Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

Remember how you were taught to write an essay in school? First you write an outline. Then you write the prose. Then you throw away the outline.

What’s with that? Keeping the outline would make the essay more readable. Once again, culture trumps common sense.

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Cleaning out my email box (only 1,892 gmails to go!), I opened the April issue of Steve Denning’s newsletter, only to discover that I’d already read and posted about it. I decided to re-read Steve’s piece on Nine Ways to Elicit Desire for Change. It’s a chapter from Steve’s book which is slated for release in September! The upside is that you get to read chapters of Steve’s book as people originally read Dickens, one installment at a time.

Re-reading is a very worthwhile activity. After a second reading, I probably take away five times as much as I’d have gotten from a single reading.

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strategy+business has an insightful article on how to think about the value of talent. Traditionally, corporations assess the contribution of the individual functionally. We attribute contribution vertically, that is, based on an individual’s performance within his or her silo. Yet business success is often scored horizontally, in the white space between the functions.

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One of the closing presentations at eLearning Guild was a great example of informal learning. Peter Orton is a Hollywood script writer who works in IBM’s Vancouver-based Center for Advanced Learning. Research strongly suggests that mastery modeling via videotape is far more effective for building long-term skills than typical classroom or text-based instruction.

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Mobile Learning was the topic of the closing session of the eLearning Guild’s eLearning Producer conference.

The panel was packed with heavy-hitters who are all close friends: Ellen Wagner, David Metcalf, Judy Brown, Clark Quinn, David Holcomb (host). The panelists responded to preliminary data from the Guild’s survey of m-learning. More than 400 responses have come in to-date but twice that many more are expected.

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I spent several hours today hand-crafting a few decks of discussion-starter cards for the Informal Learning Zone at The Annual Gathering of the eLearning Guild next week.
Lance Dublin, Clark Quinn, and others (including me) will be experimenting with informal learning techniques throughout the event. A few of the planned activities:

Learning conversations
Speakers, participants, and others in informal discussions. No presentations. No pitches. No PowerPoints. Just honest back-and-forth and serious search for answers…and questions. Grab a card from the fishbowl that initiates a learning conversation or start your own conversation.

Feed the Guild wiki
A wiki is website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. Join us in building a wiki that e-Learning professionals will use to add to the collective knowledge of the community. This will help newbies and experienced practioners alike. Put your two-cents into the Guild wiki. We’ll build it together throughout the conference. After the conference you can continue to add to the wiki knowledge base…and your knowledge base!

Speed talking
In less than half an hour, you’ll learn the process, engage three or four other people to help solve any problem you choose to work on, and have time for reflection. Not bad for 30 minutes. Check Malcolm Gladwell’s description of speed dating in Blink to get an idea of what we’re talking about.

Start your Blog
In less than five minutes, we’ll help you become a blogger. A new blog is started every second of every day. Isn’t is time for you to claim your spot in the Blogosphere? (It’s free.) Contribute to the Guild community’s blog. Feed the Guild webfeed! Discover why so many people are blogging. Start a discussion on how blogging can support your learning initiatives.

Impromptu discussion
Informality begins by recognizing the impossibility of covering all the bases in advance. Come on down to see what events we’ve invented on the fly.

P.S.

The Informal Learning Zone has plenty of places to sit…and we have wi-fi.

Stories are magic. Part of the power comes from the fact that you’re telling your mind the story you want to hear. It’s the same phenomenon as “I liked the book better than the movie because the colors were more vivid.”

Steve Denning is a corporate storyteller. If you want to become a better storyteller, you owe it to yourself to read Steve’s free monthly newsletter. You’ll get a drip-feed of his thoughts: Steve is sharing the book he’s writing for Pfeiffer, The Secret Language of Leadership, one chapter a month. It’s a convenient way to study something that’s important but probably not on your front burner.

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by Dennis Sandow & Anne Murry Allen

In Reflections, the SoL Journal on Knoweldge, Learning and Change
Volume 6 Compilation 2005

This is a great article about how work gets done and where value is created.

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How to keep blogs from scaring the hell out of people describes why companies should not fear blogs. Blogs have been around for years. The Fortune 500 does it. Blogs supplement (not replace) other channels of communication. You can create and access blogs from just about anywhere. How you do it is up to you. You can start small and grow from there.

Okay, blogging is no longer edgy. But businesses need an upside reason to undertake new activites. And that is, to my way of looking at the world, Transparency. Smart businesses are shifting from hoarding information to sharing information. The greatest learning technology ever invented is human conversation. Advertising and corporate-speak convery puffery and sales pitches; conversation transfers meaning. Blogging is conversation that shows the human side of enterprise.

Interview with Learning Review en español.

WHY NOW?
We live in times of great change. The world is becoming more interconnected and complex every day. The future is unpredictable, so organizations must be sufficiently flexible to change as conditions change. I think of learning as adaptation to change. Learning is what enables people to relate to their work, play, and families in challenging yet fulfilling ways. Continue reading →