It's a big ship to turn around, but I suspect that we're no where near hurting enough to change. There's too many people who are involved in the old way of doing things, too many systems in place that advance their own agendas rather than the future's agenda or student's agendas. That's not to say that it can't be done. It's unfortunate that change needs to happen relatively quickly and large organizations cannot respond in a timely manner. Perhaps our large institutions need to operate smaller? I'm not advocating downsizing, but maybe giving smaller units more autonomy to respond quicker?

That's not to say that I'm unhappy with Desire2Learn,  it doesn't have any performance issues (much like what Stephen Downes wrote about the Sakai vs. Moodle in the OLDaily) and it's been the best of the lot by a longshot. I wish it was more robust in the web 2.0 area, and a built in collaborative document would be a good way to have student collaborate (without their LiveRoom add in), but it's easier to use than Blackboard and WebCT and is web-based, which is a plus for those who don't want to download the client for FirstClass.

One thing might be that people create areas of their lives that are unavailable to networks - in essence a "safe room" or along the lines of a sensory deprivation tank. I can see this being something that futuristic home builders might already be working on; a bedroom where no wireless or cellphone network can access. Where else would you want this? Anywhere your privacy might be important. We've seen what happens when two people in a relationship at distance will do to show their love (lust), and then later embarrass the other in a revenge plot. Emotions can get in the way. I see the Japanese inventing private hotels, much like the love hotels they have now to service young couples who have no privacy at home.

As we see the Internet of things evolve, we'll need these sorts of strategies to allow maybe our fridge, stove and phone to talk, but not our fridge and furnace. And this opens hackers to having a real effect on human lives - if we trust devices to tell us we're out of milk - does that mean a hacker could get us to buy two dozen bags of milk because they spoof a message from the fridge? Brings a whole new meaning to "your fridge is running... you better go catch it".

This post was inspired by:

Of course, that requires an understanding of complimentary colors and color theory. Color Matters has a good page on color theory which for some of you will recall grade 5 art class. If you don't want to be bothered with the theory, just want to get down to brass tacks, Color Scheme Designer will give you a good selection of possible combinations to use in your designs.

Neither of those sites really talk about the psychology of color. The more I dig into it there isn't much research that I would bet the house on, but Pantone has a good article about it as well. Well of course, Pantone will... they're the biggest marketers of color (and consistent color) in the world. Is there real evidence of color psychology or is it just smoke and mirrors?

Another conflicting idea is that online spaces should have fonts set in sans-serif type, because on screen resolutions are low, and serif fonts are not always displayed with the same clarity. When doing web design (not so long ago now), I usually defaulted to setting clients websites into Arial, Helvetica and sans serif. I wonder what impact that had on the end user?

I will say this, Apple is a genius at wringing every last little dollar out of developers... $99 to get access to the SDK (software developer kit) is usually something given away in exchange for some demographic information. It's a small price I suppose, I don't particularly mind paying it either considering the extra support it gives.

What if Bloom's Taxonomy is right?

Well, first a brief primer in Bloom's. Bloom's Taxonomy is a tiered structure, like a staircase, that illustrates increasingly complex or difficult cognitive tasks, particularly in an educational setting. At the bottom is Knowledge (knowing the facts) and scaling up to Evaluation (the ability to weigh several arguments, select the best option and defend that selection). In between there are steps that build on the previous one. There are criticisms of Bloom's, including many arguments about how learning is not sequential and the semantic framing of Bloom's steps.

What if Bloom had it wrong for learning but right for evolution? On pages 6-18 of the new Pew Report on the Future of the Internet (PDF), people responded to whether or not Google is making us smarter. I think if you apply this transformation to Bloom's, you see that we're skipping from Knowledge and Comprehension on Bloom's scale to something higher, likely Application. The danger, of course, is if we ignore the the critical consumption part of the equation. We no longer have to evaluate the information we receive, but the source of the information. If the source is trustworthy, then it is likely that the information is trustworthy. If we are unable to make this evaluation in a split second, then we are destined for Idiocracy.

It funny, and seems obvious, but colleges don't like cuts to adult education. I guess we're really serious about getting out of the recession we're in, so we should cut one of the best ways to get people skilled-up and into new positions, which in turn will cycle new buying potential into the system. I'm no great capitalist, but it seems so self-evident.

As subjects become more complex, perhaps we could take this approach to remind educators (or ourselves) that even though we are at an advanced stage of understanding a subject - perhaps deeper and aware of more facets than our learners - we should always consider the fundamental underpinnings of those topics. Maybe checklists can assist us in seeing patterns where grouping makes sense; that makes checklists useful as a sensemaking strategy.