Can we use Twitter in Learning? & Excuse: Vacation
Aug 29, 2007 Learning 2.0, blogging
SLACKER! Now that we have that out of the way, I really want to be more prompt on the posting. But (here comes the excuse) I was on vacation last week and was playing catchup the last few days of this week. Soooo, here I am finally posting. But I think you will find this one particularly interesting.
I was talking with a friend about his time up in Seattle at Gnomedex, THE conference for serious bloggers. He mentioned that it is a tough conference to present at. My initial thought was, WHY? You have a bunch of bloggers and technogeeks who love this - isn’t everyone feeding off of each other? Yes they are, but not in the way I thought.
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He mentioned that as the presenters were up doing their magic, everyone was on their laptops/phones, etc. They were listening, but they were also using Twitter to communicate about the presentation real time. So as the presentation is going on, there is another conversation happening simultaneously in the audience. As the presenter speaks, they critique the words/concepts and lobby them back and forth using Twitter. They debate among themselves, cross check information and refine the presenter’s material. By the time question and answer period starts, they have all asked the basic questions to each other and refined them and really boiled down to some pointed issues. Those are the questions they ask the presenter, and it sounds like it almost tears him apart. By this time the intial questions have been asked, debated and refined. Only the real difficult questions are left.
What was the audience doing? Learning in double time. We can guarantee that they learned more in that session with Twitter than without.
Given that, how can it be used in other situations for learning? To tell you the truth, I have not thought about it enough. My guess is that it is limited, but there are some niche area where it could help.
How to “Liberate Your Control Freaks”
Aug 17, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Implementation, Learning 2.0, SlideShare
One of the most challenging things to do when implementing Collaborative Learning is to help relax the people who have control. The control could be something as small as a report or as big as a corporation. Don’t get me wrong, there is moderation in all things and some things cannot be given up - like accountability. However, there are so many territories that are traditionally held on to. The old mentality was that “The more you control, the more powerful you are.” That is shifting to “The more your share, the more powerful you are.” (I might venture to say it has always been that.)
“It is glorious to fail…” Not really - at least not here.
Aug 9, 2007 Implementation, Learning 2.0
“In the beginning there was darkness…” and I did what I could to help others in my company understand what collaborative learning is and what the benefits are. They didn’t take it too well. This was mainly due to the fact that this type of learning is so new and foreign that it takes a while to understand. It is difficult conceptually see it without hands on learning.
But I tried - and in one of the first meetings I had with a group on this subject they blew up. Yes, there were other internal factors involved, but essentially they did not understand it. The next day the Director of I.T. gave me a fortune cookie tag. In essence it says, “In worthy attempts it is even glorious to fail.” A veiled consolation prize at the time. But I had the bigger picture in mind and knew that this was a small setback and that my vision will be realized (that sounds like the mad scientist who wants to take over the world, I know - but someday, ha ha ha, they will bow down to ME! Now, back to my alter ego…).
A couple weeks ago, this same person mentioned in a meeting that he felt that, “now more than ever that we need this type of solution.” I can’t wait until we get to a certain point where we are all learning collaboratively and I can return his gesture of condolence. Actually, that will only happen in my mind because I don’t want to throw it back in his face. It will be mine to keep in remembrance of where it started and where we wound up.
If you are trying to implement collaborative learning, don’t give up. Keep teaching, inspiring and be patient. Then go ahead and conquer the world.
