Café des connaissances de Montréal

Last March, I stumbled upon Café des connaissances in the internet and decided to give it a try. I immediately registered through this website and within 24 hours received a personalized invitation to partake in their monthly meeting held at CRIQ (Le Centre de recherche industrielle du Québec).

For an MLIS student who has never been in inside a scientific research facility, this step was a bit intimidating. The security guard asked to see my ID so I showed it to them. Then the security guard phoned the organizer of the event and within minutes I was inside a state of the art conference room equipped with a Cisco Video Conferencing technology for simultaneous cross-region video conferencing. Apparently, we were going to have a discussion with practioners in Quebec City.

I noticed that everyone in the room had a laptop in front of them, so I quickly set up my own, and was asked to come up with 3 key words related to wikies which would be inputed into a internet-based mapping application. The discussion for the evening was on “wikies and how to use them within in an organization”. The discussion in Montreal was simultaenously streamed to Quebec City KM practicioners.

This monthly meeting is spearheaded by Dr. Joel Muzzard, who also runs a consulting practice called Applied Intelligence (http://www.a-i-a.com/). The community of practice is comprised of business practitioners from all industries who are particularly interested in Knowledge Management and the application of KM in their business context. Anyone is invited to participate but registration for security reasons. The discussion is conducted in French, but you can add your comments in English.

For more information you can visit: http://www.a-i-a.com/KM-GC-MONTREAL/index.html

For a recap of August visit : http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6l0mp_le-cafe-des-connaissances-de-montre_tech

Wikinomics: A Review

Coming soon!

A review of the international bestseller book authored by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

http://www.wikinomics.com/book/

Learning in context in World of Warcraft….

The video proposes that learning in context is far more beneficial to the learner because it allows students to learn within context and it adds an element of FUN and fantasy in education.

While I agree with the idea that contextual learning is far more applicable than theoretical learning, I am not thoroughly convinced that learning through the World of War Craft merits any more points than say Second Life or an asynchronous/synchronous e-learning technology.

Why?

Learning in context can be accomplished in more than one way. The video suggests that learning through games is better. Well, maybe…but it does not entirely take into account that in order for this to become a reality in classroom learning the issues of accessibility needs to be addressed.Middle-class America might be able to afford computers at their homes, but that does not mean that everyone will have equal access to internet or to a computer capable of running high-end video or graphic cards. This also means that public libraries and schools must allocate extra funds to purchase designer-end computers.

I don’t mean to slam the the idea of learning through games. In fact, I love the idea…but realistically it is still a vision of the future. Instead, I would consider using a different tactic: social learning in context in the flesh. What i mean is through people to people interaction in school or universities with an added element of internet based applications like wikies or blogs.

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