Tony Hirst at the Open University has put together a nice custom search engine called “How do I…?“. It restricts it’s search to sites that offer “howto” videos, and the few tests I ran on it (how do I upload to flickr and how do I change screen resolution etc ) were pretty successful - ie. a decent answer on the first page. The format encourages a natural language search - you only need to think about what you want to do and then complete the question, How do I…?
Just tried it with How do I… make falafel and it was fine for that as well.
It sparks my curiosity because I’m convinced that we will need a different “model” to support web2.0 and mobile learning - we can’t possibly do it by sending people out to visit users or equipment that are having problems. User’s will certainly need to be more self supporting, but we will also need to show more intelligence in how we provide assistance - knowledgebases and community support (users helping each other) are essential if we’re to consider supporting 10’s of thousands of people using scores of different services (many of which we will have no control over). This is talking about the future obviously, but it will come.
These thoughts dovetailed neatly with a post in moblearn, the informal blog behind the people working for Tribal CTAD. I’m sceptical about the value of authoring tools for mobile learning in F.E (primary maybe), as ubiquitous learning - self documentation - micro-content/reinforcement exercises via twitter et al. seem to be the things that are working: but these are the people linked to the biggest initiative in mobile learning in the sector and this is what they have to say about “support” (their emphasis):
“And what about support? From our experience, we have NEVER had decent technical support from ANY of the phone companies who have supplied the devices.”
Ho hum.
10 steps to Web2 loveliness
1 - Think up a new password.
You’re going to need it. You can’t do Web2 without signing up to a ton of stuff and it helps if you’ve got a password where you can think - “Web2! - thats….. b2telishus” or whatever. Not the same as work. Trust me - in 18 months time you’ll be glad you made the distinction.
2 - Get a Google account.
Now. Go here and sign up. If you don’t have one already jettison the feeling that it’s all moving too fast and just get on the wave - it takes about 60 seconds. (and once you’re on the wave….things look different).
3 - Get a blog.
Now. Go here, or here or here. If you don’t have one already…. whatever, I said that already, but you get my drift. At some point when you’re signing up it will ask you if you want your blog to be “public” or “private”. Check “private”. (This means you can play in peace - no-one goes live from Day1).
4 - Get a reader.
Now. Go here or here or here. If you don’t have one already jettison….repeating myself again. Just do it. Now.
5 - Pause.
You’ve done all the easy bits - now it’s time to think about content/purpose. This is the good bit, because once you’ve got all the tools sorted out you can start thinking about what you really want to say, (and what you really want to learn).
6 - Say what you want.
There are 2 clear rules in blogging:
7 - Find the Motherlode.
Whatever field you are expert in, someone has already blogged it - which means there are exemplars on-line now, who have already gone through steps 1-6 above. Find them.
8 - Don’t be afraid to share.
No-one expects a blog to be full of unique/original content, it’s not that egoistic. Even if 150,000 people have already blogged a presentation/post/service it’s ony boring to post it if your friends have already been there.
9 - Read your peers.
It’s not a one way thing - that’s why you need to get a reader.
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