Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day

Following my last post Social Learning: Are you starting from the right place, I was asked to explain what “social learning” actually is in an organizational context. Rather than provide a bland definition, I thought I would provide some quotes from some key resources that will give a flavour of what it is all about ...

Read the article on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

When I hear people ask for advice about how to “do” or “implement” social learning it reminds me of this Irish joke.

“Paddy stopped cutting the hedge as the big car drew up beside him and an English visitor enquired, 

“Could you tell me the way to Balbriggan, Please?”

Read the rest of the article on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

At the Social Learning Centre I am going to be hosting a number of short online “programmes” about social media, social learning and social business. These “programmes” will use a very informal, social, collaborative approach: there will be no formal classes and no monitoring/management of your learning in a LMS. Rather the programmes will be hosted in dedicated group spaces on the Social Learning Centre (which is powered by a social and collaboration platform).

Each day there will be an “activity” that consists of an introduction to the topic with links to additional reading (if desired), an individual or group activity, and a group discussion question to encourage the exchange of thoughts, ideas, experiences and resources of participants.

Here are three upcoming programmes. Follow the links to find out more about them, their agenda as well as how to join up – currently there is a special launch price available.

20 February – 2 March 10 days (weekdays only)
An introduction to social learning in the workplace
How social media is impacting the way that we work and learn in the workplace, and how L&D can support learning more widely in their organisations.

12-23 March 10 days (weekdays only
How to create and sustain an online community
Guidance on how to set up and maintain an online community

16-27 April 10 days (weekdays only)
Using social media in a formal learning programme
Ideas for how to use social media in a formal learning programme - classroom based and/or online.

More programmes to come.

My colleague Harold Jarche has created the following presentation which brings together some thoughts (in the form of short quotes)  about workplace transformation from each the 5 Principals of the Internet Time Alliance (ITA).

ITA Insights 2012

When Mark Britz tweeted about this slideset, he said

ITA Insights 2012 slideshare.net/jarche/ita-ins… via @slideshare / Quote on slide 8 now on my Org email signature. — mark britz (@britz) January 25, 2012

Which quote would you use on your email signature?

We have also integrated our best articles into our new website, in a section called Insights, so if you are looking for more in-depth thinking, take a look there too.

In my new monthly series of webinars at the Social Learning Centre I will be talking to industry practitioners and thought leaders from around the world about their work with social media and their current thinking about its use in the workplace.

I am very pleased to announce that my friend, Jane Bozarth has agreed to be my first webinar guest. I’m sure you all know Jane, as she has written lots of useful practical e-learning books including the recently published Social Media for Trainers, and speaks widely about the use of social media in the workplace.

I’ll be talking to Jane about her job as the Elearning Coordinator for the North Carolina, USA, Office of State Personnel, about her book, and also about some of the myths around the use of social media in the workplace.

The In Conversation with Jane Bozarth webinar is scheduled for
Wednesday 22 February
18.30-19.30 pm GMT, 13.30-14.30 pm ET, 10.30-11.30 am PT

As these webinars won’t be traditional presentational-type webinars, but a dialogue with my guests, I also want to include questions from the audience.too, so if you’d like to find out more about this webinar, how to register and how to leave your questions for Jane, you can do so HERE. I hope you can join us.

BTW I’m gathering together a line-up of future guests, and those that have agreed so far, are listed on the Webinars page.

As a final note, the picture of us together was taken at DevLearn 2010 in San Francisco, as we were just about to start a live #rnchat Twitter session.

I’d like to introduce you to my latest venture, which I’ve  been working on over the last few weeks with a number of early users: the Social Learning Centre.

The Social Learning Centre is the place where learning professionals can find out more about the use of social media for learning, as well as exchange thoughts and ideas with their peers and leading practitioners and thought leaders around the world. Become a member of this global learning community and get involved as follows:

• Take part in scheduled (or on demand) online programmes - which offer a structured approach to learning about social learning
• Participate in webinars - where I will be having conversations with leading practitioners and thought leaders
• Join a range of special interest groups - for continuous updates and discussions on social learning topics.

In addition to these Community activities, the Social Learning Centre also aggregates a number of resources about social learning, which can be viewed without being a member.

To become a member of the Social Learning Centre‘s global community of learning professionals: register for a free account on the site, and this will enable you to join any of the public groups set up for the interest groups, webinars and some social programmes. Note:  a number of the online programmes require a small fee to join.

If you want to keep up to date with what’s happening at the Social Learning Centre, you can read the News here and/or subscribe to the news feed.

I’ll be featuring some of the current and upcoming activities at the Social Learning Centre  in further blog posts during this launch week.

As you will know I finalised the 5th Annual survey of  Top 100 Tools for Learning in the middle of November 2011, and at that time placed the presentation on Slideshare. I’ve just noticed that in the subsequent two months it has been viewed over 200,000 times!

You will also know, Twitter topped the list again for the 3rd year running, although in 2008 it was only ranked 11th and in 2007 it was 43rd on the list.

This made me wonder what the best performing tools were over the last 5 years. Would Twitter top the list again?

So I did some calculations and to see the list of the top 20 tools over the last  5 years, please read the post on my C4LPT blog.

In his recent post, Informal Learning , 95% solution, Harold Jarche provides the reason why many workplace learning professionals can only think about “informal learning” and “social learning” in terms of how they can manage them within a blended training solution – rather than simply support them,  as they happen, naturally and continuously, in the workflow.

“Since the latter half of the 20th century, we have gone through a period where training departments have been directed to control organizational learning. It was part of the Taylorist, industrial model that also compartmentalized work and ensured that only managers were allowed to make decisions. In this context, only training professionals were allowed to talk about learning.”

But to be fair, it is not just Training Departments that think like this, there are still many people in other parts of the business that believe that “learning” has to be “organised” or  “packaged up” (in the form of “training”) to be seen as a valid solution to a problem … Read the rest of the article heret

Predictions for an upcoming new year are inevitably based on the “flow” from the current year, so if you have taken a look at my Top 100 articles of 2011 (or even my complete 2011 Reading List), you will not be surprised to hear that many predict that 2012 will be the “Year of Social Business“.

Up to now, for many organisations, Social Business has been about social … Read the rest of this post on the C4LPT blog

My primary blog is now the C4LPT Blog based at http://c4lpt.co.uk/blog. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/feed/ 

In my second blog post reviewing 2011, I take a look at some the key moments of my own year in terms of resources, blog posts and presentations I have produced.

January

In January I published my Social Learning Handbook (both as a paperback and a PDF).  This book aggregated a lot of my thinking and activities from 2010.  Its main premise was that social learning happens all the time …

Read the rest on the C4LPT BLog

With only a few more days left of 2011, this is the first of a series of posts reviewing the past year and look forward to 2012.

From nearly 500 links to articles, blog posts, slideshows, reports and (this year also) infographics that I saved in my 2011 Reading List, I have produced a list of the 100 articles that I enjoyed or that impressed me most in 2011.

This is my 4th Top 100 articles list, and this year I’ve added a quote beneath each link to give you a taster of what it is about.

In fact just reading the quotes themselves will give you an indication of what this year has been about for me: i.e. it has not been about the social media tools per se, but how they are impacting personal, professional and organisational learning practices and behaviours.

To the right you will see this year’s Wordle that summarises the main themes in this year’s list (click on the image to see it full size).

And now for a link to the list itself: TOP 100 ARTICLES OF 2011

It seems that many people like tools lists, if the fact that there have been over 110,000 views of the 2011 Top 100 Tools list presentation via Slideshare since 13 November is anything to go by!

So here is my Christmas present to you – 50 More tools!  This time the ones that didn’t quite make it onto the 2011 list.  25 of the tools have actually already appeared on previous Top 100 Tools lists (in 2010, 2009, 2008 and/or 2007), but 25 are completely new to the list.  There should be something there for everyone’s learning needs – in the workplace, education or even for pleasure.

Below is the embedded presentation via Slideshare.  The textual list is available on the 50 More Tools page

Happy Christmas!

Here is this week’s roundup of 5 resources about social learning and the use of social media for learning.  Again lots of great articles to choose from this week.

1 – We start this week with a couple of educational resources.  The first is So.cl.  This is a research experiment, from Microsoft, for students focused on combining web browsing, search, and social networking for the purposes of learning.

… Read the rest of the post here 

The revolution that is social media means that everyone can now have access to the Social Web and a range of services and applications to support their own as well as their team’s learning, performance and productivity.

So here is an opportunity to find out about a wide range of tools that can help you and your team work smarter.

The Smart Worker’s Guide to Social Media (SWGSM) contains 30 short Assignments which provide introductory reading, examples, links to further resources, and a short activity to work on.

To access the materials in this Guide you will need to become a member of the SWGSM site.

You can then either make use of the materials as you like, e.g. work  though them on a self-paced basis, or just dip in and out of when and as required OR you can join a group where over a period of 30 days you can work through the different assignments, try out the tools with others in the group,  as well as the discuss the daily topic  and share your thoughts and experiences with the others in the group. Each day’s activities will be coordinated and facilitated by Jane Hart in a dedicated group space on the SWGSM site.  Note: this is a very informal programme – there are no formal classes, tests or “management” of your learning!!

The next scheduled 30 Day Programme will run: 9 January – 17 February 2012 (weekdays only)

To find out more about the Guide, how to purchase membership, and read the feedback from participants on previous 30 Day Programmes, please visit The Smart Worker’s Guide to Social Media

There have been lots of interesting articles and posts this week about social learning and the use of social media for learning.  Here is my pick of just 5 of them

1- I am going to start this week with a post by Jon Ingham, who

 

 

Words: 73 was at the recent #CIPDSocial event, and in which he describes ARM’s very social business.  Although the term “social learning” isn’t actually mentioned in…

Read the rest of this article 

You have probably heard about The Flipped Classroom where the traditional classroom model has been flipped on its head, so that students watch videos as homework and then apply the concepts in the classroom.  

If you haven’t, Dan Pink explains it in his piece in The Telegraph, Flip Thinking – the new buzz word sweeping the US:

“During class time, the teacher will stand at the front of the room ...

… Read the rest of Jane's post here

Back in May 2010 I posted a diagram that I had created that showed what I considered to be the 5 stages of Workplace Learning.  My ITA colleague, Jay Cross, re-worked it so that I looked like this.

Back in May 2010 I wrote: ”In my opinion most organisations are in Stage 3, but as the L&D conversation circles around the concepts of social and informal learning, I’m getting the impression that many are…  Read the rest of the article here

Here is this week’s round-up of articles and other resources looking at social media for learning and social learning.

1 – Firstly, this week, here is a preview of Harrison College’s new approach to online learning, KnowU: Where Social Meets Learning. For more about this new approach, visit http://knowu.harrison.edu for more information.  (I expect we’ll be going to see quite a few more examples of learning in education that look like this in…

Read the rest of the article here

The Carlson School of Management received a surprise visit from a saxophonist…and nearly 300 of his friends from the University of Minnesota’s School of Music this November.

Credits

“Deck the Halls” arr. Francisco J. Núñez and Jim Papoulis from “Coolside of Yuletide”

Special Thanks To: Greg Wrenn (saxophone), Campus Singers Maroon, Gold, and Mosaic; Men’s Chorus, Women’s Chorus, University Singers, Kathy S. Romey (coordinator), Phillip O’Toole (audio), Boosey & Hawkes, Northern Lights Video, Michael Teachout, Bryan Koop (director of photography), Steve Rudolph (producer)

For more information on the Carlson School of Management visit www.CarlsonSchool.umn.edu

via www.c4lpt.co.uk

Here’s this week’s round up of resources that look at social learning and the use of social media for working and learning:

1 – The first resource I want to share with you this week is Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Learning Start Guide, which appears inside the (glossy) November edition of Inside Learning Technologies magazine, and which is introduced as follows:

“New tools have given training practitioners limitless new

… Read the rest of the article here