Social media revolution

Social Media Revolution

Personal Learning Environment Stephen Downes

Beyond Management: The Personal Learning Environment

View more presentations from Stephen Downes.

We Think

We Think

A Collaborative Workplace

A great paper here on building a collaborative workplace by Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and Nancy White via Harold Jarche

An extract…………….

“Today we face an entirely new environment for innovation and getting things done. The days of the lone genius quietly toiling away in pursuit of that Eureka moment to revolutionise an industry are all but over. We are now in the days of asking and listening to our customers and working with them in our innovation cycles. Innovation demands collaboration. So does production. In the past we could focus on a single task in an assembly-line fashion, handing our completed activity to the next person who would in turn do the same, until the job was finished. Now the jobs change fast, requiring learning new skills rather than merely repeating the old. We have to seek out people who have other pieces of the puzzle and work with them to tackle increasingly complex issues at a much faster pace.”

Handbook of emerging technologies for learning

A handbook written by  George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger as well as a wiki that will continue to be updated is now available.

“This Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (HETL) has been designed as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.”

Really worth reading.

Networking & Managers

Great article here re networking via George

“Managers today juggle more responsibilities than ever and for many of them networking becomes an afterthought. Herminia Ibarra, INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour says that’s a potentially fatal career mistake. “What you know is who you know,” she says and warns that managers who neglect to build their networks risk failing or remaining stuck in middle management.

Ibarra insists that networking is a requirement for business leaders in today’s competitive environment.

“Other things being equal, what is going to give you an edge?  It’s the relationships that you have that allow you to augment what you know and allow you to take the ‘what you know’ and actually to translate it into practice, into something the organization can use. It makes all the difference.””

Knowledge Networker

The knowledge networker is described here by Mohamed Amine Chatti ;

“I believe that the new knowledge age is demanding new crucial skills based on knowledge networking rather than knowledge creation abilities. Since knowledge is distributed and ubiquitous in nature, everyone has to be a good knowledge networker. A Knowledge networker is one who has the ability to;

• identify connections, recognize patterns, and make sense between different knowledge sources.
• locate the person or the community/communities with the required know-how that can help achieving better results.
• navigate and learn across different communities.
• Connect and collaborate in different knowledge networks.”

I connected this with a previous post concerning new skills needed to help us cope with the abundance of information available to us;

 Recognising patterns & trends

Filtering of knowledge and extracting the important elements

Determining the value of knowledge and ensuring it’s authentic

Achieving our purpose or goal by navigating between people, technologies, repositories and ideas.

Critical & creative thinking

Building networks in order to stay current and informed

Focusing on important tasks while undergoing a deluge of information

Acceptance of uncertainty

I wonder how different these skills will need to be in 12 months time?

EduCampOnline 2007

Following on from Brian’s thoughts re the Unconference, here’s a opportunity to participate in EduCampOnline 2007 where participation and organization are dispersed from the organizers to potential attendees.

This has been  set up by George at the University of Manitoba and is due to run between 24th-28th September. The password is c4mp.

See you there!

Future of Education Conference

This looks worth participating in. Here’s an extract from George Siemens newsletter.

“I’m quite pleased to announce that details for our upcoming Future of Education Conference (free registration, completely online) are available. We have a wide range of speakers confirmed (and many more to still confirm), including: David Weinberger, Dave Snowden, Stephen Heppell, Rene Barsalo, Sugata Mitra, Jay Cross, Brian Lamb, Chris Sessums, Vicki Davis, Mark Oehlert, Cheri Toledo, Dave Cormier, Teemu Leinonen, and MaryFriend Shepard.
Our last online conference (Connectivism conference in February) attracted over 1200 registrants, with excellent discussion in moodle with conference participants. We effectively managed to, in my humble opinion, shift the conversation from the pulpit to the conference floor. For this conference we have added a variety of 20 minutes presentations in addition to daily keynotes. This will hopefully extend the conversation…and (due to different presentation times) enable people in other time zones to participate for the live sessions. “

E-Learning in the 21st Century

Here’s an extract from a thought provoking post by Janet http://brandon-hall.com/weblogs/janetclarey.htm

“In E-Learning in the 21st century authors Garrison and Anderson, recognized pioneers in distance learning said:

The future is for those who are ready to assume control and responsibility for their learning; those who have acquired the critical thinking and learning abilities needed to cope with the ‘too much information’ age. Those who have learned to manage learning and create; those who are will to act upon their learning and who are ready to shape change and not be the victims of it.”