learning re-imagined

Thanksgiving - The Perfect Mix

Thanksgiving is before us. I cannot believe it. It is time to mix family, food, wine, laughter, and likely a few age old family stories that can’t seem to go untold. It should be a really fun time; seeing family that you haven’t seen in a while; catching up with friends and loved ones. And yet, the holidays often become very stressful; overwhelming… so many moving parts.

Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like I’m writing about something other than Thanksgiving? We spend a lot of time at SkillSoft discussing our assets; and we have many of them! It’s like a huge Thanksgiving meal; so much food, so little time. So, what is someone supposed to do when it gets confusing?

SkillSoft KnowledgeCenters aggregate relevant data around a subject, so learners can gain access to courses, Books24x7, Business Impact and Challenge Series titles, mentoring, Learning Sparks, Learning Roadmaps, and other assets. And, it’s all about one subject – leadership, management, project management, Oracle, Six Sigma, Java, and many, many others. So, in essence, KnowledgeCenters provide only the assets you need around a particular subject.

Now, wouldn’t that be nice for Thanksgiving? My Thanksgiving KnowledgeCenter would include all the great food, some family (but not all!), good friends, wine, a beautiful sunny day, and perhaps a time limit, so it’s not awkward when it’s time to say goodnight.  I’d leave out the family drama, the arguments that tend to resurface around the holidays, and the guilt associated with not getting to see everyone who I’d like to see. 

I’ve just described my ideal Thanksgiving in a package. That’s what a KnowledgeCenter is. It’s a universe of learning around one topic, where every asset is handpicked just for you!

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble, gobble!

By: Rachel Levine

Epiphany on iTouch

OK, let’s first establish the context – I am a Baby Boomer (well, really, on the very youngest edge of that generational divide).  My peers think that I’m a technology genius since I work in elearning, after all – but really I feel that I’m falling behind every day.  I asked for an iTouch ^TM for my last birthday so that I can read MapQuest on the big screen to find my way around, and because I love the way you can zoom in on photos with that finger-stretch action.  Last night, after a ten hour day of working on my laptop, I shifted from my home office to the living room sofa to transition to “leisure time.”  (There really is a connection to learning coming soon.)

The home page of my iTouch has a YouTube icon.  As a way of getting acquainted with my iTouch, I was systematically  tapping all the icons and menus, including YouTube.  I’ve launched very few YouTube videos, because I’ve not been too interested in the Dancing Babies and other “educational” subjects you hear about on the evening news.  But I eventually tapped the “Most Viewed” icon and what came to the top of the list was a video called “Carl Sagan – A Glorious Dawn” (Cosmos Remixed).  Now this title appealed to my passion for academic inquiry, and so I launched.

The music, the images – captivating.  I mean, a DJ re-re-remix, you know? But within, the pearls of wisdom: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”  I’m mesmerized by the quality of the image on the screen, the clarity of sound through the ear-buds: “A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise – a morning filled with four hundred billion suns, the rising of the Milky Way.”  Science, poetry and thought, together in the palm of my hand: “The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean; recently we’ve waded in, and the water seems inviting…”

Leisure, learning, recreation, learning, music, learning, imagery, learning…blended til the boundaries are impossible to discern.  (This being my own poetry, almost as mystical as Carl Sagan’s.)  The point, dear reader, is that the immediacy of the learning opportunity is what drew me into my learning moment.  And so we observe the very equal importance of content and delivery.

This is the idea behind SkillSoft learning portlets.  Portlets bring access to learning out of the Learning Management System and into the familiar online sites where employees already spend time.  In the course of day-to-day work, an employee is one click away from problem-solving information or personal enrichment.  With all the priorities competing for the time and attention of today’s knowledge worker, convenient access is as critical as engaging content.

By: Darlene Frederick

Cloudy with a chance of clear skies ahead

Between blog posts by book publisher Tim O’Reilly, and the recent announcement by Google about the pending release of the Google Editions ebook store, there has been a lot of talk recently about “books on the cloud” and the concept of a “cloud library.”  The terms are borrowed from the broader “cloud computing” concept, which encompasses a wide range of managed services, including; software as a service (SaaS), software on demand, and platform as a service (PaaS) technologies. Basically, cloud computing offers new, flexible and generally more affordable ways to build, deliver, and purchase software.   

The truth is that “books on the cloud” are nothing new.  Here at Books24x7, we’ve been doing it for over 10 years.  In the fall of 1999, Books24x7 released its first online, on demand, reference collection.  At launch, ITPro consisted of 200 technical books delivered in a “24x7” web based environment.  In those early days, we didn’t need to do much more than put the content online and offer the solution in a simple subscription-based model to drive huge demand and create raving fans.  As hard as it is to imagine, in 1999 we weren’t all living in a 24x7 on demand web world.  But IT folks and other technical professionals were.  As the early adopters of what are now considered to be rudimentary web technologies -- listservs, text-only email, early HTML websites painfully delivered over dial up networks -- techies the world over were more than ready for a new delivery method for trusted technical content.   Our publisher partners saw the potential, and most jumped at the chance to provide a new means of access  to their readers, while deriving new revenue streams for themselves.

Over the years we have  exponentially grown the number of titles available, as well as the range of Books24x7 topical collections, and enhanced the platform feature set and delivery methods to encompass deep portal integrations, mobile access, and more.   But, from day one, the content has always resided on web servers ready for instant “anytime, anywhere” access.   Today, “books on the cloud” may be the fashionable buzzword; but regardless of terminology, a great idea that puts knowledge in the hands of people who need it most is always in vogue.

By: Pam Boiros

Learning Tricks: Suggestions For Making Time for Learning

 

I’m not one of those people who feels overloaded by information. I am excellent at multi-tasking and unless something completely throws me for a loop, I normally don’t drop too many of the balls that I’m constantly juggling.  I field instant messages, email, RSS feeds and people walking into my work space all day long. I don’t skip a beat. My work gets done.

But, all of that goes out the window when I’m trying to learn something. I need quiet. I need peace. I need a way to zone out and allow myself to fully engage in the learning situation I’ve embarked on.  And, that’s not easy to do in the chaos of a normal work day.

So, here are few tricks that I learned along the way.

• ·I try to find a quiet conference room and hide. People assume that I’m in a meeting and I don’t get too many people looking for me.  I also shut off my email and my instant messenger.  I confess to being one of those people who cannot let an email go by without reading it. So, shutting my email off completely takes away the temptation.
•  Blocking time off in my calendar shows people that I’m busy and usually stops people from pulling me into last minute meetings. And, if I can, I try to schedule that time first thing in the morning before I get caught up in the day and decide to put it off.
•  Earphones go a long way in quieting the chatter around me if I’m sitting at my desk. And, I don’t mean iPod ear buds. I use the old school, big, honking ear phones. People can easily see that I’m listening to something as they walk by my door.  
• Finally, I really try to focus on only the learning – for the duration of the learning event – without allowing myself to be interrupted. Stopping and starting gets confusing. It also forces me to go back a bit when I re-start because I have trouble remembering what I started to learn during my previous session. Spending uninterrupted, dedicated time stops me from spending extra time re-doing work if I have to start and stop a few times.

Our learning consultants suggest a range of other useful tactics as well. They suggest a door tag – much like a hotel room ‘do not bother’ tag - that indicates learning is in progress and to please allow for some privacy. They also suggest a learning version of caution tape; A funny way to make the same point.

We all agree that learning is a critical piece of growing on the job. But, time isn’t usually on our side. The trick is to find what works for you and utilize those tactics to ensure that you give yourself the time and space to learn. It’s not always easy but it’s surely worth the effort.

By: Rachel Levine

Café: It’s about a conversation.

I would not be the first person to observe that companies are often like families.  Especially in organizations where employees stick around for a while, over time you begin to feel like you know the people in your workplace as well as you do your family members.  You know their strengths, weaknesses and eccentricities.  You know who has a wicked sense of humor and who has that annoying habit of bouncing their leg and shaking the conference room table (that would be me).  And you share a history of success and failure that binds you together in a shared purpose. 

One of the things that I find fascinating about SkillSoft is that this family feeling extends to our customers.  This may sound like schmaltzy marketing talk, but I think you would hear the same thing if you talked to one of our long-time customers, and there are many of those.  You would undoubtedly hear a mix of our strengths, weaknesses and our eccentricities, but in most cases, it would be wrapped in an overall tone of affection.

I’m thinking of these things because next week we’re holding Café, which is an event that really embodies SkillSoft and the bond we share with our customers.  Café stands for Client Advisory Forum Event, but the word Café feels more accurate, with its overtone of a coffee klatch.  Café has existed for about as long as SkillSoft has existed, and it has always played an extremely important role in driving the company’s direction and the products we bring to market.  Every year we have a mix of first-timers and customers who are returning for their third or fourth or fifth time. 

Café is like a big focus group in some respects.  We divide customers into groups and discuss various topics. I happen to be a big believer in focus groups because I think there is no substitute for hearing from customers in their own words.  So often companies become ensconced in their own jargon and it may be completely different from the language their customers speak.  There is only one cure for that, and it’s getting out there and hearing what they have to say, directly from their very mouths.

When I started with SkillSoft six years ago, my first day was at a Café.  I remember the day evolving the way large group events often do, with some awkward silence in the morning, and by the afternoon, opinions were flying and conversations were bubbling up on unplanned topics.  Moderators were being challenged to keep discussions within time limits and people stuck around at the close of the event to talk to their colleagues about things that were important to them.

Over the years the format has evolved a bit, and the topics have also changed.  Back then the clients were responsible for taking notes in the breakout sessions and reporting back to the larger group.  The thought was that this gave them more buy-in.  While this may have been true, some felt that it was kind of like inviting someone over to dinner and making them do the dishes.  So now a SkillSoft person keeps the notes and delivers the PowerPoint, but the intent is still to reflect what the customers have said, in their own words.

The topics are much more far ranging as well.  That first Café I attended revolved largely around which course topics SkillSoft should be developing.  In next week’s meeting we’ll talk about the evolving role of courseware, but we’ll also discuss mobile learning, social learning and the future of games and simulations.  And I’m sure there will be some topics no one anticipated.

What I remember most fondly about Cafés of the past are the evening events where we got to know each other on a more personal level.  In 2004 the Yankees and Red Sox were locked in a heated post-season battle, and we were scheduled to board a dinner cruise in the San Francisco harbor.  TVs were brought in to appease die-hard fans on both sides, and that may go down as the loudest dinner in Café history (the Red Sox broke their 86-year championship drought that year, but I’m not saying the two events are directly related). 

Another memorable night was the songwriter’s dinner in Nashville, TN.  I’m not a huge country music fan, but hearing about the inner workings of the music industry was fascinating.  And after a couple of the songs touched on topics close to our hearts, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

So perhaps this is a fitting way to kick off SkillSoft’s entry into the world of blogging.  Our hope is to extend the conversation to more people, and to keep it going throughout the year.  I’m optimistic we can do this, but it will never replace the experience of gathering in a room and listening to what people have to say, in their own words.

By: Julie Ogilvie