The humble stick phone may one day change the way we collaborate and learn. I am working on an article featuring YFonGlobal, a media company that, among other things, enables organizations to create what it calls communications venues. You know, what Intranets were once supposed to be.

Because YFonGlobal uses VoIP as one of the many underlying applicatons, it also loads its proprietary collaborative application (Windstorm) onto stick phones. Got me thinking, that an organization could host a knowledge-sharing program accessible from anywhere. Students will simply plug their stick phone into a USB port on any PC, in a hotel or cybercafe, and have the capability to interact with each other, and even instructors using all the collaborative tools loaded onto it. This includes free VoIP calls, of course.  Yes, YFonGlobal is also involved in distance learning.

Speaking of online education, Bill Lanphear of OdysseyWare, a curriculum and technology company, is convinced that online education will soon catch up with the always-on student with Wiki-like rich-media applications that foster collaboration. "Students and teachers are writing blogs, making podcasts and creating their own vodcasts," he says. They are "moving like swarms of fish working in unison as
teams, seeking experiential learning, and using all forms of technology
for social networking."

So you have to wonder what’s keeping educators –and this includes companies – so far behind in knowledge sharing? Are they (a) suspicious that all these new media formats and sharing methods will detract from the content? Or (b) scared to death that administrators may never be able to keep up with all this new technology? Whatever the answer, Asking kids/employees to go to old media access points to engage in knowkledge sharing will not survive for much longer. Asking students to "park their cell phones, iPods, and
laptops outside the classroom" is ignoring reality –that "kids have woven
these devices into their personal learning spaces," says Lanphear.

On a related note, Pearson, the publishing/education company has announced plans to publish a business book titled "We are smarter than me" in wiki format.