I’m involved with the Harm Reduction Coalition of York Region. I became involved when I was a Program Manager with Street Kids International and managed the Streetjibe – addressing youth poverty in York Region program. I’m staying involved as an independent business representative that cares deeply about the kind of community I live in.

Harm reduction is a big word covering a lot of ground. For me it’s about seeing and being with the person, not the harm. It’s also about fostering a compassionate, caring, inclusive community were we don’t lock up people or stigmatize people for their struggles as a human being. Read more…

Brent Business, Learning Community, Presentation, Research, networks Learning Community, prevention, yorkregion

Learning how to work more effectively across sectors and building new skills is an ongoing requirement for professionals. As a community and youth worker (and now a social media consultant) I believe people want to be feel connected, they want to belong, they want to feel valued and competent, contributing to their own development and the development of those close to them. Using social media tools help me feel this way and I recognize the same benefits coming to others who publish online and use web 2.0 tools in their work.

Read more…

Brent Learning Community, networks Learning Community, networking, ning, voicethread

This slideshow, with only seven slides, comes from Nancy White (Full Circle Associates) who is attending and a leader in the Corporate Learning Trends & Innovation 2008 online conference. The slides do an excellent job of capturing and showcasing what online and network learning is about. There are some excellent links to the other massive online course called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge hosted by Canada’s own, Stephen Downes and George Siemens.

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A colleague with an International NGO organization asked me if I had suggestions for using video along with a a web authoring tool in her work with K-12 youth. The audience is pre-high school and grades 9 – 12 students and staff, mainly in Canada but with potential for international use.

Barring constraints within the the different school boards she is involved with, my first choice is the Ning Networks. I’ve recently been involved with 3 online learning experiences involving hundreds of people around the world using the Ning Network and I’m very impressed how well this tool works.

For educators, I’ve being told that advertisements will be removed and that their support is excellent. Ning allows you to upload video from YouTube etc.; share photos and slide shows, create discussions forums and groups, add widgets to increase overall site functions and much more. You can see all the features on their web site.

I’m including a link to Jeff Utecht’s Ning Network that connects to the Learning 2.008 Conference held in Shangai. I think she will see the potential applications by browsing this site. I recommended that the best way to learn about the features is to set up a Ning Network for practice (who knows, you may decide to launch it).

I stumbled across Sir Ken Robinson’s talk at TED a few years ago and I thought it timely to include in this post as well. His 15 minute presentation is titled “Do Schools Today Kill Creativity”. It’s a must see for those in the edu sector.

Brent Education, Services globaled, Learning Community, ning

I had a very insightful and exciting time this morning in my new online course titled Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations 2008. This is a free course that covers a lot of social media ground and led by notables in the online learning field. It’s not too late to join the course and take part in the Elluminate sessions. The slideshare is from Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies and one of the course leaders. I’ll link more to this learning experience throughout the week and make available the resources covered in the course.

Brent Business, Education, purpose course, Learning Community, tools

Deconstructing the Work Literacy Learning Event

Michele Martin, along with Tony Karrer and Harold Jarche facilitated the Work Literacy experience. This post comes from Michele. I’m very pleased to have been part of the course and these comments by Michele are so helpful in my work with local groups in my area (Greater Toronto Area). I’m going to put together a Ning community especially after reading your endorsement of this software Michele. Being part of this work helped me see what could work in my community so the course is definitely a valuable building block for me.

The Work Literacy online learning event is over and Harold Jarche has posted some of what he learned from our facilitation of the course. Time for me to share some of my thoughts. . Read Michele’s full post here.. it’s well worth it especially for those interested in community organizing using online tools.

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Jay Cross is one of my elearning and blogging mentors. He is on the forefront of the elearning movement and a prolific writer and speaker, sought after around the world.  He is one of the first persons to coin the term elearning. I am inspired by clear thinking and concrete explanations of elearning and the benefits or informal learning to organizations and individuals. On his Internet Time Wiki, he has a list of services offered to corporations. I copied in his service list below and one of his informal learning videos to give readers a sense of what he is about.

Through my blog, I’m offering related services to the non profit and educational sectors. By posting this excerpt on Jay Cross, I am drawing attention to how how successful leading edge companies are utilizing social media tools to fulfil their mandate.

Services

We help organizations profit from informal learning, Web 2.0, and related approaches. Some solutions are simple: social networking, encouraging conversations that matter, and beefing up networks. Others require more investment but can be transformative: nurturing communities of practice, trusting peer learning, and building bottom-up knowledge systems. The profit potential is phenomenal. My clients tend to be progressive organizations: high tech, pharma, and change agents. These companies are already the best; they are always exploring for ways to stay on top. In contrast, most rigid, centralized, conservative companies are waiting things out and may be beyond hope.

Brent Business, purpose Learning Community

I am transforming my self and my career. This short post from Seth Godin is a nice reminder of possible jobs for me in the coming months and years.

From Seth Godin’s Blog

Three new jobs you might want to consider

Every company that works online today ought to consider hiring three amazing people to lead these projects:

1. COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. Find and connect and lead a tribe of dedicated users that contribute to and benefit from the work you do.
2. STATS FIEND. Measure everything that can be measured. Do it efficiently and consistently. Find out what metrics are important and cycle until they improve.
3. MANAGER OF FREELANCERS. Find and hire and manage the best outside talent in the world. If it can be defined as a project, and if great work defeats good, seriously consider having the MOF get it done.

With three superstars doing these jobs, it’s possible you can create almost

Brent Business, pre-smtwl, purpose Learning Community, newjobs

This excerpt from Jay Cross’s post is bang on. In my non profit world, learning is the lowest priority amongst the list of daily tasks. It’s sink or swim, get or you don’t, and on and on..

Home of Jay Cross and Internet Time Blog — Internet Time Blog

In a knowledge society, work and learning are the same thing. Sun and ILA are developing what I call learnscapes. A learnscape is the platform where knowledge workers collaborate, solve problems, converse, share ideas, brainstorm, conceptualize, tell stories, help one another, teach, keep up to date, forge partnerships, build communities, and distribute information. Learnscapes are where and how modern work is performed – including workplace learning.

Back to those Twittering, Facebooking, always-on college students. Our challenge is not to design overlays and alternatives to accommodate them. Instead, we should be developing ways for them to take advantage of their approaches to the world to make our businesses more effective.

While we’re at it, we’ve got to drop the us-versus-them stance. They’re adept at keeping up with torrents of information, volatile situations, extreme flexibility, and real-time responsiveness. The oldsters are not.

Brent Business, Education jaycross, knowledge, Learning Community, work

Virtual Distance : Laleh Shahidi’s Blog

This is so relevant to my interests in working with students and NPO staff. Her data is reinforcing my own experience working with social media (albeit in more smaller contexts). I can use this to reinforce the outcomes of using social media in business settings. It’s a motivator for managers who need to see the ROI and certainly the front line practitioners who need to understand the importance of commanding your own ongoing learning experiences.

Sept. 23
Virtual Distance

Filed Under Learning Communities, Virtual Worlds

Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski the author of the book “Uniting The Virtual Workforce” defines Virtual Distance as the perceived distance between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations that is brought on by the use of electronic versus face-to-face communications. The greater the Virtual Distance among the members of a team, the more problems team members will experience. Among them: miscommunication, lack of clearly defined roles, and even personal and cultural conflicts. It does not matter whether team members are widely distributed or collocated; every team is potentially subject to the risks of Virtual Distance.

The results of the research in the area of virtual distance from the Virtual Distance International indicates organizations that have managed virtual distances well report:

Innovation behavior increase by 93%
Trust improves by 83%
Job satisfaction is better by 80%
Role and goal clarity rise by 62%
On-time, on-budget performance is better by 50%
Helping behaviors go up by almost 50%

By Laleh Shahidi, PhD

Brent Business, Education, Research, purpose enterprise, Learning Community, Research