Feed aggregator

Here is my pick of 10 articles about social learning since my last posting just before Christmas. I have listed them below in chronological order, and also added a short quote from each of them to give you a flavour of what each is about. If you want to read further articles you will find many more that I have saved in my 2012 Reading List ....

Read the full post in myLearning in the Social Workplace blog

Here's the latest news from the Social Learning Centre - what's been happening in January and what’s coming up in February? Membership has now reached over 700.  For non-members I've been adding some new (free) resources and some free on-demand tutorials.  How to use Twitter for social learning is particularly popular.

First of all, the Introduction to social learning in the workplace programme begins on 20 February. I want to build a small group of participants with a common interest so that we can have some good discussions around this topic. There are a few places left, so let me know if you would like to join this one. Details are on the page (link above).

Secondly, on 22 February, I have my first In Conversation with .. webinar, with Jane Bozarth. This is going to be fun. It won’t be the normal presentational-style webinar, but a dialogue where I talk to Jane about her job, her books, and her thoughts about the use of social media in the workplace. Joining instructions once again are on the In conversation with Jane Bozarth webinar page, and how you can also information on how to leave your questions for Jane.

I am lining up a number of great guests for this series of webinars; and you can find out who’s coming up on the Webinars page.

During January I also added a few more interest groups to the list including: Google applications for Learning, Social Learning Theory, Meet the ITA Team  and Community Leadership. You can view the full list of interest groups here.

I’ve also enabled the site-wide Activity stream so you can get a better view of all the public activity.  You can use this to post directly into the groups of which you are a member (and these are listed in the pull-down menu), so that other  group members are notified of it.  Note, if you post into your Profile – it will only be visible in the Activity stream and in your profile.

Updates in the group and site-wide Activity stream are also now editable within 10 minutes of posting – so if you realise you made a typo, you can now easily correct it.

And just a reminder, that both members and non-members can keep up to date with general news about the Social Learning Centre by subscribing to the RSS feed.

Read Write Learn
http://www.facebook.com/RWLLearning

Read Write Learn Technology
http://www.readwritetechnology.com/

Greg Green, principal at Chintondale High in Michigan is in charge of a financially challenged school. He is trying to provide his students with the best education possible. The students that attend Clintondale are all on different skill levels. With the economy today the students have limited resources to do their homework at home. With the students in mind Greg wanted them to become excited and to show interest in school, thus the flip model was integrated into their school by the help of Tech Smith. Tech Smith helped us create a flipped classroom structure through the use of their screen and writing software. Teachers than record their lectures and the students watch these lectures at home as their homework. When the students are in classroom they then have the available resources to do their homework, including the help of their teacher. The flip model has made inequality no longer an issue. If educators can come together and work toward a common goal of fixing the education system, education could be changed forever. Thanks to the flip model every student can have a chance to succeed. To read the full Flipping The Class Article click here.

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

First day at my new job… I learned lots…
1: Easy to use is also easy to demonstrate
2: Computers and phones have a way of levelling the playing field. Today neither my android or my Outlook wish to be configured, it happens
3: Learning a new product is tiring and motivating all at the same time
4: It is about the people as much as the product…

Feel I still have some learning to do after the house goes to bed tonight !

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 a community of practice
Guidance on how to set up and maintain a Community of Practice

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.

RWL Technology

http://readwritetechnology.com/landing/coursepower

Many students aren’t willing to admit in class that they don’t understand the material being taught. But for one Utah classroom that isn’t an issue anymore. New technology is making it possible for students to input their response into a handheld device called the SMART response device. This device sends the students answer directly to the teacher’s computer allowing the teacher to know if she needs to recover the material or if her class understands and its ok to continue with the lesson. The teacher also no longer needs to spend hours grading the tedious assignments the teacher’s computer will keep track of all the scores.

For resources on SMART Devices:

http://smarttech.com/us/Solutions/Education+Solutions/Products+for+education/Complementary+hardware+products/SMART+Response

For the Utah Classroom story:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18915170&title=smart-technology-enhancing-classroom-learning-experience

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.

Do you have full access to online learning modules with assistive technology? Are they tedious and time consuming to navigate? RWL Tech, Inc. has created a new tool that allows you to efficiently navigate online learning modules and have full access (not separate but equal access), even if the module has complex Flash interactions. Read more here and sign up to be a beta tester. We LOVE having your perspective and feedback. Course Power.

RWL Tech
http://www.readwritetechnology.com/

RWL Tech- Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/RWLLearning

Making Learning 508 Compliant and Accessibile
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Making-Learning-508-Compliant-and-Accessible/95298389507

 

In Kelly Gallagher’s new book “Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling & Mentor Texts.” He focuses on this topic of why reading is a problem of how it is taught in schools. He turns his attention to writing instruction, which he believes is in a state of crisis. Gallagher states reading/writing as a subject “seems to have gotten lost in many of our schools, it has been buried with curricular pacing guides, huge class sizes, worksheets, and over-the-top testing. When writing is taught at all, it is often subject to “prescribed school discourses” that limit students’ development and fail to capture their imagination.” It’s been estimated as many as 70 percent of students graduate from high school with inadequate writing skills. Are you one of those? Gallagher’s book consists of how he teaches to write six different real-life discourses, and after that he provides a series of writing prompts. Kelly Gallagher is prepared to get you or your class back on track. Click to read more on Kelly Gallagher’s new book.

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

Teaching, Training, and Learning
http://www.facebook.com/RWLLearning

Making Learning 508 Compliant and Accessible
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Making-Learning-508-Compliant-and-Accessible/95298389507?sk=info

Interested in stimulating your kid’s brains and making them
smarter? Ken Gibson and Tanya Mitchell created a free list to help parents shop
for toys, games and brain activities that will help improve your children’s
learning. The list describes the games and its cognitive skills. Cognitive
skills help children learn auditory, visual processing, memory, logic, processing
speed, and attention. Ken and Tanya have listed 10 games that can stimulate
your child’s brain.  They are:
1-Acuity
2-Blokus
3-BrainBox
4-Inchimals
5-Labyrinth
6-Pentago
7-Quad Doku
8-Scavenger Hunt For Kids
9-Square Up!
10-Tri-Spy
You can find the description and games at the Learning Rx website.

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

Teaching, Training and Learning
http://www.facebook.com/#!/RWLLearning

Making Learning 508 Compliant and Accessible
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Making-Learning-508-Compliant-and-Accessible/95298389507

Are You serious
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Are-You-Serious/181656175217770

RWL Tech
http://readwritetechnology.com/

Teaching is all about the relationship between teacher and students and the tools the teacher uses to help impart knowledge. Thousands of teachers across the world have been using screen casting and mastery learning for many years. With the turn of the century brought upon a new idea of teaching, this new way of teaching was called “The Flipped Classroom”. The flipped classroom is about making connections with learners and differentiating your instruction. Students are now presented with video material for learning; this can provide auditory and visual explanations and can remediate the students ways of learning.

Watch the video below of Aaron Sams’  classroom as he explains why he flipped his classroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4RkudFzlc

 

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!