Interesting Books

During the last days, I´ve been reading Marc Rosenberg´s new book "Beyond E-Learning". A very interesting book that I would recommend. In this book, Marc argued that "e-Learning is much more than e-training" and that "the accelerating pace of knowledge growth and change, as well as the increasing pressures of the marketplace, require that we look for innovative approaches to complement training". Most of the ideas presented in this book are very similar to e-Learning 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts, though he didn´t mention those terms explicitly. Marc also had a good article based on the same book.
I´m currently waiting for 2 other books that would be available in the next couple of weeks. The first one is "informal learning" by Jay Cross who coined the term e-Learning a couple of years ago. In the "Informal Learning Blog", Jay introduced informal learning as "the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way most of us learn to do our jobs. Informal learning is like riding a bicycle: the rider chooses the destination and the route. The cyclist can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or help a fellow rider". The second book is "Knowing Knowledge" by George Siemens. To introduce his new book which will be available in early October 2006, George said "Knowledge is changing. It develops faster, it changes more quickly, and it is more central to organizational success than in any other time in history. Our schools, universities, corporations, and non-profit organizations, need to adapt. We need to change the spaces and structures of our society to align with the new context and characteristics of knowledge. How we market, how we learn, how we build, how we collaborate - these are all changing. Most organizations are not prepared for the sea change washing ashore. We are conducting business in a manner that is no longer reflective of the market, or society as a whole. Knowing Knowledge is an exploration of knowledge - what it is, how it is changing, and what it means to our organizations and society".