Group items tagged

Article on Leaning into Discomfort: Social Sector Leadership inthe 21st Century, NPQ (Nonprofit Quarterly), May 7, 2012 Excerpt from interview with Nancy Northup, Center for Reproductive Rights: ""In fact, leaning into discomfort, I think, is critical, to make sure that what we are doing-both externally, as we work to establish reproductive rights around the world, and internally, at the organization level-is bold enough. The organization had better be feeling discomfort if it's leaning into new strategies and ways of working. "You have always to ask, Am I pushing for the change that's really needed? On all of those levels, you have to continually refresh and check and make sure that you're getting the most power for the mission by being as uncomfortable as possible. Because change is hard, and the reason why you have to look at all those different levels-yourself, your organization, and then the world-is that if you're not willing to hold the tension of change as an organization, how can you begin to understand what you have to risk and what others have to risk to make change happen in the world?"" Excerpt from interview with Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance: As Poo observed, "Domestic workers work in isolated workplaces. They don't have any job security whatsoever, and there are no labor standards or protections, except-for now-in New York, because of us. But really, there's nothing mediating the relationship between a worker and an employer-your workplace is somebody else's so-called castle. It already takes a lot of courage to assert your rights and dignity, and to make sure that you get paid on time, and to make sure that you can get home on time to your own children. And all of these challenges that are just day-to-day challenges of living in that environment already demonstrate a tremendous amount of day-to-day courage." Excerpt from interview with George Goehl, National People's Action â€

Stephanie Hirsh of Learning Forward describes how teams and districts may transform their professional learning, June 25, 2015.

"What You'll Learn: In this highly interactive three-day workshop, we'll take a deep dive into transformative leadership for social change. Employing the framework if "I/We/It" What you'll learn: Why mindfulness is a critical leadership skill How to shift from "ego" to "eco" or system-awareness The difference between organizational and network leadership How to identify your allies, build relationships, and map your network What "systems-change" is, and how to scale social impact   Why design-thinking is a critical skill for change-makers Case-studies of organizations and networks that have achieved impact at scale "

Blog post by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner on leadership groups within communities as act of service to lead group process. September 14, 2012 Need to do something like this in setting up Studio leadership roles that could be period specific, event specific, etc. See excerpt: The practice goes like this: everyone at a meeting belongs to a leadership group - and each group stewards one part of the learning process of the whole group. In this way leadership of the community meeting is distributed over the entire event. Leadership here is seen as an act of service, that is, not leadership in terms of telling others what to do, but helping the group develop itself as a learning partnership. We've seen these groups lead to some transformational turn-arounds in group dynamics and the learning potential. (Notwithstanding the times they flopped - which led us to learn a great deal!) We gave playful names to the groups in the spirit of making it a fun and inventive way of leading the process: agenda activists, community keepers, critical friends, social reporters, external messengers, value detectives. Over the years we've come to see that these groups can work well in lots of different contexts including group meetings, conferences, and long-term community development. Anywhere, that is, where there is an intention for collective learning.

blog post by Clark Quinn, September 25, 2012, on transcending experience design "they argued that what was due next was a "transformation economy", where people paid for experiences that change them (in ways that they desire or value).

"Enrolling in MOOCs has a lot to do with what drives me, and what I think drives most adult learners: the desire to understand, to know and to increase personal competency." Organic learning communities are replacing formal lectures. Self-discovery coupled with peer-to-peer interaction, sharing and co-learning is transforming the learning landscape

A client of mine is closing in on his 61st birthday - He's a baby boomer. He's also embarking on an amazing journey, leaving a sort-of safe corporate job to jump back into the start-up pool. Risky? You bet. But informing his decision is the knowledge that he is a [...]

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.

got this on LinkedIn

Blog by Harold Jarche, April 30, 2012. This excerpt IMO justifies why women (and everyone else!) needs to know how to work in social networks to learn and to help others learn and apply their "capacity for action" in their workplaces and elsewhere. They can transform their workplaces through enriched learning practices. They may not have the HR title but they can still role model organizational learning on a small scale at least. Excerpt: "Individual learning in organizations is irrelevant, as work is almost never done by one person alone. Knowledge, Senge said, is the capacity for effective action (know how) and it is the only aspect of knowledge that really matters in business and life. Value is created by teams and mostly by networks of people. While learning may be generated in teams, this type of knowledge comes and goes. Learning really spreads through social networks." Excerpt: It shows that the company never gave any thought to organizational learning. â– Are employees narrating their work in a transparent environment? â– Does the daily routine support social learning? â– Is time made available for reflection and sharing stories? "Narrating their work in a transparent environment," "support social learning," and "reflection" are all linked to other resources.

blog post by Dmitri Dragilev in Better Humans "Dopamine is why CEOs write down goals and vision statements. As you move toward these goals, mentors and advisors reassure you that you are moving in the right direction and every step of the way you get a shot of dopamine. The problem is that all of us have learned how to cheat the system and get shots of dopamine without actually accomplishing anything. Gambling is a great example, every time you pull that handle on a slot machine you get dopamine. Alcohol is the same story, a shot of whiskey = a shot of dopamine, you want more, you repeat; you're not actually moving toward a vision or a goal." I too am guilty of dopamine addiction. I love email and depend on it for a lot of my day to day work. I love instigating stuff, fast back and forths, and knowing what is happening everywhere. But I have found that all this stuff re-prioritizes my day quite a bit. For the past year I have successfully disabled email, Twitter, Facebook, and text message notifications on my phone and have kept it off since then. My life has been transformed. Not only do I find that there are a lot less distractions, I find that I stay focused on the right tasks that keep me marching toward my overall goal. Again, I'm not saying that what I did is the magic formula for everyone. What I am saying is that perhaps it's time to re-assess how much you check your email, text messages, social media and your devices in general and see if you're cheating the system in order to get a rush of dopamine or you're truly marching toward your goal.

The new science of social physics which is about the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors. Alex Pentland has a new book: Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread: The Lessons from a New Science that explores the patterns of information exchange in social networks, the ways humans are like bees, and how networks large and small can be tuned to increase exploration and community engagement.

"TED (Technology/Design/Entertainment) is celebrating its 30 anniversary in March and has transformed the art of keynote speeches. Since TED "talks" are now viewed online more than two million times a day and smaller, independently run TEDx events are held in 145 countries, there's a good chance that people in every audience has seen a TED talk. That means, like it or not, your next presentation will be compared to TED!"

"Networking is a prime form of 21st century learning.  The world is much smaller thanks to technology.  Learning is transforming into a globally collaborative enterprise.  Take for example scientists; professional networks allow the scientific community to share discoveries much faster. Just this month, a tech news article showcased how Harvard scientists are considering that "sharing discoveries is more efficient and honorable than patenting them."  This idea embodies the true spirit of a successful professional learning network: collaboration for its own sake. As educators, we aim to be connected to advance our craft.  On another level, we hope to teach students to use networks to prepare for them for a changing job market.  But what is the best way to approach PLNs?"

Blog post by Brianna Crowley, Oct. 23, 2013 Excerpt "Then I found an online community of educators who taught in schools across the country and in classrooms ranging from pre-K to higher education. They were authors, keynote speakers, and policy advocates. This interdisciplinary and diverse community challenged me to adopt a new perspective: Rather than simply identifying problems in my district, my classroom, and the educational system, I should propose the solutions. The CTQ Collaboratory transformed my practice by allowing me to see myself as a teacher leader whose experience in the classroom should empower me to affect decisions outside of my classroom. With the support and encouragement of this teacher-leader community, I began to engage with other educator communities through Twitter, ASCD, and Edmodo. Through these networks, I found not only teachers, but principals, superintendents, and authors willing to discuss the issues I was passionate about: educational technology, educational policy, and reimagined schools"

Fascinating and scary look about how the internet and the access to the widest range of resources imaginable, many of them beyond the scope of our individual capacities, is changing the role of classroom teacher to facilitator, and the role of pastor to facilitator through multi-site transmission of the sermons delivered by the best faith orators. Makes me wonder about WLS facilitation, too. Atlantic, Michael Godsey, march 25, 2015.

Although written in 2011, it forecasts nicely how LMSs are being revamped/enhanced/integrated with business performance & business transformation. Really it's about boundary management, too, in terms of formal employer led/sponsored training/learning and what employees may learn and apply on their own.

Great article on why more progress in the classroom isn't happening with student-centered uses of technology. June 10, 2015 Edweek, quotes Larry Cuban.

blog by Tanveer Naseer on leadership terms. Tweeted by Lolly Daskal in March 2014. Terms are meraki (Greek for doing something with love, creativity, & self); sawubona--seeing those we lead for the people they are; ubuntu--becoming aware of the impact we have on those around us; Taarradhin--transforming compromise from zero-sum into a win for everyone.

blog by Eli Dourado on March 6, 2013 on binge learning. Excerpt: A combination of technology (DVRs) and market service providers (Netflix, Hulu, On Demand) have transformed how and when and where we watch "television." I suspect that students want the same things. Technology and market forces appear to be reshaping how and when and where we learn. Perhaps we education providers should pay attention. But the kind of bingeing that people might like to do with online courses is entirely different. Most people who sign up for an online class at Udacity or Marginal Revolution University want to take the class for its own sake, not as a requirement for some broader credential. The point is not to learn and forget-it is to indulge an interest. This seems like a more natural way to learn than traditional educational structures can offer: develop an interest and mercilessly indulge it until another interest supersedes it. It is a method that conserves the mental energy associated with willpower, leaving more of the brain's resources to focus on the material itself. Since it relies on the student actually being interested in the class, it is hard to fit into a physical schooling environment, where classes have to begin on a schedule, go slow enough for everyone to keep up, and run in parallel with other classes. Online education also saves the resources associated with context switching. Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Each time a high school student has to change classes, she has to quickly stifle the thoughts and questions raised in previous classes to focus on the current class. She has to expend mental resources remembering where the previous session of the current class left off. And when she returns to the class that stimulated the thoughts that had to be stifled, she may not recall them. Far better to focus on-or even to binge on-one subject until she is at a good stopping point.