Group items tagged

Article by Robert Whipple, on how to overcome distance in building trust. "How can a leader effectively use technology to build trust and cohesion in a decentralized team environment? * Clarify a strategy for how communication should be optimized for their particular team dynamic. * Ensure all team members are trained to use all the different communication methods properly and have the proper equipment to use it easily. * Have a well understood policy for when to use each type of communication. What sorts of communications need a permanent record? When is it important to be able to see a person, face to face? Some decisions are not clear cut, but it is important for the leader to teach the team what to consider when making the choice of how to communicate. * Model the behavior you wish to see."

very good blog post on building networks both strategically and serendipitously, October 27, 2015

Interesting article in Educational Psychologist 50(4), 313-334, 2015 Constructivist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning by Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke. Although the research is about k-12, there are implications in this article for all learners.They used existing research (using specific criteria to choose appropriate research) about gaming use and principles, and then used constructivist theory to posit a new way of gaming design. Gaming is very effective in building coding and computational concepts, practices, and perspectives as identified by other researchers, but the authors go further in applying the constructivist theory of personal, social, and cultural tenets to these categories. They argue that student-designed gaming is an effective way to build social networks around a work purpose, and that iterative processes are going to be the norm.

great post by Bernadette Noll on importance of building your tribe to help you do what's important to you, 8/28/2013

Community Wins, an action oriented workbook on building a thriving online tribe, Bryan Allain, 2012. Amazon

by Eric Barker on building good habits based on research by Dr. Sean Young at UCLA, a behavior change specialist

English version of how to build a PLN. Great visual and step by step guide

This video by Seth Dickens poses two questions 1) What do I know that could be shared? and 2) What do I want to learn? While I might disagree with the order, the rest of the video (about 4 minutes long) does a beautiful job of explaining what a learning (professional or personal) network is and what it allows one to do to connect purposeful and learn. Other information: Uploaded on Feb 21, 2012 This short video is an introduction to PLNs; known also as "Professional Learning Networks" and "Personal Learning Networks." These simple, organic networks help professionals to continually learn and add new skills and knowledge through informal learning. I'd be delighted to add you to my PLN, whether you're just getting started, or have already established a network. Join me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sethdickens Find me at my blog: www.digitalang.com/blog For Teacher-Training Seminars & educational Consultancy please contact info@digitalang.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free: to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work , to Remix - to adapt the work, to make commercial use of the work provided under the following conditions Attribution - You must attribute the work to Seth Dickens -www.digitalang.com Noncommercial - You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Share Alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

report by National Council of Nonprofits on using a network approach to leverage resources & knowledge-worth checking out

Excellent article by Jan H. Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy, and Bruno S. Silvestre explaining social media building blocks in Business Horizons (2011) 54, 241-251. Like the honeycomb image of social media functionality in particular.

Interesting blog post by Jane Hart on building an enterprise learning network within an enterprise social network. Is the WLS going to be an enterprise learning network? Perhaps not in the usual sense of an organization with employees comprising a workforce. But perhaps it can use some of the same techniques advocated by Hart below: Under Part Two 1. new social approaches to training and online learning--backchannel learning, online social workshops ("participants with a lot of autonomy, so that they participate in the ways that they feel more comfortable and best suits them..." ); tiny training aka microlearning--short bursts of learning ten minutes long... 2. Innovative Learning Initiatives--social onboarding, social mentoring 3. Continuous series of learning activities and events 10 minutes a day - provide a daily link to a place where individuals can spend just 10 minutes learning something new. Note: 10 minutes a day, each weekday adds up to around 6 days of training in a year! Live chats - run regular live Twitter-like live chat sessions on different topics. They might just take place over 1 hour or be a longer all-day event that people can join in at any time. Hot seats - put one of your people (e.g. CEO or a leading expert) in the hot seat for a period of time, and encourage employees to ask them questions. Book club - organise a monthly time for conversation around a book of interest. Lunch'n'Learns - ask someone to lead a short informal session on a topic of interest to them. This might be purely conversational or involve a web meeting or face-to-face meeting, with the ELN used as a backchannel. 4 - SUPPORT OTHER PEOPLE-BASED LEARNING SERVICES Your ESN provides the opportunity to set up and support other learning activities in private group spaces. A Learning Help Desk service (aka Learning Concierge service) which provides an advice centre for ad hoc learning and performance problems. - See more at:

Harold Jarche from 2014 on engaging knowledge artisans. "Complex environments are the new normal. Relationship building is needed in order to share complex knowledge. Implicit knowledge takes time to share, so time has to be set aside for sense-making, reflecting, and conversing. These are significant workplace changes, but can be mastered with a stable foundation of PKM practiced by interdependent and autonomous knowledge artisans. When everybody is engaged in sense-making, then any organization can better sense where it needs to go."

by Gregory Ciotti, good tips and research links on building good habits

Great wiki to help build a personal learning network. Has FAQs, steps, 5 top tools, getting started

Reflection blog post by Nancy White on 1.9.13 on her Project Community course that she co-taught at the Hague. Offers many insights including this jewel below on what the learning design must bring together: "The other aspect of the design was to bring three elements together: sense making discussions about the subject matter (synchronously in class and asynchronously on the class website), insights from weekly "guests" shared via 5-10 minute videos (to bring a variety of voices), and action learning through small group experiences and team projects. I know there are strong feelings about team projects, but building collaboration skills was part of the course learning objectives, so this was a "must do." And we spent time talking about the how - -and reflecting on what was and wasn't working as a vector for learning these skills."

Helpful suggestions for conducting Tweet Chats

Blog post by Harold Jarche, Life in Perpetual Beta blog, March 24, 2013. Asserts that enterprise social tools can go only so far to help people share their knowledge because people wish to retain ownership and use as they see fit it. Excerpt: "People will freely share their knowledge if they remain in control of it. Knowledge is a very personal thing. Most workers do not care about organizational knowledge bases. They care about what they need to get work done. However, if we are going to build organizational knowledge from individual knowledge-sharing, we have to connect the two."

Video by Off Book/PBS on how YouTube has broadened what we think of as entertaining, valuable, educational, etc. Fast Feedback loop on content. June 6, 2013 Unlike TV, can comment on it and affect directly what is being made, importance of subscription for those who want to watch it. "Just so cool that people all over the world can build a community and drive development." Very intimate and close up framing of videos on YouTube. That comes across, makes it feel personal. "Has to feel like one person is in charge of everything, otherwise it doesn't feel like YouTube." Using feedback mechanisms and viewer interactivity to make new stuff Even TimeWarners of world are reallocating resources to YouTube production "Will be as comfortable going to YouTube as turning on TV"

blog by Harold Jarche on the Connected Workplace, 4.15.2013 Excerpts: "Implicit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships. It requires trust before people willingly share their know-how. Social networks can enable better and faster knowledge feedback for people who trust each and share their knowledge. But hierarchies and work control structures constrain conversations. Few people want to share their ignorance with the boss who controls their paycheck. But if we agree that complex and creative work are where long-term business value lies, then learning amongst ourselves is the real work in organizations today. In this emerging network era, social learning is how work gets done." ..."Personal knowledge management (PKM) skills can help to make sense of, and learn from, the constant stream of information that workers encounter from social channels both inside and outside the organization." ..."Collaboration skills can help workers to share knowledge so that people work and learn cooperatively in teams, communities of practice, and social networks." ..."Leaders need to understand the importance of organizational architecture. Working smarter in the future workplace starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust."

Second story by Eric Nelson offers good reasons for volunteering during transitions to build relationships, references, reach clarity on new directions, etc. January 29, 2013.