The information age is rapidly turning into an age of information overload. A simple search of the web using a search engine like Google reveals a fantastic array of information. As I’ve discovered given the thousands if not millions of results, trying to sort through and make sense of any of that data is an exercise in futility. This sort of rudimentary search and pray approach isn’t effective, and grows more ineffective by the day with the growing size of the web. Why can’t it be easier? It can – Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web holds that promise.

In November 1959, Donald Kirkpatrick published a series of seminal articles on training evaluation in the ‘Journal of the ASTD’. In the fifty years since, his thoughts (Reaction, Learning, Behavior, and Results) have gone on to evolve into the legendary Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Evaluation Model and become the basis on which learning & development departments can show the value of training to the business. How has the model evolved over fifty years, is it still relevant? As designers of learning, have we applied the model with Don’s intent?

I’ve been occupied with writing a paper to promote the adoption of mobile learning amongst corporates and enterprises. While trawling through multiple web-links, a pattern of myths about mobile learning emerges. Quite a bit of back and forth about these myths – I’m taking the liberty of listing and describing the five that struck me as odd, and am attempting to debunk them to an extent. I’ll be the first to admit there is always an element of truth behind myths; but with the rate of technological change, quite a few of those ‘truths’ would seem like falsehoods today.

We picked up something from ICT results on 24th June – more amazing stuff that’s changing the way we interface with computers. This time it’s emerging from Cogain (Communication by Gaze Interaction), an EU-funded project under eInclusion tasked to use expertise on interface technologies for the benefit of users with disabilities.

When writing the whitepaper about Casual games, I did a fair bit of research and looked at several hundred web links. While doing so, I documented a few of the better ones. I’d been mulling posting these to the blog. So here they are – a Top 100 Learning Game Resource list. If you are already developing learning games, these links will broaden your horizons, as they did mine. If you are contemplating beginning – it might help to look at links that interest you to get some grounding ideas.

I was digging through some older GDC related posts during the course of some research yesterday. In a keynote that Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata delivered to a packed house at this year’s Game Developers Conference. He mentioned the “Four I’s” that Nintendo uses as a standard for the games it develops.

While we spoke about putting the board games created during Upside’s board game creation exercise up for download, it’s taken us a couple of weeks to get here. Designing, prototyping, developing and play-testing a board game is one thing, packaging it for everyone to play is another. The individual who was lucky enough to convert it from physical prototype to a printable version learned much about game design while creating the PDF.

If you’re on Twitter and have missed Spymaster – where in the world have you been? All the rage last week, you’ve probably seen the many #spymaster tweets from tweeps in your network. You’re into it, or just plain confused about what the objective of the game is; either way, there’s no way you can ignore it’s huge presence on Twitter.

The E3 2009 extravaganza just concluded in Los Angeles recently. As is always the case at this expo, every major electronic entertainment company that develops game hardware and software was demonstrating their wares. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft made major game hardware related announcements. Ubisoft, Square Enix, Sega, Konami, Namco Bandai, Eidos, MTV Games and others announced game content.

There’s more talk about Digital natives going around; Jeremiah Owyang blogged from the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam. Time and again, this talk about Digital natives and the millenials comes up, and there still isn’t much agreement about the key issues at hand.

We discovered ‘The Ten Commandments of eLearning” as elucidated by Cath Ellis and Clive Shepherd. We’ve decided to follow in the same vein and list our commandments. First off, we thought ten is too many to remember, so we cut it down to five. There are some similarities to Cath and Clive’s commandments but that is to be expected given the nature of this post.

In Learning Circuits’ Big Question for March, most experts agree that social learning is here to stay, differing only in the degree to which it’s used. The workplace culture of an organisation is identified as the biggest challenge in implementing social learning.