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.The Harm Reduction Coalition is hosting a series of learning and awareness building events that bring new and hopefully greater acceptance of harm reduction policies and practices into our York Region services. Last week we held our first “building awareness event” and we had 3 guest speakers. Tom Rigehr, survivor, writer, founder of CAST Canada, Cathy Middleton, Director of Women’s Services from YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo and David Collins, President and founder of the the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force. Through this event and others like we are working towards making York Region a more caring inclusive community.

In this video, Dave Collins gives a great overview of the evolution of harm reduction practices and policies in Toronto. I have video of Tom and Cathy but the quality just isn’t as good as they moved around quite a bit and I didn’t have an audio feed to work with.

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Strengthening Practice: Building Resiliency with Learning Networks

Extend Your Messenge & Include the Messengers

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.

I am very committed to communities of practice and networking initiatives as a means to create new solutions, improve skills and increase the sharing of knowledge across sectors. Over the last 3 yeas I’ve been working as Manager, Canadian Programs, Street Kids International and supporting a “learning community” in York Region.

My project, called Streetjibe, brought youth workers together to learn from each other, build skills and create better networks so youth at risk have access to relevant services and skilled staff. The Streetjibe blog is our online learning community that contains the learnings and tools used in the 25 workshops conducted over the past 2 years and of course introduces social media tools such as blogging, wikis, videos, podcasts as way to build community and engage in conversations with the youth service community.

Networking, collaborations and partnerships are essential practices in non profit service communities. With some of the networks I belong to, I’ve been introducing online tools such as the Ning network platform, wikis, VoiceThread software and collaboration mapping tools such as Mindmeister. While these tools complement face to face meetings, they can also be used to enhance service delivery and engage clients and stakeholders in conversations within your organization.

I am a member of Ning networks in Britain and Ireland. There is also keen interest by many within the educational sector in using these simple and relevant (most often free) learning and sharing tools. Here are the links to the UK groups and a link to a post written by Dean Shareski who writes about teachers who have opened up their classrooms to the world. I’ve also included links to several online learning conferences that I’ve participated in over the past 6 months.

Teachers Who Share Dean Shareski – Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Work Literacy – Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals

Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations 2008 – Hook up with fellow innovative thinkers and international visionaries to gain insight into what’s going on, swap opinions, and shape the future of learning.

Youth Work Online – Youth Work Online is an evolving network of practitioners sharing their learning, their questions, their visions and their ideas about the future of youth work and the web.

Youth Work Northern Ireland Youth Workers discussing the development of their youth work in Northern Ireland

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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