"Learners are doers, not recipients."—Walter J. Ong, "McLuhan as Teacher: The Future Is a Thing of the Past"

It's high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as "doers, not recipients." If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.

It's been over five years since the landmark study in Nature that showed "few differences in accuracy" between Wikipedia and theEncyclopedia Britannica. Though the honchos at Britannica threw a big hissy at the surprising results of that study, Nature stood by its methods and results, and a number of subsequent studies have confirmed its findings; so far as general accuracy of content is concerned, Wikipedia is comparable to conventionally compiled encyclopedias, including Britannica.

There were a few dust-ups in the wake of the Nature affair, notably Middlebury College history department's banning of Wikipedia citations in student papers in 2007. The resulting debate turned out to be quite helpful as a number of librarians finally popped out of the woodwork to say hey, now wait one minute, no undergraduate paper should be citing any encyclopedia whatsoever, which, doy, and it ought to have been pointed out a lot sooner.

By 2009 the complaints had more or less faded away, and nowadays what you have is college librarians writingblog posts in which they continue to reiterate the blindingly obvious: "Wikipedia is an excellent tool for leading you to more information. It is a step along the way, and it is extremely valuable."

Read more research from the full article here from the TheAwl.com

Evening classes in French are nothing out of the ordinary, few eyebrows would be raised at Saturday evening salsa lessons and Yoga is simply passé. The newest of trends among the suits, however, is perhaps a little more surprising.

Academics and private tuition firms are reporting a "growing trend" in people taking Twitter lessons, as well as classes in other social media.

They say that more and more firms are expecting their staff to be able to use social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

According to tutors, students signing up for the lessons range from those who want to know how to use an 'at-reply' or get people to 'Like' their page, to those who - in the words of one teacher - "want to create the next Facebook."

Read more: http://bit.ly/gfVI1t

After more than eight years of doing business in other states, a Madison company that offers online alcohol training to bartenders and others in the industry is now able to do business in its home state.

Professional Service Certification Corp., with its website, Rserving.com, offers online certification training in 35 states for bartenders, servers or sellers of alcohol to teach the proper protocol in checking people's identifications and also to help recognize the signs of intoxication.

"Since it's online, they can get off in the middle of the night and can work on it," President Robb Graham said about people doing the certification program. "They don't have to be on a specific schedule where they have to show up. It's a lot nicer for accessibility reasons."

Find out more here

IEEE offers elearning in key technologies

According to the IEEE, the service "The convenient learning system delivers nearly 200 courses in core and emerging technologies, providing professionals, faculty and students across academic institutions, corporations and government agencies a better way to learn.

IEEE says its eLearning Library "offers advanced technology content only IEEE can provide… [It] selects the best educational courses from IEEE conferences and workshops around the world and delivers them in engaging, instructional and interactive online courses.

IEEE says that each course was developed and peer-reviewed by subject experts and awards continuing education units (CEU) or professional development hours (PDH) upon successful completion. 

"Users can choose between introductory, intermediate and advanced levels for many subjects, learn on their own schedule, and resume a course where they left off at any time. Courses range from one to three hours in length and include notes, a glossary of terms and a post-test. Topics range from smart grid and biometrics to telecommunications and green engineering."

Read the full article HERE

LinkedIn Launches Signal: Think Twitter For Professionals

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner took the stage at the final day of TechCrunch’s Disrupt this morning to announce a new Twitter-connected product, Signal.

Signal, Principle Product Manager Esteban Kozak explained, is the interface that filters the fire hose of information that Twitter directs at users who follow a lot of people (especially those of us that have the more ‘talkative’ members on our lists).

Signal connects the user’s Twitter account to their LinkedIn page, which acts as a sort of filter on the feed – only tweets coming from the user’s professional contacts will be displayed on the Signal interface. The left side of the page hosts the filter options – by personal network of contacts, by industry type, by company, region, etc. – while the right-hand column displays trending links shared by LinkedIn users on Twitter. The center is the feed itself.

Read the full article HERE