Super-duper best of the week

Wow! Lots of great content this week making up for the light-and-fluffy week last week.

Cool tools

Marconi's virtual presence application. The Telework Times reviews this new tool for multipoint videoconferencing. It has some nice capabilities and just looks neat.

The Literary Machine. The e-Learning Centre points out this software, which can be added to my list of personal knowledge management tools.

A new blogging tool. The Kolabora Website offers this review of Qumana, a new tool that should make life easier for power bloggers.

Workplace skills

An alphabet-full of creativity techniques. A long list of creativity techniques is offered by a small company in the United Kingdom specializing in creativity and innovation.

"Do You Know When to Delegate?" A good article from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge says the keys are to make yourself let go, ask don't tell, match tasks to people, cultivate independent thinking, and link people with resources.

The Value of What You Do. A company has developed a proprietary platform that aims to gauge the worth of people's contributions at work so they can get justly compensated, the Fast Company blog reports.

Studies

Eyetrack III. The findings of this study on how people read news Websites may help you design e-learning. Interesting stuff, tracking the movement of eyeballs around the screen. Here's an interview with one of the project managers.

"Sleeping on the Job." Thirty percent of people have their best ideas in bed, compared to 11 percent who have them at their desk, says BBC News. The number of companies that offer nap rooms may be growing.

"Blended Learning and Sense of Community: A Comparative Analysis with Traditional and Fully Online Graduate Courses." An interesting study and report completed in the higher education world but with definite applicability beyond. From the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.

"Workplace IM Showing Growth." Clickz Stats reports that 21 percent of respondents to their study use instant messaging in the workplace. Is it a helpful tool for productivity and collaboration, or just a distraction? Forty percent say it's improved teamwork; 41 percent says it hasn't helped collaboration.

The future of work and learning

Department of social capital. The Future of Work founders Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham offer their thoughts on a department that would link what kids learn in school and the jobs they get when they graduate, help determine what kind of businesses are profitable and sustainable, and more.

"Reusable Media, Social Software, and Openness in Education." This PowerPoint presentation from Stephen Downes is a rallying cry for some of the new, cool technology that's being used for learning--some of which Downes is creating. (For more on what he's been up to, see my RSS article and my content article.)