5 Essential online survival skills by Howard Rheingold

I bought the book by Howard Rheingold called Net Smart: how to thrive online. It is a guide to digital literacy. I haven't had time to read it yet though but next week is autumn holidays here in the Netherlands so I hope to have some time to read it then. Howard Rheingold is said to be one of the first community managers on the web and seems to be walking his talk, which is why I bought his book.

In the meantime I found a video with Howard Rheingold about the 21st century skills. It doesn't seem to embed so you have to link on the link if you want to see it. It is more than an hour long but very interesting with lots of examples.

Howard states that the online skills, the 21st century skills are no longer nice to have, but are essential survival skills. The 5 skills he mentions are:

• Attention. With all available media and 'pling!' sounds everywhere it is much harder to focus your attention. I experienced it two days ago when I had to focus on finalizing a report, but kept on responding to mails, got a google chat and a skype call coming in. Later I closed everything. 1 in 6 Americans reports to have bumped into something because they were texting! The 'second screen' in the form of an ipad in front of you while watching television or being in a conference or training is already accepted. However, only 5% of people are really capable of multitasking - performing 2 tasks which require your attention. So the skill is how to divide your attention? How to focus?  We call this infotention, and you can learn how to do this.
• Participation. If you know how to participate online, by smart blogging, tweeting, reacting, networking you can have more influence and even start movements. If you want to be a recognised expert is a certain field of expertise, you will have to learn how to curate content online. In the Netherlands we have seen the power of mobilising people online (in a negative sense) through the Project X in Haren. Wael Ghonim, is one of the activist of the revolution in Egypt who used social media very smartly. 
• Collaboration. Gamers and patients with a specific disease already found out that you can easily collaborate online with people you have never met. For people in the Netherlands this is sometimes still a doubt, but in the US it seems much more accepted to collaborate with people who have never met in real life. For instance I am coaching a community manager in Washington whom I have never met. Wikipedia is ofcourse a nice example of online collaboration too.
• Crap detection. Many websites are a hoax or nonsense. Rheingold provides the example of an online pregnancy test. With common sense you know it is impossible but there are still people who believe it. Teachers have been telling me that pupils may happily cite information from the website of McDonalds when asked about healthy food.The skill involved is how to know what is real and what is fake? What are trusted sources online?. 
• Smart networking. It is important to build your personal learning network online with people who think differently. People who have a wider network make better decisions apparently. If you feel at some point that nobody is contradicting you, you may have a uniform network diminishing your own capacity to innovate.  

I have been wondering whether digital natives do already posses these skills? Come to think of it, I really doubt it. 

Making social learning practical: the LOSmakers event

Past Friday we organised the presentation of a book called 'Because it works'. It is a collaborative effort by the LOSmakers, a group of 15 professionals passionate about the new potential offered by social media to stimulate social learning. The book is full of practice cases and can be downloaded here. It is in Dutch but we are thinking about the English translation and already working on translating two cases. We offered it online as a free download and it has already been downloaded more than 15.000 times!

It was not a traditional bookpresentation, but rather a workshop in which people worked on their own cases of situation in which they want to stimuate social learning through social media. In small groups they chose a case, formulated important questions and with those questions went shopping on the market with experiences. They could also call in the help of Twittercoaches. One group chose as a topic: what can you do as a learning professional with few means to support learning in small groups? In the video she talks about their insights (in Dutch). 

Let me help the non-Dutchies: She talks about 4 important insights they gained from the market and the twittercoaches:

1. Make use of known tooling, for instance Twitter or Yammer in organization where there are experiences with Yammer. You avoid heavy investments in tools and for the participants there is also no learning curve for the use of the tool. 
2. In case you have a group with little experience with social media: use social media in simple and accessible ways to share teasers. For instance by sending them an interesting video upfront. 
3. Make clear agreements about the facilitation and your availability. Avoid that people expect an immediate response in the evening or weekends. .
4. Make sure you know your participants. Find the right mix between participants, tooling and the dynamics you want to stimulate. Make sure this is the basis for your plan.

You can find the storify of the event here. With regards to our twitter backchannel we had a nice mix of planned and spontaneous interaction. We had asked 3 people who could not participate whether they would like to be twitter coaches so they were available (in the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal respectively!) and reacted to questions from the groups. One of the participants working in higher education tweeted about the idea of starting a facebook group for the first year student and one of the students following her tweeted back and it was a cool idea but would be best to have students as administrators.

Engaging course alumni using Facebook: the case of Ruforum

It's been a bit quiet on this blog because I had a nice long summer holiday - with a trip to Cambodja with my family which was wonderful. We visited friends, rode tuktuks, bicycles and elephants and visited the famous temples around Siem Reap. Here you see us on the boat in Bangkok.

From now on - I'll try to blog weekly again. To start with an interview with Carolyn Nandozi from Uganda about her experiences facilitating a facebook group for alumni. I met her during an online facilitation course which I facilited (online of course :) and found out she has some interesting experiences with an alumni group. This is a question I often get: "When organise courses -how do we keep in touch with our course alumni online?" RUFORUM has done this using Facebook. RUFORUM is the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, a consortium of 29 universities in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa established in 2004. RUFORUM has a mandate to oversee graduate training and networks of specialization. Below my question and Nandozi's answers

Nandozi, can you describe how the Facebook group started? "The group began in 2009 through a need to track and engage alumni. The group was started by the RUFORUM Secretariat by inviting a few alumni and asking them to invite others. One of the strategic objectives of RUFORUM is to increase the use of technology to support effective, decentralized learning and the sharing of knowledge. Therefore, the increasing use of social media as a network connection was one technology aspect for use that was explored to bring alumni in a network connection to support this objective and also keep track of their work. Thus, the introduction of the online group. There were no guidelines or rules created. Just an objective for the group and goals- connect alumni all over the world.We have several platforms such as Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, Linkedin but I will focus on the Facebook Alumni Platform-/ (see the picture to have an idea how the facebook platform looks like)."

How does the group function? "The group has several administrators and an appointed Virtual Intern to moderate discussions (me). We make monthly work plans (with targeted milestones) to plan the discussions and find the best ways of engaging the alumni. For example we plan how many posts to share for the particular month usually five (5) or more but usually also members share and we triple the target. We also target the particular number of persons to join per month for instance we began with 10 and became optimistic to 20 and are blessed to double the numbers some months while others are a bit quite. However, one thing for sure is every other month our numbers are increasing and this makes us happy. Thus, currently we have 269 members and counting.

The facebook group mainly focuses on posts aimed at sharing of opportunities such as scholarships, fellowships, skills writing, newsletters, jobs, consultancies and project fundings among others and we encourage them to circulate and feedback any successful applications (we want to track the success of the platform in offering successful opportunities). Such postings usually lead to increased invitation of members to the platform. We really want alumni to share their experiences and knowledge but are yet to achieve that.

We have also began discussions of the international events and days to invite Alumni contributions to such events. These discussions have been really lively such as the recently concluded one on World Hunger Day event we celebrated  on 28^th May this year. RUFORUM will find ways of implementation of such contributions as some have led to prompts of proposal writing and face to face meetings. These discussions have led to bringing out the challenges and needs Alumni face in the field and pathways for responding to such challenges. We wanted alumnis to share with us any challenges and any needs thus, such discussions have been helpful.

I do a monthly report of all the activities that have transpired on the platforms (as I mentioned we manage a number of platforms such as Linkedin for professionals to target all people as some people may have phobia for Facebook which is more active)."

How do you facilitate? "I usually post any opportunity and wait for member response. If I don’t get any I will still prompt; prompting/pestering is a must. For example I can put a like or comment myself. Some posts will be interesting to members and will invite a like or contribution immediately. I also thank and encourage members who post or like their posts or sometimes I post comments.  Saying Thank you may be too much in case one person is constantly posting (which happens). I have noticed two persons who constantly share opportunities and usually like and comment. We would like other members to share but some don't share. However, they may be more active in commenting. I have noticed some members imitate what I post for example picture postings this means I have to be more creative to prompt more.

Since people are still in the initial stages of being active, I am the conductor and have to intervene here and there and also kind of motivate members know there is someone keeping the platform active. This is when the platform has been quiet for a while. Though sometimes I would like to be the invisible chameleon and let the discussions flow, but it’s a bit hard. Since I need their contributions I will have also to contribute!"

How do you invite and grow your membership? "RUFORUM has a database of members whom I send emails inviting them to the platform. Having exhausted the database, I had to come up with other means such as writing the steps for members on how to invite other members on the platform. I write a thank you message to every member who has invited someone to the platform and encourage them to invite more persons. I also write a thank you message to every invited member and also encourage them to invite other members. I thought about this when I could not meet the target of a particular month yet I had exhausted the database. It was amazing looking at the turn up!  Thus, these plans and innovations that have been put in place have almost tripled the member numbers in four months compared to the one year trend."

What are your challenges? "I will talk about the challenges I encounter in the Facebook group and the other platforms like LinkedIn.

1. How focused on topics do you want to be? Members usually comment questions or wider discussions which usually get wider views and contributions. Thus, we have to think of such posts to get such member contributions apart from the more focused opportunities and contributions. RUFORUM is aimed at agricultural sustainability thus focused on posting agricultural opportunities - however usually some Alumni have ventured in other fields and need opportunities in such areas.
2. How to engage the members? Another challenge is that we do not get as much response as needed, ie from a platform of 269 persons less than 15 persons contribute to the group and less than 20 persons are really active.
3. How do I engage persons of different areas of interests? I face the challenge of being at the same thinking of all persons of different ages, work, experiences, diverse disciplines, etc to fit into what their ideal discussion would be.
4. What style and tone? How do I respond/comment in an easy down to earth manner with some joking for all parties?
5. How to engage people who are not on Facebook? Some members tell me they want to invite other persons who are not on Facebook and I am not sure how to help them. Yet, they find it difficult to go into other engagements for next steps such as writing them an email or giving me member email for contact. There are some Alumni on Facebook invited by email but do not respond thus it would necessitate me to become their Facebook friend and add them to the group easily- but I don’t have to be a friend of everyone, I prefer not to friend them first.
6. Who to engage? Do I also engage with organisations or unknown people? How do I responding to organization invitations and them joining the platform- thus how do I keep this online partnership active? This also includes responding to invitations from unknown members especially on the LinkedIn group.
7. How to manage multiple platforms? RUFORUM has a number of online platforms like I said, thus challenge of managing all platforms at the same time- not to mention the weekend interruption when Alumni usually have some free time. How do I differentiate posts in one group from the other because same posting may not motivate members to join the other groups. RUFORUM has its own inbuilt platform but its very difficult to engage persons in this platform as they are more focused on the other worldly known social platforms such as Facebook. How do we get Alums to join our own inbuilt platform?
8. Do we organise Face-to-Face meetings? The platforms are majorly focused on online discussions but recent discussions have prompted Alumni to request face to face meetings-yet to be revised.

Last question: why did you choose Facebook groups as one of your main platforms?  We knew the majority of our alumni had Facebook accounts thus it was very easy for invitation and thread creation. However, like I said we use other platforms like LinkedIn too and we hope to engage persons there as well…

Curious whether you have any questions for Nandozi or any tips because you also have an alumni group? I can forward them to her. Just let me know in the comments.

Creative screencasting

A screencast is a recording of your computer screen to which you add an explanation by voice- combining it into a video. A screencast is a classical way of explaining computer programs and software. You might for instance explain via a screencast how to start a twitter account. But there are a lot more creative ways you can use screencasts. For instance you might show a presentation on your screen, a prezi or powerpoint. A nice way as a trainer or teacher to put up an explanation or presentation online. Ideal if you want to flip your classroom or training room. Here's an example of a presentation by myself. It's in Dutch, and the content doesn't matter, but then you get an idea of how it might look like.


Can I make a screencast?!
A screencast may sound rather technical and not so easy to do. Recently though, I gave a half day workshop whereby the participants went home with their first screencast. Proud of themselves and I was also rather proud of them- after half a day! It is good to distinguish between very professional screencasts and quick screencasts on the fly (and everything in between). A professional screencast may be outsourced and may include editing etc. with paid software programs. However, it is also possible to make a screencast with free or lowcost software and without editing. If you make sure you don't need to edit, it costs a lot less time to produce a screencast. Ofcourse the choice for professional or on-the-fly will depend on the context. Is it for an elearning module which will be widely used over the years or an input for a training for a group of 15 professionals? I will explain the latter in this blogpost.

Some creative ways of using screencasts. 
Besides the classical use of screencasts to explain the use of a computer program you can think of other ways to use screencasts: 

• Show people how to use an online platform or wiki for instance (a so-called 'walk through').
• Share a presentation on your screen (prezi or powerpoint) and provide an explanation. This is a way to get people into the topic and make them think before a meeting (think flipped classroom like the khan academy).
• Make a visual storyline. Use slides or photo's to build a story. In most screencasting software this is a technical option too (not sure if you would still call it officially a screencast but never mind the name...
• Record a webinar from you screen so that people don't only listen to an audio recording but can watch the whole webinar.
• Make a slidecast on slideshare.net by adding an audio file to your powerpoint presentation.
• Organise an interview with an expert via Skype and record this including the webcam images.

Make your own screencast on the fly
What is a good screencast? Here's the worst screencast ever..(self-announced by the way) :
Some of the mistakes are:

• Background noise
• Uninterested, level voic
• No clear storyline
• You have no clue what the screencast is about

To avoid all this you should give a clear introduction, make sure you have a storyline and talk clearly but also engagingly. So use your voice! It helps if you make a storyboard using separate small cards. On every card you write down in keywords what you would like to narrate and what you would like to show as images. My experience is that you can never record it well in one session, you need at least 3-4 takes. With every take you know your storyline better. Don't forget that if you have a screencast of 5 minutes, this is still only roughly 20 minutes work.

Screencasting software
There are many different screencast recording programs. Here's a good comparison on wikipedia. However, if you are new to screencasting this would probably not make any sense to you....Hence I give you some starters. You should realize that there is a difference between screencasts with Picture in Picture (PIP) whereby you see the person talking in the screen (like the one above), and others whereby you don't see the presentor. Another difference is between software you'd have to download and install and software you can use 'in the cloud', through your browser. Apart from recording software, you might also use editing software and ofcourse you need a place to upload and show your screencast. Lastly there is special software for recording skype calls.

Below you will find a table to give you some suggestions.

Function	Software
Recording screencasts	Screenr (free and paid versions) Jing (free and paid versions), Screencast-o-matic (free and paid versions), Screenflow (for mac, 99 dollar), Camtasia (available for mac and windows roughly 100 euros), Windows media encoder.
Editing screencasts	Windows Moviemaker, imovie (voor mac). Adobe captivate. AVID studio Some screencasting recording software (like screenflow) also offers opportunities to edit.
Publicizing screencasts	Video websites like Youtube, Vimeo and blip.tv. Some screencasting sites like screencast-o-matic offer the option to publicize your screencasts too.
Recording skype calls	Callrecorder (paid version 20 dollar, for mac), Evoca (mac, paid versions), Pamela for Skype (free version till 15 minutes), MP3 skype recorder (free), IMcapture, the levelator (paid version, roughly 50 dollar) More about skype recording on this wiki.

Why we enjoy sharing thoughts and emotions online

Source: nedmartin.org via Joitske on Pinterest

In this cartoon you see how people in the '50 would have reacted to the idea of sharing on Facebook en Twitter.. "so you are saying people will tweet what they are having for breakfast?!" I meet many people who are as surprised today (including myself at times! I'm not sharing so much personal information for instance.. ). 80% of the messages on social networks like Twitter are about our experiences, of course a twitter statement is still a reaction to the question: What are you doing?  (source article Tamir en Mitchell).

Last week I did a workshop at the Dutch conference about education and social media where Michel Penterman emphasized that social media are a logical consequence in the evolution of the need to share information. This all started with the first drawings in the caves. Maslow's pyramid about our needs is famous. On the  buying happiness weblog (via Alex den Haan) I found this picture matching social media to our basic needs according to Maslow. I wonder if there is not a new top on the pyramid necessary where we fullfil the need to express our experiences and emotion online..       

This article: 'disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding' by Tamir and Mitchell is providing a great insight in why we are sharing so much via social media. The authors investigated what sharing of experiences and emotions does within our brain.  People ('our species' as the article calls us) appear to have an intrinsic motivation to share their thoughts and emotions with others. This triggers a positive reward in our brains  (dopamine).

They discoverd the following (read it if you want to understand the details of the study):

• If we disclose information about ourselves this triggers a greater reward than considering information about other people.
• People were prepared to forego a monetary reward for sharing information about themselves. More than information about general questions - this means that sharing information about yourself has a value.
• Talking about thoughts and emotions stimulates the reward system in your brains, even when it is done privately. However, when there is the opportunity to share it with others the reward is even higher. so sharing with people has a higher reward than sharing privately (eg. in a diary). This would explain neatly why I blog and don't do this in a private word document for instance..

Sharing what your thoughts are or sharing your emotions hence gives us a good feeling, similarly to what sex and food do for us. This is evolutionary smart because it can stimulate social bonds, enhance self-knowledge by means of feedback and to know what others think and feel, so that the knowledge of one person is greater than his/her own experiences. Smarter survival.

Leaves me with the question whether the value of a learning trajectory is higher for the people who share more? Or they will simply feel better? And lurker may learn but may not feel as engaged (hence not rewarded by their brains??

Interview with a teacher making smart use of social media

What always strikes me in contact with teachers is that there is so much difference in their attitude towards social media. One teacher loves social media and widely experiments with various media, another says "it's not for me" and doesn't want to try anything. Younger teachers sometimes have an attitude that they know it because they are on Facebook, but I don't believe they really know how to use it at all levels. Perhaps they do not see the link with learning. I believe that social media is of interest to all professionals and teachers are an important group of professionals, since dealing with education. In the newspaper special last Saturday I read the following quote: "a good teacher must continuously innovate and surprise." Here come's social media full of surprises!. Antoine is such an enthusiastic teacher convinced of the value of social media to a teacher-professional. I interviewed him, below the interview.

Tell us something about yourself as teacher at Varendonck secondary school? 
  

I work since 2003 as a French teacher at the College Varendonck in Asten. Furthermore, I support colleagues in using our Virtual Learning Environment. This school year we switched from N @ tschool to the ELO of Magister.

You blog about French and ICT (hier), tell us something about your blog, how you started it, who your readers are and what the value is of blogging for you? Do you read many blogs yourself?   
I began my blog in december 2007. My big inspirations are two Dutch professionals: William Karssenberg (@ trendmatcher) and Pierre Gorissen (@ PeterMcAllister). I followed their blogs for a while and it seemed useful and fun to keep a blog. My weblog is read by French teachers and by teachers who are interested in using ICT in the classroom. What has been the benefit for me so far? First, it is an archive upon which I can draw. Often I know that I've blogged about a particular topic and this way I can quickly and easily find the materials. I refer colleagues to some posts on my blog. Furthermore, the interaction with readers helped me with solving some problems. There are always colleagues who want to help you further. Also nice to mention is that I have been approached by Teleac to make a guide (GoAnimate) following screencasts that they have found on my weblog. I follow many blogs themselves and try to make use of Google Reader.

Which social media do you often use yourself?    

I will mention four important social media. To stay up-to-date with information I use Google Reader. With Google Reader you can subscribe to interesting blog without having to visit that blog. Furthermore, I often use Diigo, a social bookmarking site. Previously, I used Delicious, but at one point there were rumors that this service would quit and when I switched. The beauty of social bookmarking is that you have quick access to a website, because you can add tags and notes. You can also see what other teachers bookmark these links and you copy interesting links from other teachers. A third tool that I would mention is Twitter. I use Twitter to share things I find interesting with others. I also use Twitter to ask questions using the hashtag #daretoask. What always strikes me is that so many people are willing to help others. Sometimes there a whole conversation develops which is also very beautiful to observe. Finally I would like to mention Wunder List, an app allowing you to make to-do lists which you can use on multiple devices. 

How do you stay up-to-date?
I use Google Reader and Twitter, the two most important tools. Dat zijn voor mij de twee meest belangrijke tools.  

How much time does it cost you to read your Google Reader, blog and twitter? Do you have time to do it during school hours?   
At school I do not twitter nor blog. I do that outside of school. It depends also on how busy it is. Sometimes I don't post for a long time on my blog, because I'm just too busy. I had good intention to blog more this year, but I haven't been living up to these intentions yet. During the holidays, I try also to occupy myself with other things, like reading.

What is for you the added value of social media as teacher-professional? 
A blog allows you to think about some things and share your knowledge with others. Why should anyone have to reinvent the wheel? Social bookmarking allows you to quickly locate information and to find new interesting sites to explore. Twitter offers notably the ability to share knowledge and to ask questions.

And during class? 
In class some tools can be useful tools, such as Socrative. With this site, students can vote. I recently used this tool for practicing reading skills. In this way, students (also quieter students) become actively involved in the lesson. Make the use of social media and use equipment the students have. Some have a mobile with internet, others an iPod Touch. Not all students have access to this equipment, but if students work in pairs together, you do not need much equipment. Be creative! Further, Twitter may be used by pupils making a thesis or presentation. They can use the #daretoask (#durftevragen in Dutch) to ask questions and input. I don't use social media in each lesson. Do it only if it is useful and if it adds something.

Social media and reflection: marriage or divorce?

Social media in organisations has been a difficult topic and sometimes bothers me. When I am invited to do introductory sessions in organisations, I feel like I'm converting people to use MORE social media, whereas I don't believe it is a matter of using as many social media as possible. I do believe however in finding an optimal use of social media to support individual and collective learning and innovation. Reflection is needed in order to learn from the past. Most of the time a smarter use of media may help. A lot of times, social media don't solve the underlying learning disabilities. Hence work on social media AND the practices is needed.

Social media stimulate us to live and work in an ever increasing pace. Quick messages. Scanning. Multitasking. I had a skype this morning and we were both reading and answering our mails simultaneously. Hence it seems like social media is having opposite effect in organisation - that social media hinder reflection and deeper conversation. On the other hand, I am convinced social media can aid reflection for individiuals, teams and eventually organisations. However, what is needed are some conscious practices. Without those practices the effect of social media may indeed be the opposite: people get overwhelmed with messages and experience loss of control.

Here's a Tedtalk by Sherry Turkle called connected but alone. She basically points to the same danger of social media, though she does not talk about reflective practice in organisations, but in society at large.  She talks about "The goldilocks effect" - you get contact with others but in small bits through sms, tweets and other short messages. She claims human relationships are cleaned up by technology because connecting in sips doesn't lead to real conversations. And a flight from conversation can limit our capacity to reflect. "We can learn from solitude and listening to each other. It is in the stumbling in words that we reveal ourselves to each other." I partly agree with her that there is this danger of communicating faster, with less attention, communicating with more people but not getting to a certain depth of understanding. I also disagree because most people use social media to stay in touch with the same people over a long period of time and hence get flow of bits which also make up for revealing ourselves. For instance, there are people I get to know better through reading their blogs systematically over time. I agree for people who can't make sense of it all and do see people struggling with this. 




Let first go to the basics: what is reflection and why is it important? 
Reflection on one's own practice is an important aspect of learning. Reflection in a way to look back at what we know and what we experienced. Someone once explained it to a group by turning around and really looking backwards (with his hand above his eyes to look afar). In the process of reflection we analyse what happened to generate new knowledge and insights (this might be done individually or in group, a method for systematic reflection in group is After Action Review). A definition from a paper "Reflection is a form of mental processing that we use to fulfill a purpose or to achieve some anticipated outcome. It is applied to gain a better understanding of relatively complicated or unstructured ideas and is largely based on the reprocessing of knowledge, understanding and possibly emotions that we already possess." Reflection is important for learning because it provides us with insights in what works and what doesn't, it gives us new ideas and new ways to act. The focus of reflection may vary: from your way of working, your convinctions, processes used and other angles.


Angle 1: The reflective practitioner; reflection on action needs slowing down
Schon wrote a book on the reflective practitioner, pointing out the need to constantly reflect on the way we intervene as professionals. He distinguishes reflection in action and reflection on action. Interesting is also Argyris who talks about defensive routines in organisations that limit learning. Reflection on action demands slowing down because you need time to look back at experiences (alone or together, in structured session or unstructured when thinking under the shower). There is a difference in the way different media support this slowing down. Some media seem to get in the way of this slowing down, like email and twitter when it feels like you are getting behind and you scan and follow more and more people. On the other hand Twitter may be used in a more reflective was when you try to send a tweet about a presentation. What is the core of the presentation for you? Blogging is inherently more reflective because it forces you to formulate your ideas. Lilia Efimova wrote her Phd on 'blogging for knowledge workers'. You can read about her work here.

Angle 2: Reflection through social engagement
Another angle to reflection is reflection though social engagements. Contacts with others can stimulate self-reflection because socially agreed frameworks are called into question in interactions with others. In this article called Stimulating reflection through engagement in social relationships this is elaborated upon. However, "not all social interactions necessarily result in a reflective learning situation". There are some conditions like the dialogue partners need to be in each others 'zone of proximal development'. Where partners are too much alike there is less misunderstanding but also less opportunities to learn. When differences are too large, there is too little common ground. If you consider social media as new ways to engage, it creates a positive environment to learn. There is the question however of what conditions are necessary to learn from interactions through social media. A feedback on Yammer made stimulate thinking, but if it is too different you may simply think it is not valuable. I follow many marketing specialists which have given me new perspectives on marketing, but now I stop following them back. One of the requirements mentioned in the article above is that you need reflective skills" "I can see that the other is talking from a different point of view". Social media offer new opportunities to engage in this type of learning. From an optimistic point of view, you'd say that people who follow many others through social media will become more tolerant and capable of seeing various viewpoints. Any research to support this though?

Angle 3: The quantified self
Another angle to learning about yourself is the thought stream about 'the quantified self- developing self knowledge though numbers'. Social media (and digital media in general) provide many opportunities to collect data about yourself. What is it that you learn about yourself by analysing those data.  For instance, Chloe Fan kept all her movie tickets since 2001. In this blogpost you can read how she analyzed it and learned from this like her change in taste and movie visiting patterns like time of day, who she is visiting with etc. For Dutch people here's a blogpost by Hans de Zwart.

So is there a marriage between social media and reflection? 
From angle 1 to 3 there is an increasing positivism about the opportunities to reflect and learn through social media.  What seems clear is that with a changing practice of communication through social media there is a changing practice in the way we reflect, use and analyse information. But it is probably not automatic. The quantified self demands quite something to analyse data... There may be examples of reflective practices using social media. Like the practice of seek - sense- share described by Harold Jarche for professionals. Or the practice someone once shared that before writing a blogpost you read the previous blogposts you have written about a topic.

Any examples you would like to share? They will be welcomed by me!

Introducting social media in organisations to improve the learning function is more difficult than you may think..

For some time now, I have an evaluation report of an organization that has experience with the introduction of social media (like wikis and blog) in the organization since 2009. The report is very interesting, because it shows that the actual practice of changing habits in organisations is very hard!
They allowed me to blog about it and I think it has some valuable lessons like shape such a process as a real change trajectory (I'm personally convinced about this). 


The design of the project 
The initiative for the project came from the Research and Development department. The aim of the project was that increased use of social media within the organization would support the development of a global network: information would be better available in one central place (through wikis) and transparency about what is going on within the organisation would be enhanced. The chosen toolset fits into the broader strategy of becoming a learning organization, breaking through organisational silos. Top management supports this vision and has made it possible that sufficient time and money is allocated to this project. There is someone working on this project full time and receive the support of an external agency. The organization chose a toolset with thematic wikis as a basis, supplemented with other social media such as social bookmarking, blogs and discussion forums. "We chose to use existing social media services in the cloud instead of buying a company package, because this creates flexibility and is cheaper. You are not dependent on one company/vendor and can benefit from the further development of social media in the cloud." 

The start
The project started with training voluntary groups, people were invited but not forced to be trained. More and more groups and teams came to register for the training. Working with teams worked well because you create ownership to use the tools together with the whole team. An example: a team had to develop a new program and proposed to use a wiki, as the place for the exchange of all documents, presentations and photos. Another example is a wiki about the work in a country that has helped to get an overview of all activities in this country.  

New ways of working 
The project was framed as 'a new way of working' instead of 'learning new tools'. However, the new way of working is not still not very clear for the majority of people in the organization. It has even led to unproductive polarities in organizations: the fans versus the enemies of the new way of working. After 2 years there is no critical mass of employees formed who have embraced the new way. What was probably missing is a clear argument: a rationale of why this is a better way of working. Even though there was management support, the project became isolated from other developments in the organisation. There were too few exchanges and talks about why this way of working was needed and what exactly was understood as new. As a result, it has not yet become effective. One of the lessons may be that management support is not enough, there needs to be space  in the organisation to give priority to this way of working. If a restructuring or resizing is more important it may not be the right time. In this case, some champions were identified, but some of the champions lost their jobs, which was a set back for the project. 

Wiki as a core tool 
Although the project has introduced a broader toolset, wikis were seen as the central tool. It has proven difficult to get everyone 'into wikis' because it appeared to be a tool that works great for some, but not for others. It depends on individual preferences. Furthermore a set-back of using wikis as the central tool is that wikis are very suitable for information storage but ignores exchange and interpretation and meaning processes.  

Some lessons 
I think at least three important lessons can be learned from this project (note: these are partly my lessons and interpretations based on my observations and reading the evaluation). 

• Introducing a new way of working with social media is a change process, not an ICT project and should therefore be managed as such. It therefore requires sufficient knowledge and experiences within the team about managing change in organizations. In this case using lessons from change management would probably have led the team to pay more attention to 'sense-making and understanding of the new way of working.  
• Ensure that the vision, the purpose of the new way of working is sufficiently clear. Provide a clear focus, otherwise it quickly becomes vague to people what they are required to do. They may interpret it as 'I have to use a wiki instead of a word document'.
• Be flexible in the choice of tools. If very early in the process a uniform toolset is chosen there is the chance that you create advocates and opponents, in an unproductive battle. Allow flexibility in use of tools while keeping the vision and purpose of the new way of working as your focus. Evaluatie regularly whether the vision is still relevant. 

Four strategies profesionals for personal branding via social media

Why would you be busy and thinking about personal branding?
I always though branding was a horrible word 'become your own brand'. It sounds so much like shallow marketing. In the meantime I changed. I started branding myself online, though not consciously, through this blog, participation in online communities, twitter, commenting on blogs. I have a lot of followers on Google+ even though I hardly post...So branding can also be about sharing you unique view on professional issues and showing what your view and particular interest is. This is actually fun to do. I am now convinced you can use social media very effectively and in a fun way to develop your professional identity. Seeing what type of blogposts trigger a response from you may help you define your own specific interests to pursue.

What is a professional? A professional is someone who work and has autonomy to act. He or she identifies with his field of work. A doctor in a hospital often identifies himself more easily with other medical doctors than with the hospital. As a result he of she will be more energized by a meeting with peer than by a hospital department meeting.

Online personal branding Social media provides a space for professionals to profile themselves as autonomous thinkers and professionals. Much more than for instance within the organisation. This sometimes gives friction if someone is more appreciated online than in the organisation. In social media they are judged for unique content and interesting views whereas in organisation hierarchy and organisational politics come into play. However, in social media there is also group dynamics, but it works differently.

Meet Emile I would like to share a great example of online branding. I was part of a meeting, the Yamtour. The meeting started online. During the gathering some speakers were features from large organisations like Rijkswaterstaat en Capgemini.
They had interesting stories, so my point is not that the selection process was not good, but often the larger organisations are in the spotlight. Small innovators like Emile buurtzorg will not be selected so easily to be on stage. However, Emile used the online space to profile himself succesfully online as an innovator in the health sector. He used the online space to search other health professionals and started a group for them. After the event, he organised an informal meet up.  This is an example of using online space to profile yourself. 

Four strategies to use for personal branding using social media

1. Become an 'info-mediairy' or 'content curator' if you want. Scan information, search, make sense of it and add your personal view. You can use Google like everybody else, but you need to build your unique learning network to get more interesting information. You can use RSS feeds and other dashboard tools like tweetdeck or hootsuite to help you scan information. Don't forget the sharing part!
2. Network and learn. The speed of communication through social media and the open culture lends itself for building a personal learning network, a group of people who can help you answer work related questions. As they say: 'it's no longer what you know but who you know'. My tip is to invest in developing some relationships further. Not allow your network to become very shallow. Try to meet new people too.
3. Share. Menno Lanting -in his Dutch book 'Iedereen CEO'- notes that sharing through social media is an excellent way to work on and develop a professional identity. What are the things you'd like to tweet? What triggers you to write a blog. Maybe your blog categories help you to sharpen your elevator pitch. Everybody is an expert on something on social media...
4. Collaborate in project. Maybe you are a very practical person and you'd prefer to let your actions speak. You could also use social media to work on real project and collaborate. For instance help build a wiki about a specific topic.

The four strategies are overlapping ofcourse. Nevertheless, I'm convinced they can help you make informed choices on where to start or what kind of activities to intensify. Choose the strategy closest to your preferences and current activities.

I developed a presentation on Prezi on this topic. You might have a look if you are interested. It is in Dutch, but quite visual so it might make sense. 

Professionele Profilering on Prezi

Yammer for internal knowledge sharing for health care and policy making

What is Yammer? 
Yammer is booming, especially in the Nederland within Europe. Many companies have started their Yammer groups for rapid internal exchange. If you don't know Yammer:  Yammer is kind of Twitter (micro-blogging) service which can be used within organisation, so it is not public like on Twitter. The messages can be slightly longer than on Twitter and it is easier to reply (looks a lot like Facebook). Someone from KLM told me for instance he was looking for someone who could explain their wiki system to him. He put out a message on Yammer and found someone who could sit with him and explain it, the very next day. Without Yammer it would have been difficult to find this person.
  Yammer on tour started with great online ramp up
Last thursday Yammer organised the Yamtour. It was very well facilitated beforehand using a -you can predict - a Yammer network. People were invited to introduce themselves, everybody got a nice reply or welcome. People were asked to come forward with topics for the unconference part, and had to think of people they would certainly like to meet. For me it worked in order to meet Emile (whom I interviewed, see the video below). There was a bit of a 'selling' atmosphere in the first presentations like focussing on the ROI van Yammer and other figures to convince people of the value of Yammer. 38% of our time we spend looking for information and Yammer can reduce that time span. I thought it was a missed chance not to link and refer more to the real question that came up through the Yammer group beforehand. But nice to see the examples of various uses of Yammer and how it has opened up knowledge in organisations and made it accessible, through the use of a social approach.

Social online learning = not facilitated? 
Most people I met had the idea that you deploy Yammer, invite people and the rest should be a spontaneous proces. I talked to a member of an IT - company where it had actually worked like this.Someone spontaneously took the initiative to start a Yammer group (a free account). He invited employees from the company and within a few months 80% of the employees was on Yammer. This person explained that it is an IT company and that employees are relatively young. I also meet many organizations where it is set up spontaneously by someone and then it remains a small group of employees who sign up, or people sign up, but very little sharing is going on. I believe in supporting and facilitating the process of adoption. I'm also convinced from a knowledge management/organisational learning prespective you can influence the direction of the conversations that you would like to see on Yammer. Many people I spoke to are worried that facilitation means you are taking the spontaneity away but you can also facilitate and stimulate without imposing conversation topics and rules.


Examples of using Yammer for closing the gap between senior management and the workfloor
I enjoyed the examples of Rijkswaterstaat, Capgemini and Mobile BI. Tim de Waard of Rijkswaterstaat said that they regularly organize Yamjam brainstorming sessions on specific topics. The board of directors was coached to participate during a hands-on laptop session. After the Yamjam, they also wanted Yammer on their Blackberries, because it had given them a good insight into the various complaints and grudges within the company and it gave them the ability to respond to employees. Tim told us he himself currently has a better understanding what the board of directors is doing, before the Yamjams he really had no idea. At Rijkswaterstaat there is a community manager. He ensures that new people join a group called 'new to Yammer' and helps them develop their personalized feeds and filters. He also welcomes new members and organizes Yamjams.  

Capgemini has used Yammer in an interesting way for organizational change. Each year the senior management gets together for a three-days retreat, this time the retreat was planned in Barcelona. They used Yammer to engage a large group of people in the conversations. During the 3 days of the retreat 8000 people have joined Yammer. Presentations were shared in real time, and feedback was collected. This gave senior management a much better understanding of:

•      who the thought leaders are
•      major concerns of employees
•      what excites people

Showing the value of internal knowledge sharing
Finally they spoke about the way to demonstrate actual value created. They recommend to collect cases, every discussion, every question on Yammer may be a case. One tip is to choose a hashtag (# benefit) for conversations that helped people. In one organisation over 1500 cases were collected in this way, that show the variety of ways in which Yammer has helped employees do their jobs. Unfortunately there was no discussion of the advantage of use Yammer above for instance open social media like Twitter.

Practical example of Yammer in healthcare: replacing the client logfile
Afterwards I interviewed Emile de Roy van Zuydewijn from Thuiszorg Emile, about their use of Yammer to replace the client logbook in healthcare. In the Dutch video he explains how they are using Yammer to communicate about clients, using the clients' names as hashtags. There are also clients and other healthcare professionals who can join them in an external network. The advantage is that you can easily communicate with various involved parties. Furthermore, when the client is part of it, it is very transparent.  Emile was the one who thought of it, set it up and introduced it. It wasn't hard to get the students to use it. It might be slightly more difficult though with older groups. He has chosen for Yammer because of the security (closed system), the ease of use and the fact that you can use it on many devices (like via apps).

What strikes me in this case is that there is a pioneer with a clear vision on what a tool can do for a group. You might call that the technology steward role.

Read Dutch?  here's a blogpost by Eric van Oevelen from Avans Hogeschool who was there too. And here's the blogpost by Paul Voors from the NS.

Benchlearning: jugling with figures for deeper learning

In Ethiopia, I worked with an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) who had funds for small organizations. Year after year there was feedback from the organizations that approval of their funding took way too long. The employees involved were claiming that it was not their fault and that they were doing everything to approve quickly. As an advisor to this organization I decided to follow a number of cases made a table with the data obtained for each step in the process. It showed exactly how long the application lasted in each step. Every individual step didn't last too long but their were so many steps. With these figures in hand, we had a common truth and fairly quickly we agreed that a number of steps in the procedure should be cut. I was actually flabbergasted that my table worked so well, especially because it was a problem which had a long history of conflicts.

So when Nelly Spanjersberg told me about benchlearning I was very interested and curious. I think it is very innovative to learn from fact and figures, and not merely from reflection and feedback. So I was happy that she arranged an interview with Corline Koolhaas, projectleider benchmarking en benchlearning Rijk, projectleader for the Ministries. Here's the interview I had:

What is benchlearning? “Benchlearning is an innovative way of learning, and therefore difficult to explain. The danger is to explain is with an 'old' vocabulary, which may not fit this new way of learning. For example: an innovation as the mp3 player is hard to explain with the words of the old ways of listening to music, there are so many new possibilities. We are working on benchlearning since 2009 and have yet to be developed a better language. But I will try anyway!  

The goal of bench learning is creating a better government without making a judgment about what is right and wrong. In the case of bench learning we want to create a new vision, rather than a strategy in place. Benchlearning helps to discover: are we moving in the right direction? The traditional way of working with statistics and benchmarking worked like looking in a mirror. In benchlearning you do not you look back, but you monitor what is happening around you, with no hypothesis, and without predetermined indicators. Having predetermined indicators restricts your vision. In benchlearning you have a look at information available and arrange in in new ways, but without a set first hypothesis. You go looking for patterns. This leads to a deeper form of learning than through indicators or other means. 

Furthermore, the collective process of meaning construction is very important. You will look at the figures together: what does this mean? This means you work to change ideas and culture, yet without talking about 'culture' or 'change'. It is extremely important that you not filter yourself but that people are going to interpret what the numbers mean. Because most people want change but do not want to be changed. They must draw their own lessons"  

How does the benchlearning proces look like? "We start by making conversation starter sheets. This is a collection of figures around a particular topic. Then we assess what figures surprise people and why. After that we organize meetings, on these subjects with a central question. It is important to not to do this in a meetings environment, but in an exploratory, different setting. People should be open and confident to share. It is important that they are not judged behind their backs on what they share. These meetings lead to new insights and meaning-making about what happens in practice".

What are situations in which benchlearning fits well? "You have do it where you have a good breeding ground, there should be a clear problem. There must be some cracks. The method lends itself to larger organizations for internal sessions, but you can also apply to benchlearning amongst companies. It does not work when you are working with highly judgmental people who do not want to explore what is going on. If people in the bargaining or negotiating modus they cannot learn. Furthermore, it is important to ensure you have participant of an equal level within the organization who can inspire each other."  

What is the function of the data, the figures in benchlearning? "

The figures provide the confrontation with the real world. Sometimes a problem is already recognized as a major problem, but the numbers make it more manageable. Figures work very well to discuss actual practices, even with people who are afraid of figures. With them you present the information just in a different way. By presenting the numbers (which are often already available!) in a different way, you get a very different conversation. Often people talk past each other. In bench learning you create common ground by the use of figures and a central question. "

 

I am definitely inspired by bench learning and still want to see if I can try part of it in my own practice. For example, it could be interesting to start a session with teachers with data on the use of social media by students and teachers? Seems interesting to see what kind of conversation that brings.