learning re-imagined

Social Media Impact during a crisis and beyond.

As news of the devastating earthquake continues to come out I find myself pondering the role of Social Media in so much of our lives.  Not so long ago, our only source of what had happened would have come from traditional print media – the daily paper or perhaps the weekly news magazine.  Even sources like CNN might have only had some basic information while they got the right people in place to let us know what was going on.  But last week the earthquake happened and almost instantly the world was finding out about it.

The information was coming directly from people  there.  Immediate.  Instantaneous. It is the power of the social media that I find amazing.  Survivors tweet “I’m alive.”  Families search for loved ones through Facebook.  A donation to a charity can be texted from a phone.  It not only makes us aware, it makes it personal. 

We can talk about social media in learning, but really isn’t it almost all about learning something?  Immediate.  Instantaneous.  Relevant.  Learning about events far away and their impacts at home.  Learning about how you can make a difference.  And perhaps that is the power that we are only starting to explore. 

By: Stephanie Pyle

Book Review: Content Nation

We continue to add timely and informative new titles to our Books24x7,On Demand reference collections.   For example, the new book Content Nation: Surviving and Thriving as Social Media Technology Changes Our Lives and Our Future  by John Blossom (© 2009, John Wiley & Sons) was recently added to the BusinessPro collection.  I had actually borrowed a copy of this book from my local library, but did not have a chance to read it before its due date.  Boy, was I excited to see it appear in Books24x7.  (Yet another great benefit of Books24x7 – no overdue fees!)

The author of the book, John Blossom is a widely recognized content-industry analyst.  However, taking to heart some of his own advice, the book was written with extensive input from the Content Nation community.    Social Media is evolving rapidly, and the role of content producer and content consumer are blurring to the point where they cannot be put into nice neatly-defined compartments anymore.  The book describes how social media is changing everything – how people connect with each other, as well as their governments and other institutions, not to mention the impact on social structures and marketing.  I especially like the “Seven Secrets” of Social Media, as outlined in Chapter 2.   My favorite is Secret # 2: “Technology matters in social media, but not as much as understanding what people are looking for: to influence others and to be influenced by them”.   

What do you think?  Read this book and let us know.  BusinessPro subscribers can access this book on Books24x7.

By: Pam Boiros

 

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

Nice to meet you, can't wait to learn from you!

 “If you have lunch with the same people you’ve been having lunch with for five years, you’ll probably have the same conversations you’ve been having for five years.  Have lunch with someone new!  You both might learn something!”  - Tom Peters

Some of the most fascinating and intellectually fun people I know are constantly meeting and interacting with new people.  We once spent an hour with Patrick Dixon as he stood in front of a camera and provided stacks of incredible stories and insights one after another on highly divergent topics and never once repeated himself.  I asked him later where in the world with all of his touring and lecturing did he have time to do research?  He explained his lecturing and traveling was his research.  He gets invited to all varieties of industry meetings and conferences, and as a result shares meals and conversations with players at all levels in banking, in trade, in technology, in politics, in climate change, and much more.  And he doesn’t claim to be an expert in any of these disciplines but approaches each event and conversation with an open and inquiring mind.

He has a marvelous story in which he was attending a financial trade conference and having dinner with some top executives.  Around the table, each was explaining their role in the banking industry and after one gentleman provided a lengthy and complicated explanation of his work in derivatives trading, Patrick asked, “I don’t mean to impolite, but do you understand what you do?”  The gentleman paused and said, “It’s true, what I do has become so complicated even I don’t always understand it.  Sometimes if I take a shower and have a brisk walk and clear my mind, if my boss were to call me at that moment I could clearly explain our derivatives product.”

Patrick used that interaction and story to share in later presentations on the value of trust and compliance.  The tip here is: get out of your comfort zone, have new conversations and don’t be afraid to ask a provocative question or two.  Good luck!

By: Shawn Hunter

e-learning 101

e-learning can provide benefits at all levels of an organization. Because I work in the industry, the benefits are obvious to me. But recent blog posts by two of my colleagues, Rachel and Julie got me thinking about those benefits again and about the fact that maybe some of them aren’t so obvious to the rest of the world. So for my second blog post, I thought for my second post a little return to basics might be in order.

For learners, e-learning resources provide the ultimate in self-service education. E-learning resources are “always on” allowing learners to access materials where and when it best suits their schedules and their learning needs. A diverse library of learning assets also means that learners can choose the best learning modality to match their learning style. And because learners can return to materials over time, they can review and refresh their learning from other e- or live learning experiences increasing the impact of all your training efforts.

From an organization standpoint, e-learning can often provide a cost-effective means for increasing the impact of training within your organization by making resources available to more people. Workshops, seminars, and other classroom-based training options can be highly effective . . . but they can also be costly and they require learners to spend time away from the job. As a result, you may have to limit participation in these live events to a select portion of your audience. With e-learning you can provide learning materials to more of your audience with minimal disruption of their work.

Obviously these are just a few of the benefits to using e-learning within an organization. What other benefits of e-learning are important to your learners or to your learning organization?

Next week I’ll be heading off to present at Learning 2009 in Orlando Florida. I’m looking forward to spending time immersed in the great learning culture and learning from and sharing with my colleagues. If you’re there, look me up. We can compare notes . . . or hit the rides!

By: Tim Hildreth

Halloween Candy and Bite Sized Learning

On this Halloween eve I am thinking about (and of course eating) candy. Like many people I tend to take a treat from the various bowls around the office, a Hersey’s Kiss® from here, a MaryJane® from there. (By the way, check out this great interactive Hershey’s site where you can build a custom Kiss and email it to a pal.) For some reason, stopping to enjoy some bite-size bits throughout the day seems perfectly acceptable.  Of course I wouldn’t dream of eating an entire regular size candy bar.  That would be fattening! So much for logic.   

In some ways we’ve seen a similar trend in learning.  Many learners are put off by the idea of a “regular size” course.  Two-three hours seems like an awfully long time in the middle of a busy work day.  But a smaller serving of learning that’s right at your fingertips is fine.  In the past several years SkillSoft has introduced a number of learning assets that are shorter in duration than traditional courses, and the response from customers has been a resounding “More please!”  So, you’ll see SkillSoft continue to produce a stream of learning products that fit into our learners’ hectic schedules, everything from one-hour courses to the diminutive Learning Sparks.  And of course we’ll continue to expand our on-demand resources such as Books24x7 collections and Leadership Development Channel—great for quick answers and inspiration.

Don’t get me wrong, our customers still want and need in-depth learning resources to support compliance, certification and other mission-critical needs.  Just like every once in a while I give in to the urge for the full size Baby Ruth® (and be sure to take a moment and give in to the urge to check out this hysterical Baby Ruth site!).

By: Julie Ogilvie

Alphabet Soup of Technology

I recently attended a meeting of the local Kansas City “LIG” of the itSMF-USA.  itSMF-USA is a membership-based, IT Service Management professional forum with over 40 Local Interest Groups (“LIG”s) in the US, and affiliated groups globally.  The practice of IT Service Management has grown to cover an “alphabet soup” of interrelated technology and business frameworks, standards, and methodologies including ITIL®, COBIT, PRINCE2, Six Sigma, PMP/Project Management and many others.   This meeting was held at Sprint’s beautiful corporate campus in Overland Park, KS, and once again I was pleased to see IT professionals recognize the key role that training plays in rolling out any technology initiative.   From overall organizational awareness of ITIL, to preparing candidates for various professional certifications, providing training resources to employees is integral to technology success.  We had the opportunity to present the KC crowd the various e-learning solutions SkillSoft offers to support these various initiatives, including SkillChoice IT and the Books24x7 ITPro and ITIL collections.

By: Pam Boiros

So many emails, so little time: Read the ones that matter

We all get so much email these days; we have a work email address, a home email address, and other varied and sundry accounts to manage such as FaceBook and Twitter.  Although spam filters help with some of the true junk mail, I know that I still get a lot of things I barely read. 

Once in a while, a great summary update comes along and I just LOVE it when it shows up in my inbox.  If you do not subscribe to the alert email in Books24X7 titled “Books24x7 New Title Notification” it is the one email I absolutely love to get.  It feels like a virtual trip to the neighborhood book store.  The email originates as a Books24x7 subscriber, checking the boxes for topics that are important to the individual.  I personally love only getting titles that matter to me.  It shows little icons of the newly released titles that are on Books24X7.  Running through it takes all of 45 seconds to see what is new in my area of interest.  It helps me stay current on things happening in areas that matter to me.

One day recently, I was scrolling through the titles I saw the photo of a colleague of mine who recently recorded a “Quick Talk” for the Leadership Development Channel series.  Pamela Meyer is an author and business owner who also teaches at DePaul University, which is where I met her.  It gave me a great reason to connect with her and catch up.  It was also great to see what she had to say.  I also find books I want to dive more deeply into for my personal and professional needs, all in a short time frame.  If you do not get this email weekly, be sure you go to your Books24x7 profile (Click the “Settings” tab then click “Email Options”) and set one up.  It is a great “coffee break”!

By: Lori Neblung

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