1. Learning in the Microcosmos
Standards for Microcontent-based Working & Learning in New Digital Media Environments
Stuttgart, Open Forum, September 5, 2008
Martin Lindner Research Studios Austria Studio Microlearning & Microinformation Environments Innsbruck/Salzburg

2. “There is a world of difference between the modern home environment
Marshall McLuhan (1967):
“There is a world of difference between the modern home environment
of integrated electric information and the classroom.”
(In 2008, the gap is bigger than ever.)

3. “e-Learning is dead!”

4. e-Learning is Dead. “Did you hear?
That's right... dead. Shot down in the prime of its life. Six feet under. Kaput.“
Jay Cross (2003)

5. Jay Cross had coined the term „e-learning“ in 1998,
fascinated by the possible impact of the Internet on human-centered learning.
He got frustrated when the term was misused in the following years,
When it became just a new buzzword label for „Computer-based Online Training“ & the transfer of courses & classrooms into virtual „Learning Management Systems“.

6. „The Ideal Classroom“ (presented as such in the Web)…

7. … the matching ‚Ideal Office‘ …

8. … and a model for „eLearning 1.0“
US Airforce

10. Macro-organizational Learning
Adapted from Edward Tufte‘s famous graphic about MS Powerpoint

11. Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software

12. „Google Learning“

13. ?

14. New Learner

15. Micro-Information Workers: Point of Presence, Continuous Partial & Peripheral Attention
OPEN SPACE
OPENNESS
(After getting connected, mainstream workplaces do not feel that much different from this geek cockpit.)

16. E-Learning 2.0: Early vision of a „Personal Learning Environment (PLE)“
Scott Wilson (UK), 2005

17. Jay Cross now prefers to speak of „Informal Learning“.
2007
(But the concept has close connections to Stephen Downes‘ „e-Learning 2.0“-meme.)

18. In Web-driven digital media environments, people are in fact already practicing (informal) microlearning. Willingly or not. How can we design for this situation?

19. A Global Digital Climate Change

20. David Weinberger, 2002 Small Pieces Loosely Joined
“[The Web is ] a collection of ideas, none longer than can fit on a single screen. … small nuggets pointing to more small nuggets.”

21. Anil Dash, 2002 Introducing the Microcontent Client
“We've discovered in the last few years that navigating the web in meme-sized chunks is the natural idiom of the Internet …“

22. Anil Dash, 2002 Introducing the Microcontent Client
“Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical and technical limitations of the software and devices that we use to view digital content today. “

23. This causes new dynamics within the „Semiosphere“
It‘s more like a slow dislocation of magnetic fields, centers of semiotic energy. Old institutions, media, parties, life forms tend to feel empty life forms.
Thats another reason why i prefer to call it the MICRO WEB.
„Semiosphere“: a term coined by Jurij M. Lotman, referring to „Biosphere“.

24. Circulation of microinformation is heating up.

25. (This is somehow more than just a metaphoric illustration –
This will fundamentally affect our future lives!
(This is somehow more than just a metaphoric illustration –
since the 1980s, Al Gore has actually been both a prophet of Global Warming and an evangelist of the Internet.)

26. Glaciers are melting.

27. Glaciers are melting.

28. Deserts are growing.

29. Deserts are growing.

30. Creatures are driven from their habitat.

31. Microsoft Office MICROSOFT OFFICE FILES & DOCUMENTS
DESKTOP APPLICATIONS
MICROSOFT OFFICE
FIXED-LINE TELEPHONY

32. MS Office devastated MICROCONTENT EXPLOSION OF THE E-MAIL INBOX
GOOGLE & THE WEB SHREDDERING MACROCONTENT
MICROCONTENT
MOBILE PHONES. SHORT CALLS
discovered in 2001
WLAN, LAPTOPS & MOBILE DEVICES.

33. The Microcontent Office
discovered in 2001
Soon after this Anil Dash became Vice President, Professional Network of Six Apart, a famous blog/microcontent enterprise that launched Movable Type and TypePad and now is cooperating with Nokia.

34. A System of Microcontent Circulation
clouds
drops
pools
trickles & flow

35. “Media is no longer something we do, but something we become part of.”
(It is not tools anymore …)

36. in a sea of microcontent and streams of microtasks.
People working and living with digital micromedia are swimming, rather than navigating,
in a sea of microcontent and streams of microtasks.
This also changes the way Information Workers learn.

37. Microcontent. The stuff the Web is made of.

38. Anil Dash, 2002 Introducing the Microcontent Client
“We've discovered in the last few years that navigating the web in meme-sized chunks is the natural idiom of the Internet.“

39. … memes: self-replicating units of cultural information

40. Microcontent is a virus
Soon after this Anil Dash became Vice President, Professional Network of Six Apart, a famous blog/microcontent enterprise that launched Movable Type and TypePad and now is cooperating with Nokia.

41. Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information
self-contained
the smallest units of meaning and attention that can stand for itself
elementary
individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed
appropriate media format
MICROCONTENT is a triple phenomenon: at the level of the media experience
appropriately formatted to work as building
block in different cultural patterns and
individual mindsets

42. Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Human processed information
self-contained
the smallest units of meaning and attention that can stand for itself
elementary
individually addressable to be easily re-used and re-mixed
appropriate media format
appropriately formatted to work as building
block in different cultural patterns and
individual mindsets
STANDARD
appropriate media format
MICROCONTENT is a triple phenomenon: at the level of the media experience
appropriately formatted to work as building
block in different cultural patterns and
individual mindsets

43. Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information
self-contained
[some relation to object-oriented programming]
elementary
individually addressable to be
easily re-used and re-mixed
appropriate data format
appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services

44. Dash‘s microcontent definition (paraphrase): Computer processed information
self-contained
[some relation to object-oriented programming]
elementary
individually addressable to be
easily re-used and re-mixed
appropriate data format
appropriate data format
STANDARD
appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services

45. The evolution of microcontent is a complex feedback phenomenon –
it can not be reduced neither to software nor to humans
Human Computer Intersection:
-- Human perspective: uploading things in the system (producing MC) and getting things out (consuming MC) -- Computer perspective: pulling things out of the system, processing it (annotatting it, aggregating it), and uploading it back into the system,
(Microcontent is about circulation, not just transmission. Standards have to be built for enabling feedback and emergence.)

46. The Micro-Web is about emergent patterns of user-generated and user-enriched content

47. appropriate data format for computers
Emergent standards: microformats, RSS/Atom, tagging APIs…
appropriately formatted for integration in different applications and services
Emergent standards: blog posts, microblogging templates, delicious items …
appropriate media format for human attention
appropriately formatted to work as building
block in different cultural patterns and
individual mindsets

48. But for now e-Learning primarily is formatted neither for humans nor for the Web, but for macro-organizations & -institutions.
appropriate format for organizations
Formatted to stabilize macro-organizational frameworks: - macro-organizational training (formal, top-down) - macro-organizational calculation of costs - macro-organizational management control

49. If we want to design standards for “Next-Generation eLearning”, we have to understand & bear in mind the nature of microcontent-based information work.

50. “Personal Info Cloud” Thomas Van der Wal, 2005
In micromedia environments, knowledge takes on the form of clouds.
(Microcontent being something like small drops of vapor.)
“Personal Info Cloud”
Thomas Van der Wal, 2005

51. David Gelernter, The Second Coming – A Manifesto (2000)
„… all kinds of information chunks in our digital life take on the form of digital lifestreams …
… leaving behind a stream-shaped cyberbody, like an aircraft's contrail, as we go”

52. Learning in microcontent-based environments should feel like this
clouds
drops
pools
flow

54. Thank You
OPENNESS