CivieBlog

I saw that Tony Hirst has posted a pipe that aggregates the twitter posts (tweets) from the learning professionals that Jane identified. I had said that I might want to subscribe to these folks. So, I looked through a small portion of the output of the pipe:

GeekMommy: @themantisofdoom - wild, isn't it? I've been in "online" communities since BBSing days in the early 80's. Higher % of good people here.

GeekMommy: @Merlene - I saw that you were jumping back in the deep end! Happy to be swimming around here with you! :)

problogger: @dingman having said that, there is room to improve 4 sure. Happy to take suggestions back to them. They r still in beta and improving fast

GeekMommy: Only I could somehow accidentally end up with 2 Twitter Moms profiles. A site so good I signed up twice!! :) http://www.twittermoms.com

acarvin: ...and for next week, maybe Yom McKippur?


problogger: @dingman photrade r a step ahead of many competitors when it comes 2 SEO as many others use javascript. Their images do well I google images


GeekMommy: @gradontripp - thank you! You know I'm trying to pretend that it doesn't mean I spend too much time twittering! ;)

chrisbrogan: Can't even dent my inbox. Falling behind in life.

GeekMommy: @myklroventine - I'm afraid it just means I'm overly chatty - but thank you! :)

michellegallen: loving my new laptop table from IKEA. It's lickable.

GeekMommy: @themantisofdoom - personally, I always feel amazed at how lucky I am to have found so many amazing folks on Twitter. :)


acarvin: You just know that if Obama does any High Holidays events, the headline will be Shana Tovah Obamah. Or Obamashanah.

markpentleton: Back in hotel: checking emails and uploading pics to flickr before bed. Looking forward to home tomorrow, but now before breakfast in BCN!

RobMcNealy: @rosenz Do YOU eat bacon? LOL Yes, yummy, a rabbit wrapped in bacon.

acarvin: Wondering if anyone named Cohen has ever changed it to Koan just for Zen coolness.

gminks: @BrettPohlman Yeah it gets very very cold for real. You get to wear cool clothes though. I think the worst thing is the darkness.

GeekMommy: @Merlene - it will go faster than you ever imagined. It has for me. The past year has been a whirlwind! :) An aqua-blue Twitter whirlwind...

gminks: wow I always use twhirl, but my updates say "from the web"

gminks: another for my "don't do this" category: don't make an out-of-print book required, and then tell us the author is your college mentor. gah.

joedale: New Tumbleblog post: “ Bilton Grange French: Les aventures de Florian & Maja. I- Je m.. http://tinyurl.com/3ehn5b

joedale: New Tumbleblog post: “ Nos Projets 4: Des messages d’accueil pour un répondeur/boîte .. http://tinyurl.com/4kehsm

rgalloway: Wow, heard really exciting ideas today, got only about 25% of planned work done though.

GeekMommy: What to say for 20,000th Tweet? Simply this: thank you for sharing your Twitter with me. It's been a great ride so far. Really. Thank you!!!

gminks: @BrettPohlman me too! Was supposed to go back 4 the mullet festival but it didn't work out this year. Seen a Boston winter yet?

LisaMLane: tiring of the cck08 squabbling

Well, never mind. I don't think I need to a way to subscribe.

Or maybe I'm missing something. Do you see value in any of this banter? I guess the very last comment from Lisa about cck08 is at least somewhat interesting.

As part of the Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals, I've created a couple of screen casts showing very quickly how I use LinkedIn to find expertise. This is my first time using Jing. Let me know what you think.

FYI - the Jing object does not appear in the RSS feed.

Whoops, I clicked too fast on publish - I will try to get additional screen casts posted soon.





By the way, I'm still looking for a free tool that will let me do this with someone else online at the same time. In other words, record my walk-through and conversation. Prefer it produces Flash Video Format.

Over the past two years, I've worked with start-ups and corporations around the world who are grappling a bit with the impact of Web 2.0 on learning. One of the more interesting aspects of this is that I've really changed and refined what I advise both audiences in terms of their learning 2.0 strategy. But, here's what I see in terms of a CLO perspective.

Seven Key Aspects of Learning 2.0 Strategy

1. Start Tactical and Bottom Up

The title of the post is horribly misleading. When I used to work with organizations on defining an eLearning Strategy, I always worked from a very broad view of needs across the organization and the implications that had on people, process and technology. I always felt this worked pretty well and we'd have a roadmap that covered a few years and provided the basis for moving forward. I initially attacked eLearning 2.0 and Learning 2.0 the same way. But, I'm not sure that really works. Instead, I've found that it's much more effective to look at individual opportunities and figure out what makes sense. You need to be prepared to apply learning 2.0 solutions. You need to be able to spot new kinds of opportunities that you might not have been involved in before (see Long Tail Learning).

In defense of the title - I still call it a Learning 2.0 Strategy because you have to be prepared to provide these new services and solutions. But, it's quite a bit different than the top-down kinds of approaches I've used in the past.

2. Avoid the Culture Question

Learning 2.0 implies some pretty significant changes in the way that organizations look at the role of a knowledge worker, management, the learning/training organization, boundaries of organizations, when you reach across boundaries, etc. The idea that workers/learners have largely become the instruments of learning and that learning is not controlled or controllable is something that causes all sorts of culture questions. I get asked at seminars all the time - "How can I change the culture?" Horrible question. There are some gurus who claim to be able to change culture. I don't feel I can do that - even in really small organizations. But I can change particular behaviors. I can provide tools and support. I can go in tactical and avoid the culture question.

3. Avoid Highly Regulated Content (and Lawyers)

If you are in pharmaceutical manufacturing, there are some procedures that are almost there more for legal reasons than for practical reasons. They establish exactly how you are supposed to manufacture everything. This is what's used for audits and lawsuits. A lot of the time, the way people actually learn how to work in this environment is through informal learning. However, you can't afford to have any of that written down (email, wiki, etc.) because it represents liability in a lawsuit. Likely, there is no way you are going to be able to fight this. I can argue until I'm blue that the reality is that there's a whole unwritten code of conduct that should get surfaced so you know what's really going on and can correct it. But the reality is that they want it that way and you can't change it.

However, this is the exception. Many people assume that their content falls into that same pattern. That's not true. If people are allowed to send thoughts in an email, then chances are your content is not that regulated.

4. Learning Professionals Must Lead

A big part of a learning 2.0 strategy needs to be getting learning professionals in the organization ready to Leading Learning and Help Them Acquire New Skills. The good news is that instructional designers and performance consultants have good analysis and delivery skills that are an important part of identifying and making tactical implementations happen. However, because of the ever shifting web 2.0 landscape, learning professionals need to become far more proficient in the tools and the related work and learning skills. They must be prepared to be thought and practice leaders. They must spot and support tactical implementations. This requires up-front support.

5. Prepare Workers for Learning 2.0

I was a bit surprised by the lack of preparation of workers for web 2.0 (learning 2.0) found in the recent eLearningGuild survey. Like preparing learning professionals to lead the charge, you need to be thinking about how you are going to help workers be successful when you use these approaches. We've complained for years that our internal clients thought that just giving someone a tool made them somehow competent in its use. Now, it's us giving them a tool. Don't assume competence. Help build competence. If you are going to be successful rolling out tactical solutions, you need to prepare the workers to be successful with the tools.

6. Technology is Tactical not Strategic

First, learning 2.0 uses Web 2.0 technologies, but it is really more about a shift in responsibility, a shift in tactics, a shift in skills. It really is not about the technology. That said, there is almost always some technology (Wiki, blog, RSS, etc.) that can enable it. But, keep in mind that you DO NOT START with a big technology selection process. Find tactical, simple, solutions that can be applied to the particular problem. If you try to choose tools through an elaborate selection process, you almost always end up dealing with a whole bunch of bigger picture questions that the CIO cares about, but that really are not going to help you.

7. Avoid the CIO

Find out what's already implemented in your organization either by IT or by some rogue group. Find out about tools that you can use as a service (without the CIO's permission being required). Go with one of those two out of the gate for your tactical solution. You can always move it later. But, you won't get started if you have to go through the CIO's office.

I'd be curious what you'd add to the list.

I was wondering why I was suddenly getting so many Twitter followers - a tool that I'm not yet convinced is a good thing except for people who need to be on the very bleeding edge of information flow - and finally Brent pointed me to a post by Jane Hart with a list of learning professionals to follow on twitter.

Now the stupid, lazy person question - is there an equivalent to OPML import for twitter for those of us who don't want to go through the list and add people one at a time?

I've announced this already - Free - Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals and the response is great already - it looks like we are going to have quite a mix of people involved.

To sign-up, go to the Ning group.

As part of my presentations on Work Literacy and eLearning 2.0 - I discuss how learning and knowledge work are changed by things such as computers, mobile computing, the web, social media, social networks, access to people/experts through the web, and the flood of new tools. To me, this change is still being underestimated - it's so radical that it's pretty hard to comprehend it.

A post by Gina Minks - - where she discusses a quote from an inscription at FSU:

The half of knowledge, is knowing where to find knowledge

Led me through to the King William's College annual General Knowledge Paper (GKP). I guess it's been published in the Guardian since 1951 - 2006 test - but it was new to me. Students sit for the test twice: once on the day before the winter holiday, and again when they return after the holiday (after having researched answers). It is highly difficult. Here are the first two questions from 2006:

1) In the year 1906:

1 which bedstefar was mourned multinationally?

2 which fruity concoction rivalled the first all-big-gun ship?

The test is now voluntary. There's a beautiful quote at the start of the test (and it's translation).

"Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est"

"To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition."

And if you run a Google define search on erudition for those of us wanting to make sure we understand the term, you get roughly:

profound scholarly knowledge

So, as opposed to half of education being to know where to find things, the King William's quote puts it at "the greatest part."

But let's go back to the start of my post, impact of the web, social media, etc. on learning and knowledge work. Well let's think about it - if you were an adept student today being asked to do research for the general knowledge paper, well it's a bit unfair right. The questions today are made harder and more obscure because the quiz master checks to make sure that the answers cannot easily be located via Google. For example, the word "bedstefar" doesn't even seem to have a definition - possibly it's an old spelling for the word used in 1906.

But, it's going to be tough for the quiz master to keep up with what's going on out there. Students can essentially farm the questions out - seeking out interested experts in each domain. Or even easier - they can hand it off to the crowd via metafilter. And they get wonderful help including things like a person posting the day it went live:

Bedstefar is Christian IX, king of Denmark, dead in 1906
posted by parmanparman at 5:38 AM on December 21, 2006

Some quick fact checking shows that indeed that's when he died. And then further, I found someone who posted a comment that:

‘Bedstefar’ means grandfather in Danish.

Which makes this highly likely since the King has such international influence through his children.

After looking at this, I first was thinking - the poor quiz master. First, having to fight Google. And now having to contend with social / network solutions. In fact, because the test is well known, I'm sure it's a bit depressing to see things like metafilter come up with answers that makes it somewhat irrelevant for students today. However, if their wasn't broader public interest in the quiz, then I believe there's real value in the test.

So, if the students were forced to take the quiz in today's world and the public was not generally interested in helping them find answers, what skills do the students need?

• Search skills - Likely this is wonderful fodder for how-to information on using varied search sources to find answers.
  
• Network skills - Also very good fodder for engaging others to help find answers.

There's real value here, but, unfortunately for the quiz master, they have a following - so I'm not sure the quiz serves the students as an audience anymore.

I just posted about Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals, and likely it will get picked up by various bloggers. However, I'm curious where else it would make sense to post about this to reach people who are not regular readers of blogs? Any recommendations?