e e learning

my little hiatus from blogging over the past six months provided me with a number of interesting issues to contemplate, but the one that caught me most off guard was this question:

do readers really care if i post or not?

why would i ask this question? a quick look at some of my blog statistics for eelearning will clue you in. Here’s a chart of the activity on eelearning here on wordpress. I my last post before my sabbatical was the middle of September. But readership of eelearning continued to grow through November. hmmmm. Makes you begin to wonder.

Add to this that my stats counter on my typepad account is still counting away and has shown steady readership there, even though I haven’t posted a new post on that verson of eelearning in almost a year now!

What I take from all of this feedback is two fold. One, many blog readers aren’t obsessed with what is being written every day. Blogs for many web users are resource sites and it doesn’t really matter whether the content they are seeking and finding was published yesterday or last year. Two, moving a blog and getting your readers to change their blogrolls and bookmarks is a very difficult task as well. if you obsessed about reader statistics, then make sure you have a comprehensive plan to migrate your readership before you move.

Tags: reader statistics, blogrolls, blogs, bookmarks

Powered by Qumana

how do you explain an impromptu seven month hiatus from blogging activity? the best one i’ve come up with so far is the line my mother always used when i slept in late or caught an unplanned nap in the afternoon. “well you must have needed it.”

it’s as good an explanation as i can come up with.

After four years of blogging on eelearning, three years managing learning circuits blog, a job search that was not working (it seems be going much better today), personal finances that reflected the lack of success in the job search, and a handful of other personal matters resulted in me coming down with a case of “blogging burn-out.” stressing out to post “something” just because the clock passed midnight once again became less and less fun and more and more onerous.

I even contemplated shutting eelearning down. then i considered a facelift. i even had a new name (eeVolution) and new masthead. then i realized i didn’t need to create more work for myself. i needed to pare down the work i had on my plate to projects which i can focus my limited time. i decided to resign from the online community leader role for LCB, stop trying to participate in every known online community (LinkedIn is now the only one I try to visit every day, Facebook still gets some time), pull the plug on my consultancy business, redouble my full-time job search efforts, and regenerate eelearning while putting eelearning wiki and my obsession with Web 2.0 tools in suspended animation for the time being.

it seems to be working. life is a bit more manageable. my six month hiatus has led to me rethink what I want to publish here, review what I’ve done over the past four years, and reflect on why i blog. i’ll provide these insights over the next several weeks.

i guess Mom’s right. i must have needed this seven month nap. i know i feel renewed about writing eelearning. i hope it will show through in what you read!

Tags: blogging, social networking, eelearning, learning circuits blog, facebook, time management, priorities

Powered by Qumana

for the past four new years i’ve found myself in exactly the position i’m in right now.  limbo.

after forty years of living in the eastern time zone, my idea of new years celebration is tied to the dropping of that ball above times square in new york.  to me, that moment is when the new year begins.  but it happened two hours ago and people here in california are still waiting to pour the champagne and find their date for the big kiss at midnight.  56 minutes from now.

the second year i was here i decided to celebrate when new york did.  boy did i get some strange reactions when I was being all gushy and happy at 9 in the evening! 

by this time of the evening on new years eve (50 minutes from midnight), i’m over it.  time square is almost empty by now, except all that confetti and noisemakers and plastic champagne glasses.

but here people are rushing down the sidewalk to get to where ever they want to be in 48 minutes when they are going so celebrate the year being 3 hours old.    LOL

i’ve made most of the adjustments to west coast living.  i never wake my parents up at 1:00 in the morning by calling at 10pm any more.  i get that the business day is in the morning here.  the afternoon is just for us west coasters.  but after four new year’s eves, i still don’t get why new years starts three hours after the ball has dropped.

whether you’ve been to bed and are awake again in the new year or waiting it out like all these people around here, i want to thank all of you who have shared so much of yourselves with me in 2006.  once again i’ve learned more this past year than i’ll ever remember, but i wouldn’t change anything about the year that has been.

2007 is full of new opportunities, new friends and new ideas.  if only the last 40 minutes of this wait would just disappear!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!!!

sometimes i feel compelled to do whatever jay is doing.  so here are my results from the superhero personality quiz.  well it is new year’s eve.  what the heck!

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

so in that long post below, i describe 2006 for me as a workplace learning professional and for workplace learning in general.  where does that leave me and the field?

what are the challenges we face heading into 2007?

personal

personally, as i said at the beginning of my first post, i could be down.  this ti
me around, looking for a job has been an exhausting, frustrating, sometimes demeaning process. Keeping a positive attitude and having faith that all will workout for the best in the end have kept me moving forward one day at a time.

learning circuits blog

learning circuits blog has been a blessing.  it’s enabled me to get to know some of the best people in our field and it has been a positive focus for me in between sending out resumes.  we’ve built a solid, foundational readership in the past year and a half, but lcb has struggled a bit to find the way to the next level.  the challenge is to morph into the next generation of resource when no one is really clear what those resources will be.  taking a leadership role in that definition of the next thing is the challenge for lcb.

workplace learning

it seems that the workplace learning field is out of sorts today.  we know our past practices and attitudes just aren’t going to cut it in the work environment of the future, but we’re not certain of where we need to be headed.  part of this is natural due to the huge amount of change society in general is going through today.  part of this is due to a deep down feeling that we might not be totally prepared to  deliver what is expected of us in the near future.  the challenge is to find a way or ways that will allow us to meet expectation with quality and efficiency.  we also need to assure that these new ways help build both our understanding of ourselves and each other and others’ perception of us as professionals

dealing with the  incredibly exciting, mind boggling changes in technology has been a struggle for everyone in every walk of life.  many of our colleagues in learning have chosen thus far to bury their heads in the sand and hope that it will all be easier to grasp in the future.  in some sense, that’s exactly the mission for those of us who are at the front edge of learning technologies – to help our colleagues by finding easy ways to understand the new technology.  on the other hand, technology is not likely to become a one size fits all, no directions required, you already know how to do this environment any time soon.

at the same time, many of us are wading in, shifting paradigms, experimenting with new processes and ideas,  openly questioning our assumptions, challenging each other to change our ways of being.  this is where the hope and challenge lies.  the hope is in that we have people who are stepping foward to take the risk of questioning the status quo, to declare that the emperor has no clothes, to send the sacred cows out to pasture.  the challenge is to find the new way for learning professionals to add value to the enterprise before other equally capable professionals end up meeting the same goals without us.

predictions for 2007

for workplace learning

the storm isn’t over – 2007 will be a year full of tectonic shifts and changing expectations. 

talent managment rules the house – by the end of 2007 the talent management approach to recruiting, learning and development, performance management, leadership development, organizational development and succession management will be the norm in all but smallest organizations and the most recalcitrant among large organizations.

web office tools take the lead – a stumble by microsoft in the area of document compatibility will open the door for one or more of the web office suites to stun everyone by shooting to #1.  placing the cornerstone for ubiquitous online workflows and processes in the near future.

mobile learning goes mainstream – thus far, mobile learning has been a novelty.  but the combination of the introduction of the wireless broadband standard, the emergence of new, powerful and inexpensive handheld devices, and continued acceptance of short, mini-learning events will drive mobile to the forefront of delivery of learning.

rapid leadership development will be mission critical – the retirement of the baby boomers and  management ranks that are not sufficiently prepared for leadership roles leads to a generalized crisis regarding leadership skills.  learning will be expected to solve this problem asap.

"simple" simulations arrive – this is a pure guess, but someone will introduce a line of simulations that are inexpensive, easily distributed to desktop, laptop and mobile devices, and instructionally compelling.  their market penetration will look like the emergence of podcasts in late 2005/early 2006.

outsourcing/offshoring slows – already there are signs that outsourcing/offshoring’s honeymoon is coming to an end.  business models and longer range strategic and budgetary considerations are called into question.  resulting in a slowdown of companies shifting competencies outside of the enterprise.

web 2.0 tool makers find their long tails – venture capital investment in web 2.0 slows and business models are changed to reflect the fact that most web 2.0 applications can’t support a staff of more than 10-15 employees.  but the great majority of the tools can support 1-5 in a mom and pop set up.

 learning circuits blog

5th anniversary brings new image – our 5th anniversary in April will be marked with a new look and direction that reflects the new understandings about learning and when and how it happens.

personal

working for money – i’ll find work just in time…..

over on learning circuits blog, we’ve got our third installment of the big question going.  actually this month it’s three questions.

what will you remember most about 2006?
what are the biggest challenges for you/us as we head into 2007?
what are your predictions for 2007?

so here’s my bit of self-reflection before the blogosphere.

what will i remember about 2006?

it would be quite easy for me to simply label 2006 a disaster area and walk away from it  wondering what the number was on that bus that hit me.  (no not  literally.)   instead i’ve taken my struggle to find meaningful work as an indicator that i had other more important work to do first.  so using the crutch that i was going through what dotlich/noe/walker describe as a leadership passage in their book with that name and my savings slowly dwindling with every resume sent out and never responded to, i embarked on a mission to see what others around me do, how they handle situations, what do they do to handle all the information and seemingly unlimited number of opportunities to try something new.

but, i believe as a direct result of having to do the soul searching work i’ve had to do, i’ve had the chance to do some very positive things for myself this year.  one truly positive experience was working with jay cross on the beta test of his unworkshop.  the opportunity to help build a course that was seeking to truly practice what we preach was a awesome.  while there were times we struggled and there were times when we were both exasperated with each other, what we began cobbling together back in february has evolved into an experience that now seems to be transformational to those who go through it. 

there were two other benefits that came through working with jay on the unworkshop.  one was to have the chance to be so close to a master, watch his world literally crumble under his feet (no one who was there the first week of the beta would want to relive the experience!), and then witness as he righted himself, reoriented himself and completed the three week beta in a blaze of glory with a brilliant "final exam."  jay’s performance and, in my role as the course coach, my chance to be sole witness to all of it was my lesson in the power of informal learning through apprenticeship. 

the other positive that came directly from the unworkshop beta was my first two professional publications.  camille jenson asked several of us from the unworkshop to submit articles for a special edition of the alberta distance educaton newsletter she was editing.  then this august, loretta donovan, one of my coaching victims from the unworkshop, invited me to pen the article i mentioned here last week. 

the last two personal highlights were watching george siemen’s very open process in conceptualizing his new book, knowing knowledge.  i ended up being one of the last to review the manuscript for george before he published.  to read such powerful thought, and have an  impact on it’s published work is why i loved working in textbook publishing years ago.  check out knowing knowledge, it’s free to download and it could well change the way you think and learn.  finally i’ve had the tremendous opportunity to work with tony karrer, one of the real up and comers in learning, as we’ve worked together to start the big question feature of which this post is a part.  the distributed conversations have been dynamite and lcb has never seen this level of participation. 

but my 2006 wasn’t all about me.  it was a year that saw web 2.0 explode onto the learning scene mimicking the general population.  lms’s and lcms’s are almost only spoken of in conversations about things that aren’t working.  wikis, podcasts, rss feeds, social networking tools joined blogs as power tools of the forward looking.  in a move that only surprised me in that it took so long to happen, corporate intranets were "discovered" by the learning world.  informal learning gained more urgency throughout the year.  half the time, i couldn’t figure out if jay cross was riding that wave masterfully or if he was the wave machine causing the wave.  second life took on a life of it’s own.  including spillover from it’s fictional economy into the real world economy and visa versa (starwood hotels, nike, and reuters are just a few dual world vendors) making the singularity seem all the more real. 

it also seemed that the corporate learning world took some time to gather itself after several years of incredible effort to gain credibility and position in the enterprise.  but foundational questions about evaluation and assessment, the substance of the arguments and cornerstone beliefs we cling to, and the continued  worry that we’re not ready for that office in the corporate suite seemed to have much of the industry on  edge by the end of the year.  but that may also be explained by what seems to be a bi-annual cycle of doubt and hand wringing that our field seems particularly inclined toward.

whew!  that was exhausting.  if you followed me this far, thank you.  i think i’m going to give both of us a break and break this assignment into at least two parts.   so, one down, two to go.

next:  present  challenges.   and  future predictions.

lilia effimova is developing a tool to help characterize work-related blogs along a scale of personal to business in regard to who controls, contributes and reads a blog.  she’s invited anyone to contribute to here efforts by completing the scale for their blog.  sounded fun, so here’s mine.

we were asked to fill out several scales based on criteria that lilia provides on how personal or how business driven that item was for our blog.

from that input, the following chart is derived.  the more  toward the center the array is, the more personally focused the blog. 

overall, i think this is a great tool.  There are few things that need to be considered in revision.

1. the tool assumes that the blogger works for an organization (company, university, etc) that they don’t own or control.  thus affiliation with company doesn’t really apply to an independent contractor, someone "between jobs" or a graduate student. 
2. process decision making and content decision making really have a third or even 4th dimension.  i know alot of bloggers watch what their readership seems to be reading and then publish more in that area.  another would be the blogosphere itself as an influencer.  this post is more a reaction to the fact that a number of the bloggers i read regularly had analyzed their blogs with lilia’s tool.
3. i’m not sure that the individual scales all have the same weight or value.  what i mean is that for a personal blog like mine, an answer of fully personal (the left most box) on the "content control" is a positive.  but because my intent is to help myself and my readers understand business issues the same answer to "blog uses" would be horrible.  so is it better to have a circle closely bundled around the center of the array or one that follows the outward edges?
4. i will be interested to see what the "norm" is for the array chart.  especially if it were to be analyzed along the lines of company blogs, employee blogs, and consultants’ blogs.

but like i say, this is a great tool.  my callouts are merely refinements.  Thanks Lilia.

mark oehlert has posted a fun challenge on both his blog e-clippings and on learning circuits blog:

so here is the challenge – think of six word lesson plans. use just six
words to describe the objective(s) of a course, a unit, a module, a
lesson, an entire college career – whatever your preferred length of
instruction is,

so here’s my go at it:

share -> connect -> forget -> reflect -> learn -> reconnect

give it a try.

i just happened to notice the other day that i was coming up on this milestone for e e learning.  this indeed is post  #100.    Seeing that I began writing e e learning in January 2004, my rate of publishing won’t be challenging Robert Scoble or Arianna Huffington.   but it is somewhat unbelieveable for me to comprehend. 

I’ve always struggled with writing.  As a colleague of mine said to me once, "its clear from the way you speak that you have intelligent thoughts, but it’s torture getting it to your fingers!"   by blogging, i’ve given myself more chances to write informally. the result is that writing is much easier for me today.

because of both my work on e e learning and as blogmeister for learning circuits blog (thanks again jay!), i’ve had the motivation to teach myself tech skills (html, css, some java script, etc) 

I’ve come to know dozens of new colleagues from all over the globe.  these connections allow me the opportunity to participate in the development and editing stages of three books (jay cross on metrics and informal learning and george siemens on knowing knowledge), help create the beta version of jay’s informal learning experience, serveral conference presentations, and authoring or co-authoring of several articles.

and i’ve learned about myself.   what motivates me?  what are my strengths?   I’ve experimented with,  new technologies to enhance my blogs.  (both eelearning and lcb have wikis associated with them, cocomment and mysyndicaat, etc.).   i’ve toyed around with voice and how i present myself, and  i’ve found a way to communicate through the written word that actually doesn’t stress me out.

today i have five blogs in some sort of state of exisitence.  besides eelearning and learning circuits blog, i occasionally post to a blog on elgg.net  and another on myspace.  i also recently started a blog called divanet. divanet is a blog written by my dog, diva.  for me it is a real stretch, but thus far a comfortable one, into the very new territory of creative writing.   i’m having fun with it.    i also have the two wikis i created – one for eelearning and the other for lcb and two ning application (one as the discussion forum in eelearning wiki and the other is a web 2.0 review that is a companion to eelearning wiki).

So that’s 100 down.  Now let’s see if I can crank out posts 101 -200 a little faster than the first 100!