Friday, January 20, 2012

Social media for trainers: think differently!

I did a workshop last Friday on the conference 'Trends voor Trainers'. The topic was: social media as learning instrument. Amazing that I don't have to translate the title of the conference for you, I'm sure you can make sense of it in English! I forgot my adaptor (really stupid of me) and felt very disorganised working on various different laptops and computers. Skype for instance looks so differently on a Windows computer. Fortunately I have my new adaptor now. The workshop was quite successful as measured by the people who contacted me afterwards for more information, to buy my book or to ask whether they could share our test Yammer and test Ning with their colleagues.

I started with a line up: from no engagement with social media to intensive engagement. Some trainers were still at zero, a few were halfway, being a member of a few Linkedin groups and maybe on Facebook. Only a few were using social media intensively and only one had followed the hashtag #tvt12 before the conference. Then we did a second line up between zero use of social media to intensive use of social media in the context of their trainings. Many trainers moved towards zero. Some had LinkedIn groep started by their participants after the training, but then would not facilitate but follow.

Here's the presentation that followed. The key is my vision that facilitators and trainers should be amphibian facilitator, comfortable moving and facilitating online as well as offline. In that way, they can choose the right mix. However, we are not there yet, as shown by the laughter when I stated that starting a Yammer group is not more difficult than using the beamer.


2 comments:

Kelly Meeker said...

I like your metaphor of the amphibian facilitator! A perfect way to visualize the different skills necessary for succeeding online and offline.

Ruby Claire said...

Good points on social media to see on other side of grass.





Social Media questionnaire