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Whilst I have not contributed to many groups I do keep track of discussions via the email summaries, therefore, I thought the attached message was an interesting one!
‘Social enterprise’, ‘networked enterprise’, ‘learning culture’ and many more related buzzwords are flying around at the time being and influencing the professional literature and conferences. What perhaps makes these themes different, to their predecessors, is that it is clear they cut across traditional disciplines as, arguably, the first big shift of power away from IT departments since their creation.
Tools such as ThisWorkedWell offer, on the face of it, walled garden knowledge capture and dissemination. For many organizations this would have been the responsibility of knowledge/information departments in the past. However, such new tools recognize the value in collaboration for learning and efficiency, thus rethinking workplace learning and communications.
The mobile, BYOD, nature of many of these tools arguably democratize the workforce, albeit with the need for some staff to “let go of control“. A point in that “let go of control” article, about Google’s environment, is that transparency is key.
Ultimately the questions over all of these related areas, for me, come back to “what kind of organization do I want to work in?” My answer would have to include characteristics such as the organization:
What I am really talking about here is knowledge work and I have to agree with much from Jarche.com. This of course relates to corporate culture and much more, again cutting across traditional theoretical disciplines. An interesting time, especially for organisational design professionals.
Another ‘what am I using’ type post today following a quick look at a trial account of Znanja, from GTSLearning.
Rapid eLearning is too slow. You need instant eLearning
znanja (NAN-ja) converts your documents to editable, SCORM-compliant eLearning in seconds.
Experimenting with different types of collaboration, authoring and assessment tools was a big part of my previous role and I am trying to stretch back into that area after two years in my ‘new’ job. This is partly out of personal interest but also as I think we’re starting to see a more mature HTML5 market and a lot of new options in the ‘post-PC’ age. So, over the last couple of days, I have been experimenting with Znanja. Initial thoughts below.
It is the first tool (since Wimba Create) that I’ve used to easily convert styled Word docs directly into (SCORM) eLearning content. Overall, this idea of super-rapid eLearning is one which at least gets the debate going …
Overall, I’m impressed that Znanja seemed to work smoothly (in IE and Chrome on W7), picking up your document styles correctly. The browser-based editor then allows for easy customization (you can, for example embed YouTube and quiz questions).
In a way it might actually be preferable to go for this approach, rather than the embedded within Office approaches of Wimba and other tools as it means you do not need to worry about plugins or custom styles. Instead your source files can be kept simplistic and you could create a workflow where, for example, learning technologists deal with the importing and customization bits – keeping your authors/academics/SMEs away from anything remotely techy.
Longer term – if we perhaps all switch to less feature heavy authoring tools (Office for iPad, etc) then perhaps we will need to create new workflows where secondary, web based tools, can perform customization and branding…or perhaps we are reinventing the wheel?
Lots of questions, although one thing is for sure – I’m not sure about the name…
From time to time, on previous blogs, I’ve taken snapshots of my tech usage. These are interesting to reflect on in hindsight and allow me to see trends in how I work. In the past they’ve also been useful for exposing to colleagues some new tools and features as well as acting as mini reviews of technology. Here is my current setup:
Home – iMac (about 4 years old) mostly for FireFox, Steam and MS Office. The big advantage is the screen and my habit of doing multiple things at once is very easy on here.
Home – ASUS Netbook (about 5 years old) I bought this originally for when away from the office to take conference notes, check email in hotels, etc. However, this very rarely leaves the house these days. A few months back I swapped out Windows XP (which was virtually grinding to a halt) with JoliCloud and it now makes the ‘book a quick and easy middle house between phone and iMac for email checking and browsing (although I installed FireFox rather than use the default Chrome-based browser for Joli).
Work – Lenovo Helix (new but currently downgraded from the default W8 to W7). Current work is mainly based around the MS ecoystem of Office and SharePoint with a few web apps here and there. I use two monitors with the laptop screen as the third, when at work, so multiple applications and copy/pasting into docs and websites is easy. In my current job this has replaced the Netbook as my travelling companion.
Phone (mine) – HTC Windows Phone x8 (about a year old). Really liked the phone and generally find Windows Phone more to my tastes than iOS or Android, especially the tile notifications approach. However, the phone itself has developed various problems. It has been back to HTC once already for battery problems and I currently have an issue where calls from the hearing piece are very quiet.
Phone (work) – iPhone 5. I basically only use this for work calendar, email and the podcast app (synced to my home iTunes). I would say I prefer having things on a separate device that you can ignore, at weekends and the like, rather than merging phone use to one device.
The above mix of devices and hardware does help me try different ways of doing things. For example, I no longer use my netbook for conference notes as I do it straight to Word or OneNote on my phone. You also end up with a variety of ways to do simple tasks, for example I’ve recently tried Snagit for Chrome (as TechSmith picked up on Twitter) which rolls screen capture and annotation into a nice tool. This was the first time I had used the Chrome App Launcher on my Mac and it looks an interesting way of bringing in additional functionality to the OS (certainly when, by default, it is a hand braking job to do a print screen). I’d actually presumed I would try Chrome Snagit on my ASUS but the version of Chrome used within JoliCloud is too old. However, the experience has made me think again about Chromebooks and if a cheap one would be the natural successor to my ASUS when the time comes. I do still have a Windows 7 (upgraded from Vista) Samsung laptop, that I have had for years, but it crashes constantly (years of overheating due to poor fan) so I do not even try and use it beyond occasional use as a DVD player.
My top sites are probably the below (nothing extraordinary here!):
I still do not use Twitter all that much apart from event back channels via the mobile apps and TweetDeck (on the Mac). Other sites I regularly visit tend to be related to specific uses – for example I will often visit JISCmail to read messages that I am alerted to by the daily digest emails (due to formatting not always being very clear in the emails). Currently I am spending lots of time on Rightmove…but thats another, and more depressing, story.
Various things of late have got me thinking again about the nature of learning and the value of different terminology to guide behavior. Some quick notes, for my reference, below.
This address by Bill Clinton highlights some useful examples of education schemes from around the globe, with the focus being on the impact of education upon poverty and opportunity. A key thread in his argument is the need for young people to be exposed to at least one ‘great teacher’. This grates slightly due to my dislike of the idea of ‘teaching’ in a connected environment where there are many kinds of learning event. Does the facilitator’s title have to be driven by the nature of the learning event and, as such, ‘teacher’ may be perfectly valid in a remote African classroom?
Thinking back to the variety of event types that now exist, as discussed on a previous blog, we are seeing more and more formats emerge, often based around what a specific tool (such as Google Hangouts) can do. One term I did not list was ‘Festival’ but the once-upon-a-time JISC Conference (which I attended a number of times) is now the JISC Digital Festival (although they do host an online conference too). How can we best leverage subtle changes such as naming conventions, room design, catering, etc. to engage attendees of all types to develop a better formal/informal learning experience? Can we best label ‘delegates’ and ‘teachers’ to maintain a sense of respect (where needed) but also shift the responsibility for (all) learning toward the learner and their network? I personally do not think we should see this is as age related where we expect the young to respect their ‘teachers’ but the name for the role being less important in other age groups.
In the above I am seeing conferences and other events as learning opportunities, perhaps one trick is to have conference delegates agree to certain expectations in the same way you may have a student, in a formal education environment, sign up to a ‘charter’ or other form of learning contract?
Overall, I would like to see different names for facilitators of learning based on the nature of the event, this would help people be clear on the expectations. For example, a webinar presenter is one thing whereas a classroom facilitator does something very different.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 