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.

Brent Uncategorized Learning Community, nancywhite, onlinelearning

[slideshare id=370608&doc=svi-toronto-building-a-community-1209053137875748-8&w=425]

This post comes from last summer’s Social Tech Training sponsored by MaRS, the Web of Change and Communicopia. The post is quoted from the Communicopia blog of Jason Mogus. I think he captures the excitement, learning and long term implications of this training very well. I took part in the social training and I know the learning that I took from this experience will be with me for many years to come.

Last week we convened Canada’s first ever intensive web training event for theGroup view of the STT social change sector. Called the Social Tech Training, the event was a collaboration between Web of Change, a series of events owned by the community but managed by Communicopia, and the social innovation group at MaRS, a new player in the Canadian social entrepreneurship scene.

The event was fantastic – a sold out crowd of 65 participants from across North America learned from nearly 30 of the best trainers, facilitators, and strategists in the growing “web 2 for social change” field. We had 3 days of presentations, sharing, leadership development, and fun in hot sunny Toronto.

It was great to see this snapshot of how organizations use the web to support their work, what’s effective and what’s not. Key learnings for me were:

* everyone across the sector is struggling with the same issues in taking their sites and organizations to the next level
* no one quite knows what to call this new field, and few of us know what skills are required to be successful in it
* what we’re doing is definitely not technology or HTML publishing! The closest thing we can call it is “engagement” work
* very few people (even the “experts”) feel they know everything they need to be successful at their online work. This is due to the broad range of functions we provide (variously fundraising, communications, group facilitation, and technical skills) and all the tech choices out there
* a lot of orgs still need basic groundwork online before they can jump to the next level with high impact Web 2 tools
* the resistance a lot of implementers are seeing when they do try and create social media tools, has nothing to do with the technology, or even the way they are implementing it. Bigger cultural issues are at play

STT Group at work

I’ve been noticing this for a while. The senior people (executives) control the culture of organizations, and they ask the younger staff to keep them on top of the latest innovations in the web. Yet actually taking advantage of these innovations requires a sometimes significant change in that very culture before they can have a hope of working in the web world!

Here’s why: many organizations’ operating models and underlying theories of change are based on a paradigm of control, centralization, and a “we know what to do and we’ll get it done ourselves” approach. This creates barriers to connection with those outside of their organizations. There are many reasons why this is and many reasons why this approach has worked well, however the complexity of the issues of our times, the number of people who are “waking up” and looking for more meaningful involvement in change, and other larger cultural trends towards open systems and transparency, are causing great shifts that are worth paying attention to. And the web teams inside orgs are among the first to notice.

The models that produce breakthrough success on the web reflect web culture – open systems, decentralization, conversations, storytelling, and a chance for people to offer meaningful participation. Orgs with the most incredible stories of success online (like some of our keynote speakers: Avaaz.org , Step it Up / 350.0rg, Nothing But Nets) were created in this new, open, people-driven paradigm.

Most traditional organizations are not geared up – operationally or emotionally – to maximize this new approach. It’s becoming clear that orgs who:

* try to control their audiences
* centralize all communications flow through traditional “message controllers”
* limit the empowerment of front line staff to engage with and respond to the outside world
* and don’t have a learning mind or appetite for experimentation (and failure, this stuff is hard!)

will never fully realize the transformative benefits the web can offer.

The web – and by extension the web staff – are the ears of organizations, they are the membrane that communicates out but also receives feedback – in real time – from the larger systems we all exist within.

Brent Uncategorized onlinelearning, socialmedia, tech

The Work Literacy course ran from September 29 through November 7, 2008. Although new activities are no longer being added, the community and course content will remain online and we invite new participants to join in and explore the topics below.

Week 1- Social Networking–Ning, LinkedIn and Facebook
Week 2–Social Bookmarking and Tagging
Week 3– Blogs
Week 4–Aggregators and RSS Feeds
Week 5–Wikis
Week 6–Pulling it all Together

Below is a post I made on the subject of reflective practitioner.

Week 3: Blogging for Personal Learning – Work Literacy

“Don’t tell me you don’t have time or that other things are more important. Is anything in your work life more important than continuing to be better at what you do? Because that’s what reflection is about–considering what you can learn from your experiences and then doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t”.

“After reading the blog post from Michele (quote above) on Becoming a More Reflective Practitioner I was motivated to write. Her comments really address my own inertia and the inertia I see in others when I’m promoting the use of blogs and social tech/media for learning, working and professional development.

I’m an active blogger for personal learning over the past 5 years and I use blogs in my projects over that time period. I’m a dyed in the wool blog evangelist however I’m not the best at adopting a more rigorous approach to my reflective practice. I think that at times I am stuck in the shiny toy syndrome where I become enamoured with the latest social media tool. I get distracted in my reflection time by my interest in consuming new ideas and concepts that others are writing about.

Michele’s post especially resonated with me today as I’m facilitating a workshop tomorrow titled “Thinking Critically to Improve Programming”. It’s a series of workshops coupled with online learning via our blog that tries to help youth work practitioners be better at what they do – working with youth experiencing poverty and homelessness. I’ll be adding some of the resources that Michele used in her post to the mix of activities in my workshop.

Like Charlie Bluglass who commented earlier, I’m introducing social media to the youth service community in my Region and really enjoy the challenge of showing how these tools can increase impact and engagement outcomes. By following Charlie’s post, I found the larger Youth Work Online ning site which was very inspiring for me as I plan on doing a similar initiative as my project winds down over the coming months.

In closing, I am leaving my highest recommendation for a book that taught me a lot about learning and reflective practice. It’s called “crucial conversations – Tools for talking when stakes are high’.
There are many books out there that help me learn, particularly with social media but for me, this one tops them all. It is about communication between people and the bonding that can occur when crucial conversations happen. I believe these crucial conversations happen within the blogging community, creating unique learning experiences for a wide variety of writers and readers. So this exercise has got me to reflect about how I’m blogging and how I can be a better blogger by taking time to reflect about my important conversations and experiences. I’ll be working on these practices in the coming weeks, months and years.

Brent Uncategorized course, eliteracy, onlinelearning, social media/tech