e e learning

am i a blogger?

once again tom haskins has a post that just sends my brain a spinnin'  (fyi, that's a good thing in my book).   beware of blogging is inspiring at times and a bit depressing at times.  tom grasps the way blogging is effecting him and i think many of us as we learn a new way of learning.  he says that bloggers are shaking the foundations of what we've come to expect in regards to ourselves and the way we interact with the world.

one aspect of what he has to say that has really hit me at home is that if you are posting to a blog and no one is responding then you're really not participating in the blogosphere and thus not truly a blogger.  he feels that a blogger makes a difference when he/she creates reaction and change in those who they are in dialogue with.  without commentors, it's not blogging.

while early on I worried about counting the number of comments I got,  realized that I probably would never be one  of those bloggers who got 10 comments on every post.  heck, take a look and you'll see that I'm probably luck if I get 1 every ten posts. 

but i've come to judge whether my blogging is worthwhile by two other means.   

first and foremost, i'm learning.  in the three years that i've maintained eelearning and the two i've served as the blogmeister of learning circuits blog, i've learned more than i'd ever image i could, my writing has improved (it still needs work), and i've connected with some great people i would have never met if it weren't for blogging.

second, if i use other statistical guidelines like traffic statistics, technorati rankings and link information, or feedburner stats, i know that i have a growing collection of readers and feed monitors.  i wouldn't be in your feeds and blogrolls if you didn't value at least part of what I have to offer.

i'm sure tom overstated is case and didn't mean to exclude me or similar bloggers from his definition of what it means to be a blogger.  but his posts did make me think about what is important and what makes me consider myself a blogger.  to quote martha, "and that's a good thing."

xblogs: the road less traveled

while checking out the social networking weblog,  a new-to-me blog, i stumbled across quite a gem.  the escape plan by kim and jason kotecki is an xblog (short for experiential blog).  while the escape plan is a great xblog journey through 40 days to free yourself of adultitis, it's the underlying instructional design of an xblog that captured my attention.

As Kim and Jason explain it on their xblog alley page;

an experientialblog (or xblog) is a blog that inspires active participation in eventsor activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill. youmight think of it as a community self-help or how-to blog.

the general design of the xblog, as they have created it is simple yet  powerful:

1. it has a finite number of posts, each of which constitute a specific step towards a stated goal.
2. community is created by readers (voyagers) who share comments on their experiences.
3. it is written by an individual or team of sherpas, who lead the experience and guide voyagers in the journey.

while it might be a whole heck of alot of fun to learn something using this approach in a group, it really has it's power in being an individualized journey that draws upon the wisdom of those who have walked the same path before you.   as long as the tasks in each blog post are kept open enough for the individual to interpret how they will fulfill the task this becomes a potentially powerful way to use blogs to drive informal learning.

i've had a number of interesting ways to us xblogs for workplace learning bubbling in my mind as i've been writing this.  in fact, if you happen to be reading this and are intrigued about giving it a try in your organization, drop me a note.  i happen to be available these days!

technorati tags:xblogs, web_2.0, informal_learning, self-paced, experiential_learning

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jay cross on informal learning

jay cross hits on some key themes for moving informal learning forward in an interview with elearning america latina - which jay has published the translation of on the informal learning blog.

in this short interview, jay advocates for training departments taking responsibility for learning, not just training.  nothing new there, but he does go further by offering concrete ideas for demonstrating, in real business terms, the power of attending to informal learning.

he also advises training professionals to begin experimenting with the new web technologies. this i couldn't agree with more.  if you are an instructional designer and you don't know how a wiki works or the various uses of tagging systems, you better find a class soon (jay's unworkshops for example).  it won't be long until literacy in these tools will be requisite to do your job.

i'd add a tangential comment to hr executives and senior managers of learning to take a look at their job descriptions for leaders and managers of their learning function.  are you looking for people who have an understanding of the new technologies? 

• do they maintain a blog? 
  
• have they read one? 
  
• can they explain how a wiki can be used to enhance learning?
  
• do they understand social networking tools? 
  

do you expect that someone who's 15-year experience has allowed them to perfect building facilitation schedules in excel will come up with the viral learning campaign using podcasts and an expertise location database that you really need?  this is an new world that has some very new skill requirements.

in the last question of the interview, jay is challenged regarding the ability to measure the impact of informal learning.  while a bit general in time, i think his answers are a great starting point for us to really start defining how we can and should be judged by the organization.

maybe a bigger point in all of this interview is that learning professionals have got to learn how to market what we do.  figure out what our customers (the rest of the enterprise) want, how they talk about it, build our solutions to meet their needs, and package it in a way that makes sense to them. 

i've been a fan of jay's for a while and it's been an incredible opportunity to watch as he's taken on the task of figuring out informal learning.  i'm happy to see him pushing for practical applications linking them to real performance objectives.  his forthcoming book on informal learning should be on every learning professional's must read list.

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informal learning survey

elearning guild should be about to wrap up their informal learning survey.  it seems to me from the questions they ask that they are trying to determine if there is a consensus on what informal learning is and what tasks or events are informal learning.  hopefully there is some commonality.  it seems that every person writing or talking about informal learning has their own definition of what it is.  which of course, makes any forward moving discourse on the subject nearly impossible.

so take a few minutes in the next day or so and go complete their survey.  non-members of the elearning guild who complete the survey can request that a copy of the results be sent to them when the report is completed.  (guild members have access to all guild research.)

technorati tags:elearning guild, informal learning, surveys, research

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unworkshops live

i just got a note from jay cross that along with harold jarche and judy brown, he will be moving forward with the unworkshop project that he and i piloted back in march.  right now, you can sign up for their frist offerings at www.informl.com.

the beta test of the unworkshop was a tremendous experience both for the participants and jay and me.  jay's dedication to the open and learner focused approach was something to behold.  despite some stumbling out of the blocks, jay finished off the beta in a blaze of glory that truly showed how and why a format that truly expects participants to create their own learning is so powerful.  if you have the opportunity to sign up for an unworkshop, take it.  You'll have a learning experience that will change the way you think about your own learning.

technorati tags: web 2.0, informal learning, online classes, jay cross

kowabunga, dude!

i just had the experience that i'm sure happens to many of us.  i was reunited with a long lost favorite website. the collaborative learning environments sourcebook was one of the first resources i use when i began learning about communities of practice.  unfortunately somewhere along the way i "lost" my bookmark for it.  (thus the power of bookmarking services like blinklist, de.licio.us, and the like.)

but what struck me as worth blogging about was that i rediscovered this resource through practicing one of the first forms of informal learning that the internet spawned - web surfing.  back in the barbaric dark ages of web 1.0 before rss, news aggregators, blogrolls, technorati tags and folksonomies, most "webbies" would wander around from site to site, following whatever link caught their imagination. 

today the web is about finding information you "know" is there and thus tools from google to tags to rss feeds are created to help you pinpoint what you need to find as quickly as possible.  but back in the day, the internet was still evolving.  you really had no idea what you might find.  there was even a time when browsers didn't have book marks. (i recall having a legal pad with urls scribbled on page after page.)  so you would just sign on, log into a site you knew had some interesting links, pick one and off you would go, surfing from one site to another.  it was like a scavenger hunt every time you went on the net. 

my favorite discoveries back then include a site called "the big red button" where fellow surfers would leave their impressions of their experience having found the big red button (it was picture of a big red button. it didn't do anything. but thousands of people left notes.) and another site which stripped the captions off family circus cartoons and visitors wrote their own captions - most too off color to repeat here.

now don't get the wrong idea, if i'm trying to get a project done and need information or just trying to stay up on the latest in our profession, i'm very happy to use my rss feeds and google to get the job done fast.  but i realized that i've kept my web surfing skills up and i use them regularly to just discover new things.  just to explore and learn. 

then i wondered, i never hear anyone talk about surfing the web anymore. 

am i the only one still practicing this ancient craft?  do you secretly sneak off to you computer at work to hang ten hoping to find a site with a wicked cool design that blows you away?  or a site for radical environmentalists in southeastern oregon seeking to protect beavers' rights to dam any river they want?   or a gnarly site with pictures from a berlin burlesque show?

vote in the flash poll over in the left hand column and let me know if you've totally co-opted to the web 2.0 thang, or if you still are with it and get stoked lookin' to catch the big one.  if you have some rad stories to lay on us of your surfin' days, it'd be so chill if you'd lay it out in a comment below.   

hang loose dudes and dudettes!

time for an unworkshop

over the past month i've been working with jay cross to develop a online course to help workplace learning professionals get comfortable with the new technologies emerging on the internet and their application in workplace learning situations. blogs, wikis, and web 2.0 tools for learning is an "unworkshop."

what's an unworkshop you ask?  an unworkshop is an online, personalized learning experience that combines the formal learning aspects of synchronous webinars, with real life, hands-on experiences, and individualized coaching in support of each learner.

by the end of the unworkshop, you will:

• Be the author of your own live blog
• Create a wiki to share with your colleagues
• Know how to take advantage of RSS for educational purposes
• Understand the principles underlying Web2.0 technologies.

during the last two weeks of february, jay and i will run the beta version the workshop.  if you'd like to learn more about what we are doing, go to the application form and let us know if you'd like to be a part of the beta or have us inform you when we are ready to launch the full production courses after the beta.

Please feel free to pass along this information to any colleagues or employees who you think would like to get up to speed with the power of web 2.0.

learning2005

i'm in orlando at elliott masie's learning2005.  thus far it's living up to the promise of being a very different learning conference.  with the small exception of the odyssey of  trying to get from the airport to my disney resort hotel, it's been a comfortable and interesting experience.  a couple hours from the official opening of the conference, i've had several educational conversations, dialogued on an interest section white board, and interacted through the conference wiki.

even before i got here, i had arranged two meetings about possible employment situations and interacted with a dozen fellow attendees through the conference social networking site.

nobody who know me believes this, but it takes me a long time to warm up to events like conferences that are filled with strangers.  at it's most extreme, i'd even miss the first few sessions and avoid the crowds.   i have to say, the social network, the wiki and the general atmosphere that elliott and the folks from the maisie center have created have me engaged and raring to go already.

bravo! (and thank you!)

blogs and informal learning

one of the prime rules of blogging has to be that good information can come from just about any source.  while going through my email, i decided to click on what was obviously an unsolicited newsletter from a vendor.  the concept of an enterprise wiki sucked me in.  i'm not sold on that idea.

but what did make me want to blog was ideas raised in another article in the newsletter entitled three rules for sharing informal knowledge.  the author suggests that the three defining qualities of information found in blog (which imho would have been the better title for the article) are:

1. immediacy
2. interactivity
3. informality

he then goes on to say:

when companies start to take seriously the idea that something written in an informal tone can be just as valuable as something that has been copy edited and when they start to get comfortable with the self-correcting effect that comes when knowledge workers share information they will be amazed how much more powerful their information resources will be.

i think he hits on a couple of concepts that are barriers to adoption by most organizations.  first, corporate control of information.    there have been several recent articles companies trying to control blogs/bloggers (apple suing bloggers for releasing information on tiger or the delta flight attendant fired for blogging about her travels.)  i'm not going to weigh in on right or wrong, but leave it at i don't think many companies, particularly their legal departments are ready to relinquish control of information.   hit the continuation below to read the rest.

credibility for informal learning

have to admit that it's always kind of bugged me that i took to the arguments and data regarding the prevalence of informal learning in the workplace.  i hardly blinked at the statistic that 80% of all learning is outside of formal learning contexts like instructor lead training.   it just made sense to me.  but why?

well one of the why's hit me square between the eyes the other day as i was working on my job search "elevator pitch".  what dawned on me was that i took to the concept of informal learning because that's exactly how i've built my career.  i learned regression analysis from rebecca oxford when we were crunching numbers for a needs analysis at heinle & heinle and i needed