And So It Goes, And So It Goes - And Now 2 Billion Pictures Know
Nov 30, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Social Learning SIG
I have been waiting to post this, even though it is old news, just so I can be sure that what I am saying is correct.
Flickr.com started in February of 2004. On November 13th, the 2 billionth photo was posted on this site - only 3 years and 9 months later. That is a TON of photos the world is sharing! Very impressive. Even more impressive, in my estimation, however, is that the 1 billionth photo happened on or very near August 4th (not a very impressive picture, however), only 3 months and 10 daysish earlier.
There is a momentum that is happening. More of us are getting used to this type of sharing. As we do, we want to LEARN! We will EXPECT to learn when we want it and in the amount we want - and we will want to share our information. Truth be told, we already do- well, some do and some don’t. It is up to us to appease the appetites of those who do and help those who don’t to share appropriate information so we all can learn.
The Death of the Radio
Nov 23, 2007 Learning 2.0
According to tradition, the day after Thanksgiving is our day to put up Christmas decorations, something we have been doing all day today. Another tradition during this time of the year is to listen to Cinnamon Bear, an old time radio program specifically for the days in between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
My 6 year-old daughter, Tessa, just asked me, “Dad, can we listen to Cinnamon Bear?” A little confused, because it is on the radio, I asked, “Where?”
“On the radio.”
“Well, you can’t just listen to it on the radio. You need to wait until it comes on.”
“Why?”
“Because it is on only at certain times.”
“I don’t get it.”
Tessa is used to listening to what she wants to listen to when she want to listen to it. By CD, by MP3 on the computer, etc. I never realized she doesn’t understand what a radio is or how it works. Because we also home school, she expects to learn what she wants to learn when she wants to learn it. Do we think that will change? No - in fact we hope it doesn’t. The rest of my kids are that way as well - they learn what they want when they want. There are so many resources there isn’t much reason not to quench that thirst to learn at the time they thirst. Give it to them after their thirst has died and often the time for real personalized learning may be past. If we can get it to them when they want and get them engaged - there is the key!
UPDATE: Last night my kids and I were laying on my bed ready for Cinnamon Bear to come on. Of course it was preceded by a BUNCH of commercials. My insightful daughter, Tessa, asked another wonderful question, “Can we skip this part?”
Social Learning SIG: 1st Webinar - an Introduction to Social Learning
Nov 21, 2007 Implementation, Learning 2.0, Social Learning SIG
Announcing our first webinar!
We will be having periodic webinars from guest speakers throughout next year. To end the year right, we will have the first one in three weeks. It will be essentially the same presentation as the one I delivered at the eLearning SIG last August - a primer on SL:
- What is Social Learning?
- Why does it exist now?
- What learning problem does it solve?
- How might I take advantage of Social Learning?
- If I ignore it will it go away?
Here is the basic information:
An Introduction to Social Learning - Presented by the ASTD Social Learning SIG
Presenter: Kevin D. Jones - SL SIG Leader
When: 12/11/2007 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Pacific)
Dial-In: 1-866-851-9754
Pass-Code: 934740To signup:
https://admin.acrobat.com/_a87024196/astd/event/registration.html
To join the meeting:
http://trainingobjectives.mmalliance.acrobat.com/sociallearning/
Please feel free to invite anyone - peers, friends - anyone who might be interested. Remember: 12-11-11 (December 11th at 11am). See you then!
An Explosion of Content and Usage
Nov 16, 2007 Implementation, Learning 2.0, Social Learning SIG
Before we launch an official Social Learning app in my company, one topic we have talked a lot about is who we make sure that this does not become irrelevant. One person mentioned the cycle:
- If there isn’t any content, people won’t go there
- If people don’t go there, there won’t be any content.
Although, you have to start somewhere. We started with our Intranet. We are putting everything from our intranet on there. That will incent people to go there. How quickly will adoption happen? That’s the million dollar question. Actually, the BILLION dollar question…
The recent 2 billionth uploaded picture on flickr.com has given me hope. Flickr opened for uploading in February 2004. It took approximately 3 years and six months for users to upload the first BILLION pictures. How long did it take to upload the second BILLION? About 3.5 months. That’s it.
Then there is talk about the death of email.
Where does this take us? The way we learn, the way we share, the way we interact is quickly changing. Will adoption happen? There are too many variables in any given situation to say. But there are fundemental changes that we can look at and use. To ignore them is would be the same as ignoring the impact of the computer in 1977 - later you regret your words.
The ‘SOCIAL’ in Social Learning
Nov 8, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Implementation, Learning 2.0, Social Learning SIG
A couple nights ago at the SAO’s IPSIG meeting, one person mentioned that the social part of Social Learning is getting out of hand and killing productivity. Afterwards, as we were talking, she shared an experience where she left the desk of one of her employees, waited a bit and then came back around. Quickly, the employee make one swift keystroke to cover up what was on the screen and then looked at her with that look of, “I am pretending nothing is wrong although I was surfing but I don’t want you to know that.”
She is concerned, and has seen evidence, that too many people get on the internet and blog or comment or …(?) about useless information not pertaining to their work; information that may be personal or just a self satisfying indulgence.
I agree - to an extent. I guarantee this WILL happen, as it has happened with the Internet when it was first introduced (and to some extent now); as it happened (and is happening) with teenagers and texting; as it happened when the hoola hoop was introduced. We tend to over indulge on the new, really taking it out of context and creating a fad until later it equalizes out and is used for its intended purposes. (There is a whole sub-discussion on how this ‘fad’ stage expands the usefulness of any thought/product for other uses, but that is another discussion.)
This attitude helped fuel the first internet bubble (some say we are in another now).
What we should not do it get so worked up that this is THE solution for learning. Years ago e-learning was the next BEST thing - then it was the LMS. Now, we are realizing that we have applied both of these to areas that should have been left alone. That will happen again with Social Learning, to be sure. We just need to keep this in mind and make sure we will have a level head on as we go through this learning bubble.
I am not trying to down play Social Learning’s effectiveness, but we just need to be realistic and moderate.
Social Learning SIG - Communities
Nov 6, 2007 Implementation, Social Learning SIG
Below is a repost of my post on BlogCascadia.
There are some MUST HAVES for Social Learning. The first one is community.
Communities take all different forms for all different reasons for different lengths of time. Some may be created on the spur of the moment and only last a short time. Others are deliberate and may need to be sustained for long periods (even hundreds of years).
There are all different types of members:
- Some only watch from the sidelines and reap a lot of benefit. Even though that may seem wrong, it is actually just fine. We all are in communities where we don’t participate, but just enjoy the company.
- There are others who join in from time to time and give back to the community as they feel they can.
- There are others who make the core. These members are the most engaged and drive the community.
This goes along with the three levels of personal connections we have with others:
- The CASUAL connection: You do not understand, and very possibly not intend to use, the value of this connection. But, if needed, you can use this group or a person in the community to help.
- The VALUED connection: You understand the value of this connection. Although maybe not formal or used every day, this connection might hold some information / skill / pathway into an area you are interested in or may be in the future.
- The VALUABLE connection: This connection was either a CASUAL or VALUED connection who was used and thus they become VALUABLE.
All communities need to be nurtured to some degree. We can’t just let them sit or they will die and become useless, forgotten corpses of thought and good intentions (I had to add a Halloween element in there somewhere!). On the opposite side of life, we can’t build them and expect people to join, either.
So far I have not even mentioned anything about virtual communities. But it doesn’t matter. Online or off we all communities have these characteristics and needs.
This SIG does not meet in a physical location which, without this element, makes it difficult to build a community. That is unless…
In an effort to build this Social Learning SIG community, I have created a place online where we can continually nurture, add to and strengthen this community. It is using an online service called NING and it allows us to set up our own Social Learning community. This expands our interaction into a more casual environment. It only adds to the strength of this blog and does not replace it. In fact, you will notice that the first thing on there is BlogCascadia.
As the community is built up we will be able to tap into the minds of many others. In essence, we are able to allow more people to casually interact and take advantage of the strength of the knowledge out there in all of our collective brains.
So come join us and meet others. It only takes a minute to join. Tell others to join you. The more people we have here the more we will all benefit.
See you there!
Speaking at SAO
Nov 3, 2007 Social Learning SIG
Next Tuesday I will be on a panel at the Software Association of Oregon’s IPSIG event on “eLearning: How, When, Why (& Why Not) To Use It.“ Planet Productions headed up getting the speakers which consist of them, Powell’s Books, Katherine Stevens from Kaiser Permanente and myself. We go from the highly complex to the highly informal learning. We will do short presentations and then open it up for Q&A.
Come join us!
