The dangers of social media for youth

The high school of my daughter organised a meeting about "internet and social media". As you might guess it was focused on the dangers.. "The potential hazards are discussed and the possibilities to take measures to enhance safety .." It was very funny to hear someone do the opposite of what I do: I'm trying to enthuse people about professional use of social media and Donny Gieskens of the 'stichting veilig online' (Foundation internet safety) is raising awareness about the dangers of Internet and social media .. and he did make his point! Especially with his presentation with the blonde girl on his webcam who turned out to be an old man:). There are a lot of technical possibilities to create innovative online communities, but also for people with bad intentions.

I wanted to make notes for this blog post but thought a laptop would look kind of weird. And there was no wifi so live-blogging was not even an option. Eventually I brought an iPad for notes and I was the only one. Finally I did not dare to take pictures because it is forbidden by school protocol!.

Though I pity the fact that social media are usually approached from the danger side by parents, it felt useful to have a look at side of social media to which I usually don't pay a lot of attention. I might give it a clearer space within my own work.

Some facts

First some facts and figures for 12-16 year olds in the Netherlands

• What does a typical teenager do on the internet? Main use is YouTube (videos), MSN messenger (chat), browsing (surfing), social media (contacts and new contacts), Word (word processing) and games (gaming)
• 87% had a bad experience through the internet.
  
• 1 in 4 boys aged 12-16 engages in cybersex
• 2 out of 10 have met someone in real life they met through the Internet (but so do I!)
• 1 in 100 parents think their child has been involved in cyberbullying
• However, 40 out of 100 teenagers has really engaged in cyberbullying
• 12-16 year olds play on average 1 hour day games
• There are already 5.9 million years played in the game World of Warcraft
• On average, a 21 year old has gamed for 10,000 hours
  

The dangers

1. Information sharing

Importantly, a lot of information is shared by children, which the parents don't want to be shared, such as holiday dates (burglars are actively using the internet for information too!). The caches of search engines will all be kept for five years, what teenagers do not always realize. So when you share a picture when you are 16, this picture may still be found on the net when you apply for a job at 21. The privacy settings on social networking sites (like MySpace and Facebook) are not always set consciously to visible for friends only. Moreover Twitter has a public account by default, what teenagers may not realize. Youngsters do not always realize what their settings are and whether their information is public or visible only to friends. Also with links between network sites like Twitter and Facebook privacy settings can be overwritten. On a positive note: companies like MySpace and Facebook may sell user statistics, but not the individual information, because it is protected by the (dutch) law on personal data.

Some tips on sharing information are: Use a nickname (not your own name and not sexygirl15). This is an opinion contrary to my advice in building a professional identity however ... And ensure good privacy settings: have a look at them together.

2. Cyberbullying

Bullying can be done by acquaintances or strangers (anonymous).

Tips: Keep all threatening or bullying emails. Every Internet connection has its own IP address, and is recognizable. In a chat program you can block unwanted people, chat programs are required to provide this function. If bullying comes from a public computer, eg library, there are many cameras that have registered who have made use of this computer, so the anonymous persons are traceable.

3. Phishing

Phishing is social engineering by imitating emails individuals are trying to extort information. If you give someone your password voluntarily and they abuse is by posting on your behalf or using your credit card it is still a crime (contrary to popular belief). Your password is yours alone. This is a legal offense.

Phishing Tips: Change your password every 70 days, using 5 digits 2 3 Unicode characters. A good free virus program is AVG.com. Do not forget to log out when you leave a computer. Automatic locking may also help.

4. Gaming

Gaming is also positive for the development of language, manners and communication. Unfortunately, 3 out of 10 parents buy games for 18 + for children under 18. 6 out of 10 parents have no control over the types of games that teenagers play.

Tip: Know what they play! Do not buy 18 + games for under 18.

5. Sexual Abuse

Especially for girls a modeling offer may be tempting, and it comes with the instruction not to consult with the parents. Also, blackmail and threats occur. He showed a convincing example of a man who posed as webcam blonde girl. So you think you are talking to a nice girl, but in fact it is someone else.

Tips: If you suspect abuse attempts: contact the site administrator. In case of concrete evidence: File a report with the police. Webcam only with people you know in real life. To check authenticity of the webcam image: ask to raise a hand. Cover the webcam with a cloth so the webcam can not film from a distance without you noticing.

Some general tips for parents:
Talk to teens about online behavior and provide parental control and agree on time limits, etc., after school, not directly behind your computer, check age limit games, talk about experiences, learning a critical attitude. Write an Internet protocol and let the teenager sign.

I'm a little double about this focus on the dangers. It is useful to me, because it is my invisible spot. On the other hand, you could have a much wider and interesting debate about social media, socially-constructed learning and learning within the curriculum..

Twittering = learning?

I often have conversations about the role of social media in learning processes. Sometimes people might say: 'Ok, but twitter is not learning. How can you learn from 140 characters?!

The theory about learning you embrace determine how you look at social media and its importance (or unimportance). From a behaviourism point of view, twitter might not be very relevant as a means for learning. However, from a social-constructist view you might see a twitter network building relations. In that case twitter is very important. I used a Dutch article about various learning theories: ontwikkeling van leren in organisaties by Keursten to look at what the various thought streams might think about twitter:

• Behaviorism: learning is equivalent to influencing and changing behaviour. You do this by offering situations to practice the desired behavior. One example is a course about giving feedback. You can teach people the right way of giving feedback and create a situation to practice it. Twitter will not be seen as an important means for learning, because the change in behavior needs face-to-face to practice (although there are also research which shows that an innovative program using a webcam to practice social skills worked very well).

• Cognitivism: learning as information processing; the mind and thought process is put at the centre of the learning process. Within cognitivism, a clear distinction between knowledge, skills and attitudes is made and sharpened. I see the cognitivist approach reflected in many conferences, where the expert notify and explain to participants what the latest findings and trends are. Twitter will be interestingly but mostly because people may link to articles, books and information. I must admit I have used this argument myself. I would now respond differently.
  

• Pragmatism: learning by doing. This an approach I see clearly in the design of 23things, a course for librarians. See for instance here. People can learn 23 new Web 2.0 tools by using them, experimenting and experiencing them. Within this movement Twitter will not be so important (unless you want to learn how to use Twitter!)

• Constructivism: learning means developing a unique world view based on all experiences acquired. Learning is a process by which a professional adds new knowledge and ideas to his or her existing body of knowledge. Independent and self-directed learning is important. Within this thought stream twitter is more interesting. Twitter provides a window on the world. And using twitter means quite some self-direction, choosing who to follow, what to tweet etc.

• Social constructivism: learning through collaboration. This school of thought views learn as the result of interactions between individuals, learning within networks and communities is important. I am myself a supporter of this school of thought. That explains why I think being active on Twitter might be an important part of a learning process. Using twitter to build your network and maintaining relationships.

Keursten did not yet talk about connectivism. This is also an important school of thought developed by Siemens.

• Connectivism: was developed because the previous schools of thought were not impacted by technology. These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). They also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations. Learning is a process that occurs within chaotic environments of shifting core elements and is not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning can reside outside of ourselves. Connectivism might be summarized as 'I store my knowledge in my network'. In the case of connectivism Twitter might be a source of serendipitous learning and self-organisation.
  

When you are talking about using Twitter and Yammer (a single twitter tool) within your organization is therefore important to do this in the context of your learning theory. This may help surface the differences. How do you feel about learning through twitter?

Interview about the birth and growth of the HR community

On October 6th, we are going to work on a casebook learn and organise through social media with a group of about 12 learning professionals. Though the analysis of various cases of learning and change processes in which social media has played a role we hope to gain more insights into this relatively new field. I interviewed Remco Mostertman, the initiator of a large HR community mainly on LinkedIn (Remco is on the right). Here's the interview:


Start
"It all started about 5 years ago. The basic idea was that we all need to improve and develop the HR field. I am convinced HR is the most relevant discipline in organizations, but HR is not always taken serious. There is a need for innovation in HR. The main target hence are line managers in organizations. I believe in learning by connecting and exchanging experiences.

At first I just started with a LinkedIn group. I accidentally running up to LinkedIn, I was receiving all kind of annoying reminders and wanted to get rid of those. Searching on LinkedIn I discovered LinkedIn groups. Immediately I saw the potential of the group section of LinkedIn. In many LinkedIn groups nothing much was happening, and I thought I could do this in a better way."

Approach
"There are different types of communities: communities of purpose, communities of practice and communities of interest, the HR community you could say is all three. The core team is a community of purpose, the community as a whole is more a community of interest. I started inviting my acquaintances, then they another 1 or 2 people out of their networks. I saw that we grew to 20 members, now there are 15,000 members in the largest group and come every month 750 members join. In the beginning there were no subgroups possible on LinkedIn, so we started groups next to the main group started, such as change management, social innovation, diversity, leadership and talent management. Now there are subgroups possible on LinkedIn and we work with subgroups, like HRD Employability and Vitality.

I learn continously. Learning by doing, that's my learning style. Every week I have some new experiences. Sometimes I think about a problem, and forget that I have a huge think tank I can ask for help."



Mix online and offline
"A mix between online and offline is important. People get to know each other online, but when they meet each other there is more depth. I organize World cafés four times a year (see photo), about 80 people attend. The world cafés started when we had 5000 people and wanted to celebrate this. It's been organised 8 times now, at zero cost. I see that the online interaction deepens.

I received many applications from different countries such as India, which I rejected. I thought: I'm going to start a global HR group there is an interest. Currently I have 16 international groups, such as Italian and Russian groups. Great things happen here-it is booming. I search local group managers and organize international conference calls. My dream is: 10 country-based communities that eventually linked together and all contribute to the discipline of innovation by sharing knowledge and experiences."

Business model
"The business model is changing. The newsletter from LinkedIn is free. Eventually we will have a spin / off. so. There will be a fixed group knowledge partners, and there are organizations that will have paid subscriptions, for example on a HRjob-site and people who pay to participate in activities of the HR Business University. Besides the HR community I work one day a week for the University of Amsterdam, where I coach students."

Role of social Media
"Social media are supportive, they are a means and not an end. Social media have to help achieve my ideas. Without the media I was going to build a community anyhow, but it would not have been possible on this scale. Social media also promote transparency and increase the speed. People will in the future have to be authentic, unethical conduct will be visible.

I started with LinkedIn groups, and then there are about 10-12 twitter account currently. Now the HR community participates in a newsletter from one of the partners; we provide trending topics from the groups. We always ask whether people approve, but without exception they agreed to have their issues highlighted in the newsletter.

We use a tiered model, the most current topics owners make a summary for the knowledge portal and the newsletter. We are building nine websites, including two knowledge portals. Knowledge of the groups is then secured to the website. There is also a magazine 2-4 times a year. We have put up Facebook pages for future use, there is nothing to be found currently. Each topic has its own website soon, a LinkedIn (sub-) group and a twitter account."

Critical situations in the growth of the community
a. Tipping Point
"There is a tipping point: a LinkedIn group with over 2,000 members runs itself, even though it differs per theme. What makes a theme work? Whenever they are needed. I do an inventory and latera twitt poll (a poll via Twitter). From there I gather a few sub / theme groups and start. If I invent the topics myself "accidentally" they may grow, but not as good. So start from the questions / orientation. Besides that what is always needed ... active moderation on the content. Remove advertising and promotions or remove spam and place jobs in the section for jobs. Start discussion and / or boost them. From the tipping point onwards, this is less or not needed. Until 2000, you need to recruit and activate members. Only 5% are active, 10% send or read things, so at 200 members, it is not dynamic. However, it can be a good number for a project or group that wishes to exchange information, but not for a community of practice / interest. I'm amazed how fast it develops. HRD and L & D subgroup on LinkedIn already has 1100 members (in 2 months!) and there are four face-to-face peer meetings planned. We do not actively market this.

b. Core Team.
"In the beginning I worked alone, but at some point you need a buddy. I have created an inner circle of about 20 very enthusiastic people who share the same passion and goals and cooperate in different ways and with different intensities. Yet, with the enormous growth there was also a need for more structure and stability in the heart of the community, now there's a solid core team of six people who put in time, and participate at least 1.5 years till December 2012. I invited a number of them myself and some expressed their interest to join to me. Each member manages a label. A label is what we use to market a business unit or window. There are four named values ​​from which we work: skills, openness, curiosity and ownership. We work with shared leadership."

My own role
"Maintaining the LinkedIn group takes me about two hours a day. Some professionals start a group, and nothing happens, they underestimate the work. It's hard work and you must begin with a vision. Every community has a leader. I am the leader for this HRcommunity. You also need luck. What I bring: I like to experiment with the computer, I want to discover how it works. I have a passion for HR, Social Media and the development of organizations. My role is very diverse: till the tipping point I invite people and alert them about discussions, after the tipping point it grows by itself. I also moderate content and topics, and start boosting discussions. I try to read everything, it provides a good view into the field, I enjoy reading everything. I get a message when someone starts a new thread. Sometimes things go out of hand with advertising issues, then I filter it out. This is a lot of work, but otherwise it's annoying for the members. I put all applications manually on a list of members in an excel sheet, and I review the composition of the group occassionally."

Results
"We have contributed to an HR field in motion and development. There is an active community with 20,000 members nationally, 30,000 internationally. The largest group has 15,000 members, 50% are consultants, 40% work within organizations, 5% are students and 5% recruiter. I would like a mixed composition - so I am pleased with the growth in number of students since this was only 1%. The number of people is not an end in itself - the dynamics and depth are more important than the numbers, the debates and reactions, and numbers of people showing up at meetings. In my perception, there are more and more in-depth topics, they run longer and more people participate than in the beginning. Participants gain new insights, news and interesting facts and get new contacts. The network has a value. Thus I have been approached for cooperation, but the bottom line is that I'm not selling products, then people will lose interest in the community."

Reflection
"It is a different way of working. If you ask a question, you often get a solution and suggestions within few hours. Even I forget sometimes that this is possible. Within the HR field, the awareness that being active in a community is part of your work is not so high. The community-based work is not in the DNA of organizations. What has really surprised me is the incredible speed at which things are going and the mega impact. The goal for next year is: develop the groups and platforms, further animation and professional development, connecting people, developing a talent bank and career portal for matching on the labor market and an assessment site for HR service providers .

Read dutch? There is an article by Kim Castenmiller. The home of the HR community is a linkedIn group. You may follow Remco Mostertman on twitter or the HR community op twitter

Develop creativity and empathy through opposing perspectives

I have been rethinking my focus. I started working within the framework of knowledge management and communities of practice. But knowledge management in the Netherlands is still associated with databasebuilders. And communities are hijacked by the marketeers for client communities... The core of my work is about 'the learning professional' / the innovative professional / the creative professional. Communities of practice as still a very powerful environment to stimulate professional innovation at an individual and collective level. I found a book which divides the learning professional in personal and professional development. Not sure how useful I find this distinction however.

I've lived in various countries and I am convinced that a new environment works great for self-knowledge and awareness of your own beliefs. An anecdote: when we lived in Mali we were invited by Bintou, a colleague to join her for lunch on a Saturday. We were very surprised to see that everyone had already eaten, and we were seated separately with a dish to eat and left alone. We thought we were late but that was not the case. Then you realize again that there is a strong social connotation in the Netherlands to lunch invitations. It's not about the food, it's primarily a social activity, eating together, while at Bintou's she literally wanted to feed us. Those types of collisions between different worlds make you more creative and empathetic.

Here's a great TEDtalks of Raghava KK, artist. He wrote a children's book on the ipad. If you shake the iPhone changes the perspective, instead of a father and mother there are suddenly two mothers. He believes that learning children to understand different perspectives stimulates creativity and empathy. Have a look, it's great!



And for the social media twist... you can use social media to broaden your view to various perspectives. It's not automatic though. You have to be aware of your networks and who you are following. Follow some people on twitter from a radically different background, or lurk in some totally different communities... Who knows what you will learn..

Finding the perfect learning platform in 5 steps

After the holidays I have been bumping into the same issue with different clients: "Which platform you choose for a online part of a learning trajectory as trainer/facilitator?" It is already clear that you want to combine online learning with face-to-face meetings, you need a private online platform and there is also a budget for it. With the enormous amount of social media tools it is much easier for a trainer/facilitator to make his/her own choice of tools fitting the learning activities rather than trying to fit your learning activities into a predetermined platform.

I have a first blog post written about the broader range of platform options that exist for online discussions. In this blog post I'm going deeper into the selection process for online exchange in a private group. In large organisations, there may be a platform available and you may have to decide whether you want to use this, or an alternative. I noticed many start with the tool rather than thinking about the participants and the learning activities.

For a good selection process, take the following five key steps:

Five step approach to finding your learning platform Make a shortlist of potential platforms by asking around (and I'll help if my shortlist), review and test them on the following criteria: Identify what your participants are familiar with Determine the features you need by designing the learning activities Look at the implementation trajectory of the platform Find out what the price is

Make a nice table (something like this) to sort out your findings in writing and help support your decision to support (x-ax the potential tools, y-ax the criteria


Re 1. Make a Shortlist of possible platform There are many different platforms. You can be practical by asking some experienced people. The shortlist that I currently have for tools that are relatively easy to implement are Elgg, Moodle, Ning, Drupal, Bloom Fire, Buddy Press for wordpress, and Social Engine. Do you have a good platform, please let me know by leaving a reaction!

Ad 2. Familiarity of participants with tools This step is often forgotten, but is important. You can send a short survey, some people call or arrange a meeting. If you combine this with the design of learning you save two birds with one stone. Awareness of different tools also gives an indication of how easily they get used to a new tool. If many people are familiar with such a tool like Yammer, but it has not all the features you want? This may be an argument for your intent to reconsider. Because it gives you a flying start.

Ad 3. Needed functionalities (based on design of learning activities) To know what features you need as a minimum requirement, you need your design of learning activities already have quite some detail. Would you give assignments, much literature do you need to upload, do you want to tag? Can you use videos? Do participants need a blog? This determines the features you want. Often you will develop a good feel for the various functionalities when you have worked with a number of platforms. And balance 2 and 3: if a platform has fewer functionalities, but people have experiences, you might simplify your design.

Ad 4. Implementation path Some platforms like Ning, you can tweak by yourself as a facilitator in one afternoon. Other platforms such as Drupal need more support and expertise. Maybe you want the platform to be hosted on your own server or not. These are implementation requirements. While chosing a platform these are important to consider too. To what extent do you support? How long is the design and implementation process?

Re 5. Price Well, it speaks for itself .. What will it cost? Per month, per year? How easy can you cancel? (Important in a learning process with a clear endpoint)

Although it is now may appear as a very structured process, in practice it will be messier. But what is important is that you first look to at the experiences of users and design of learning activities before you select the best tool - though you will probably not find the perfect tool... after all the process is more important than the tool.

What can knowledge interventions contribute to development?

I was interviewed for Vice Versa and asked for input. It was a double interview together with Eric Smaling working for the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. An interesting combination as he is well grounded in the science world as professor. I will blog what I remember as main points and issues. I hope I remember enough- waited a little too long to blog it and didn't make any notes (as the journalist was taping it). Curious to see what she will choose to publish too!

The first difference I remember is about what knowledge is. In my practitioners view- knowledge resides in the head of people, practitioners or policy makers. Eric Smaling would consider a phd research as knowledge. I would prefer to call this information rather than knowledge (if it does not reside in anybody's head except the phd student's head..). Or if you'd like to call this knowledge too, then I would like to clearly distinguish it from 'actionable knowledge', knowledge that leads to changing practices. Smaling pointed out that there is a gap between research and practice. A lot of research never gets transformed into changing realities. So how to close this gap? My solution would be to think of dynamic learning communities and networks where scientists, researchers and practitioners can meet. This solution is so logical to me, but I am now conscious of the fact that it is not all the solution for many others. I pointed out my belief in the power of south-south learning to increase the impact of development efforts. The World Bank has done a survey and the results tell us many respondents agree with this.

One of the first questions was 'what kind of knowledge should the Netherlands 'export' or 'transfer'?. I explained my vision that in my idea the counterpart model in development (the northern expert working with a southern person for a longer period of time) has disappeared because it is not how people learn and change happens. Rather, I look with a learning lens knowledge and change. Hence I start with the learner and his/her learning journey. Then it is more logical to talk about what are the knowledge needs and questions at stake. I'd say that depends on the sector and type of knowledge workers. A finance manager or minister could probably learn a lot from another manager or finance minister (through a network or community, though trainings, workshops and exchanges help too). But I guess the question of relevant knowledge within the Netherlands could be asked at a global, policy level in the sense of what are the strengths and expertise areas of the Netherlands.

This kind of led us to jump to the reciprocity in learning and knowledge sharing. Is learning north-south? Can we in the Netherlands also learn from developing countries? I definitely think so (and Smaling agreed). It is a pity if we feel that learning is north-south only, like I mentioned before, I believe in south-south learning and south-south-north learning. I gave the example of the forest landscape restoration learning network. A network where people from Brasil, Indonesia, Ghana and other countries learn, but also people from Scotland. Smaling and I both felt strongly that openess to learning is necessary. If you are in a relationship where you feel you are the expert or know more, you are not open to learning from others (but you may share). I have seen this between participants from two African countries (one looking down upon the other), I have seen it between departments in organisations and I've also noticed it myself as a trainer. What is, for instance, obstructing southern NGOs from learning is that they feel that they have obtained funding for a program because they can implement it. That doesn't favour asking questions or visiting others who may have undertaken similar programs. And sometimes it is simply lack of time. I feel when you start a new project, you should always ask around for experiences. That's not the common way of working.

Given my focus on south-south learning and networks (and alliances too by the way) to enhance learning for more impact on development, the interviewer was wondering 'but what's the role of the Netherlands'? Well, there is definitely a role to be facilitate south-south learning, to spot innovations, to compile information. As Lucia Nass, a former SNV colleague also observed there is a mindboggling number of website and manuals and even studies to compile and compare all manuals on climate change. We focus on collecting, but not enough on connecting the learners.

And ofcourse social media play a huge role and have an enormous potential to facilitate south-south-north learning, but there is a need to learn to make effective use of these media. To find information, to connect with the relevant people, to participate in online communities in ways that change and improve development practices. That's why I focus on helping people to start and facilitate communities, or to develop themselves using internet and social media. I think that we are starting to see a shift but to quote Clay Shirky "social media will not become socially interesting till they become technologically boring". In other words the real change in connecting likeminded learners and speeding up learning and change is still ahead of us.

We ended (if I recall well) with a kind of philosophical question about the role of internet and social media with regards to learning and working together in this globalised and connected world. Can we learn our way out of the global problems? On the one hand I'd like to be a sort of cyberutopian believing we will all learn to solve all global problems like poverty, climate change, feeding the growing world population. Peace through the internet. On the other hand I can imagine that there is a limit to collaboration when there is a scramble for dwindling resources. A kind of fighting for a piece of the cake. No matter how empathetic we may be, in the end we will try and make sure we and our closest families and friends are fine.

How is internet changing the way you think? book review

Edge is asking an annual question. In 2010 the question was: how is internet changing the way your think? This question was presented to 151 people and they answered this question in 2-3 pages. Amazing to see how different the 151 answers are! It was a great read during the holidays, very inspiring and there were many things I recognised..

Some people state that the Internet is not really changing their way of thinking, but most of the writers respond it does. Many mention that they consulted pages on the internet while writing the piece, and so reached different conclusions than in a world without internet. Paul Bloom: "I realize how nice people can be through the Internet". Strangers devote their time to respond and share their ideas and knowledge. Haim Harari is a physicist and sees three major changes:

• Messages are getting shorter, the attention is more and more on one-liners (potentially misleading!)
• Facts are available on the Internet, so hence we need to think less about facts. Thinking comes more down to making connections, collecting new ideas, distinguishing head and side issues, analysis, etc. As the facts are now available on the Internet, we do pay less attention to remembering the fact. (though with the warning that it is important and hard to distinguish between pseudo- and real facts and facts on the internet)
  
• The process of learning and teaching is changing in-depth by all the possibilities and dangers of the Internet. Lessons of the greatest teachers in the world are available, we need to know fewer facts by heart as they can always to be found on the internet. This leads to a different pattern of knowledge, understanding and developing thinking in people. This fact has, according to him, not yet sufficiently penetrated and transformed the world of education. And I think it has not yet led to profound changes in the training / education world (but seems to come).
  

Personally my way of learning and thinking has changed dramatically by the Internet and especially social media. I follow many other professionals, what they are thinking, doing, sharing, reading. I become more creative, think of new possibilities. I am also a collector of information. The danger is that you do not have enough time reviewing the information to place and also had something to do, something that many authors mention in the book. Judith Rich Harris compares the Internet even with a bottle of ketchup. First too little came out, and now too big a glob. I have to watch myself that I'm not taking in and bookmarking too much information not using it to apply ideas and incorporate it in my own practices. I see my use of social media as supportive to developing my professional practice. Yet it happens that people retweet what they found through me and that I already forgot! I see this as the real danger. A beautiful expression of Brian Knutson (from this book) is 'survival of the focused'. He observes that some are steaming ahead as internetsailers, while others navigate around helplessly.

Making good use of the positive aspects of the new possibilities of learning through the internet while watching the pitfalls is necessary. For me, that means improving my focus on quality and application of new ideas, make sure it is not a mash of information, but that it affects and improves your own professional practice. So I try to read less, but apply more.

What is important in knowledge sharing for innovation in development?

Next monday I will have an interview with a journalist of a magazine about international development cooperation (Vice Versa). The topic of the interview is knowledge sharing. I'm trying to put some of my ideas together and would really like your input as the topic seems so vast: what are the main trends in knowledge management/knowledge sharing within international cooperation that I should highlight?

I have a very short summary of what they are looking for which I will share with you: "The importance of knowledge sharing is more and more recognised within international cooperation. The big question is: how do you do this anno 2011? What knowledge to share, how to share, and what needs to be done for innovation in international development cooperation?"

What would you definitely want to highlight? Please contribute by replying..Even though the interview is in Dutch I will make it available in English later.

Working on knowledge flows in your organisation with social media

Here's an interview with Andrew McAfee from MIT (source McKinseyquarterly), talking about organisational change, related to improving knowledge flows with social media. He reaffirmes that it works to start with thinking about the challenge you want to address and from there work towards the tools and the way of measuring changes. For instance, the US intelligence had a serious knowledge sharing and expertise location problem. Through use of wikis and blogs with good search functions, the situation was improved. Another organisation had a problem with redundancy. They created a central and accessible space to ask questions and had others answer the questions. So his main adivse is: think upfront what you want to improve with social media, don't just introduce it for the sake of introducing technology.

Two tips:
* Find pockets of energy and work from there
* Signal from the top what you want to achieve and want to see (eg if it's people blogging, start blogging yourself)

What can really undermine adoption processes in organisations is dumping the tools without patience and encouragement, or being too concerned about the risks.

Unfortunately I have seen a case where both has been done. However it was really hard to introduce a new way of working. I thought in that case it would have helped to see it as a change process whereby tools are just one of a series of interventions.

You might watch the whole interview, it lasts about 10 minutes

Your number of followers on Twitter doesn't matter but retweets and mentions do

Often I get the question: do people know when you unfollow them? And I used to reassure them that you only get a notification from Twitter when people start following you, not when they unfollow you. But now there is a whole bunch of twitter tools; I started testing some Twitter unfollowers tracking tools:

1. Twittaquitta - will send you a mail with your new followers and unfollowers
2. Twunfollow- will send you only the unfollowers

Now I'm a little confused what I should do with this information. For en_nu_online I stop following them back. For my own account most of the time I don't really care. And this is now back-upped by real scientific research! (disclaimer: I only believe and quote scientific research when it's in line with my own convictions..)

I read the paper: Measuring user influence in twitter: the million follower fallacy by Cha, Haddadi, Benevenuto and Gummadi. They researched and compared three measures of influence on Twitter: indegree (followers), retweets (how often a message is resend by followers) and mentions (the number of times a person is mentioned by others on twitter). Traditionally a lot of research has gone into the influentials who can persuade others. A modern view how ever de-emphasizes the role of influentials in innovation, and pays more attention to the interpersonal relationships and the readiness to adopt innovations. A trend can be initiated by any one, and if the environment is right, it will spread.

The most followed users in the research spanned public figures and news sources (CNN, New York Times, Barack Obama) and celebrities like Britney Spears. The most retweeted were aggregation services like Mashable and Twittertips, businessmen like Guy Kawasaki and news sites again. The most often mentioned were the celebrities.

Interesting findings:

• The number of followers was not related to mentions and retweets. Hence the most followed users were not necessarily the most influential in getting a message spread.
  
• Influentials were influential in a wide range of topics, not only their own field
• Broadcasting too many tweets puts popular users at risk as spammers
• Users who limit their tweets to a single topic showed the largest increase in influence scores

Similarly, Dan Zarrella talks about the science of social media and digs into similar topics. If you have the time, you may watch it, takes an hour.

The Science of Social Media from HubSpot on Vimeo.

Dan Zarrella dismantles the idea that ideas spread 'because they are good'. This is not the case, it depends on the ability to reproduce yourself. Most ideas get less than one retweet. Compared to animals, you have the elephants (live long) and the fruit flies (live short but high fecundity). The tweets may be compared to the fruit flies, you need to seed widely to have an impact.

Some highlights from Dan Zarrella:

• The more negative remarks, the less followers people have on Twitter
• The hoax about the death of Nelson Mandela was spreading not because the person starting it was influential but because it was well-timed, well-worded. He didn't have many followers, but they were well connected.
  
• Now that everybody is tweeting there is link fatigue. In weekends the number of tweets slow down, but the click throughs go up.
  
• Novelty gets spread, if nobody has heard about something, it spreads.
  
• Most retweetable words include you, twitter, please, retweet (and how to, and new blogpost)
• Least retweetable words include game, going, haha, but also bed, gonna, well, sleep.
  

Now assuming you are making use of twitter to change the world or get influential for other means (I still feel I'm there to connect and learn..) I guess what you take away from these scientific researches is the following:

Build a well-connected social network around you ready to embrace the changes you envision.Make sure you have unique and interesting information that resonates, information that fills a void. You may ask influential people to tweet or add please retweet. Multiple seeding may be necessary. Calls to action work. Don't tweet that you are gonna sleep :). Monitor your number of mentions and retweets, not the number of followers.

About blogging, tunneling visions and knowledge entrepreneurship

I had the pleasure to attend a presentation by Julie Ferguson. Julie is doing research for the university of Amsterdam (VU) into (micro-)blogging as part of her PdD research about knowledge and power in the development sector. The research has not yet been published.

This research had the goal to investigate how knowledge related to a shared organising vision (in this case (ICT4D, about ICT for development). It analyzes the behaviour and perception of the bloggers. She interviewed 7 professional ICT4D bloggers (used interviews to identify those) and analysed their blogs. She has some remarkable conclusions.

Blogging has some so-called 'affordances':

• Many to many communication


• Reflection in practice
  


• Open and interactive
  

Because of these affordances blogs may enhance participation in ICT4D policy and practice, creating an organising vision. It has the potential to close the gap between the discours at policy level and the discours at country level, by organisations and 'the poor'. This was what the bloggers believed in. In practice things were slightly different. The findings:

Blogging as 'reflective practitioner'

All bloggers basically blogged for themselves, not for marketing or other purposes. Blogging helped them in sense-making, development of ideas and reflection on their practice as 'reflective practitioners'. Blogging may hence be an important activity for professional development of knowledge workers and can help develop their professional identity.

Blogging outside the organisational boundaries

All bloggers were pioneers and ahead in thinking of their own organisations. For some their blogging activities were controversial within the organisation. Blogging offered an important space for professionals outside the organisation, to exchange ideas with a wider group of people, mostly outside their organisation.

Bloggers contributed to a tunneling vision instead of organising vision

The idea of creating an organising vision through participation on blogs was not found through analysis of the blogs. The number of comments were relatively low (an average of 1,1 comment per blogpost); even though there were quite some readers. Most of the comments were positive, so the fear for negative comments that many organisations have was not confirmed by this research. (if I recall well, she said only 2% of comments were negative). On the contrary, many comments were appreciative like 'What a great post!'. By lack of real content interaction, the blogs were most of all a reflection of the individual professional bloggers, who we may see as 'knowledge-enterpreneur'. As a result, there was an overall fragmentation of ideas, instead of convergence. She could not discover an emerging organising vision. (it was not clear to me whether the bloggers were reading each other's blogs). Rather, ideas went into all kind of different directions.

New discours

However, despite the fragmentation of ideas, there was a new discours, outside the accepted visions of the organisation. You might say there were new lines of thinking, new directions explicited by these knowledge entrepreneurs. I asked Julie whether they influenced actual practice or policy, but that was outside the scope of her research. In some cases, she did get that impression though, that the blogs did influence policy and practice. This means that blogs can be a good tool for knowledge-entrepreneurs to stimulate innovative thinking within a sector. Though the research focused on the fragmentation, I do see this a something very positive.

Facilitators: we are needed!...

Simply by bloggers a new organising vision does not emerge spontaneous. This is the part where the obvious comes up: there is more needed than blogs to cultivate a collective vision, eg to cultivate a bloggers community, organise meetings, discussions of ideas presented in blogs. Think of what Global Voices ("the world is talking are you listening?") is doing to amplify the voices of bloggers in different countries. Also a teamblog might be an interesting alternative, like thes teamblog of NVO2. A teamblog might be more conducive to read each other's contributions than individual blogs.

So many learning style tests, so little time..

I went looking for a learning style test for an online course. I thought a learning style test was a nice ramp up for an exercise where people had to blog about their own facilitator style - from the idea that it is good to know your own preferences and biases as a trainer/facilitator. Hoping this awareness helps you to try to stretch and integrate opposite preferences in your design. I asked a question about learning styles on Twitter and in Jane Hart's social learning community and got some good responses which made me really think! A definition on learning style from wikipedia is:

Learning styles are different ways that a person can learn. It's commonly believed that most people favor some particular method of interacting with, taking in, and processing stimuli or information. Psychologists have proposed several complementary taxonomies of learning styles. But other psychologists and neuroscientists have questioned the scientific basis for some learning style theories (nb: learning may be broader than just processing stimuli or information)

.
How do you notice differences in learning styles?
One of the observations I have with regards to the use of social media is that some people just love delicious, the social bookmarking service, and others don't bother at all after you show them. The same with blogging. For some it really works, for others they try and abandon it immediately. Personally I dislike podcasts, when I listen to them, my mind gets distracted too easily. I also have the impression some people enjoy learning in communities, others preferred structured courses. Is there something in the personality of learners or learning styles that may explain these differences? And how to work with this as online facilitator?

What are the various learning style tests available?
Here's the list of learning/personality styles tests I harvested:

• 4MAT system by Bernice McCarthy (paid assessment)
• Friendly Style Profile (paid assessment)
• Navigational v. procedural learners by Elliot Masie (did not find an assessment)
• Your Preferences by Clare Howard (paid assessment)
• Enneagram (free online assessment in Dutch here)
• Team Management Wheel (tmsdi) (paid assessment by accredited trainers)
• VARK-learn (free online questionnaires available here as well)
• Finding potential (free assessment online, results will be sent to you)
• Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (free online assessment in Dutch here and in English here)
• Vermunt (free online assessment for students in Dutch here)
• Myers-Briggs (free online test here)
• Multiple Intelligences (MI) free online test here)
• Roos van Leary (free online test in Dutch here)
• Language of Learning (free questionnaire available after signing up here)

Ofcourse this is a little overwhelming! And there are more to be found in this report about learning styles.
Do learning styles exist and is it helpful for learning professionals?
I found this video with Daniel T. Willingham of the University of Virginia and this blogpost (via Harold Jarche).




Both claim: "Learning Styles don't exist. Everybody knows this except people who don't. Their non-existence is mostly harmless. And occasionally tragic". The explanation in the video sounds convincing for the case of remembering words- learning a list of words does not work better through audio for auditory people or by images for visually-oriented people. So it's correct that people have different preferences, it is not required that teachers use that to adjust their teaching to those styles. The way you teach depends more on what you are teaching (and I'd say depends on the learning experiences you'd like people to have).

Learning styles and the brain
Reading the book 'brein@work' about brain functioning it is explained that the brain is flexibel and adaptive. One of the definition of learning in this book is: "a proces whereby as a result of our experiences and activities changes occur in the brain which may influence our future awareness and behaviour." From all impressions that people receive we can only process a small portion (2000 bits/sec). The thalamus takes care of this. Visual stimuli are the strongest, but you may use all the senses if you want to make sure information sticks. Repetition is important too, and emotions. This is true for any learner, not only for 'visual learners'.

How to choose a learning style test that fits your purpose?
This question arises which test are you going to use and why? Wilfred Rubens suggested to select a test based on solid research, but don't they all claim that?... In the blogpost there's also a link to this solid report about learning styles by the learning and skills research centre (haven't had time to read it in full but scanned it..). It helps to uncover the assumptions about learning underpinning the learning style tests. It adds new tests to the list, but the good thing is, it can help understand the wide variety by pinpointing to five families of learning style tests:

1. Assumption that learning styles are constitutionally based/fixed (like VARK I guess)
2. Idea that learning styles reflect the cognitive structure (like Pettigrew)
3. Assuming that learning styles are part of a relatively stable personality type (like Myers-Briggs)
4. Learning styles are flexibly stable preferences (like Kolb)
5. Move on from learning styles to learning approaches, strategies, orientations (like Vermunt)

This is helpful to select, and I tend to go for 4 or 5, learning styles as flexible preferences or moving to learning approaches, like the language of learning. The report also looks into reliability and validity for 13 models. Some are really weak, some are recommended like Vermunt and Entwistle.

I tested some of them- it helps that I'm a fan of online tests.. I must say that several test results resonated with my own observations and helped me reflect on my own preferences. I liked the Myers-Briggs (which is more a personality test) which pointed out that I'm a rational mastermind- more introverted. It helps me see why I enjoy working online (and other might not or less!), and my strength to explain theories in a practical way.

My take aways?
I'm amazed that there are so many different learning style theories and tests! The families definitely help to choose what you'd want to work with if you are looking for a learning style test. I'd prefer a style test that acknowledges the dynamic nature of preferences. It may depend on the situation and what you want to learn what your preferences are. And I don't believe in the auditory/visual/kinesthetic learner difference.

I still think the tests are helpful for learners to become self-aware. You can use it as a starting point to reflect about yourself and think for instance about your pitfalls and strengths as facilitator. Or as a learner- what activities work for you? Do you thrive on certain ways of learning? How to strengthen this? The downside is ofcourse that you fill in the tests yourself (rubbish in- rubbish out!), so some feedback from others may be needed too.