Bill Fitzgerald :: Feeds

Web 2.0 in Africa

Whenever people are able to connect and collaborate, engage in conversations, share expertise, and access information, the impact on a society (or quality of life to individuals) can be enormous. This is obviously true for developed countries. But can the same be said about developing countries? Does giving internet access to a poor farmer in South America, Africa, or in poorer regions of Canada, US, or Europe, benefit? Don’t people need the basics of life first? Yes. And no. Web 2.0 in Africa (via Elearning Africa blog) suggests web 2.0 tools can assist farmers in regions such as Uganda gain and share important knowledge about farming. Rather than external experts being the main providers of information, farmers share information about banana growing/harvesting with each other. Reminds me of E. M. Forster’s statement “only connect”. The rest progresses from there…

More Net Gen Nonsense

Mark Bullen writes an important blog - netgen nonsense - that I encourage educators to follow. He takes a critical look at evidence (or lack of it) that supports the concept of net generation learners. His blog title is obviously intended to be controversial, but his views are well considered. His main message: evidence to date does not support broad assumptions about different traits/characteristics of learners who have been raised in a technologically rich environment. From a recent post (he is quoting a research report from UK): “The findings show that many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning. Students use a limited range of technologies for formal and informal learning. These are mainly established ICTs - institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking.”

Networks of Everything

Apparently, by 2017, personal networks will consist of over 1000 devices. I’m not sure how they came up with that number, but it seems realistic. Most of us already deal with hundreds of devices on a daily basis. They’re not all networked yet…but they will be. The key to effective functioning with these multiple devices will be in how they are connected and in how we can use that connectedness in making decisions. Obviously, we need something more than just tying these devices together. We need new approach to managing the overwhelming information they will produce. That’s partly as software problem and partly a conceptual shift. As I’ve stated before, as information becomes more complex and abundant, we will begin to rely to a greater degree on technology to perform a grunt cognition role by deciphering and presenting patterns for us to consider.

An educated and informed citizenry

Rob Paterson thinks that Canada and its government are moving beyond the nation-state and that coalitions may become the main model for future governments.

Meanwhile, the Internet, airwaves and coffee-shops across the nation are engaging in a sort of dialogue. Unfortunately it is not always an informed dialogue and this is a sad state of affairs. How can the electorate engage in the political process when too many do not understand it? In New Brunswick public education there are no classes on civics or government. Our sons learn about politics at the dinner table; thankfully. For instance, there is a lack of understanding about the duty of the Official Opposition, as they’re not just the party that came in second place:

The duty of the Official Opposition and other opposition parties is to “challenge” government policies and suggest improvements, and present an alternative to the current Government’s policy agenda.

There have also been many comments based on the “fact” that the current PM was elected as such. Our Prime Ministers are not elected, only Members of Parliament are elected, and the government’s right to govern is based on the confidence of those members:

The Prime Minister and the Cabinet are responsible to, or must answer for, their actions to the House of Commons as a body and must enjoy the support and the confidence of a majority of the Members of that Chamber to remain in office. This is commonly referred to as the confidence convention.

If the Government is defeated in the House on a key (“confidence”) question, then the Government is expected to resign or seek the dissolution of Parliament in order for a general election to be held. It is not always clear what constitutes a question of confidence. Motions which clearly state that the House has lost confidence in the Government, motions concerning the Government’s budgetary policy, and motions which the Government clearly identifies as questions of confidence, are usually recognized as such.

There is no doubt that a democracy depends on an educated and informed citizenry. We now have easy access to information, but we need to continue with the education.

Invert the Pyramid

In Advice for the Training Department I recommended that those in the training function should concentrate on Communicating & Connecting. Later I suggested that the training department should wake up and smell the coffee or be rendered obsolete. All of this is premised on the fact that our organisational structures need to change in order to deal with complexity and one framework we can start with is wirearchy.

However, the training department can at best manage incremental change unless the organisation itself changes. In It’s Time to Invert the Management Pyramid, Vineet Nayer says:

It is not a stationary relic I’m talking about. I’m talking about the brand new dinosaur on the block - the classical management pyramid. Time has come to dismantle it and adapt to a new evolutionary and unstructured model that leverages the team effect to ensure that companies can lead change rather play catch up or be left behind.

The training department and the CLO can help in this effort, but inverting the pyramid is the big work that needs to be done by the entire organisation.

I believe that structural change is coming sooner than many expect, with the WorldBlu list as an example of the hunger for change. The inability of our prominent command and control organisations to deal with growing complexity highlights our structural problems. The largest military force in the world cannot defeat a loosely knit group of terrorists; the US/Cdn automotive sector has been incapable of changing its business model and our elect & forget political representatives are increasingly hamstrung by an electorate that no longer provides majorities or landslides.

It is time to invert the pyramid and integrate learning into all that we do. Are you ready?

Drupal in Education and E-Learning Now Available

Drupal for Education and E-Learning is now available from Packt Publishing. This book covers Drupal 6, and describes how to build a community site to support teaching and learning. This book is designed for people new to Drupal, with no prior development experience. The hands-on, step-by-step instructions guide you through installing Drupal, configuring contributed modules and themes, and working with some of Drupal’s most useful and powerful modules, including CCK, Views, and Organic Groups. The book also covers site maintenance, upgrades, and backups – these essential steps, while not as fun as site building, are essential for keeping your site and data secure.

Additionally, the book covers some of the basics of when to use different types of resources in the classroom. Frequently, people talk about incorporating video, or audio, or social bookmarks, etc, into the classroom, but they never discuss effective uses of these tools. While this book is not exhaustive in these discussions, I attempted to create some context around creative and effective use of the social web in a learning environment.

On a related note, we have also decided to be more organized and systematic with regards to putting out occasional tutorials. They will be collected under the tutorials tag, and can be seen at http://funnymonkey.com/tutorials (or subscribed to via rss).

For people new to Drupal, Drupal in Education and E-Learning includes details on:

• Drupal terminology;
• User creation;
• Role based access control;
• Installing modules and themes;
• Using taxonomy to categorize posts
• Backing up and upgrading your site.

For more experienced Drupallers, the book covers:

• Using CCK to extend content types -- instructions cover sharing media, images, links, text, and files;
• An overview of Views 2, including adding new views, using the new access control mechanisms of Views 2, configuring multiple displays from a single view, and cloning and modifying existing views;
• An overview of Organic Groups, including instructions on how to use groups to support informal and formal learning;
• Extending user profiles to support connections between users;

Using the menu and block system to simplify and streamline the navigation of your site.

For more specifics on information covered in this book, the Table of Contents gives a solid overview.

Federman - No educator left behind

I’ve been following Mark Federman’s work since he published McLuhan for Managers with Derick deKerckhove. Mark recently gave a presentation for TVO (video download) on No Educator Left Behind that ties together much of his work over the past few years. These include papers like Why Johnny and Janey Can’t Read and Why Mr. and Ms. Smith Can’t Teach (PDF) and the notion of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity (UCaPP). Other ideas sewn into this presentation include epochal changes; break-boundaries and the shift from the 3 R’s of education to the 4 C’s :

1. Connections
2. Contexts
3. Complexity
4. Connotation

The recent Facebook study group incident in Ontario is used as an example of Mark’s thesis. His presentation also questions the entire system of content-based validation and test scores as a remnant of the 17th Century that should be discarded. There is much in this presentation that should at least be considered by educators and those setting educational policies.

Connectivism: Networked Learner

Over the last 12 weeks, Stephen Downes and I have facilitated a course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. The final “project” for enrolled participants is to reflect on the quality of their own learning networks. Wendy Drexler has posted a video of her final project that is (deservedly) getting significant attention: Connectivism: Networked Learner (also available on YouTube)

Definition of Emerging Technologies for Learning

I received an email recently asking for my definition of emerging technologies for learning. To enlarge the conversation, I asked the question on Twitter. The following are responses:

Eduinnovation: “Those technologies that allow learners to connect, collaborate, and create with other learnes, mind-to-mind, anywhere & anytime”

prawsthorne: “an innovation that captures attention, engages and deepens learning so the learner/teacher can self-measure the improvement.”

MarkMilliron: “any technology YOU don’t quite understand that you’ve heard might improve teaching and learning”

UNMVCTLC: “using technology TOOLS to improve the learning process while enhancing the instructional environment” and “using those tools that are not fully explored to reach new frontiers in methodology, experiences and concepts”

jdwilliams: “I think emerging (web) technologies are just sites/apps my district hasn’t found to block (yet)”

Darren Draper: “Emerging technologies for teaching and learning consist of all hardware, software, concepts, and ideas that can be employed to advance social, connective, and educational processes”

davecormier: “usually defined as - stuff George likes - I believe”

bengrey: “A body of knowledge or innovation not yet widely adapted or fully actualized which holds educational implications”

StonyRiver: “New Direction Learning Technologies”

How do you define emerging technologies for learning (or is the attempt to provide a definition sooo web 1.0?)?

Social Computing

Dave Snowden is well-known in the knowledge management field. He has been kind enough in the past to present to online conferences that we have hosted at University of Manitoba (most recently, our Future of Education conference). Over the last few years, his writings/presentations have taken a turn that very much fits in with concepts presented in this forum and in CCK08. Dave started blogging about two years ago, but I’ve been following his work through his publications and contributions to ACT-KM. I could be imagining things, but his shift to blogging seems to coincide with his increased attention to the fragmentary nature of information. Distributed conversations, not packaged as they have been in the past through frameworks such as articles and books, in blogs provide an interesting experience in personal sensemaking. In a recent presentation (.pdf of slides - why not slideshare?…podcast is here), Dave details seven principles of KM, including: “Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success.”

Visualizing Data

OECD has been learning from Hans Rosling and Gapminder. In order to make their data more accessible, they’ve created (or had someone create) an application for visualizing data. I personally prefer gapminder’s interface, but OECD’s contribution is appreciated. If data is made more accessible it will be used more often as a guide for decision making (he says in his most idealistic voice).

Microsoft’s Personal Reboot: Web-Centric, But Beyond “The Cloud”

Microsoft has been a favorite source of mockery for all the cool web 2.0′ers. Microsoft is seen as too closed, too confined to the desktop, too late to search, and too out of touch with how people want to compute. In the face of this criticism, Microsoft continues to attempt a transformation -Personal Reboot: Web-Centric, But Beyond “The Cloud”: “Cloud computing may be trendy, but Ozzie says MSFT’s best course moving forward is a hybrid desktop/Web-based strategy…future success hinges on new products that win over the masses instantly.”

Education needs to be pulled into the 21st century

Short rant. Articles like - Education needs to be pulled into the 21st century - cause many educators to smile and nod in agreement. The report broadly splashes all the latest and coolest terms that cause sensible educators to viciously agree: “In an increasingly complex and competitive world, teachers must understand technology and connect coursework to the global economy, curricula should eliminate less relevant material and incorporate modern skills such as global awareness, technology and media literacy, and standardized tests must include these new subjects”.
Ok. That’s very nice. We are then treated with the typical mis-focused comment: “I hope to encourage policymakers to better equip our graduates for today’s and tomorrow’s jobs”. Education isn’t only about creating employees. It’s about assisting individuals to develop into the types of people that can tackle and handle the continual gyrations of a complex world. I don’t buy into the “education must prepare people for jobs that don’t yet exist” view. Education - as it always has - must prepare people for an unknown future. This isn’t new. When I was going to school, the particular job that I have today did not exist. How should we prepare people for, let’s say, the current financial crisis? By training people to be stockbrokers? No. You can’t prepare people for black swans. People must be capable of handling uncertainty, but also adapting as environments shift and change. At it’s most basic, education must move from epistemology to ontology. Getting back to the report: give us something useful. Statements as broad as those provided in the article (i.e. “develop new programs, standards, partnerships and assessment measures”) are hardly a basis for action. Perhaps it’s time that we stop focusing on what our curriculum is and start focusing on how we actually do curriculum in the first place.

Systems for Supportive Open Teaching

We’ve experienced this in CCK08: Systems for Supportive Open Teaching: “I think it more valuable to think about how openness changes the basic praxis of teaching from an essentially individual activity to a shared activity.”
But, as we’ve discovered, openness may produced shared activity at some levels (students helping each other, taking on leadership roles, connecting to others outside of the course, etc). Open teaching is really best seen as open learning. When we learn in transparent ways, we become teachers. But not everyone wants to learn in open ways. In CCK08, we had numerous participants who did not contribute by posting or commenting. Instead, they observed/lurked. They did not contribute in the way we would have expected. Lack of direct participation does not mean they didn’t learn - at least that’s what some participants have expressed here. Open teaching, therefore, means also rethinking our expectations of engagement. We simply can’t control students the way we have done in classroom environments. Open teaching will become a rather shallow concept if we bring too much of closed-classrooms to the process.

Using Drupal as a Portfolio Platform

This screencast describes how to use Drupal to create a presentation portfolio within a class blogging platform. The portfolio functionality we describe here can be replicated in just about any Drupal site. While this screencast focuses on one user, this structure will work equally well for 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 users. At the risk of stating the obvious, you will have different design needs at each of these levels, but the core structure will scale upwards as needed.

Note: For the full (and easier to see) video, download the original -- all 72M of it.

In setting up the portfolio, we look at these main areas:

Adding Content

Using this model, people in the site are doing their daily work, and adding content as they go. As people add content into the site (aka, blog) they create a body of information. Within this site, people can either upload content directly into the site, or embed content from external sources. The screencast provides more detail on this area.

Creating the Portfolio

In this section, we describe how to add pages into the portfolio, and how to organize content that has been added into the site.

Next Steps

These steps are not covered in the screencast, but are worthy of mention. The portfolio system shown in this screencast is a starting point. The Technical Notes section gives an overview describing how to build this tool, but the functionality described here can be added into any Drupal site. It will work with various types of Access control, and you can also set up a Workflow to create a feedback mechanism on portfolios. In short, the tools shown here provide a starting point for a broader range of functionality.

TechnicalNotes

Key modules used for the portfolio functionality:

• CCK: http://drupal.org/project/cck
• Link: http://drupal.org/project/link
• Filefield: http://drupal.org/project/filefield
• jQuery Media: http://drupal.org/project/jquery_media
• Embedded Media Field: http://drupal.org/project/emfield
• ImageCache: http://drupal.org/project/imagecache
• Imagefield: http://drupal.org/project/imagefield
• ImageAPI: http://drupal.org/project/imageapi
• Book Manager: http://drupal.org/project/book_manager
• Views: http://drupal.org/project/views

Tutorial on using Filefield and jQuery Media, from Sean Effel.
Theming tip on Filefield and jQuery Media, from Aaron Winborn.

The theme used in the screencast is the Pixture theme.

Screenshot of all modules used on the site (swf file, with download links).

Screenshot of permissions for the Book and Book Manager modules for users who are creating portfolios.

And, for those who just feel the need to download large files, feel free to grab the original video -- all 72M of it.

Online learning requirements

Grassroots activities in incorporating technology into teaching and learning goes a long way. Due to the current design of the education system, grassroots activities keep bumping up against barriers. However, initiatives like this one in Minnesota will become more common: “To expand access, increase technology skills, provide exciting and inspiring course content, and maximize efficiency and use of taxpayer resources, Governor Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) Board of Trustees Chair David Olson today announced a goal to have 25 percent of all MnSCU credits earned through online courses by 2015.”
It’s a start. I’d like to hear more about how they’re planning to develop the faculty to actually teach the online courses…and how they’re redesigning the existing education system to ensure that they aren’t only transferring content online, but that they are actually transforming the learning experience to utilize the affordances of the medium.

Proficiency-based training

According to Clark Quinn in this eLearn Article:

There is one role for pre-tests, and that is in the realm of allowing students to test out of a course. Learners should be allowed to skip the content they already know if they can demonstrate competency. This is to the great benefit of the learner. But when pre-testing is used to demonstrate mastery for this purpose, it should be an option, not a requirement. So please, don’t abuse your learners. Give pre-tests only to allow the learner to test-out of specific material. And don’t give in to de facto standards that dictate every course start with a pre-test. Use assessment properly, to demonstrate mastery.

I agree that pre-testing is not of much value unless it triggers some action. This reminds me of the proficiency-based training we used for training military helicopter pilots. Learning how to fly an aircraft is an expensive endeavour and each flight costs several thousand dollars. Minimizing training time, without compromising standards, was one of our objectives.

Flight training was divided into about 35 “air lesson plans” and each one was about 1.5 hours. At the end of certain lessons, students had to have achieved mastery of specific skills, such as hovering or completing a circuit. Additional time in the aircraft could be provided, with counseling, but after a certain number of hours students were expected to achieve the performance requirement. Conversely, if a student achieved the performance requirement in fewer lessons, he or she could skip one or more lessons and move on to the next stage. In this way, a student could complete the course days or weeks earlier than scheduled and at a lower cost for the training establishment. For pilots who were already spending a lot of time away from home, this was a positive incentive.

As Clark mentions in his article, if you can demonstrate mastery then training is not necessary. For learning professionals, it is important to design tests that can validate competency. This is an overlooked area of instructional design as too much effort is spent on delivering content, in my opinion. Another rule that we had in military training, though not always followed, was to design the proficiency test before developing any training. The proficiency test had to correlate with the job performance area that was being addressed. In this way, the direct link between training and job performance was obvious. Considering my last post, this could be a good thing for the training department.

Google’s experimenting with new search features

Google is experimenting with search. Basic idea: when you’re signed in to your Google account, you’ll see the option of voting results up/down and to add comments to results. This doesn’t (yet) impact the results others see. It’s supposed to help personalize search. Results are mixed. Some hate it. Others question it. Others love it.

Wake up and smell the coffee

An interesting post made by Rob Wilkins, is a confirmatory data point of what I’m seeing in the corporate learning sector:

This morning the CLC (Corporate Leadership Council) released the results of a survey that asked CEOs which areas were to suffer the most in response to the crisis. L&D [learning & development] came out on top at 38%. So this means, globally, that a third of organisations surveyed will stop investing in development of employees. Recruiting was second and IT infrastructure was third.

As I said in Opportunities in Difficult Times, there may be a silver lining, but not for everyone in our business. When your department is number one on the CEO chop list, you should be thinking about your reason for being. Training is seen by this group of CEO’s (and I would wager many others) as superfluous to the company’s bottom line. Obviously all of those initiatives like blended learning, competency-based training and learning style inventories haven’t convinced the boss that L&D is important. Neither have all the ROI calculations that get discussed during training conferences. The CEO and the CLO must be using different calculators.

The reason that these companies will stop investing in the development of employees is that they don’t see a direct correlation to their business. People go on a course and come back no better prepared for work. A successful course is where you learned perhaps 10% of what was covered. The rest of the stuff is interesting and might be useful - some day.

At the risk of repeating myself, the following message doesn’t get through to many training departments, and now they will pay the price.

Too many people in the training department make the leap from a performance issue (lack of skills, abilities, knowledge; lack of access to appropriate data and resources; etc) directly to training as the only solution. This is the wrong approach and the most costly. Even the CEO may play into this, with statements like “We have a training problem” and no one challenges that statement. There is no such thing as a training problem.

Here are some “training problems” that are not solved through training:

• Unclear expectations (such as policies & guidelines)
• Inadequate resources
• Unclear performance measures
• Rewards and consequences are not directly linked to the desired performance

These barriers can be addressed without training. Only when there is a genuine lack of skills and knowledge, is training required [repeat as necessary]. Training should only be delivered in cases where the other barriers to performance have been addressed. A trained worker, without the right resources and with unclear expectations, will still not perform up to the desired standard.

Training departments have allowed themselves to be lulled into a comfortable spot while times have been good. Everyone feels better after a little training, so that is what was prescribed - for all that ails you. I have met too few L&D professionals who can actually analyze work performance and come up with something other than training as the solution. Well, it seems that the days of the one trick pony are over.

I, for one, do not regret the demise of the L&D function. Perhaps our profession will wake up and start helping the organisations we serve.

I'm Doing It

This December 10th through the 12th, I'll be at the Do It With Drupal seminar in New Orleans. The name of the seminar notwithstanding, a quick run through the speakers list and the sessions shows that this seminar offers a solid blend of social web, web communities, and developing web trends, in addition to sessions on Drupal use and development.

Drupal use within education is on the rise; if you are already using Drupal, thinking about using Drupal, or contemplating ways of making your site more effective, this conference will have something for you. To receive a 10% discount off the registration, use the EDUCATION discount code as you checkout.

If you're going to the conference and want to meet up, feel free to drop a line in the comments. I look forward to seeing you there!

Elgg for Professional Development

Dave linked to this story a while back, and I finally got around to checking it out: Saugus Union School District creates hot spot for collaboration, distance learning. The cool thing about this approach is that a school managed to get educators excited about social networking for themselves -- as personal professional development and as a communication tool -- before wading into the oh-so-scary world of students using the tools. Now that they're seeing the benefits, they want to get kids using it too. From there, it probably improves the chances of getting kids really learning as part of the wider web...help them learn in a safe place first and then gradually open things up. Elgg makes that progression relatively easy with flexible permissions. While I'd love to see schools diving straight into the deep end, this kind of approach probably makes more sense for most institutions.

Groups and Networks

I've been enjoying Stephen Downes' recent writing, talking and showing on the distinction between groups and networks. On Half an Hour, he has two solid posts called Groups and That Group Feeling, and digs in really deep on a full-length paper: Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. In multimedia territory, he's also got a video explaining the differences (Google Video), as shown in this whiteboard full of goodness, and also audio of one of his talks in New Zealand (mp3), covering somewhat broader territory.

I like how the concept of the personal learning environment pops up in all the right places, but I've been stewing on other personal connections to some of these differences between groups and networks. I got thinking about the kind of angst I had after blogging here for a year. I had been naively (and egotistically, I guess) expecting some sort of community to form around my blogging experience, but I didn't know what it should look like. I thought it should feel like joining and belonging to a group. At that time, Seb Paquet wisely pointed out that I had actually become part of a network, but Stephen's ideas now have really helped clarify what exactly that meant.

I also realized that some of my initial investigation into 43 Things was misguided because I was looking for people learning in groups; something more like the classroom discussion boards in the courses I had been taking. I thought that once you found a bunch of people who shared a learning goal, you would really have to become a "group" to learn much of anything that mattered. I noticed that there wasn't much evidence of conversation or interaction between the people sharing a learning goal and interpreted it as a potential weakness of the site as a learning space. But of course the people sharing a learning goal are part of an emergent, informal network. Stephen's main network words all apply: diversity, autonomy, openness, and connective. There is the potential for powerful learning, but it won't look like a cohesive, unified group of people busy learning something together.

The third thing that popped into my head was my grown-up hockey experiences. I played as a kid, up until I was 16 or so. In recent years, I've half-heartedly started playing again. Last winter, I tried two very different formats. I played a few games for a local old-timer's team, and I played noon-hour drop-in hockey a dozen or so times. It hit me last night that the contrast between the two formats is very similar to Stephen's differences between groups (the old-timer's team) and networks (noon-hour drop-in).

The team was all about unity (us vs the bad guys), coordination (scheduled games, annual fees, obligation to show up, set lines), closed (you had to be invited) and distributive (core group ran the show, stars were central). The noon-hour drop-in hockey was all about diversity (whoever shows up today plays, regardless of skill level or age), autonomy (you decide when you want to come, when you want to rest), openness (everyone welcome every time), and connective (over time you talk to many more individuals than you would have on a single team).

While it is true that there are benefits to playing on a team -- added motivation to support your teammates, more cohesive relationships, and beers after the games -- I found that the drawbacks way outweighed the benefits for me. At drop-in hockey, I played more often, learned more (more ice time, more variety), spent less money, met more interesting people, and just had more fun. It may be a personality thing (some people really do seem to thrive in groups of all kinds), but I think networks make more sense for me.

Space Blog

So interesting to see someone's personal reflections on life in space: Anousheh Ansari Space Blog. Not sure if it counts as citizen journalism when she paid $20 million to get up there, but there's just something so cool about photos from the space station showing up on Flickr.

Recommender Systems

Stephen Downes linked to this older (1999) page on Recommender Systems in his recent paper on Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. It pre-dates the social-software boom, but still acts as a nice overview and notes the value of recommendations in finding people in addition to movies, books and other items:

"Although currently recommender systems are mostly used for finding things, such as books and CDs, Resnick thinks that one promising application may be recommending people. You could use recommender systems to find the right consultant or colleague - or even a potential mate."

Most people sharing a learning goal in 43 Things aren't necessarily looking for people to collaborate with (although there is functionality to form explicit groups to pursue a goal together). It could be used as a sort of recommender system for finding people ("I'm looking for people sharing my goals"), but it looks to me like it's being used more as a recommender system for things you might like to do or learn. The network that emerges around a goal does loosely connect people to each other, but that may not be as valuable as the connections between the artifacts themselves: the entries outlining what their experiences have been in pursuing the same goal, why they decided to pursue it, what they hope to accomplish, how the learning helped them, pitfalls to avoid, etc.

Perhaps it's more important as a way of finding content (advice, resources, opinions, possible applications) than as a way to find like-minded people. The primary "pivot" is the goal itself, with the people associated with each goal as secondary pivots. It is interesting to find out what other goals someone is pursuing besides the one you share with them -- that function is more exploratory than the process of figuring out if you want to pursue a specific goal.

Xapped

Web sites aim to open doors -- some positive coverage of the work being done by the new corporate parent of the company I've worked for since 1999.