Obama wants community colleges to have free open-source classes.

How is that going to happen?
Who is going to pay for it?
Who is going to assess the skills learned?
What is the digital library of contents going to look like?

Since my book came out, that you just held up, those are the two trends: Opener number one (eBooks) and opener number four (open teaching and learning) have probably being the most prominent. And then number 10: Facebook, social networking.

How Facebook Can Serve Future Educators - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 1' 47"
Robin Good: How is that Facebook becoming relevant to the world of learning? Curtis Bonk: What we see today is that Facebook is spinning out to little games and applications. How can we create educational games that engage kids for one month or two months, not just Farmville, which has millions of users, but how do we create educational games within that? How do we build social ice-breakers for a class, so students get to know each other? Or a community, that is not just a repository of documents? All these papers could be posted into a community, right? But how do we get to engage with other students in the class and beyond the class? I think Facebook is a way to bring people in from the outside into your class for a view, as well as to get students within the class to network with one another: share homework, share their ideas, but homework in particular. What you are learning, where do you want to go and who do you want to learn with. We can extend a peer group today with social networking beyond our four-wall classrooms. I do not have to look here or there, or in front of me, but really the world community comes in using Facebook or Ning, which I like. N-I-N-G of course. Have you used Ning? I am sure you have.
Robin Good: Yeah, I am not actually a great fan of Ning, but it is indeed a nice infrastructure to build communities, and if there are strong vectors of interest around the community it can work really well I think. I am all for that.

Society Can No Longer Ignore Online Learning - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 5' 7"
Robin Good: You just mentioned classrooms and the possibility of going beyond the four walls. But why is then all these technology and new opportunities still converging around putting people inside that box for so many hours? That bugs me a little bit. How do you see that situation changing? Curtis Bonk: We have got to think about new universities, new secondary schools. We have got to move beyond the notion of four walls. There is a book here, is called Learning at the Back Door. Do you see this little Russian kid looking into the school over here? He is not allowed into the school, those four walled rooms. This other individual has resources wrapped around him, he can learn whenever he wants. Today this kid does not have to think about learning from Oxford or Stanford. He can. Whenever he wants to, or she wants to. He does not have to go into the classroom. Today the student can go to a podcast and listen to or something like this, when he or she needs to.
Robin Good: But then in the reality of the day today I am in fact quite forced even at a legal-penal level to bring my kid to a four-wall classroom. I am not allowed, not supported, nor rewarded it if I try to invest the little time left after all those hours and the memorization exercises assigned by the Soviet school to him, to explore this other worlds, to access the professors he wants to be into, the affinity groups of other kids that do not have to belong to his same district to be part of his classroom, but enjoy his same passions. The dream I see is the same one, but the reality of it, for what I see, is still very far and distant, and the culture around me seems also to reject me when I try to pronounce those new thoughts. What is your experience? Curtis Bonk: Here we are. We are at this playing field trying today, where we are all engaging, you and I have gone to these schools. There are few people who are on the fringe areas who are deciding to learn from these online contents when they need them to be re-tooled, who are adults typically. But young people today in the US, like Adora Svitak, the world's youngest teacher, 11 year-old, learns online and teaches online since she was six year-old, these are the early pioneers, like we called them. Sooner those will no longer be the pioneers. Your kids will be jumping into your Soviet state, I think you called it, will be seeing this success story of these kids on the fringes, these fringe people will become the norms who learned from:

Podcast,
eBooks,
wikis,
blogs, or
their own personal learning environments.

This is shaking people up, in the US anyhow, in Korea which I visited recently, in Singapore. Now, today we have got so many options available to us. If universities, colleges, schools, corporate training centers do not take advantage, we are going to have a revolution of the people. Who demanded, you and I, not just us. World is open. How do we take advantage of that? We just see the inclination of this, with people learning on ships and boats. Those guys going around the world at age 17, they were learning all the time they were taking their sail boat around the world. If they can learn from a boat, if Arctic explorers can learn from the ice at the North Pole and South Pole, if people can be learning from trains or on planes, we have taken learning and pushed it out beyond schools to so many non-traditional and informal learning venues. People can no longer ignore it, people can no longer say it is not worthwhile. We have to start exploring where it works and how to get the information out to as many locations as possible. That should be the goal of all politicians, of all educators, to spread beyond schools. Schools are important, but let's push well beyond, where humankind has gone, or wherever all the species are gone, we can learn. That is my notion.

Technology Is a Way To Broaden Learning Perspectives - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 5' 8"
Robin Good: I am receiving this idea that those kids and those pioneers among us pushing the envelope will be the models of this emerging revolution, but the resistance from the existing educational system is very strong. Also what I noticed is that these so-called digital natives are not as schooled as they are painted to be. They are cool because they have those tools as natural tools in front of them, but most of the time they are clueless on the best use of these tools on themselves, out of the very easy superficial social tools that they start to learn right away. Digital natives do not seem to get what are the possibilities in front of them because they do not really have models inside their educational institutions that help them think critically about the opportunities available to them. The education system also makes them think in ways quite opposite in the way of forming them as humans that can have value inside society, that are kind of opposite to the once being offered by those very technologies. I am having some conflicts with all that. Curtis Bonk: Let's think about the Flat Classrooms Project. The Flat Classrooms Project is the only one discussed in my book, Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat book, Don Tapscott's WIKINOMICS book and Growing Up Digital. What they do in the flat classrooms, in Digiteen Project, they take a book like mine, or whatever book they might have, my blended book or whatever they have got, and they analyze the book. And in this case, these kids in secondary schools, work with other kids around the world to understand the technologies that make learning open. This semester they are using my book actually, The World is Open book. It is making them aware of what are the technologies for learning. Last year they looked at Growing Up Digital, the book from Don Tapscott, and they analyzed it across the world. You are right, kids today have pretty savvy skills for their mobile devices, they can use them for chats and all this. But they are not for learning. How do we transform the mobile devices or these synchronous conferencing tools? In the Flat Classrooms Project they use Ning to form groups with other kids around the world, wikis to summarize the book across cultures, video conferencing like this to discuss what they have learned and do peer interaction. They use other kinds of tools like Twitter, microblogging and blogs. How can that one-off project become the norm? How can those synchronous as well as asynchronous collaborative technologies push all through all schools? This is the power of technology I have been talking about since 1987. I think that video conference like this can let kids stand in each others shoes. They can see perspectives. That to me can change the whole teaching and learning arena. We have to pushing the global head, international head for perspective taking. I understand people in Italy better, which I do not admittedly, or people in Pakistan or some other places around the world. To me this is the most powerful way to use technology. It is to do cross-cultural collaboration like the ePals projects and others, there is something called the IEARN Project. That will get kids in K-12 schools thinking about collaboration, teaming, these digital skills that you are talking about to critically analyze data. Not just accept what they see, but to analyze it with their peer groups. When they see a group in Italy critiquing a document that they thought was great, they will see that they really were not thinking about the credibility of the sources, the quality of the resources. When I have done any international collaboration with my students, with my teachers, they see that once we go to Finland, Peru or Korea, those students are analyzing the data in a different way, and they are opened up to the fact that they are really not going as in-depth as they need to go. I really think that international collaboration pushes us up to ego-centric points of view to multiple perspectives. That is one way of using technology that can help with this digital teen issue.

No More PowerPoint, Do Carnival Pedagogy Instead - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 5' 52"
Robin Good: Then with the explosion of all these learning opportunities, there must be indeed some work like the one you are preparing to train a little better these supposed teachers to become real communicators, because they have been going up and down the hall in my classroom, and my son and my grandson classrooms forever, telling their memorized stories, but only very few of them are kind of interesting or engaging. We have learned how to do great games while they walk down the other way, and we have those 48 seconds or so in which to prepare another trick for them when they come back. Again, the issue is also to create a new generation of, maybe I do not like to call them teachers, that word gets in my way a little bit, but guides, facilitators, like this concept of samba schools that - who was it - Seymour Papert, I think, brought up. Samba schools in Brazil, where there is a lot of affinity, everybody is passionate about something, there is a unique goal and then there are elders and novices mixing up each other, and sharing their skills. That is the type of learning I am looking for, and I would like it to come to where I am. As you are saying the you learning world, in which everything comes down to my mobile, your indication of preparing a set of lessons that are short and I can look up on my iPod or so, seems to be quite the direction. But the content producers, the teachers seem to be lacking. We got a great deal of PowerPoint makers, but I have a place where you can send them here in Italy. Curtis Bonk: I have two comments right away on that. First of all: I will send you all the PowerPoint people you want. PPPs: Power Point People. Power to the PowerPoint people. It is enough Ps. OK, two things. My friend Inae Kang, in Korea is developing carnival pedagogy. The same notion of Seymour Papert's Play, liveliness, engagement. She is looking at a brand new concept: carnival pedagogy. How do we create a pedagogy teaching platform, which is:

Engaging,
fun,
interactive,
collaborative,
more depth to the experience,
more social connectedness among the people?

She is the first one I have ever heard talking about this notion, and I am trying to support her to be a keynote at a conference. I nominated her many times and people say: "What is this?" "Forget it, this is a bit too extreme" And I feel bad, because this is the kind of extremism that we need to be pushing this edge, we need get people thinking about things like carnival pedagogy or something else, right? How do we get kids engaged in new forms of learning? That maybe might transfer into using digital technologies for learning purposes as well as social purposes. How do we mix the learning and social together? "Soc-learning" or we need a new word for this, because we cannot ignore the social anymore. Social is too important, right? Is the social plain where all thought is displayed and we internalize that. But how do we make these social events an engaging learning event? And I think you are right, short blurbs of knowledge mixed in when they need it from their mobile devices attached to their bodies somewhere. Their teacher is in their pocket, right? My friend Paul Kim has these little pocket school projects. Teachers in my pocket. Kids in Latin America, in Rwanda, in India have literacy training. Our teachers who think they are almighty gods, they are the PowerPoint providers, we do not need them. They are in our pockets. If we can have our teacher in our pocket, what good is a teacher? When we have:

Academic Earth,
YouTube EDU,
SchoolTube for K-12,
BBC video,
CNN video,
NASA TV,
Link TV for National Geographic and Smithsonian specials,

we have all the stuff. All these contents dumped into the web. When we have Stanford, Oxford, and you name the universities in Japan and Vietnam putting their stuff on the web, in India, the Indian Institutes of Technology, all this stuff. The openers number four and five in the book, The World is Open, all these portals. Teachers then have to think: "But how do we use these contents that are available from MIT or the Open University of Malaysia or the UK?" That way they are wrapping around effective teachers... We do not need to replicate these statistics lectures five hundreds times over every semester. How can we utilize these contents and have teachers then get students to listen before they come to class so when they get to class is an interactive, engaging, problem-based, problem-finding activity?

New Teachers Should Become Content Curators - Curtis Bonk

Duration: 5'
Robin Good: It would seem to me that in this painting you just sketched out there is a tremendous opportunity for those who actually act as curators of all this material, because so far so good that you, MIT and everybody else are coming out with these thousands of new files and links. But God knows what it takes to go through them, make sense of your titles and indexes, and put some threads to it, so that I can really navigate through information and learn something. There is a whole universe of work to do to organize this beyond and across the different content repositories that are emerging every hour. Is not there a job for the next 1000 centuries? Curtis Bonk: Oh God. You know Piaget was a curator. When Piaget was 10 year-old he was a curator of a museum. How can teachers be curators? I think they are concierges of a hotel. The hotel is this information hotel. How do we turn information into knowledge? And then how do we get students develop mentally pushed? I think we ignore human development. We have so much potentials as human beings to go well beyond were we are today, if the organization, as you said, if the teachers figure out ways to help get us into the contents, push us through, not just in organize the content in some way, so we are not overwhelmed. There is so much there we can just be unfrustrated. How is the teacher role changing from deliver of this content? I am the teacher. Here is the teacher in this box. How do we now have the box and utilize the box stuff and push kids to new levels of development they have never achieved before?
Robin Good: It would seems that the traditional teacher would not be the appropriate skill-owner to do this type of job, but the person who has skilled themselves to research, analyze, evaluate information and to juxtapose and remix it in new ways. There is an opportunity for a new breed of professional or non-professional independent guides - let's not call them teachers - that can help people make sense of information, outside of the interest of Google, which is the only one that officially is out there to organize this information. We need somebody else beyond Google to do this. Whether it helps Google or not I do not care, but we need to organize information for ourselves and that is the opportunity for a new army of independent great teachers to come out. Curtis Bonk: Two comments there: Google EDU exists today. When we have been doing research on Google, actually Youtube EDU exists. We have being doing research on YouTube. There are professors in California teaching the whole class in YouTube, but they found the problem of that is there is no librarian, there is no-one indexing the stuff, and that is the same problem we have with Google. We do not have people thinking about Google from an educational point of view. One thing we can be doing is, as educators, how do we re-purpose this stuff, remix, as you say. That is one thing. YouTube, curators, librarians. A second thing I want to comment: In my book I have 15 predictions. One prediction is: eMentors and eCoaches. I think we are going to see the rise of super eCoaches, super eMentors. Those people have three skills:

The first skill is a domain expertise, whatever it is, media, social work, teaching, business, architecture, anthropology, they have a domain expertise.
Number two: They understand the Internet for learning.
Number three: They have counseling skills, human development skills.

It is the mix of those three, when you understand human beings, when you understand a domain expertise and you understand technology for learning, you will be golden in the 21st century. This is the learning century, and eMentors, super eMentors will arise to be, I think, as important or more important than teachers. Teacher role will change to concierge or super eMentors for some facilitator guide nudge. What do you think?
Robin Good: This was Curt Bonk, live from Indiana and I am Robin Good from Rome in Italy. There is not a better moment to stop this, so... bye-bye!

Original video interview recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia. Article editing by Elia Lombardi and Daniele Bazzano. First published on November 19th, 2009 as "Future Of Learning: A Video Interview With Curtis Bonk".

About Curtis Bonk Curtis Bonk is professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University and president and founder of both SurveyShare and CourseShare. Drawing on his background as a corporate controller, CPA, educational psychologist, and instructional technologist. Bonk offers insights into the intersection of business, education, psychology, and technology. An expert on emerging technologies for learning, Bonk reflects on his speaking experiences around the world in his blog, TravelinEdMan. He has co-authored several technology books, including The World is Open, Empowering Online Learning, The Handbook of Blended Learning, and Electronic Collaborators.