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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

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Conferencing Reflections

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Last week I presented a workshop on strategic learning as an opening act to ASTD’s 2009 International Conference (ICE), which was followed by DAU/GMU’s Innovations in eLearning (IeL) conference.   It was a study in contrasts, and a great learning experience.

Obviously, the focuses (yeah, focii, bugger it) are different.   ICE is huge, and for all training and development, while the IeL conference is smaller and focused on elearning.   There’s much more to see at ICE, but it’s also appears to be run as a revenue opportunity, where as IeL is designed to provide the latest thinking to a select community (DAU & GMU stakeholders), and appears to be a cost-center.

ICE should be able to be interpreted as a ‘state of the industry’ snapshot, representing the audience’s interests and needs.   As such, there are some serious concerns.   During the keynote on Blue Ocean Strategy (greatly descriptive, less prescriptive utility), colleagues overheard audience members asking “what’s in it for me?”     I can’t think of anything more relevant to organizations than looking ahead and trying to come up with answers for the increasingly turbulent times!

There were some social media sessions, and people ‘getting’ the message, likewise some other topics, but there was similarly good attendance at pretty ordinary stuff. Sure, you do need to learn about assessment, and how to cartoon (a great session, BTW), but there wasn’t the sense of urgency I reckon should be felt.

The expo hall also was scarily populated with generic leadership training, university degrees, flashy examples of elearning that didn’t have much substance, and of course the ubiquitous   ‘styles’ assessments (of which the less said, the better).   That is, plenty of other reasons to worry about the current concerns of the average conference attendee.   Aren’t they needing something more?   Support/responsibility beyond the classroom?

Granted, these conferences are planned out close to a year in advance, so it may not reflect current concerns as much as those of half a year or more ago, but it seemed little different than one I attended several years ago.   C’mon!   There were plusses, of course, not least of which were chances to meet colleagues I’d heard of or interacted with but not had the pleasure of meeting face to face, including Rae Tanner, Dave Ferguson, Craig Wilkins, and Gina Schreck, as well as reconnecting with folks including Marcia Conner and Wendy Wickham.   And I was pleased that there was WiFi access throughout the conference!   Kudos to ASTD for getting that right.   The lack of tweets from the conf can’t be laid at ASTD’s feet.   And the team (e.g. Linda, et al), keep the sales pitches in sessions to a minimum.

The IeL conference, on the other hand, was a whole different story. Way smaller, and deliberately focused on technology-mediated learning & the cutting edge.   The keynotes by Vint Cerf and Will Wright were both awesome in scope and depth, truly visionary stuff.   The sessions were more targeted specifically at my interests, and again it was a great chance to hook up with some new colleagues, including Koreen Olbrish and Aaron Silvers, and similarly connecting with colleagues like Marks Oehlert & Friedman. And there was more tweeting of sessions in this small conference than ICE, but given the audience that wasn’t as unexpected as you’d think.

I can’t say that one conference was better than the other for me or for their audiences.   I got to present what I was really interested in at ICE, versus doing a talk for IeL that met their request rather than my passion (tho’ it was within my capability and I did my usual due diligence to make it accurate, worthwhile, and at least moderately engaging). However, the good thing at IeL is that people were really looking not just at training, but at where they really needed to be for organizational learning, and how technology could help.   And that’s the most important thing, to be looking ahead.   What I missed at ICE was people really trying to do more than just their job.   And I’m perfectly willing to be wrong about that.

It’s just that I think there’s a coming crisis in organizational learning, and the answers are not doing training better. Formal learning will be part of it, but training as it’s currently delivered will not, and there’s so much more.   Here’s hoping that message starts getting heard.

Mapping the learning space

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In trialing a mind-mapping tool on my iPhone, I started mapping the ‘performance ecosystem’ space. I carried it over to my desktop tool (not literally, the free version doesn’t seem to export), and started elaborating.   I got to this point, and think it’s not too bad a top-level cut, with the caveats that a) each of those nodes unpacks even further, let alone each leaf, and b) that I haven’t even tried to capture the cross links, e.g. between performance support and mobile, between mobile and content model, etc.

strategicmindmap

Here’s the same as an outline (ok, Stephen? :):

Learning Architecture
❑       Performance Support
▼❑       Job Aids
•       ❑       Information Design
▼❑       Portals
•       ❑       Information Architecture
▼❑       Interactives
•       ❑       EPSS
❑       Formal
▼❑       Delivery
•       ❑       F2F
•       ❑       Synch
•       ❑       Asynch
▼❑       Deeper ID
•       ❑       Emotional
•       ❑       Cognitive
❑       Social Learning
▼❑       Identify
•       ❑       Profile
▼❑       Chat
•       ❑       Microblog
•       ❑       IM
▼❑       Journal
•       ❑       Blog
▼❑       Discuss
•       ❑       Forums
▼❑       Collab
•       ❑       Wikis
❑       Integrated Architecture
▼❑       Content Model
•       ❑       Semantics
▼❑       Governance
•       ❑       Lifecycle
▼❑       Systems
•       ❑       KM
•       ❑       LMS
•       ❑       CMS
❑       Mobile
▼❑       Access
▼❑       Designed
▼❑       Contextualized
❑       Concepts
▼❑       Culture
•       ❑       Leadership
•       ❑       Processes & Policies
•       ❑       Supportive Environment
▼❑       Expertise
•       ❑       Levels
•       ❑       Development
▼❑       Meta-learning
•       ❑       Skills
•       ❑       Awareness

Definitely a ‘learning out loud’ work-in-progress.   Feedback welcome!

Learning Out Loud

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We’re about ready to kick up a fair bit of dust!   TogetherLearn (Jane, Harold, Jay & I, in various combinations) are serendipitously going to be sending out the social learning and strategy message in a number of ways.

First, on the 21st of April starting at 9AM PT but revolving around the globe for the subsequent 24 hours,   Corporate Learning Trends will be hosting a day long circle-the-globe Conversation about Learning in Organizations.   Jay is the organizer, and he’s arranged a host of the biggest names in organizational learning to take part.   Still needed are hosts and topics in regions around the world for blocks of time.   This is free, but we do expect participation.   So seize the day, pitch in, and make it happen (or don’t complain when there’s nothing happening in your preferred time slot).

On the 22nd, Harold, Jay, & I are going to be part of the ASTD Pulse of the Profession series of webcasts, talking about Blowing Up the Training Department: Make Learning a Management Priority.     Registration is $39.95, but it supports ASTD (we don’t get a dime), and we’ve got a good session planned, with the esteemed Kevin Wheeler serving as our ringmaster/lion tamer.   It’s specifically intended for managers, directors, & executives charged with part or all of organizational learning.   We intend to talk about the problems that organizations are facing, some of the barriers, and some new ways to think about it.

Then I will be presenting on April 30 (10 AM PT) for Training Magazine Network’s Provocative Ideas webinars, speaking about Why Incrementalism Won’t Cut It Anymore. This presentation is free, but you have to register.   I’ll be looking at the bigger picture, not just social/informal, but also content strategy, mobile, and more, and particularly focused on systemic changes and the need to shift, not creep.

I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting, but that’s enough for now.   Hope to see you here and there!

Learning Twitter Chat!

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Blame it on Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia), who’d been participating in Twitter chats for journalists and editors.   She found them educational, and prodded a couple of us that maybe we should create the same sort of thing to talk about learning.   We visited a few other chats, and it seemed worth experimenting with (it’s our duty, after all!). One thing led to another, and here we are:

The first learn chat happens *this* Thursday, 5PM – 7PM PT, 8-10 PM ET.   What do you have to do?

To participate, you need a Twitter account, and then at the annointed time you can:

a) go to TweetChat where you use your Twitter account information to login, and when prompted for the room name, say lrnchat,

b) use Twitter search for the hashtag #lrnchat and put that in all your posts if you want your tweets to be part of the chat, or

c) use Twitter apps like Tweetdeck or Tweetgrid to seek out comments from other chatters.

Make sense?

I expect for this first chat we’ll talk about twitter itself and the tweet chat process, as well as identifying possible topics for subsequent chats.   The success of previous tweet chats has depended on a regularly scheduled time, so that time on Thursdays will be a regular gig.   It’s like a chatroom, but using Twitter (low overhead).   There’ll be a moderator for each chat to toss out questions and keep us sort of on point.

Hope to see you there!   Please feel free to spread the word to other learning, development, performance professionals who are on Twitter.

Clark Quinn (@quinnovator)
Mark Oehlert (@moehlert)
Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia)*

*Who tidied my prose

A wee bit o’ experience…

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A personal reflection, read if you’d like a little insight into what I do, why and what I’ve done.

Reading an article in Game Developer about some of the Bay Area history of the video game industry has made me reflective.   As an undergrad (back before there really were programs in instructional technology) I saw the link between computers and learning, and it’s been my life ever since.   I designed my own major, and got to be part of a project where we used email to conduct classroom discussion, in 1978!

Having called all around the country to find a job doing computers and learning,   I arrived in the Bay Area as a ‘wet behind the ears’ uni graduate to design and program ‘educational’ computer games.   I liked it; I said my job was making computers sing and dance.   I was responsible for FaceMaker, Creature Creator, and Spellicopter (among others) back in 81-82.   (So, I’ve been designing ‘serious games’, though these were pretty un-serious, for getting close to 30 years!)

I watched the first Silicon Valley gold rush, as the success of the first few home computers and software had every snake oil salesman promising that they could do it too.   The crash inevitably happened, and while some good companies managed to emerge out of the ashes, some were trashed as well.   Still, it was an exciting time, with real innovation happening (and lots of it in games; in addition to the first ‘drag and drop’ showing up in Bill Budge’s Pinball Construction Set, I put windows into FaceMaker!).

I went back to grad school for a PhD in applied cog sci (with Don Norman), because I had questions about how best to design learning (and I’d always been an AI groupie :).   I did a relatively straightforward thesis, not technical but focused on training meta-cognitive skills, a persistent (and, I argue, important) interest.   I looked at all forms of learning; not just cognitive but behavioral, ID, constructivist, connectionist, social, even machine learning.   I was also getting steeped in applying cognitive science to the design of systems, and of course hanging around the latest/coolest tech.   On the side, I worked part-time at San Diego State University’s Center for Research on Mathematics and Science Education working with Kathy Fischer and her application SemNet.

My next stop was the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research & Development Center for a post-doctoral fellowship working on a project about mental models of science through manipulable systems, and on the side I designed a game that exercised my dissertation research on analogy (and published on it).   This was around 1990, so I’d put a pretty good stake in the ground about computer games for deep thinking.

In 1991 I headed to the Antipodes, taking up a faculty position at UNSW in the School of Computer Science, teaching interface design, but quickly getting into learning technology again.   I was asked, and I supervised a project designing a game to help kids (who grow up without parents) learn to live on their own. This was a very serious game (these kids can die because they don’t know how to be independent), around 1993.   As soon as I found out about CGIs (the first ‘state’-maintaining technology) we ported it to the web (circa 1995), where you can still play it (the tech’s old, but the design’s still relevant).

I did a couple other game-related projects, but also experimented in several other areas.   For one, as a result of looking at design processes,   I supervised the development of a web-based performance support system for usability, as well as meta-cognitive training and some adaptive learning stuff.

I joined a government-sponsored initiative on online learning, determining how to run an internet university, but the initiative lost out to politics.   I jumped to another, and got involved in developing an online course that was too far ahead of the market (this would be about 1996-1997).   The design was lean, engaging, and challenging, I believe (I shared responsibility), and they’re looking at resurrecting it now, more than 10 years later!   I returned to the US to lead an R&D project developing an intelligent learning system based on learning objects that adapted on learner characteristics (hence my strong opinions on learning styles), which we got up and running in 2001 before that gold rush went bust.   Since then, I’ve been an independent consultant.

It’s been interesting watching the excitement around serious games.   Starting with Prensky, and then Aldrich, Gee, and now a deluge, there’s been a growing awareness and interest; now there are multiple conferences on the topics, and new initiatives all the time.   The folks in it now bring new sensibilities, and it’s nice to see that the potential is finally being realized. While I’ve not been in the thick of it, I’ve quietly continued to work, think, and write on the issue (thanks to clients, my book, and the eLearning Guild‘s research reports).   Fortunately, I’ve kept from being pigeonholed, and have been allowed to explore and be active in other areas, like mobile, advanced design, performance support, content models, and strategy.

The nice thing about my background is that it generalizes to many relevant tasks: usability and user experience design and information design are just two, in addition to the work I cited, so I can play in many relevant places, and not only keep up with but also generate new ideas.   My early technology experience and geeky curiosity keeps me up on the capabilities of the new tools, and allows me to quickly determine their fundamental learning capabilities.   Working on real projects, meeting real needs, and ability to abstract to the larger picture has given me the ability to add value across a range of areas and needs.   I find that I’m able to quickly come in and identify opportunities for improvement, pretty much without exception, at levels from products, through processes, to strategy.   And I’m less liable to succumb to fads, perhaps because I’ve seen so many of them.

I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to be able to work in the field that is my passion, and still getting to work on cool and cutting edge projects, adding value.   You’ll keep seeing me do so, and if you’ve an appetite for pushing the boundaries, give me a holler!

On the road again

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Well, this spring is shaping up differently than I expected. Instead of the doing the familiar talks or workshops in the usual places: Training’s Conference, eLearning Guild’s Annual Gathering, and ASTD’s TechKnowledge and International Conference, I’m doing new things in old and new places.   Not that I don’t like those conferences, in fact I recommend them, it’s just that life takes funny turns (and I like challenging myself). Which isn’t to say I won’t be at those conferences again (I hope and intend to).

So, where will I be showing up?   At VizThink, for one.   A conference I’ve been very interested in, and managed to get a chance to present at.   That’s really just in a few days (Feb 22-25), and I’ll be talking about the cognitive underpinnings behind diagrams (and more).   As well as soaking up some great thoughts from others!

I’ll also be talking at the 5th Annual Innovations in eLearning Conference, hosted by the Defense Acquisition and George Mason Universities in the beginning of June.   My topic is myths about new learners, and I intend to debunk much of the hype just as I like to do around learning styles (which will probably show it’s head in the talk), as well as provide practical guidelines.   Folks like Will Wright and Vint Cerf are keynoting, so this is bound to be special.

Finally, assuming there are enough registrations, I will be at ASTD’s ICE (end of May), not speaking but running a pre-conference workshop on elearning strategy.   This is based upon my chapter in the forthcoming Michael Allen’s eLearning Annual 2009 about both the important principles of elearning tactics like mobile, portals, social learning, and more, and tying those tactics together into a strategy.   The focus is on an integrated ‘performance ecosystem‘, and I reckon it’s the most useful thing I can offer in this economic uncertainty.   I’ve given it as a talk before, but not as a workshop, and this is for managers and executives to take the next step in improving their organizational learning infrastructure.   It’s time to work smarter, folks!

One of the ways I work smarter and keep learning is to push myself into new areas that are beyond my comfort zone but that are within my reach (e.g. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development).   I recommend it to you too.   It’s a way to keep learning, and expanding.   I welcome new challenges, got any handy?

(New) Monday Broken ID Series: Objectives

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Next series post

This is the first in a series of thoughts on some broken areas of ID that I will be posting for Mondays.   The intention is to provide insight into many ways much of instructional design fails, and some pointers to avoid the problems. The point is not to say ‘bad designer‘, but instead to point out how to do better design.

The way I‘ve seen many learning solutions go awry is right at the beginning, focusing on the wrong objective.   Too often the objective is focused on rote knowledge, whether it‘s facts, procedures, or canned statements.   What we see is knowledge dump, or as I‘ve heard it called: show up and throw up.   Then, the associated assessment is similarly regurgitation of what you‘ve just heard.   The reasons this happens, and why it doesn‘t work, are both firmly rooted in the way our brains work.

First, our brains are really bad at rote remembering.   We‘re really good at pattern-matching, and extracting underlying meaning.   That‘s why we use external aids like calendars.   Heck, if it‘s rote knowledge, don‘t make them memorize it, let them look it up, or automate it.   OK, in the rare case where they do have to know it, we can address that, but we overuse this approach.   And that‘s due to the second reason.

Experts don‘t know how they do what they do, by and large.   Our brains ‘compile‘ information; expertise implies becoming so practiced that the process is inaccessible to conscious thought (ask an expert concert pianist to describe what they‘re doing while playing and their performance falls apart).   We found this out in the 80‘s, when we built so-called ‘expert systems‘ to do what experts said they did,   When the systems didn‘t work, we went back and looked at what the experts were really doing, and there was essentially zero correlation between what they said they did, and what they actually did.

What happens, then, is that our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) do recall what they studied, and toss that out.   They‘ll dump a bunch of relevant knowledge on the designer, and the good little designer will develop a course around what the SME tells them.   So, we see objectives like:

Be able to cite common objections to our product.

What‘s needed is to focus on more meaningful outcomes.   Dave Ferguson has written a nice post defending Bloom‘s skill taxonomies, and he‘s largely right when saying that focusing on what people actually do with the knowledge is critical. However, I find it simpler to distinguish, ala Van Merrienboer, between the knowledge the learner needs, and the complex decisions they   apply that knowledge to, with the emphasis on the latter.   So, I’d like to see objectives more like:

Be able to counter customer objections to our product.

The nuances may seem subtle, but the difference is important.

How does a designer do that?   SMEs are not the easiest folks to work with in this regard.   I‘ve found it useful to turn the conversation to focus on the things that the learner needs to be able to do after the learning experience.   That is, ask them what decisions learners need to be able to make that they can’t make know.   Not what they need to know, but what do they need to be able to do.

And, I argue, what will likely be making the difference going forward will be skills: things that learners can do differently, not just what they know.   I recall a case where an organization was not just looking for the learners to understand the organizational values, but to act in accordance with them (and that that meant).   That‘s what I‘m talking about!

When it comes to capturing objectives, I‘m perfectly happy with Mager‘s format of specifying who the audience is, what they need to be able to do, and a way to determine that they‘re successfully performing.   From there, you can work backwards to the assessment, to the concept, examples, and practice that will develop the skills to pass the assessment.

There‘s another step, really, before this, and that‘s determining what decision learners need to make differently or better to impact the bottom line, e.g. choosing objectives that will affect the organization in important ways, but that‘s another topic for another day.

Doing good objectives is both a skill that can be learned, and a process that can be supported.   You should be doing both.   Starting from the right objective makes everything else flow well; if you start on the wrong foot, everything else you do is wasted.   Get your objectives right, and get your learning going!

Coping personally, organizationally, and societally

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Having just come back from DevLearn (which rocked; my hearty thanks to all participants and organizers), and now engaged in the Corporate Learning Trends conference (free, online), I’m seeing some repeated themes, and interests.   It’s a busy time, since we‘re deeply engaged in the latter, but some messages are coming through so powerfully that I’ve got to reflect on them.

In this time of economic uncertainty or outright fear, one of the resonant themes is ‘how to cope’. Marcia Conner, one of our forward thinkers, is going to be talking about the topic of coping tomorrow at 10 AM PT, and I’m looking forward to it!I believe that’s important at the societal level as well.   We need to invest in our capabilities when things are down so we’re poised to capitalize on the upswing. Jay invited me to share his breakfast byte at DevLearn on the topic.

We brainstormed with the attendees, and came up with some interesting points.   At the personal level was to be nimble, strategic, and develop yourself.   Tony Karrer talked today about investing in knowing how to use the tools effectively, building upon all the tools that Robin Good and Jane Hart had described yesterday (simply amazing tools).

The organization level of that is to develop infrastructure and capability.   Dave Pollard today talked about moving from Knowledge Management 1.0 to 2.0, empowering people to self-help. What can you do to foster creativity and innovation on a shoestring when you can’t cope with full-fledged initiatives?   Can you get a small social networking tool initiative going that can help people help each other?

A couple of recurrent themes were selling this to management, and managing the proliferation of tools.   For the former, I reckon it’s about helping more than just novices, but providing self-help.   It depends, of course, on what your needs are and consequently what you choose to implement, but the outcomes can clearly be linked to organizational goals and problems, like reducing time-to-information, increasing productive collaboration, and sharing.   For the problem of tracking the tools, I think the key are the needed affordances.   I’ve been focused on finding the affordances of the tools, but it’s another thing to think about the affordances an organization needs and map tools into them.   Briefly, it’s about collaborative representations (prose, graphics), pointers to relevant topics, etc.   More work to be done here, I reckon.

These topics are being discussed at the Corporate Learning Trends social site this week (and ongoing, hopefully) and you can join in.

Note that I think these are relevant societally as well.   We developed some serious infrastructure through the WPA, and the Interstates, and it’s crumbling.   At some point you need to build it back up (rebuild differently?) to meet the needs.   That may increasingly be things like networks (and healthcare) as well as things like bridges.   I think this is key to thinking about how to invest for the tough times; focus internally until times get good again and be poised to rebound.   It’s like your body rebuilding while you’re asleep so you can restart the new day. Of course, you need to have hoarded the resources.   May be a way short-term shareholder returns damage long-term survivability?

Here’s hoping the economic situation is short and mercifully gentle, and that you all survive and prosper!

Medina keynote on Brain Rules at DevLearn 08

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John Medina gave the closing keynote at DevLearn, based upon his book Brain Rules.   He covered two of his 12 rules, on memory, and on exercise.   He spoke fast, was enthusiastic, funny, and knowledgeable.   He talked about myths of learning, and said that he didn’t think there was a lot neuroscience had to say to learning design (thankfully, cf Willingham).

One of his points was that our brains evolved to provide ongoing performance guidance over hours of constant motion (evolutionarily).   This leads to implications that are contrary to most of our learning contexts!

His first rule was about memory, and he covered the basic model of cognitive models of memory, but then pointed out that it’s about 10 years from initial exposure to fixed memory, and requires extensive repetition.   During that period, distortion can occur. This explains the rule of thumb that you have to be doing something for 10 years before you can be considered an expert.   It probably takes 10 years of doing things before they’re solidified in useful experience to apply.

The second rule he covered was the relation between exercise and learning.   It was really exercise and thinking, and there’s a positive relationship.   The difference between sedentary and moderately active lifestyles is big in terms of mental acuity.   And reintroducing it for a reasonably short period (16 weeks) can reignite.   Memory improvements take longer, like 3 years.   It works for kids too, and if they stop, it drops off.

He made several observations how revising schools would work better, sadly too true.   So, repeat if you need it to stick (a great opportunity for mobile learning), and do get exercise for your own health, and maybe have an organizational incentive as well!   Here’s my concept map (it was hard as quick as he spoke, so didn’t get all the data):

Mobile tools

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Ok, I’ve had my iPhone a bit now, and some things are very useful, some things are cool, some are way fun, and some things are still irritating.   Note that most of the apps I download are free; I’m cheap and there are great free apps (and games).   I regularly go off to the iTunes store and check out what’s new (particularly the top free apps list).

Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way quickly.   Naturally, my pet peeves haven’t changed (because they haven’t fixed them, ahem): no cut/copy/paste drives me nuts.   For example, I put an address in my calendar, and then can’t cut and paste it into Google Maps to look it up when I’m on the go.   It’s there, but I can’t just carry it across!?!   Frustrating.   Similar with notes and todos.   As I’ve mentioned, if I promise something and it doesn’t get into my phone, we never had the conversation.   However, that’s much harder to do on the iPhone, because I have to email a message to myself!   Frustrating.   Similarly with memos. There already have been times I wanted to put things into a memo to take with me (e.g. a meeting agenda), and I can’t.   Sure, I could use EverNote, but then I’d have to have connectivity, and thanks to ATT’s coverage and hotel policies on wireless, that’s not always the case.

OK, the useful: Google Maps, Yelp, and now UrbanSpoon (finally covers Walnut Creek, my corporate headquarters) are very useful when I’m out and about and need to find some location, or a restaurant, or store, or…   I use them quite a lot, actually.   UrbanSpoon’s interface method of choosing at random is fun enought that it’s almost a ‘cool’.   Weather has been useful when travelling, as is Clock (not least for timing my tea :). Also, I’m all over references. I use the Wikipanion and the Google App.   Occasionally, the various unit converters, calculators, and the like are handy.   I expect to use the translator on occasion as well.   Hey, that’s why we have digital devices, to offload those things our brain’s aren’t great at, like remembering arbitrary data, and leave us to do the strategic and pattern-matching stuff.   The camera’s handy as well.   I haven’t used the voice recorder, though I’m ready.   And a secure password storage app, SplashID. And I got a first-aid reference, a Bart schedule, even the constitution (relevant in several ways).

The fun are the games I’m playing.   I used to play a lot of Risk in college, and then Lux on the computer.   Now there’s a somewhat abbreviated version of Lux on the iPhone.   That, along with Solitaire and Mahjonng are fun.   And of course, the LightSaber app.   Great for entertaining the kids when we’ve got to wait.   I play games for research reasons, er yeah, that’s it…. Oh, and books.   I’ve read a couple including James Fenimore Cooper’s “Pathfinder”, Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Tarzan” (I read as a kid, was re-reading to see if my lad’s ready), and Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” (hadn’t ever read, amazingly). Lots of free classics available and worth reading.

Finally, the cool.   I just got Google Earth, and that’s way cool.   Just amazing to have it running in the palm of your hand!   Went over and looked at our old house in Australia; they’ve put a tree in the front yard, it appears.   Twittelator lets me tweet and keep up with others’.   I have LinkedIn and FaceBook, though I haven’t used them much.   Midomi will let me hear a song, capture 10 seconds of it, and tell me what it is. Amazing.

By the way, many of these were available on the Palm, and some version of the above may be available on Windows Mobile, RIM’s Blackberry, or forthcoming on Android.   Anyway, it’s about extending your brain, and these apps do it in various ways.   So, what are you finding useful, and what am I missing?