Social Network Mapping!

Came across this creative view of social networking on Flickr today.

I wonder how the plate tectonics of social networking have changed the landscape since this was drawn a year ago?

 

Taking lessons back to school…

I’ve been thinking recently about “Lessons Learned”, and how widely that term is used and abused, both inside and outside KM and Organisational Learning circles.  How often in the press do we see Government departments, Football managers, Chief Police Officers et al utter the immortal words:  “we will be learning the lessons from this…”?

I wonder what this really means.  Is a lesson learned when it is identified by a reflecting practitioner, after a specific experience?  Is it learned when it is codified and made available for others, in specific or abstract form?  Or is a lesson learned when another individual has applied it, and experimented with it?

That was the basis of Kolb’s learning cycle…

…but I’m not sure that I could point to many examples of organisations where this cycle of organizational learning represents the norm.  Not really.

The Centre for Wildfire Lessons puts it nicely: 

“A lesson is truly learned when we modify our behavior to reflect what we now know.”

What I do see a lot of is something more like this.

Let’s call it “Collison’s Ignorance Spiral” (I hope the name doesn’t catch on!).

Somehow, the “abstract conceptualisation” bit seems to wear a bit thin - too many motherhood statements in lessons learned reports which fester on electronic shelves.   Now it might be that a deliberate abstract conceptualisation step can be short-circuited completely, through storytelling and the rapid exchanges and collaboration available through social media.  Perhaps abstract conceptualisation is a personal, subconscious step, rather than a clumsy organisationally imposed process. I need to think more about that one. 

But I’m still left with a lingering doubt that we just aren’t very good at designing lessons with a (future) learner in mind. I’ve been in a number of lessons learned reviews where the intent of the meeting seems to be catharsis for the team or compliance with the process, rather than learning for the organisation.

So, just for fun - what does a well designed lesson look like in a school? 

Let’s take a primary school lesson as an example (especially as I have a primary teacher conveniently sitting beside me right now!). I am reliably informed that a well designed lesson will have the following components.

Introduction - explain what you want them to learn; clear objectives.
Test past learning, build on the results of past learning.
Provide exemplar expectations - what would “good” look like?
Be accessible to different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic).
Be capable of differentiate to multiple levels of capability.
Combination of activity-based learning and theoretical-based learning, individual and group.
Have a list of accessible resources.
Conclude with a  plenary to summarise and test what has  been learned.

How do the lessons in your organisation measure up to that checklist? 
Perhaps I should spend more time in the classroom…

 

Ever wanted a slick, quick video to explain Knowledge Management?

This one from Lotus does a surprisingly good job.  Not perfect, but not at all bad…

Thanks to Geoff Parcell for spotting it.

 

Expertise development, communities and connectivism…

I spent yesteday at Henley Management College in a research workshop facilitated by Richard McDermott.  We were exploring a number of research topics relating to the development, transfer and retention of expertise.  We tabled a number of topics, including mentoring,  aging workforce, knowledge harvesting and salvage, lifelong learning and communities…  we’re going to have to focus!

Then I came across this recent post on Connectivism from Helen Nicol, who has talent for spotting good stuff in this arena. 

Helen’s thesis is that “any community of of practice must have a mix of novices, experts and all those in between, which in itself has implications for the moderation or management of communities to gain the best result for organisations.”

…which is consistent with Wenger’s definition:

“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”

I wonder, though whether there are some limiting thresholds which illustrate Helen’s idea - a community with large gaps in the continuum of expertise can generate frustration, elitism, “dumb questions and smart flaming”; whilst a communtiy with access to a great diversity of expertise can remain untapped if not well facilitated.

With apologies to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, here’s an attempt to illustrate this…

 

Social Bookmarking made simple…

Another excellent and innovative video short from Commoncraft.  Keep ‘em coming… 

 

Social Letterboxing

We’re enjoying a few weeks break on Dartmoor, and I’d planned to give the blog a rest too but I was struck by some parallels between social media and a local activity that my children have enjoyed here in the moors – “letterboxing”.  Geoff joined us for the day, and encouraged me to blog some of our observations

Dartmoor covers nearly 400 square miles, and has a large number of tors (high spots with heavily jointed granite outcrops).  Over the years, enthusiastic “letterboxers” have hidden a number of weatherproof boxes around Dartmoor, in which a notebook and an ink stamp are stored. (It’s a kind of low-tech geocaching)  The idea is that you seek out these boxes - there are estimated to be 1000+ on Dartmoor (some better than others – much like the Blogosphere!).  On finding one, you write a note in the book, and leave your own personalised “stamp” in their notebook.  You then stamp your own notebook with their stamp, and hide the box for the next person to find.

Kind of like writing on someone’s wall in FaceBook, and exchanging invitations in LinkedIn?

   

 

If you are the owner of a letterbox, you return periodically to see who has discovered your box, read the messages, and (I guess!) bask in an inner glow that can only come from knowing that a number of complete strangers have written encouraging messages to you.    Sounds a bit like MySpace?

The official “rules” for letterboxing preclude just anyone leaving their own box – no, you have to prove that you are a responsible and dedicated letterboxer by first collecting 100 stamps in your notebook and having these validated. Then, you can hide your box, and have clues to its location officially added to the official list of official letterboxes.   In practice of course, people are far too impetuous to collect all 100 before hiding their own boxes, so a two-tier system of “official” and “unofficial” boxes has emerged, with official boxes clearly marked with their “authority”.  Letterbox Technorati and Social bookmarking?

It’s interesting to see the balance between regulation and emergence, rulemaking and rulebreaking.  I wonder what the future will hold for Dartmoor’s letterboxers – and whether we’ll manage to find our 100 and leave our own box (see what a compliant soul I am?) before the holiday is over…

 

Holiday flights…

No need for “learning to fly“ - these are the experts! 
My family enjoying the Red Arrows whilst in holiday on Devon…

 

Wikis, Social Networking and RSS in plain English

Thanks to Helen Nicol blogging CommonCraft’s excellent video-shorts…

All three of their “plain english” videos here for those of you  who suffer with corporate Youtube filters, and below for those of you who don’t!

 

Bridge-building in Bangalore

I had the pleasure last week of spending two days in Bangalore with Robert Bosch India Ltd, running a number of seminars and workshops on different aspects of Knowledge Management.  One of the highlights was a bridge-building exercise designed by Learning to Fly co-author Geoff Parcell, during which the participants apply the principles of learning before, during and after, and captured knowledge to demonstrate an improvement in performance.

The picture below shows the new record span in this exercise – congratulations to the associates at Robert Bosch!

It was my first trip to India, and, although I was warned to be ready for an “assault on the senses”, and it certainly was – especially the traffic. I’m still getting over it – a whole new take on choas and complexity…

What struck me most though, was the insatiable appetite for learning and improvement demonstrated by my companions for the two days.  Robert Bosch India is already a strong performer in knowledge management, but their dissatisfaction with “good”, and unswerving desire for “great” made them a charmingly demanding client to spend time with.  There aren’t many companies in the West who could fill a conference room at 18.30 on a Friday evening for a two hour seminar on”creating a learning culture”.  Watch out Buckman Labs and Novo Nordisk…

 

Music to collaborate to…

I got back yesterday from the second meeting in a “Learning consortium” series of four events that I am co-facilitating with Elizabeth Lank, supported by TFPL.

We’re working with a group of Public Sector organisations who want to improve their capability in the fields of Communities and Collaboration by meeting, sharing, storytelling and developing new approaches.  Naturally, working with such a group requires that we invest time in building trust levels – and also in having some fun together.

Tuesday evening’s lighthearted community-building exercise involved our participants each recommending a music track which linked in some way (some of them tenuously!) to the Collaboration/Communities theme of our consortium.  Thanks to John Quinn at the Learning & Skills Council for stimulating the idea.

With the magic of iTunes, a colour printer and CD-writer, we were able to present each delegate with their own copy of “Music to Collaborate by…” at breakfast the next day. This compilation will now become the soundtrack for use our next two meetings.   
Finding a way to co-create a tangible, unique and enjoyable product is an important milestone for this particular community.

Here is a selection of the tracks…

Pulp – Common People
Sham 69 – if the kids are united
Bill Withers – Lean on me
Primal Scream – Come Together
Al Green – Let’s stay together
U2 – Somehow you keep me hanging on
Better together – Jack Johnson
The Beatles - I’ll get by with a little help from my friends

I must also take the opportunity to thank Rowan Purdy from CSIP, who gave us one the most engaging and clearest presentations on social computing that I have experienced.  Thanks Rowan – Inspirational stuff!