Blogtalk

Hmmm.... this is interesting, just discovered: Blogtalk: ETUG Discussion on the Uses of Blogs in Education - October 6-14, 2003. The About page describes this as:

Welcome to the site - this will be the base for the discussions on the uses of blogs in education over the next two weeks. Your guides for the discussion are 4 educators from around the province who each in their own way have been exploring blogs both in and out of the online classroom.

This comes from c2t2, which means it's right in my backyard here in BC, Canada.

This is also an interesting twist on the concept of online conferences that I have been participating in and writing about of late.

2003 orientation survey results available

In early fall, I conducted a survey of new employee orientation practices in North America - the results are now available.

My e-line on blogs

My continuing research on blogs is taking one form of output, a 2-part series in my e-Line column for PeopleTalk magazine. The first part, Blogged for Business: Do you blog in public?, has already been published. I am continuing to seek examples for blogs in corporate learning and development, which I'll focus the 2nd part of the series on. It's slim pickin's so far.

Creating employee guidelines on blogs

I stumbled across this page of employee guidelines on blogs on the Groove Networks site. Groove is interesting in that a number of its executives and other key players publish publicly available blogs - check out the Groove blog listing page.

Recording of September 22nd Learning Objects Event

In my blog on September 22nd I talked about a particularly good webinar I attended on Learning Objects. I just tried to update that entry to add the link, but it's not showing up when I refresh, I don't know whay....

Anyways, here is a link to a recording of the September 22nd learning objects webinar

To read my original post after I participated, in which I posted a whole bunch of learning object resources, click here

We are the Problem: We are selling Snake Oil

There is a great dialogue unfolding in the Comments of the Learning Circuits Blog. It's under the post called We are the Problem: We are selling Snake Oil.

PS - This is really worth visiting, as the dialogue really grew, and quite a few people have commented on it. Much of that on the phenomenum of the blog dialogue itself. I think it's an interesting example of how interactive blogs can build community. (note added Feb. 21/04)

Info on eHelp / Macromedia merger -- and the average developer uses 4 tools

I'm finding some answers to what I have been wondering, as to what the impact may be of Macromedia acquiring eHelp. Veerry interesting....

From a Bersin & Associates e-newsletter:

Macromedia - eHelp Acquisition: What Does it Mean?
On October 22, Macromedia announced the intent to acquire eHelp Corporation, makers of RoboDemo and RoboHelp. RoboHelp is one of the leading help authoring tools and RoboDemo, originally designed as a tool to develop application demonstrations, is now a leading product for developing e-learning application simulations.

This acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of this year, is a major move in the e-learning market. Until recently, Macromedia's primary focus was on the creative web developer. This strategy is shifting. With nearly 30% of its revenue now coming from e-learning, Macromedia sees the e-learning market as a fast- growing and highly strategic secondary market.

What does this mean to the e-learning professional? For one, it should be easier and less costly to equip yourself with the tools you need to build e-learning programs by having Macromedia and eHelp tools available from one supplier. No single tool fits all needs. Our research earlier this year (E-Learning DevelopmentTools: What Works) found that the average e-learning developer uses four different tools to build a course - and we expect this to continue.

If Macromedia chooses to further integrate eHelp's products into Breeze (a product obtained by Macromedia through its Presedia acquisition earlier this year), we will see the bar raised on "Rapid E-Learning." This acquisition could ignite a powderkeg to dramatically expand the "Rapid E-Learning" market.

Lego learning online

Ever wonder how Lego is made? Go here and soon you'll know all.

I think this is great example of how orienting new employees to how the business works can be made interesting and kinda fun.

Blog behavior

Check out the Nov 6, 2003 entry on the Learning Circuits Blog, entitled "blog behavior". The posting and ensuing comments explore Peter Jackson's experience with having his comment to a blog entry by Clark Quinn blocked by the interface, "This comment could not be posted due to questionable content." What follows is an interesting dialogue on the impact of the automated so-called-intelligence behind the technology, and the impact on learners. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

EdBlogger Conference in San Fran

There's a conference on blogging very soon, and not too far away, but alas I can't make it. EdBlogger will be held Nov. 22-23 in San Francisco. And it's actually FREE to educators.

While I can't go, I shall certainly spend some time exploring the conference site, there's gotta be some good blogs from the conference floor....

Cool feature on the website: Check out this link to the blogs of the conference attendees.

TechLearn 2003 archives disappoint

Made my way to the TechLearn 2003 Archives tonight.... TechLearn has traditionally made full conference archives available for free, including some audio/video recordings (see the TechLearn 2000 Archives), but it looks like the evolving partnership with Advantstar is resulting in just the common links to PowerPoint slides... still good, but a big disappointment.

Other useful TechLearn stuff:
Jay Cross's review of TechLearn 2003 - start at this link and click forward for the full picture
There's also usually a TechLearn-sponsored Trip Report posted, it's apparently coming soon, watch for it here.
Starved for a video clip? You can still watch this pre-conference welcome video of Elliott: http://www.masie.com/stream/tl2003/

From the Jay Blog

Just as I put my head up from a couple weeks in which busy-ness had me largely offline, and thinking I need to catch up, I get today's issue of Jay Cross' periodic e-newsletter, pointing to some recent highlights from his world, and from his blog. How timely! Of note:

Jay's blogged his review of TechLearn 2003, great perspectives as always. Lots of good stuff, as usual. Almost feel like I was there. I particularly enjoyed this:

"Elliott stressed the importance of context, saying that if content is king, context is queen. His analogy is off. The age of kings is over; kings are mere figureheads. Also, kings can exist without queens, and vice-versa, but content cannot exist without context. In fact, content + context = learning. Jay's metaphor: Content is inside; context is outside; they are inseparable." Well sed Jay!

Plus enjoyed this bite from my general catch up on Jay's blog:
News? - a fascinating ah ha from the providers of Online Learning Reviews

UPDATE: my post upon learning of Jay's passing in 2015

Blogging in the classroom... for me!

I add this blog entry from the classroom myself, living in the student seat for a few days. I am taking eHelp's RoboHelp course, fabulous. And delighted that they brought it to my neck of the woods here in Vancouver. I am also delighted that my instructor is Kevin Seigel of IconLogic, the author of many books on eHelp products.

I bought the full suite a few months back, mainly to get RoboDemo for a project - but was so impressed during my research process that I bought the whole suite from eHelp, which also includes RoboHelp. It was quite an investment for me, but this process is confirming that my decision was a good one. I am very impressed with how powerful this tool is, and I am looking forward to using it for several projects.

Blogging books

By way of the wonder of this online world, today I received two more books on blogging:
"We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs", by Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughhey and Meg Haurihan
"Blog On: The Essential Guide to Building Dynamic Weblogs", by Todd Stauffer

I am adding these two to the one title I already had, "Essential Blogging", by Cory Doctorow, et al.

I don't actually think you need a book to create a blog, it's so darn easy. But I've got an interest (ok, an insatiable curiousity!) about how blogs are being used, and what's possible, that I want to learn more. I think deepening my knowledge will be important to how I move forward with blogs in learning.

BTW, I did a bit of digging, and there are half-a-dozen or so books on blogging. I found some great reviews that really helped me figure out which to buy (I seem to recall the reviews were on Amazon).

vancouverlearning.net is emerging

So far, so good on vancouverlearning.net.... I am delighted to be receiving event postings from several new sources, several of which are new to me. I'm pleased that there were over 20 events listed for November when the month kicked off. When I've been out and about in the real world (versus the virtual one!), I'm getting positive verbal comments from people. Starting to get some responses to the feedback survey, also good. Seems I've found a need here. The bonus? So far, made a couple new interesting connections in my personal network.

vancouverlearning.net is born

Today I launched a new service: vancouverlearning.net
This is a little brainchild that I've created, I hope it has legs, I suspect it will. Will see.....

Six degrees of separation and online networking tools

I attended a fairly interesting webinar this morning on 'Six Degrees of Separation' with a fellow by the name of Kevin Temple (there will be a recording available in about 24 hours at Placeware). While far more focused on sales than my tastes (I am most interested in collaboration and learning applications), it held my attention and I learned about two interesting tools:
Zero Degrees
Friendster.com

My discovery about sharing webinar listings...

I have had an interesting experience this morning. I recently added a page on my website with listings of webinars. I attend a lot of webinars and often have people asking me where I find them. So thought this would be of interest to others in the learning and development field. What I didn't expect is that when people have trouble accessing a webinar that they would contact me, rather than the Webinar providers. I thought it was pretty obvious that I am not running these, but I guess not. I'm just the messsenger here! Hmmm.... I don't want to pull the page, but I certainly don't want this as a result! I've changed the blurb at the top of the page, hopefully it's clearer. We'll see.

Mergers abound: Macromedia acquires eHelp

While the industry was abuzz last week about the Click2Learn/Docent merger, another merger slipped under my radar, that of Macromedia and eHelp. More precisely, Macromedia is acquiring eHelp. As I've recently purchased eHelp's products (RoboDemo, RoboHelp, etc.), and subscribe to a support license, this was of personal interest to me. Though I am not sure what the impact will be, and I am already a Macromedia customer as well. My guess is that it won't be hugely negative or positive initially, in the long term the ability to develop seamlessly between DreamWeaver and the eHelp suite would be my hope. I'll be staying tuned.

How do you spell blog?

Ha! Just tried out my blog spellchecker and it says that blog isn't a word! Tsk Tsk.

Good blog stuff in today's elearning post

From elearning post today:

A new blog called Dusk and Dawn. It is the blog of "mindful learner", otherwise known simply by his first name, Stuart. He's a senior learning designer for a UK and chooses to remain anonymous as his ideas do not necessarily reflect those of his company.... Looks like it will be a good blog. For a couple articles from the mysterious Stuart are at:
10 Damaging e-Learning Myths (co-written with Maish Nichani of elearningpost)
Learning by Design

David Weinberger blogs about what will happen when blogs get really popular on the Joho blog.

I'll be looking down at the sidewalks now, could very well bump into warchalking WiFi searchers

I haven't yet been taking my laptop out seeking wireless connections in this city, the low number of locations available from the paid services has me holding back. But thought this was pretty interesting:

Warchalking is the practice of marking a series of symbols on sidewalks and walls to indicate nearby wireless access. That way, other computer users can pop open their laptops and connect to the Internet wirelessly. It was inspired by the practice of hobos during the Great Depression to use chalk marks to indicate which homes were friendly.

I'll be keeping my eyes open!

The Scobleizer Versus Cerberus the Hound of Hades

What would happen if a member of the Windows marketing team were to publish his personal observations in a public blog? Well, it’s happening at the Scobleizer Weblog, the personal blog of Robert Scoble. Jay Cross told me about this article, "The Scobleizer Versus Cerberus the Hound of Hades". It is a fascinating read!!!

An excerpt from the article: "I've gotten email from people telling me they have changed their attitude about Microsoft because of my blog," says Scoble. "It helps me share the company's beliefs." It also helps Microsoft hear what the market is saying, both good and bad. "I link to everyone who hates Microsoft, and I send the negative stuff to the executives," he says.

Here's the link to the actual Scobleizer Weblog.

Scoble had an interesting chuckle over this, and so did i: Freud Meets Blogs.

British Columbia couple both win Ironman in Hawaii

Today, Saturday, October 18, 2003, Peter Reid and Lori Bowden, a married couple from Victoria both won the Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Hawaii. After a 3.8 km. swim, a 180 km. bike ride, and a 42 km. run (a marathon), he won the professional men's division in 8 hours and 22 minutes and she won the professional women's division in 9 hours and 12 minutes. They have both won this event before but never at the same time. They have been described as the world's fittest couple. Two other Canadian women, Heather Fuhr and Lisa Bentley, finished in the top five. Canadians and British Columbians can be proud.

This came to me via an email from Don McIntosh, wishing congratulations to them both and a comment, "I am sending this out because the major media will barely mention it." He's probably right (so thanks Don!).

Not only that, but, hey, did a quick Google search, and found this Ironman site, and they don't even have the results posted yet (site still says there are four hours left); guess after the run the organizers were mai tai'ing.

How cool that they both won it in the same year, together! Or hot?

With my morning coffee....

People who are taller earn more money. $800/US an inch. It pays to be tall!!! (Where's my cheque). Source? Sorry, missed it. CBC Newsworld on the TV in the background as I surf (what can I say, I'm a news junkie).

100 millimetres of rain in 24 hours here in Vancouver. People's cars getting swamped with water up to their windows on Willingdon offramp from the freeway. Park Royal mall closed due to flooding. Lumber store flooded with floating wood everywhere in the store, 3' deep. It's called a Pineapple Express. Bet there are some interesting pictures, haven't found 'em yet. Interesting Vancouver rain clips:
Article
It always rains here
Well, not always

PS. It's still raining.

Before my morning coffee...

With my initial venturing online this morning, discovered:

Knowledge work and knowledge management are inseparable. At the Association of Knowledgework, people from every specialty cross professional, geographic, cultural, economic and hierarchical barriers to learn together. Not just another website, this is a virtual home for those who work with this stuff called knowledge.

Bloglines is "a free service that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and newsfeeds. With Bloglines, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those sites. You can read the latest entries easily within Bloglines. Unlike other aggregators which require you to download and install software, Bloglines runs on our servers and requires no installation. Because your Bloglines account is accessible through a web browser, you can access your account from any Internet-connected machine." Bingo, may be exactly what I am looking for....

JOHO - Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization - I'm not even going to try and describe it, must visit.

Ever wonder what your Palm Vx would look like if you backed your car over it? Follow this link then hit page down about 2 times.

Take a peek into my brain before coffee: Gotta love it, found all that before my coffee perked, and I didn't even know I was looking! How'd I get there? For those may be interested, and even those who aren't, (OK, it's mainly me that's interested!), this all came from following a single link in this mornings elearningpost, which led me here. From there, well, you just scroll through JOHO, and see what happens! (This is life with curious mind ;-). Guess what happens when I have had my coffee first!!)

More pre-coffee discoveries:

Picking through JOHO I discovered something event better - David Weinberger's blog. ! And, for a little fun, here's a lovely comment from his website: "As for those of you who wonder why I don't write JOHO very frequently any more, take a look at my weblog. I'm writing every stinking day. Why? Beats me. Let me know if you figure it out." Well sed!! Go blogs go!

Back to JOHO, I just LOVED Weinberger's Editorial Lint: "JOHO is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by David Weinberger. If you write him with corrections or criticisms, it will probably turn out to have been your fault. To unsubscribe, send an email to joho-request@freelists.org with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. If you have more than one email address, you must send the unsubscribe request from the email address you want unsubscribed. In case of difficulty, let me know: self@evident.com. There's more information about subscribing, changing your address, etc., at www.hyperorg.com/forms/adminhome.html. In case of confusion, you can always send mail to me at self@evident.com. There is no need for harshness or recriminations. Sometimes things just don't work out between people. Dr. Weinberger is represented by a fiercely aggressive legal team who responds to any provocation with massive litigatory procedures. This notice constitutes fair warning. Any email sent to JOHO may be published in JOHO and snarkily commented on unless the email explicitly states that it's not for publication."

Thought bubble: I seem to be perking up with each discovery of people who tell-it-like-it-is...

Demystifying RSS

Found a piece on RSS that I think can help me unravel this still-mystery aspect of blogs: "RSS: Hot Fix for Info-Junkies: Growing Web standard makes it easy to get news on the topics you want".

Courses as artifacts

Just L-O-V-E-D this statement on the elearnspace blog:

"Courses are artifacts of a learning model that is becoming obsolete. Courses work in an environment when knowledge/information is fairly static and developing slowly. The more rapidly information develops, the more quickly courses cease to serve the needs of learners. The information is outdated before the ink is dry." Read the rest of this piece, which discusses communities in learning: September 2003 archives under the heading, "Learning communities and learning networks".

Harvard blogs + more

A discovery today as part of my quest about blogs in learning: Weblogs at Harvard Law. It's really a meta-blog, a blog all about blogs - in general, and at Harvard Law. There's some good examples of legal stuff relating to blogs here, such as their terms of use. All those lawyers have been thinking about this stuff.

This led to other discoveries, from access to 80+ blogs at Harvard Law, and another recent blogger conference, BloggerCon, to this interesting NYT article: "Can Johnny Blog?",

Plus, I found: "How to enable Trackback on your Weblog" - this is something I've been meaning to learn more about, so nabbing the link here to return to. Plus, "How Trackback works".

Other stuff I found today:
Some uses of blogs in education - this is a great matrix!!! Even though I have been coming up pretty dry in my quest for examples of blogs in corporate learning, this model helps me frame the possibilities.

As always, the process keeps opening doors, and windows, and this little 'ol mind.

Sorta learned with Tom Peters today

Today I participated in a free webinar with Tom Peters on his new book (amazon.ca or amazon.com). Well, sorta participated. It was a Placeware event, aka Microsoft Live Meeting. I have taken literally dozens of Placeware events in the past, and have found them to be excellent as far as how well the technology works and how well they are facilitated. But ever since they were acquired by Microsoft, the experiences haven't been so positive. Ok, I've only been to two since then, but they were both very messy with technical problems. They'd better sort this out soon, or they are going to slip from being my favourite such provider, so several pegs down the list!

Now that I have finished that rant, Tom Peters was fabulous (would have been even better if I could have seen the slides, and it hadn't started 25 minutes late!) (oops, I said I was through with the rant, forgot). Tom is always totally refreshing. There will be a recording of the event available in a day or so on Placeware, and the slides can be downloaded from the Tom Peters site.

There's a follow-up event on November 10th, which will mainly be a Tom Peters Q&A, I'm signed up (and hopefully Placeware/MS will get their ducks in a row by then).

Thought bubble: I wonder what Tom Peter's rant will be after such a technology disaster ? ;-)
j0084206.wmf

Found a Yahoo Group on blogs for KM

In re-reading a recent Information Week article on blogs, "Are You Blogging Yet?", my attention was drawn to the fact that there is a Yahoo Group on blogs in KM. I've just joined.

Post script added October 18: Uh, how not to demonstrate KM.... It's been 5 days and my moderated posting still hasn't been approved, this Yahoo Group is as dead as a doornail.

ROI at its best is a kinda, sorta thing....

Last week I went to quite a refreshing session on "Making Quality Count: How to Get Results With Training & Development" put on by the BCHRMA, and presented by Mark Frein. Mark is Director of Executive Programs at SFU and its Learning Strategies Group. Nestled among much great content was such practical council that it made me sit up and take notice. That doesn't always happen in this town!! (at least as far as new thinking in T&D). It was this quote, "ROI, at its best, is a kinda, sorta thing" that had me cheering. The attempts to exactly measure the ROI of training are, in my mind, continuing shots in the dark and generally fruitless. I think T&D folks are driving themselves crazy trying to pin the tail on a donkey that is dancing in a land of quantum physics. There is lots you can do to measure the impact of training, but it's time this industry got real. But it takes bravery to say, nope, can't do it. Mark Frein, you are breath of fresh air!

Blog lessons....

Blog lesson #1: blog often
After a roaring start, I kind of lost track of blogging for a bit there. It's not that there's any kind of rule, at least not for me, but the value blogging comes largely in its stream of consciousness, and its degree of currency (not $, but how current)....

Learning Objects and RSS working together....

I have recently been interested in both RSS for blogs and learning objects, what I thought were two different subjects. But it seems that there are people putting the pieces together... totally intrigues me... It's late, and I've got to get some sleep, but it's caught my attention and I'll be back to study it:

"Customized collections of learning objects from multiple repositories are achieved with simple, existing RSS protocols, creating access to a wider range of objects than a single source. This provides discipline-specific windows into collections, contextual wrappers via blogging tools, and a system for connecting objects and implementations via TrackBack ...." Found at this url: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/merlot03/

What's a Webring?

I just realized that I do not know what a webring is.... haven't heard the term in a long time, and not since I became so online oriented. I gather it's some kind of online community, but for some reason I associate it with listservs and such... Tonight I came across an "Edublog Webring" - now there's a combination! Anyways, that got me thinking..... Any insights will be most welcome...

Good webinars from CLO

Today I took a free webinar from CLO Events (the publishers of CLO magazine, and providers of CLO conferences).

The session I attended was called "Enterprise Architecture for e-Learning: Working With the CIO". There will be an archive recording available in the next day or so. The host was Kevin Kruse, of e-Learning Guru, and there was a panel of excellent speakers. I thought the stuff on the "great fears of the IT department" was excellent, and there were many great ideas and strategies for partnering training and IT groups.

I'd most definitely take a CLO webinar again. They have a couple interesting topics coming up:

Nov 5 - "The CLO's Role: Enterprise Education and Change Management"

Dec 3 - "Do's and Dont's for Measuring Cost Benefit Analysis"

A shift in survey responses

I am doing an online survey on new employee orientation practices, have done this several times in the past, but have always just invited people in my database. But this time, I have also posted the survey link on some training and development online forums.... and I am finding something a bit interesting. The only mandatory questions I've included are for the respondent information. What I am finding interesting is that there are people who are responding who are putting fake information (e.g. "*" or "no response") into the fields for organization, name and email. As its a survey into organization training practices, I do find it just a bit fascinating.... I can't imagine responding to a business survey myself and doing this. On the other hand, I can only think that people have been burned by inappropriate marketing as a result of sharing information, which is a shame if this is the result.... I haven't figured out whether to exclude these responses from my survey results yet, but am thinking perhaps I have to, as I can't be sure they are from "real" companies. Just an interesting development.
Revised November 30, 2003:
The survey is now closed, and the results are available online.

Are you Blogging Yet?

Here's an Information Week blog piece, "Are You Blogging Yet?".

Session on blogs in Vancouver October 2

The KM group is focusing their October 2nd Salon on blogs: "Blogs, Blogging, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS): As If Managing Formal Knowledge Weren't Hard Enough". The facilitator is Catherine Kerr is. 6:30pm at Adega Restaurant, 1022 Main St. More info from www.kmcop.org. I'm not sure if I can make it, but want to, still gotta figure out the RSS thing....

A little in awe...

I am a little in awe. About 12 hours ago I blogged about Oliver Wrede and his work "Weblogs and Discourse: Weblogs as a transformational technology for higher education and academic research" (or slides)... and I 'wondered outloud' (in my blog) about whether there had been a conference on blogs in May...

When I woke up this morning, I had a personal email from Oliver confirming that yes, there was just such a conference - it was called BlogTalk (and, yes, lots of resources there). I didn't even know anyone had found my blog yet. It's a wired, wired world...

BTW, Wrede is a professor at the Aachen University of Applied Design (it's in Europe, trying to figure out where, the "about page" on the English version of the university website links to something that's clearly not English ;-) .... will come back later and figure that out!

Oliver's email motivates me to figure out how to set up a Comments function for my blog. My observation is that the best blogs all have this functionality. Gotta figure out how to do that. I have been trying to upgrade my Blogger service from free to the paid service, which gives more function, but to no avail (each time I try to do that, I eventually hit a screen that tells me the upgrade service is unavailable, try again later). Shall keep trying!

Storytelling stuff

I've been long interested in storytelling in learning, but it's storytelling online that has intrigued me in recent times, as without the human being in front of the learner I think, done well, stories can be very powerful. It's something I want to learn more about, so this piece on Digital Storytelling grabbed my eye.

More blog research....

A few more links on blogs... I am out of my office, so I'm really just capturing some links to dig through in more detail later...

Blogging in Corporate America - by Michael Angeles (hmmm... Is this the same Michael Angeles resource I found the other day? probably; will have to go back and check... anyways, this one give you the option to get the PPT with notes)

A Blogger in their Midst - Sept 2003 HBR article, here's the gist: a fictional case-study in blogging to explore "the question of whether a highly credible, but sometimes inaccurate and often indiscreet, online diarist is more of a liability than an asset to her employer." (abstract from elearningpost).... Hmmm... I don't subscribe, will I break down and buy the article? maybe I'll find a friend...

How I Would Implement Weblogs in Business - from Common Craft (gotta check them out too)

Weblogs and Discourse: Weblogs as a transformational technology for higher education and academic research - by Oliver Wrede - the accompanying note says "Blogtalk Conference Paper, Vienna, May 23rd-24th 2003" - does that mean there was a blog conference in May? will have to hunt and see if there was, and if there are resources. {Update: the conference was called BlogTalk, see how I found out in my entry on Sept. 25}.

BLOG SPACE: Public Storage For Wisdom, Ignorance, and Everything in Between - by Steven Johnson, in Wired.... I liked this quote, "What happens when you start seeing the Web as a matrix of minds, not documents?"

Employee Weblog Policy - by Ray Ozzie

Blogs in Education - an interview with Maish Nichani (of elearningpost). You can read it, or listen to the audio. If you like the article, you might like the discussion as well.

I actually poked around that discussion, and found this about blogging in a course on "Writing Across the Arts". Here's the course description, that mentions use of weblogs, here's the instructor's view of it all,

And another example, about students using blogs in research.... Makes sense, as that's what I am doing right now... doing a bit of my blogging research while I am at the library... capturing my links, initial reactions and questions for myself in this blog is WAY better than emailing myself links.

I continue to feel challenged to find examples of blogs in corporate learning; I am finding stuff on blogs in business, and stuff on blogs in 'education' (read: higher education)... I shall continue searching, capturing this other stuff along the way.

Blogs refine enterprise focus: companies are leveraging blogs to streamline business processes - by Cathleen Moore for Infoworld

Best of the Blogs - from CETIS (the centre for educational technology interoperability standards)

A friendly note to anyone who stops by and reads this: if you have, or know of, examples of how blogs are being used in corporate learning and development, please email me (link in the menu bar to the right). Thanks, Roberta

26 things

This was a cool stumble-across... the 26 Things Photographic Scavenger Hunt. I didn't even know how to bookmark this, I didn't have a mental category for it.... It is SO cool!

One of the things I am enjoying about exploring blogs is discovering a whole world of things I had no idea existed. While I practically "live" online, I realize how small my virtual world has been... so much more to learn!

My exploration for blogs in business

I've been digging around, and posting to some groups, asking for examples of blogging in business. Actually, I'd focused my questions on blogging in learning, still on a discovery process there.... anyways, I am finding some interesting stuff.

Jay Cross, one of my favourite bloggers, has done a couple of interesting things recently on blogs:
Blogging for Business - an article in Learning Circuits
Blogs ("Let's talk about blogs....") - A short audio overview of blogs

Jay mentions that there was the first every business blogging conference in June, and I have dug up the link. Haven't fully explored this yet, but it appears to be a blog leading up to and including the conference; it's loaded with links:
ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies Conference

A few interesting related links:
VinBlog review of the conference, and more - which lead to:
Michael Gartenberg's slides on Business Weblogs
International Blog Meetup Day - Oct 15

Eric Snyder pointed me to this great presentation on blogs and KM (that wasn't apparent by the title, but it's just bursting with great KM stuff as it relates to blogs:
Making sense of weblogs in the internet

There were also a couple articles on blogging recently in the NY Times, but not so recent that they are still online. Will have to look them up on my next trip to the library. Here are links to the abstracts of:
The online journals known as Web logs are finding favor as an efficient way to communicate within the workplace
The Corporate Blog Is Catching On

The folks at Groove are blogging and making their blogs public and easy to find. You can even read the CEO's blog. Granted, they are using the page on which they have them all organized to cite everything good people say about Groove in blogs, but that's ok. The blogs of their own people are kind of interesting.
Groove blogs

I am finding enough stuff that I am starting to wonder if I am repeating myself here, but what the heck, that's the beauty of this medium. Sometime in the future when I have a more organized collection of citations, I may create a page on my website on this topic, but, for now, this is an easy way to randomly record what I come across, along with some thoughts.

I have been bookmarking this stuff - I use a product called Backflip to handle my bookmarks these days, but at some point, the list of bookmarks becomes lengthy.... the blog is a nice intuitive tool to help

Learning Objects eye opener

I've been learning bits and pieces about learning objects for a few years now, but I haven't been able to apply it directly to my own practice yet. But today I attended a webinar (interesting format, went and joined 2 others and we participated together) that gave me some new perspectives.

One of the speakers was Doug Macleod of eduSourceCanada, with quite a vision of a world wide repository of learning objects. A bigger vision than what I could describe here, but I am quite interested in where they are going. I like that they are using an "open source" foundation, and will be making tagging tools and such readily available. I think that's key, at least to someone like me.

The other speakers were Ed Walker of IMS Global Learning Consortium, David Porter of BCcampus, and Solvig Norman of Open School. It was a great session overall; if the slides are made available on a publicly available website, I'll come back here and put in a link.

Just visiting these sites led me to some interesting links:

I just loved this one, "Designing Learning Objects". What I liked about it, is that it answers the questions that I think instructional designers have about learning objects (or at least I did). What was most outstanding was the analogies it used, as they really connected for me, namely: "learning design as a play" vs. "learning design as a game" - as models for how learning objects fit into the instructional designers' and learners' worlds.

Other links:
Educational Objects from eduSourceCanada
The Instructional Use of Learning Objects (an entire online book!)
What are Educational Objects - from Careo
What are learning objects? - U of Milwaukee

Now, to try to capture where my brain was going while all this was going on....

I was inspired to find a way to apply the concepts of learning objects to my own work, even without all the tools. I have some ideas for my own courses that I offer, and my speaking, I think that's going to be a promising but relatively simple road to go down. What really got my thinking popping was how I might apply it to a current clients' project. We are putting some learning online, using some good development tools, but are light years away from metatagging and content reposititories. But.... the more I get the 'concepts', the more I can see what is possible. From the scratchy notes that I made during the webinar when the idea came to me, I am now working out how the various nuggets of the content we design for this online learning intervention might be repurposed.... NO, not repurposed, reused, and how that can be facilitated through some up front planning. It's causing me to step back from my design process a bit, but I've got all new insights, and I think it can work for the project (allowing objects to be used in different ways) and, perhaps, can have tagging added later that would allow it to work in a repository in the future.

My head is sparking with lots of ideas lately... I am finding the process of 'verbalizing' my thinking - really, I'm externalizing it - is helping me to both clarify and shape new ideas. Blogging is my [new] life?

Updated Nov. 23/03: here is the link to the recording of the Learning Objects event

the homeless blog too

In my research on blogs, I stumbed across this piece, "A homeless guy finds a refuge on the Internet" from USA Today, OCT 03, 2002. I am putting a link here, but not sure if it will work for others (try signing into your library's web resources). It's a rather inspiring piece about a homeless man (Kevin) and his blog. While the article is good, it's a visit to his actual blog, http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/, that is meaningful. Since I've moved to the West End here in Vancouver several months back, I've become more accustomed to being around homeless people everyday. Used to scare me, now it mostly just makes me sad. There is so little one can do to help. This blog will help me understand and, I'm sure, give me more compassion.

Unravelling research and database mysteries

Yesterday I took a 2 hour free workshop, "Research @ Your Library". It was certainly worth getting myself going on a Saturday morning. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of both the instruction and the facilities. These two librarians, Ross and Louise, did more than show the how to's... they did a wonderful job of explaining the "why" behind things. As a result, I finally undertstand the Boolean thing for the first time, and understand how a "dumb" database is responding to my requests. Light bulbs were going off! I am also in awe about the databases that are available to me, free, and on the web, with just my library card number as my price of entry. I knew they were there, but I had NO idea how much I could access. And, of course, now I know how to talk to each database in a way that it will respond with useful information.

I think everyone who wants to be able to find stuff online should take a course like I did. Although I do pretty good at finding stuff online - I have had others tell me that they think I can find anything (nice compliment), but now I feel I have double the power. Really.

An interesting outcome is that I used my quest for how blogs are being used for learning in organizations, and found all sorts of great stuff. Will cycle by here again soon to post some links.

Blog definitions, trends and uses in learning....

In continuing to explore how blogs are being used, and talking about them, I am finding folks asking me "what is a blog?" So I've been digging for definitions I can share with others. Of course, learned more along the way....
- This definition of blogging from Webopedia is short and sweet
- This description of blogging from Blogger (which powers this blog) is a good place to start
- I really like Jay Cross's description of blogging, and recommend it highly. Jay really knows his blogging (several blogs of Jay's are in my list of fav's).
- There is fascinating information on blog statistics, who blogs, live vs. dead blogs and way more on blogcount. Also some interesting stats on blogging and languages

What I am really focusing in on is how blogs can and are being used in learning and development. This is a new thought to me that I really hadn't explored, and I find is really drawing me in. There are some good posts on this topic in the Learning Times discussion forums.

I've got an e-line column to write in the next week or so, and am thinking of making this the focus. I wonder what examples of blogs in learning I can find. This is going to be an interesting exploration. This is the kind of stuff that keeps my brain lively.

Km'ing

Today I rejoined the Knowledge Management Community of Practice (www.kmcop.org), they seem to have some good stuff going on. This morning was spent with Dr. Blaize Horner Reich of SFU, and her topic was knowledge management and project management, two guru-ish themes of hers. She's embarking on an international research project on the subject, so it was quite an interesting discussion.

One of the things I found most interesting is that Europe is much more tuned into the "soft" side of projects (the social aspects). Everyone's eyebrows seemed to go up at that one... but then it made sense when she gave us the context: having experienced the 'hard' side of doing things (images of war and hitler flashing in my brain), they tend to have much more interest in the soft side of things (they have seen what the hard / no-social-concern approach can do). That left me thinking.

Today also picked up my application to go back to SFU, I seem to be craving taking a history course. Taking the step feels good, timing is about right.

What's hot in blogs?

Beginning this blog journal has made me curious about whether there have been reviews of blogs of note. Here's a bit of what I found:
Forbes list of Best Blogs
blogcanada.ca's blog list.... No, it's not a government website, look closer!

Entering the world of blogs....

About 5 months ago I really learned more about blogs, and vowed to create my own. Well, all those months went by and I still hadn't done it. Well, today while I was attending the Wired.org conference -- this is an online event hosted by iCohere -- I stumbled on the blog of another attendee. Had a few good chuckles, then when it's creator and I, Ozzie, where chatting online, I told him of my stale vow. He pointed me to blogspot -- and I decided to see how easy it would be. So, here I am blogging within about 10 minutes of the inspiration. I expect it to be a continuing evolution.

For a sense of what a blog is and can be, check out Ozzie's blog and learn about how important bolts are to the life of a satellite.

All 4 now,
Roberta