Kyle Mathews :: Dreams With In

I think I'm going to start doing "link posts" more often. I run into content I think I should write about here but then never have time to write a full-blown post. Onto the links.

Clay Shirky says Internet reduces needs for "experts" by lowering transaction costs

"Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect — the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts."

Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education

Lists 10 cultural trends which is pushing education towards a web2.0 model

A world without courses

Thought experiment how universities would work without actual courses. An interesting ideas. I've often wandered if courses are the best method for learning. I know I learn far more outside of class then inside the classroom.

Vygotsky's Social Development Theory -- more here

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

How to become great? Research suggests:

1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.

Thoughts, quotes, questions about how web2.0 is challenging traditional methods of education

Bandura Social Learning Theory

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.

I love it when someone writes what I'm thinking about writing. Saves me time.

Paul Graham posted a new essay today entitled "Six Principles for Making New Things."
Here's the juicy bit:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

Read the rest.

To add a few thoughts.
When I think of overlooked problems I think of a bell curve. Most people/companies/countries are average: thinking average thoughts and doing things in an average way. Their average thoughts/actions lead to average results. If you want exceptional results, you have to act and think in ways that are exceptional. Average=dead, the edge is where the action is at.

A great list of articles/papers on enterprise2.0 from Jim McGee.

From Jack Ricchiuto:

1. Get to know the strengths and passions of people in your first and second circles.
2. Make your strengths and passions more known to your 1st two circles.
3. Discover who in your 1st two circles would benefit from introductions.
4. Make high quality introductions at the best levels possible.
5. Engage your 2nd circle to introduce you to people in your 3rd circle.
6. Look for new opportunities to learn with and from your first two circles.
7. Create new opportunities to collaborate with your 1st two circles.
8. Increase your asset, positional, and generative value in your networks.
9. Help other people increase their value in their networks.
10. Built trust and help others build trust through promise making and keeping.

From the Economist:

At some point in the decade after he moved from the farm in Nebraska where he grew up to the innovation hub that is the San Francisco Bay Area, Evan Williams accidentally stumbled upon three insights:

1. that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out
2. second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known
3. and third, that good ideas seem obvious in retrospect.