Archives for networked learning

Connecting busy experts to social networks

Posted by  on Monday, June 14th 2010     

I took the commuter rail into Boston today for the Enterprise 2.0 conference. A guy sat next to me and pulled out his Vsphere book by my colleague at EMC Scott Lowe. Of course I had to start talking to the guy (you know me!).

I asked if he was studying for an exam, and he wasn’t. He’s a sysadmin at one of our customers, trying to stay in front of the curve. He asked me about Scott, and I said he’s a nice, smart, very knowledgeable guy. Then he told me – ask him this question for me. So as he spoke I typed his question into my phone:

mytwt

And right away someone answered me:

vmanswer

I gave the guy my card, and wrote Scott’s twitter handle on the back. But he said he wasn’t on Twitter! So I also wrote down Tweetdeck.

Here you have a highly experienced sysadmin, who is using his commute to read up on a skill he knows he needs to acquire. Reading a book by an author who blogs, who tweets links to his blog (and other blogs) that provide critical information that would help this guy in his quest to learn this new skill. But he doesn’t know about it because he probably doesn’t have the vocabulary to explore the social tools that would connect him to this valuable network.

This makes me crazy! This sysadmin is obviously extremely motivated and experienced. And I honestly believe that it is time for the old geek prophecy to begin to come true: sysadmins will inherit the earth. They understand systems, storage, and networking. But they will still need to evolve their skills to truly rule the world. How can we get them to learn faster? How can we get them to trust Twitter?

Is this something learning professionals need to think about?

category: networked learning
tags: , , , ,

Lessons learned from my Web 2.0 class: we need something NEW

Posted by  on Thursday, August 6th 2009     

I just wrote my final (official) blog post for my summer class about Web 2.0. One of the biggest things I learned this semester is that we have to stop this idea that we can apply old themes and metrics and ways of doing things to these new tools.

I am not saying we need to throw out the old stuff. On the contrary, we need to build bridges between the old and the new. We need to bring the good principles from our old way of designing learning to the new. We need to align to the business. We need to design learning objectives that are tied to what people need to learn to do so they actually learn the core of what they need to do their jobs before they start wading through the gazillion terabytes of information that is out there.

Kenny and Susan marching to the capital bldg

Kenny and Susan marching to the capital bldg

But we can’t measure how someone learns the way we’ve been trying to do it for the last hundred years. That’s why I marched against Jeb Bush’s One Florida scheme when I was at FSU as an undergrad. With my child on my back (literally) for most of that march.

Learning is more than just a bottom line number on an accounting sheet. When someone truly learns – not when they learn to a test, or attend a mandatory online class – but truly masters a topic you’ll know by looking at what they can accomplish.

As learning professionals, we need to start thinking about how we can enable this mastery learning to happen. In my class blog post I talk about a Learning GPS. We should be able to point people to the fastest route to mastery, as well as the side roads that may help provide the local color to fully understand the nuances of a topic.

At any rate, we can’t allow the old ways of doing things to become the de facto way of designing instruction and measuring learning in this new Learning 2.0 world. We have to be the ones to come up with the new ways.

What do you think??

category: networked learning
tags: , ,

Networked Learning – Value Networks – and ITIL

Posted by  on Sunday, June 21st 2009     

This post is my attempt at figuring out how to explain a connection.

Last Thursday, Corporate Learning Trends & Innovation presented an online conference entitled June Learn Trends – Networked and Social Learning. I only got to hear one presentation, but that one really got my mind going.

The session was Organizational Challenges in a World of Networks given by Verna Allee. She talked about how social networks operate based on roles, not on hierarchical structures. She had a slide explaining the components of Value Network Modeling:

  • Nodes represent participants, or real people, and the ROLES that they play
  • Solid lines between the nodes show tangible, or formal deliverables
  • Dashed lines between the nodes show intangible or informal value being provided

Everything she talked about reminded me of what I know about ITIL (I’m ITIL certified). ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. ITIL is a way of managing IT infrastructure, development, and operations (management of IT operations is also known as ITSM or IT Service Mangement). My company sells an ITIL service management software solution called Infra.

So I commented: “This sounds an awful lot like ITIL”. Verna responded that Value networks are actually part of ITIL V3, and value network modeling is the first step in preparing an environment to adopt ITIL.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around these connections. I can explain ITIL, my group teaches it for goodness sake! I think I can explain value networks, especially if it is a component of ITIL v3. Can I use those connections to explain networked learning?

I think so. If ITIL has included value networks as part of its structure. Value network evaluations force organizations to look for their institutional knowledge, and to build their best practices based on these value networks. If an organization is looking for these intangible connections, why wouldn’t they leverage the training organization to encourage and foster the creation and mainenance of value networks that support the organization?

The April issue of Chief Learning Officer had an article on this: Leveraging Human Networks to Accelerate Learning. One key message of the article is that networks is where learning happens:

“Networks are where learning happens,” said Patti Anklam, author of Net Work. Anklam explained that employees instinctively create networks of informal relationships to get things done. They learn who can solve a problem, provide expertise on a certain product line, brainstorm new ideas, fix broken processes and give excellent career advice.

The article goes on to explain how to identify a network, how to seed one, and how to leverage the network to get real work done.

I’m still trying to work out how to make the connection between value networks and training. Any ideas?

category: networked learning
tags: , , , , , ,