Jane's Pick of the Day

Learning & Working in the Social Workplace

I first released my article The State of Learning in the Workplace Today on 1 January 2010 and regularly updated it through the year with new thinking, particularly that of my colleagues in the Internet Time Alliance.   I then  expanded it to form the first part of my Social Learning Handbook, which was published in mid-January 2011.  I have now continued my look at the state of learning in the workplace today with some further thoughts as follows:

Part 1: The Social Workplace as a Learning Environment

• Background
• Understanding learning  in the workplace
• Understanding social learning
• The workplace as a learning environment
• What the Social Workplace as Learning Environment (SWALE) looks like

Part 2: Moving towards the Social Workplace as a Learning Environment

• New approaches for L&D
• New technologies
• New thinking for “implementing” new approaches and technologies

You can read the article here: Learning & Working in the Social Workplace

February 2011 in Review

In Nelson Mandela Square, Johannesburg and at the Black Rhino Reserve

February was a good month for me.  I’ve just returned from a week working with a client in South Africa followed by a weekend on a game reserve.  It was both a fabulous personal and professional experience.  If you haven’t seen the pictures I posted on Twitter and Facebook, a couple appear above.

In terms of my professional reading, I’ve added around a dozen articles to my 2011 Reading List in February. But the three must-read postings/articles for me this month were the following:

1. Time’s up – Learning will always be part formal, part informal and part social, 6 February 2011
2. The connected company, Dave Gray, Communication Nation, 8 February 2011
3. Evaluating training and learning circa 2011, Tom Gram, Performance x Design, 17 February 2011

Have I missed any articles in February that ought to be on my 2011 Reading List? Please let me know below.

January 2010 News

Here is this month's round up of tools and resources added to my website:

• Tools added to the Learning Tools Directory in January 2010
• Resources added to my Reading Lists in January 2010

UPDATE

Following Allison's suggestion (see comments below) I have created a word cloud (using Wordle) of January's Reading list.  Even on the tiny thumbnail below you can see the key words.  Click on the image for the full Wordle.

10 Tools for (20)10

I have just completed a short article for the November edition of e.learning age magazine.

e.learning age is the UK’s number one media resource for the e-learning community.  The magazine is the only one if its kind for anyone involved in the e-learning industry - from board directors responsible for skilling the workforce, to training and HR professionals choosing and implementing the best systems, to vendors who want to find out the latest news and trends in the industry.   

In my article I highlight 10 of the new tools appearing on the emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 list that I think are useful, innovative, cost effective and worth considering by workplace learning and development professionals for 2010.

What are the 10 tools? Take a look at my article here:  10 Tools for 20(10)

Happy 20th Birthday, World Wide Web

Scientific American has a great feature on Tim Berners Lee and the Web.  The reason?

"CERN on March 13 celebrates the 20th anniversary of a proposal entitled, "Information Management: A Proposal," by Tim Berners-Lee, which would become the blueprint for the World Wide Web"

Happy 20th Birthday, World Wide Web

[Via Richard Nantel on Workplace Learning Today - a great multi-author blog from the analysts at Brandon Hall]

6 ways to make Web 2.0 work

Over past two years, McKinsey has studied more than 50 early adopters of Web 2.0 who are using technologies such as blogs, wikis, information tagging, prediction markets, and social networks. From this they have drawn six insights on how companies can best use these technologies.

1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top.
2. The best uses come from users—but they require help to scale.
3. What’s in the workflow is what gets used.
4. Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs—not just their wallets.
5. The right solution comes from the right participants.
6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.

For more detail, read the full article: Six ways to make Web 2.0 Work, McKinsey Quarterly, FEBRUARY 2009 • Michael Chui, Andy Miller, and Roger P. Roberts

Collaborative working and learning

The Learning Technologies conference takes place on 28 and 29 January 2009 at Olympia in London. and I've just completed the third of a 3-part article for the Conference edition of the Inside Learning Technologies magazine. 

The three-part article is called Social Media & Learnng.  In the first part of the article (that appeared in the November 2008 edition) I discussed three types of social media tools: social bookmarking, social file sharing and social networking services.

In part two of the article (that appeared in the December 2008 edition) I considered micro-blogging services, like Twitter, and their use for personal and informal learning, professional networking and as an alternative learning channel.

In this final part I take a broad look at collaborative working and learning.  As there are a number of ways that people can “collaborate” to work and learn together, I look at 12 types of collaborative activities/scenarios and some suggestions of tools to support them:

1. Collaborative brainstorming and mindmapping
2. Collaborative diagramming
3. Collaborative authoring
4. Collaborative reviewing
5. Collaborative reflection
6. Collaborative commenting
7. Collaborative annotation
8. Collaborative productivity
9. Collaborative working (spaces)
10. Collaborative project management
11. Collaborative course design and development
12. Collaborative learning (spaces)
    

If you want to read this article online, you can find it here:  Social Media & Learning Part 3: Collaborative Working and Learning.

Or register here for your free copy of the magazine.

How to train multi-taskers

Over the summer I've been working on some research for the E-Learning Guild's upcoming 360º Report on e-Learning 2.0.  My particular focus has been on understanding the needs of today's new breed of learners and the implications that this will have for workplace learning. My piece will be published by the Guild in the next few weeks, so I will keep you posted ...

However, one of the features of today's new learner that is becoming evident is that they are multi-taskers, so it was interesting to just come across an article in Learning Circuits Magazine that looks at how you deliver material "in a way that appeals to a busy, distracted, overwhelmed, and often multitasking audience".

Personally, I think it is going to need much more than new ways of presenting material to these individuals, but ensuring that they are in fact part of the whole content creation and sharing process themselves, but this is certainly a great start to thinking about this issue, and one of a few articles I've seen considering this subject.

How to train multi-taskers by Tom Brigham

25 Tools every Learning Professional should have in their Toolbox - and all for FREE!

"Whether you are a corporate trainer, a Learning & Development manager, a learning designer or developer, or an educator in a school, college or university, these are the 25 must-have tools.  What is more they are all free, which makes them very useful for those on a low (or non-existent) budget or simply for experimentation and exploration of the widening e-learning space."

Read the article in full here: 25 Tools every Learning Professional should have in their Toolbox - and all for FREE!

This article is scheduled to appear in the next edition of elearning age magazine.

Top 100 Tools for Learning, 2007

A short article I have written summarising the findings of the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2007 list which I compiled this summer from the Top 10 Tools lists of over 100 contributors (from educationa and training) has been published in eLearn Magazine.

eLearn Magazine: Top 100 Tools for Learning, 2007

At the end of the article, it mentions the fact that due to the immense interest in this list and the fact that so many people want to contrbute their own Top 10 lists, we shall be kicking off the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 activity in the new year - more information at the new site we have set up to host this activity - www.top100tools.com/2008/ =  and where you can leave your email address so we can let you know when it has opened.

[More articles by Jane Hart]