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... CyberCity Mailing List Archive - April 1999.
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Preface
This page contains the archived postings for the CyberCity Mailing List for the month of April, 1999.
The entire CyberCity Mailing List Archive of past postings to the list provides the detailed discussion for the current situation, how it has evolved, and the rationale therefor. Significant postings concerning current status are also highlighted in the archive, as are Selected Current Topic Indexes - to significant topics and their individual postings:
See also: Index of all CyberCity postings
- Indexed by title, author and date, January 1996 to present.
From the Photo Gallery (55 Kb): our City Skyline at Night. (29 Kb).
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CyberCity Mailing List Archive
... Postings made during the month of April, 1999.
The CyberCity Mailing List
is an open and free newsletter distributed through e-mail by the City of Grande Prairie to anyone who subscribes. It contains the ideas, proposals and discussion of all who are interested in Grande Prairie's CyberCity Initiative (see also Executive Sumary (a two minute read) | Frequently Asked Questions | Suggested Reading Order).
The CyberCity Initiative helps Grande Prairians to learn about and prepare to participate and compete in the Information Age.
Postings are listed most-recent first; oldest are at the bottom.
Postings of 26 April 1999:
Want to Get to a Company Home Page Quickly? - Chet Meek
FROM: Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
[Indexed in Selected Topics: On-line Searching and Selection of Quality Information Sources].
Have you searched for a Company, City, State/Province or other home page and been deluged with a ton of links, ... none of which were to the entity's home page?
Well, now there is some more relief on the horizon. In the CyberCity article "At Last - A Domain Name Search Engine" in the digest of 19 October 1998, we pointed out that Amnesi was offering a domain name search engine. But comparatively, it is slow; and you have to know quite a bit about domain addresses to correctly identify the one you want from their returns.
Now, Centraal's RealName server [cookies (cookie caution)] will look up a likely homepage and take you directly there if there is only one good alternative. If there are several, it gives you a list to choose from. All my experimental cases returned selections which were much more helpful than entering the same name into AltaVista, for example.
Their search form [cookies (cookie caution)] is on-line at:
- http://www.realnames.com/
Since RealName is a registration service, those paying to have a specific name registered will be returned at the top of the list, of course. Keep that in mind for more general searches; and in any case, watch how the returns evolve as the dollar determines what is returned at the top of the list, and as other innovations are applied. Enter "Centraal" for example, and see how the system could be made to return a veritable index of entries for their business services.
RealName also offers a desktop plug-in [more cookies (cookie caution)] for your browser which may be helpful to some readers.
-- Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
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Postings of 19 April 1999:
A Desire for Constant Electronic Contact? - Chet Meek
FROM: Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
CNN Interactive [cookies (cookie caution)] has posted an article "Cutting the cord: New devices allow continuous connectivity" [more cookies (cookie caution)] which describes the impact of wireless connectivity first hand. The complete article [cookies (cookie caution)] is on-line at:
- http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9903/16/smalltech.idg/
Author Seth Goldstein {seth@flatironpartners.com} .. [direct e-mail] says he's been unplugged. "For the last five months, I've been wearing a two-way pager, ... which comes complete with a tiny keyboard, [and] allows me to send and receive e-mail wirelessly. Unlike most gadgets I buy and abandon quickly, this one offers utility that outstrips its novelty."
At dinner he noticed two people beaming infrared meeting appointments between their palm pilots. "We realized, right then, that the revolution in mobile computing was not about traveling salesmen or road warriors. It was about two friends out to dinner swapping notes. It was about sending e-mail from a taxi. It was about bringing the mountain to Mohammed."
-- Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
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Postings of 12 April 1999:
Urban Age Survey of Technology in Cities - Chet Meek
FROM: Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
[Indexed in Selected Topics: Information Age - Societal Impacts and Trends].
Urban Age Magazine, a publication of the World Bank, has posted an article "A Survey of Technology in Cities" which discusses how advancing technologies will affect cities.
"Concentrating people [in cities] concentrates intelligence. The collective intelligence of the city is created by communication, by interaction. And we are in the midst (or on the edge) of the most extraordinary revolution in communication. It makes possible the emergence of a global collective intelligence, the interaction of thousands of cities on a daily or hourly basis-and thus a quantum leap in innovation."
"Now we are within sight of even more amazing changes ... Virtually cost-free communication regardless of distance. A global telephone that completely escapes geography. And one day, not too distant, a hand- held box, big enough for your pocket, that will do it all-a video-telephone, a fax, a radio, a television, with capacity anywhere in the world to listen to a concert in Sydney, consult a library in Santiago, buy a book in Beijing, check the state of the Zambian harvest."
"[Cities] are junction points for global flows of people, cargo, information and finance. They manage to find the linkages between vastly dispersed points of supply and demand: the linking, the design, the finance, the facilitation. That is what the city as a servicing center means: a global management and logistics system."
"Cities force technological change. And they are transformed by technology. The technological revolution of today is such that the promise of the next century is more spectacular than ever before-and the global city is at the forefront."
-- Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
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Postings of 1 April 1999:
Learning: The Critical Technology for Today - Chet Meek
FROM: Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
MODERATOR'S NOTE: Because the purpose of Knowledge Management is mainly to provide information which can be learned by others, we have indexed this paper in Selected Topics: Knowledge Management for Organizations and Individuals and in Internet Use for Teaching and Learning in Schools. The article "Knowledge Management Introductory Tutorial" in the digest of 13 Feb 1998, contains a "See Also" section which indexes links to related Knowledge Management resources. See also: the article "Two Effective Ideas for Continuous Learning" in the digest of 7 Oct 1999, with its links to indexes of links to resources on E-Learning, Self-directed Learning, Learning Organizations and Knowledge Management.
"Brains are in; heavy lifting is out.
That's the essential nature of the new, knowledge-based economy." - Tom Peters (1994),
The Pursuit of WOW!
Learnativity, "where learning and productivity meet on- line," has posted an interesting paper describing learning techniques, how adult learning differs from child learning, how teacher-centered learning differs from learner-centered learning, and the significance of the latter in the Information Age. The paper also discusses the importance of understanding how you learn as an individual, provides a simple test [cookies (cookie caution)] to shed light on that subject, and may help some readers to reach greater effectiveness in their own learning adventures. The simple test [cookies (cookie caution)], which takes about ten minutes, is on- line at:
- http://www.wavetech.com/whtpaper/abttmwp.html#A
After we discover how we learn best, we can focus on that method whenever we need to learn something quickly. Of course, by practicing other methods, we can expand our ability to learn in different situations. Though this paper is fairly lengthy, it is very readable. Its concepts may change the way you feel about continuous learning as an adult, and lead to an improvement in your learning outcomes.
"Learning: the Critical Technology" - a whitepaper on adult education in the Information Age by Marcia Conner, is posted on-line as a plain web page (cookies [cookie caution]; an HTML file; 213 Kb) for those without the Adobe Acrobat Reader at:
- http://www.wavetech.com/whtpaper/abttmwp.html
or as a .PDF file (~70 pages; 280 Kb) at:
- http://www.learnativity.com/download/Learning_Whitepaper96.pdf
Here are a few quotes from the paper:
- "In the Information Age, the implications of a move from teacher-centered to learner-centered education are staggering. Postponing or suppressing this move will slow down our ability to learn new technology and gain competitive advantage."
- "To be effective learners we must (1) perceive information, (2) reflect on how it will impact some aspect of our life, (3) compare how it fits into our own experiences, and (4) think about how this information offers new ways for us to act. We must realize that learning requires more than seeing, hearing, moving, or touching alone. We must begin integrating our senses and thoughts with our feelings and actions."
- "Active Learning - While we may each perceive information through different senses, we ultimately learn by doing. First we watch and listen to others, then we try doing things on our own. This sparks interest and generates the motivation for self-discovery. Think back to learning to ride a bicycle, use a computer, dance, or sing. We took an action, saw the consequences of that action, and chose to either continue, or to take a new and different action. What allowed us to master the new skill was active participation in the event and reflection on what we attained. Experience and reflection taught more than any manual or lecture ever could."
- "We each have a 'learning horizon,' a breadth of vision in time and space within which we assess our effectiveness. When our actions have consequences beyond our learning horizon, it becomes impossible to learn from direct experience. Herein lies the core learning dilemma that confronts organizations [and thus individuals]. We learn best from experience, but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions." This is also why learning just what we need when we can practice it immediately carries such a punch.
- "Passive learning is called indoctrination. When we think critically we become active learners. [Learners] must become active participants in the knowledge construction process, rather than passive recipients of 'pre-packaged' knowledge."
- "The goal of education should be learning, [leading to] mastery. Mastery requires knowing what you know and how to learn more. We must take information, make it our own. Use it."
- "The big issues are relevancy and immediacy. Information has to be relevant to our current wants and needs, and it must feel useful to us. Most people don't have time to waste. We want to spend time learning what will make a difference now."
- "To take advantage of [all the] useful approaches [to learning], we must overcome strong biases and beliefs. If we accept that the old ways of working are no longer complete answers in the Information Age, we should amplify the number of approaches we use to learn. We must evolve."
- "We test our notions about the world against new information before we make it our own. Our prior experience, knowledge, and expectations are [therefor] key to learning."
- "There are several keys to [learning about learning, a process called] metacognition. They include (1) our awareness of the difference between understanding and memorizing material and which mental strategies to use at different times; (2) our ability to recognize difficult subjects, where to start, and how much time to spend on them; and (3) our aptness to take problems and examples from the materials, order them, and then try to solve them. Others are (4) knowing when we don't understand so we can seek help from an expert; and (5) knowing when the expert's explanation solves our immediate learning obstacle. Metacognitive skills all involve problem solving, awareness and control. We can learn metacognitive skills by working through one topic, but can then apply them when trying to learn [any other] topic. This research tells us that metacognition is probably the most important lifelong learning skill."
- "As comprehending learners, we (1) perceive information through our modalities; (2) understand the words and context; (3) make relevant background knowledge active; and (4) allocate attention or cognitive resources to concentrate on major content ideas. Then we (5) evaluate the meaning (gist) for internal consistency and compatibility with our prior knowledge and common sense; (6) draw and test inferences including interpretation, predictions and conclusions; and (7) monitor the above to see if comprehension occurred."
- "After reading this paper, we may have more questions than answers. Outstanding. This paper acts as a springboard to propel you toward a journey of self-discovery and a life of rewarding learning experiences."
Even though the article may be seen as only a part of a longer list of educational principles, it provides opportunity and a rationale for expanding the way we look at continuous learning as a life-long pursuit.
See also the John Seely Brown entry in the Learning Organizations index. The paper there points out the importance of the learning context. Brown notes that other authors "have rejected [knowledge] transfer models, which isolate knowledge from practice, and developed a view of learning as social construction, putting knowledge back into the contexts in which it has meaning. ... What is learned," he says, "is profoundly connected to the conditions in which it is learned. Learning ... involves becoming an 'insider.' Learners do not receive or even construct abstract, 'objective,' individual knowledge; rather, [what] they learn [is] to function in a community. ... Workplace learning is best understood ... in terms of the communities being formed or joined and personal identities being changed. The central issue in learning is becoming a practitioner not learning about practice." An index of a few of Brown's other papers may also be of interest, including "Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning." In this paper, Brown asserts that "learning is not a process of delivering information to individuals. Rather, the paper proposes, all learning has apprenticeship-like properties. Understood this way, both learning and teaching look significantly different."
Given today's "life-long learning" awareness, have you ever wondered why schools never ask their customers back? Though I graduated over three decades ago, my alma mater has never once invited me back for a single course offering. Telling?
-- Chet Meek .. {cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca} .. [direct e-mail]
MODERATOR'S NOTE: The article "Knowledge Management Introductory Tutorial" in the digest of 13 Feb 1998, contains a "See Also" section which indexes links to related Knowledge Management resources. See also: the article "Two Effective Ideas for Continuous Learning" in the digest of 7 Oct 1999, with its links to indexes of links to resources on E-Learning, Self-directed Learning, Learning Organizations and Knowledge Management.
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Afterword
Mailing list owner: City of Grande Prairie
. The City sponsors this list and its archive to assist with the circulation of the information and debate concerning the CyberCity Initiative. The opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the contributors, and are not necessarily the opinions of the City. The City does not accept any liability or responsibility for the ideas, opinions, proposals or complaints, or any of the content circulated in this list from any source. Moreover, the city does not accept any liability or responsibility for any outcome, including but not limited to those which may be indirect or consequential, or which result in any fashion from any of this list's content from any source.
List of Subscribers: We will follow the usual Internet mailing list convention in making the list of subscribers to this mailing list available to anyone who is also a subscriber to the list. This allows contributors to be familiar with their audience. The list of subscribers is made available, of course, with the proviso that it will not be used for marketing or any other unrelated or unauthorized purpose.
List Moderator: Chet Meek, E-mail: cmeek@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca ... direct e-mail.
City of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada .. Voice: 780+538- 0443 .. Fax: 780+539-1056
List address: CyberCity@city.grande-prairie.ab.ca
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Return to the Table of Contents for this page. ..... Return to the TOP of this page.
Return to the Selected Current Topic Indexes - to significant topics and their postings.
Return to the Index of all CyberCity postings - by title, author and date, Jan 1996 to date.
Return to the Significant Postings Concerning Current CyberCity Project Status.
Return to the List of Archive Entries by Month (Jan 1996 to date; most-recent first).
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