i had the opportunity to co-facilitate (with allison anderson of intel) two incredibly high energy sessions on blogs and wikis at elliott maisie's learning2005. the excitement, and fear, over blogs and their potential use in learning was amazing. after allison's monday session was overflowing, a 3rd session was scheduled for wednesday and allison and i decided to team up for both my session on tuesday and the new wednesday session.
as we anticipated, the room was again overflowing on tuesday, so we divided the group in two and allison took half of the 150 folks to another room while I worked with the other half. there were lots of questions from what is a blog? what is a wiki? and what is the difference. how do i convince my it department to let me do a wiki/blog? what's the best use of each? how do i set one up?
some of things i learned in these sessions - either directly from others or by their questions stimulating
hit the button below to read the rest.
my thinking to come to new conclusions (informal learning at work, aye?):
- don't get caught up in the new toys because they are the new toys. figure out what you need to acheive and then figure out the best technology to aide your efforts.
- blogs are great for getting peoples' opinions. wiki's are great for building ideas together.
- wiki's are great for building learner involvement in crafting their own learning experiences in pre-meeting activities. (helping develop the agenda, raising the key questions they need answered,etc.)
- blogs are intimate, immediate and ruthlessly honest when they are at their best. this is both a good thing and a bad thing - depending on your context and purpose for writing the blog.
- employers fears is legitimate - at least some of the time.
- problems with it, corporate communication, and legal really aren't all that new. industries, like securities and non-profits, have always needed to control employee communication. other industries can their employees speak more freely. it really has very little to do with blogs and wikis.
- getting employees to participate in blogs and wikis - to open up and share - is a matter of trust and reinforcement of desired behavior by management.
- if you have a personal blog or wiki, you need to be aware of the persona you are projecting. current and potential employees can and do visit your sites to understand more about you. so be sure you're being who you want to be to your audience.
- when working with business partners or clients, don't lead with the technology. "hey class, we're going to work in a wiki!" focus on what they are focused on - solutions to their problems.
- we should aim these new technologies at better understanding the informal learning networks within our organizations rather than how we can do formal learning interventions just that much better.
hmm, 10 new understands around blogs and wikis. well i certainly learned alot in those two sessions. i hope the participants got as much out of them as i did!
Interesting post! I've commented on it at length at http://q2learning.blogs.com/weblog/2005/11/wikis_and_blogs.html
Posted by: Valerie Bock | November 09, 2005 at 02:55 PM