Last Friday I presented at the ASTD New England Area 2011 Conference. ASTD is the American Society for Training and Development for my storage friends. The conference had an underlying theme of getting everyone comfortable and participating with social media. This was the brainchild of Jean Marrapodi. (Brilliant idea I must say!!)

All of the speakers have posted their presentations in the ASTDL20 Facebook Fan page, and follow-up blog posts have been posted there as well. My presentation is embedded below. My presentation was about how to deal with naysayers. There was a great discussion in the room – special thanks to Jim Storer of The Community Roundtable for all the great contributions!

Things have changed since I started giving this presentation – people are now coming to conferences with concrete objections they encounter when they propose social media initiatives. It’s obvious people are moving past fear of social media, and that they are starting to think about how to systematically, strategically implement social media applications to facilitate social learning in their orgs.

The thread of every presentation I attended was that learning professionals are in a position where we can help organizations tame the overwhelming amount of information being created in the digital era. It’s interesting, because as storage professionals we’re working on ways to help our customers deal with the sheer amount of data being created – the actual 1′s and 0′s. Learning professionals are best positioned to help organizations make sense of all the information contained in that data. Kinda cool to be at the intersection of those two disciplines.

I just finished reading The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner.

Before I get started, let me disclose that I was given advance copies of the book, I’m quoted in the book, and the book uses EMC as a case study.

Now that I’ve done my due diligence, let me talk about what I got out of this book. The book’s first chapter lays the groundwork for discussions about social learning. I particularly appreciated the list of what social learning is not – its not a substitute for formal training, a replacement for employee development, synonymous with informal learning, the same as elearning, or a new online interface (among other things).

The definition given for social learning is: learning with and from others. Adding social media in the mix with social learning provides digital breadcrumbs for different learners to use as they try to make the connections they need to learn.

As educators we know we can’t make people learn, that the learner has to own that process. This book is all about ways to use social media to help people make the connections they need to learn.

One example in the EMC case study is all about connections. One of the first popular wikis on EMC|ONE (our internal social media site) was about restaurants close to our HQ in Massachusetts. My friend – an instructor – put that wiki up. He had been emailing the info as a spreadsheet to his students at the start of his classes for as long as I’ve known him.

If you’re an instructor, you know how every class is a little community. People bring in different experiences, cultures, languages even.  And at a global company like EMC, students are literally from all over the world. So when folks are sent for formal training, building relationships with colleagues in other countries becomes a nice side benefit. And that little classroom community is solidified by eating meals together. No wonder that wiki became so popular – it provided a means for people to connect IRL (in real life), so when they went back to different sides of the world working together digitally was easier.

But what happens if you can never meet? I’m still waiting to meet my colleague Varun who is in India….right now we depend on building our relationship using digital resources.

This book has practical advice and examples of how to create connection opportunities  using social media. I really appreciated the  case study of how Dan Pontefract is using video  get workers to share stories about what they do. The case study about the CIA and social media is pretty amazing as well. There is also a chapter on connecting the dots at in-person events that is timely since its almost time to start talking about EMC World planning.

My advice: get this book and read it! And give it to the decision makers in your organization as well!

I’m going to make this post quick, because I’m actually supposed to be working on a gap analysis for one of my classes.

A colleague and I have been presenting this presentation:

Basically, remember to:

• Tie this to business needs
• Show how it enables informal learning
• Explain it will still require resources to supportT

Besides working on my two performance classes, I’ll also be attending a couple of Boston-based events.

Tues Nov 3 I’ll be at the Mass chapter of ISPI to hear Cammy Bean talk about eLearning authoring tools. Several other #lrnchat folks will be there too.

Tues Nov 17 I’m planning to go to the Greater Boston ASTD meeting to hear Dave Wilkins speak about Social Learning and Social Networking.

July’s big question is very timely for me! Here is the question:

In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

This week my Web 2.0 Learning and Performance started. I’m keeping a blog for the course, as are most other people. Someone is already asking about what are the most important things to know as educators about Web 2.0.

The Technology

I think there are some basic technology tools that need to be mastered. These include:

• Simple HTML: for example creating hyperlinks
• Screencasting software: You should be able to create a screencast (using something like Camtasia) and post it to the web
• Feed aggregation: You should be able to harness information into one feed. Lots of very simple tools exist for this now. I use newsgator as an RSS aggregator, but even tools like FriendFeed can help pull different feeds into one stream

Learning to Surf

You have to be able to surf the web. By this I mean, you need to be able to ride the waves of information that may be connected to a learning topic without getting swamped and pulled under by the sheer volume of information.

You also have to be able to show learners how to surf as well. Teaching someone to surf is not easy at all. OK, let me be truthful I’ve only taught people to body surf, but that is still hard. You can’t get inside their body to make them understand how to hold themselves so that they jump at the right time to catch the wave. All you can do is model your technique for surfing, they have to adopt their own style.

Its the same when you teach someone to web surf. You can show someone how you do it. You can show them the end goal, but they have position themselves so that they are comfortable with the wave of information.

Don’t forget about ID

I think ID is very important in the case of Learning 2.0. There is so much information to be consumed that there has to be some design involved to ensure that learners don’t become so overwhelmed that they aren’t able to master tasks.

All of the rules of doing analysis of what the end results should be are still very important, as is doing formative and summative evaluations during learning events to be sure that learners are at least moving towards catching a wave.

This month’s Big Question from ASTD is “what will workplace learning be like in 10 years?”. If you go to their post, there are already some really interesting thoughts and comments about this topic.

Byron said “The best prophet of the future is the past”. I’m a firm believer in that notion, so I’d like to answer the Big Question with a question of my own: what happened 10 years ago to workplace learning?

I’ve been doing some sort of training since I came into the professional workplace in 2001. I just started studying education for my graduate degree in 2007. I have some very experienced, patient folks in my department who kindly talk with me when I ask them about something I am studying or something I have read on a blog that pertains to eLearning. They seem to appreciate my enthusiasm, but they always have this weary look on their face when I tell them about all these “new” ideas. They tell me they were trying to implement some of these very things 10 years ago!

Besides having these discussions with co-workers, there is literature that goes back 10 years or so that talks about CSCL, communities of practice, and all of these things that are the underpinnings of what people are talking about doing today. So I have to wonder, are some of the ideas being bandied about today really that new? Or are they rehashed from 10 years ago? If these are old ideas given new life by improved technology, what happened 10 years ago that got these ideas pushed to the back burner? What can we learn about our past so that we can execute these ideas in the present, so that in our future we’re not going through this exercise yet again?

I also want to say that I do not agree with the idea that the training department should go away completely. For one thing, work is social. Work gets done based on the relationships we have with others, and based on the social capital that we have. This means that there will always be “others” in the workplace. This otherness will be categorized just like it is in general society: by race, gender, nationality, disability, religion, etc.

Knowledge is a form of social capital. I believe very strongly if there is no guidance, “others” in the workplace will not have access to knowledge that they need to have to do their work. This will happen either because they don’t have access to the correct network, or because they are purposefully excluded from access to that information based on their position in the social ladder.

I believe this because of my status of other (a woman in a predominately male field), and my daughter’s status of other (Asperger’s Syndrome). Training departments can be the mechanism that provides each worker with access to the information required to perform his/her job duties successfully.

If we as training groups are aligning to the business and the true competitive advantage of knowledge workers is how fast they are able learn, we owe it to the business to ensure that every worker, no matter their access to social hierarchies in the workplace,  has access to all the tools they need to help them learn.

Maybe in the future learning organizations won’t be the “givers of knowledge”, maybe we become more like librarians that help people find resources (and learn to do their own searches) as they are needed.

The latest Training and Development magazine (from ASTD) has a very relevant article to some of the work I am doing this quarter for my organization. The article is titled It’s [Not] the Technology, Stupid. The article is about the pitfalls of thinking just because you have the technology to do it it that you’ll be able to create a kickass blended learning curriculum.

This quarter a partner and I are doing an inventory of the tools we have available to create blended learning, as well as identify efforts in other groups to create this sort of learning. One thing it’s hard to get across is that you cannot simply take what we have designed for Instructer-Led learning and port it to some form of blended learning. This article makes that point too – you must redesign the learning. The learning objectives must be matched to the appropriate delivery medium.

There is an entire section in the article devoted to the helping people “overcome the idea that online learning cannot be as effective as classroom training”.

So quick! Go read this article! Read the entire Feb T&D it is very good!

This month’s Big Question over on the Learning Circuits Blog is about To-Learn lists. Here are the specific questions:

• If you have a to-learn list and are willing to share, and willing to share how you work with that list, that would likely be helpful information.
• As Knowledge Workers, work and learning are the same, so how does a to-learn list really differ from a to-do list? How are they different than undirected learning through work, blogging, conferences, etc.?
• Are to-learn lists really important to have? Are they as important as what Jim Collins tells us?
• Should they be captured? Is so how?
• How does a to-learn list impact something like a Learning Management System in a Workplace or Educational setting?
• What skills, practices, behaviors do modern knowledge workers need around to-learn lists?

I don’t have a specific to-learn list. What I do have is a skills-I-need-to-get list. It’s not written down. I have my eye on a career shift of sorts. To make it happen, I have been looking at job ads for this particular place I want to get to in my career. From the job ads, I take note of the common skills or accomplishments a person in that position would have. Those common skills go on my skills-I-need-to-get list.

Then I work on ways to get the skills:

1. Is there a way to get attached to a project at work that will give me the skill
2. Do I need to take a class to beef up my skillset? I felt a Master’s degree was something I needed, so I am in grad school
3. Can I get the skill from volunteering? There are a couple of organizations where I volunteer my time, and they always appreciate the sort of work I do (techie stuff, training, web stuff)
4. Can I get the skill by practicing it at home? I blog, I play with code, I set up websites…etc. Practice Practice Practice

Here’s something I think would be cool. This is actually part of my entry to EMC’s Innovation Conference. What if there was a way for me to traverse opportunities in my company, and compare the skill set needed for that position to my current skill set? Then I could make an action plan, at work, to advance my career and fill needs in the company. I wouldn’t feel I need to leave the company to advance, and the company wouldn’t loose their investment in  me.  We’re all happy, we all grow together.

I think knowledge workers need that sort of feedback – a snapshot that shows where they are right now with skills, and a road map of how to get to where they want to be at the next level.

If you had all of those sorts of skill sets attached to every open position, wouldn’t that lay bare all the training gaps in your organization? You could attach a way to learn to every skill set in your LMS.

Tonight I hosted a social event for incoming Distance Learning students to the Instructional Systems program at FSU – in Second Life (SL). I worked with a doctorate student to set it all up. We hung out in SL for the last few nights, helping people get ready for the event.

Alot of prep went into the event, and we only used voice chat. Emails telling people how to sign up and download SecondLife, getting them to tell us their SL usernames, compiling a username – real name list, advertising the event, troubleshooting the event, and sending wrap-up notifications. WHEW.

To top it all off, tonight SecondLife had such serious database issues that they had to shut down logins. At the same time our event was supposed to start.

SIGH

We worked through it using email. We coached people through logging on and not being able to find our slurl due to the database issues. We also smoothed over issues people had since voice chat seemed to be affected as well.

All in all everyone seemed to enjoy the experience. I blogged about it over on our student organization blog (with pictures). We are planning to build upon this experience, and hopefully build upon it so we can have a synchronous event in SL and in Real Life.

I realized one other thing I have to do is really start talking about how to use RSS. I’m going to be talking about it at work soon, but I need to talk about it at school. I have people used to the blogging idea, but I still have to send links via email. I need to change that.

Many thanks have to go to ASTD for allowing us to spend time on their island!

I think we’ll probably run another event in SL. Lots of people want to learn the technology. And that is what I am all about!

I’ve decided to come out about where I work. I develop technical training in the Education Services Department at EMC Corporation. EMC a global leader in storing, managing, and protect information intelligently and efficiently. My department has won many awards – in 2007 we ranked 2nd on Training Magazine’s Top 125 list and won an ASTD Best Award.

I am writing this blog from the point of view of an Individual Contributor – I’m just a cog in the machine so to speak. I wanted a space to apply what I am using in my graduate program to things I see at work. I also will probably talk about how the emerging Web 2.0 technologies can be applied towards education, but these thoughts are all my own and not necessarily a direction my group is pursuing.

I also have to put the standard disclaimer up – so go see it on my “About Me” page.

I think this post about EMC’s latest ON Magazine (which has several E2.0 articles) is what pushed me over the edge to “come out” as an EMC employee. One of the articles in this issue of On talks about how DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) had the first real E2.0 system – adding fuel to my argument that these tools are not new, and they are not the domain of the so-called “digital natives”.