Harold Jarche

Friday’s Finds #6

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It seems that Twitter has been the only subject discussed here this week, so I promise to broaden the subject matter next week. Here’s my synthesis of some of what I learned on Twitter:

Business

A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture via @johnt

John Hegel’s Shift Happens Redux via @jalam1001

“Just heard of several faculty who left research & teaching because of toxic workplaces” via @ellenfweber (related to my work at Mental Health @ Work)

Learning

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists via @josiefraser @courosa

Questions on Informal Learning and the Future of Corporate Training via @fdomon

Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed – How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part 1 via @denniscallahan

Food & Energy

(related to my volunteering with Sackville CSA)

Biggest seedmaker, Monsanto, to prune 900 jobs + does a drop in potash sales = less food? via @folkstone

Longest path between here & the truth is through a McDonalds PR campaign on sustainable agricultural practices. via @rhh

Learning and micro-blogging

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I’m presenting on Twitter and its uses for education and learning later today, as I noted in my last post. During the past few weeks I’ve been looking at my own uses of Twitter and compiling a list of resources on the subject. There are lots of how-to presentations on Twitter, and I would recommend the CommonCraft videos (available in multiple languages) for starters. After that, Jane Hart’s slideshow on specific steps to get going is very practical.

For Twitter in (higher) education, the video and accompanying commentary about a university History course at UT Dallas is the best I’ve found so far. Nicole Melander’s Why I Hate Twitter and Why I Love Twitter posts about a Social Networking and Business class are also of interest to educators.

I think that Twitter used only inside a course is quite constrained. My experience has shown that the “course” is not a good model for the Internet, and is best-suited for the classroom, from which it came. Without walls, courses and curriculum become rather messy. That may make Twitter, like blogs, best suited for personal learning environments (PLE) in academia, so that learners can use it for several courses and connect to their non-academic networks as well. As educators experiment with Twitter, it will probably be at the course level, but that should not be the final limit.

One of the greatest aspects of Twitter I’ve noticed is its asymmetry, or the fact that I don’t have to follow people who follow me. This lets me tune my network to get better signal and less noise. If you find Twitter boring or useless, then you’re following the wrong people. Blogs allow this asymmetry but social networks like Facebook don’t. Dave Emmett shows on this graphic the difference between what Seth Godin describes as tightening & broadening networks. Twitter & blogs foster broadening networks.

My own focus is using Twitter as another tool/process in personal knowledge mastery. Twitter can be  used as a collaboration tool, performance support or knowledge management application. I’ve integrated Twitter into my sense-making process with Friday’s Finds. This helps me synthesize the various threads over a week and addresses one of Twitter’s weaknesses; long-term archiving. In addition, synchronous events like #lrnchat, held each Thursday, may take a little to get used to but are fun, informative and help build community.

The mechanics of micro-blogging, like blogging, are rather simple. Of course Twitter is now being hyped, much as blogs were a while back. But what’s the bigger picture?

Charlene Croft provides a sociological perspective on Twitter:

“Twitter is a social networking site predominantly used by individuals who are high-level communicators and organizations/businesses who want to reach those communicators.   Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is a good lens through which to view Twitter users.  He talks about the Connectors, the Mavens and the Salesmen as being the three types of individuals which start and spread what he calls ‘social epidemics.'”

One conclusion you can draw from Charlene’s post is that Twitter, like blogging, is not for everyone, especially if you’re not a Maven, Connector or Salesman in your work. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be a passive participant (lurker) or use Twitter as a search engine or information gathering tool.

I will leave the final and most important words from Howard Rheingold, who says that Twitter, like most social media, requires a certain level of skill and literacy in order to be understood and used [my emphasis]:

Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it – on knowing how to look at it.

Twitter for Faculty

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Image by Matt Hamm

I’m giving a presentation on Twitter for Faculty in collaboration with the Learning Resources Network (LERN) on Wednesday 24 June at 3:00 PM EST (cost $35):

Discover new Twitter tips for faculty in research, networking, and professional development. Whether you are on Twitter or not, you’ll discover new ways of communicating with implications for the classroom and your work.

My presentation will focus on folks new to Twitter, so it’s introductory, and I will leave time for comments and discussion. Most of my resources have been tagged and are already published on my Delicious account and I’ll post the final presentation on SlideShare.

Friday’s Finds #5

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From the Twitter files:

The big news this week was the Iranian election and almost all of the news was via social media, as the broadcast media were shown to be powerless against the Iranian state, but not the people:

“This feels like Tiananmen. They fight for democracy, we watch, they die, we change the channel;” via @rhh

Rob Paterson picked up on this theme and asked “Is empowerment a point of view avoided by mainstream media? ;” I added, “and is empowerment a point of view that is embraced by social media?” via @robpatrob

“This is change of media: German main news show uses YouTube and Twitter for their report of Iran election.” via @hnauheimer

“University’s security & personnel evacuated by police, there are only us students in here right now” [frightening post from a student in Iran] via @Change_for_Iran

and of course many of us turned our avatars green in support of free elections in Iran

The Real ROI of Social Media: “But maybe we’re looking at the wrong ROI to start with – instead of return on investment, perhaps we should be more worried about the Risk of Ignoring.” via @fdomon

Skepticism about the whole “Net Generation” concept via @jclarey and a link to @markbullen and his Net Gen Skeptic blog

“Is it time to get rid of the Foreign Service designation?” This is a classic example of Tribal versus Network culture, and I’d wager that our foreign service needs a network culture in order to be effective today.

A Twitter-like policy on Twitter: “Our Twitter policy: Be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. Represent us well. Remember that you can’t control it once you hit “update.”“, via @kanter

I said that I’ve noticed Twitter is replacing comments and thus opening my blog posts up to a wider audience. “Is Twitter replacing blog comments? Possibly, says @judymartin8 and Twitter is driving my traffic up & more people are connecting inter-personally, not on blog.”

Excellent Friday viewing, YouTube video on educational reform, “Goodbye Butts in Chairs” via @jaycross

Barriers to Collaboration

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In Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate, Stewart Mader and Scott Abel ask 523 workers about their information sharing habits. In reading through the responses and sample comments, it becomes obvious that there are two technologies that limit workplace collaboration – e-mail & meetings. Both can do certain tasks well but these “technologies” have become overused and abused.

Most of us who work with social media already know that e-mail can be replaced by more appropriate tools such as wikis, instant messaging, blogs or micro-blogs for a number of tasks. Also, we free-agents know only too well how much time we’ve saved by being outside an organization and not having to attend useless meetings [I would say that by avoiding meetings & commuting, I gain 2-3 hours of productivity per day].

Some highlights from Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate (PDF):

The comments indicate that people consider email a significant time management issue, and the important information often gets lost in the volume of email.

… people … recognize that trying to conduct group collaboration and revision by email is not optimal.

75% of respondents … know that a wiki can be used for documents that require group input …

Only 6% regularly request changes to a meeting agenda.

A simple strategy to give workers some time back would be to require that all meetings have agendas (on a wiki) with accompanying minutes. Then take one task that is currently done by e-mail (request for input) and replace it with a wiki, blog or other more suitable medium. These are just two small steps that could save a lot of time and frustration.

Integrating Learning and Work

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Tom Gram discusses the integration of learning and work (my professional passion) and gives a list of ten strategies for integration, of which three are discussed in detail in Part 1 (I’m already looking forward to Part 2):

1. Understand the job
2. Link Learning to business process
3. Build a performance support system

Of Tom’s 10 suggestions, not one is related to creating a course. That shows how relevant training is to the integration of working & learning and something to consider at the dawn of the learning age.

Look at “understand the job” and see how much of a challenge that could be in today’s workplace. What do you do when everyone’s job is unique? The learning professional must be in constant contact with the realities of the everyone’s work. Interventions and support will likely be incremental, addressing changing circumstances, but using multipurpose platforms for information and knowledge-sharing. Understanding work needs good two-way communications.

As jobs become more unique (I think the notion of the job may disappear over time), training either becomes a very expensive option or must be focused on specific skills that are used by several people. The result in the latter case is increasingly smaller units of training, which merges training into performance support, making training in the traditional sense less relevant.

In a complex or changing workplace (yours perhaps?), with shifting roles and responsibilities, Tom’s other seven strategies make even more sense:

4. Build a community of practice
5. Use social media to facilitate informal learning
6. Implement a continuous improvement framework
7. Use action learning
8. Organizational learning tools
9. Design Jobs for natural learning
10. Bring the job to the learning

I would say that these ten strategies would be excellent preparation for the networked workplace.

Friday’s Finds #4

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This week marked six years as a free-agent. I announced it on Twitter and received many kind words – thank you. Once again, my weekly sense-making from the Twitter files:

@ellenfweber “Since brains integrate knowledge naturally, while humans falsely separate facts artificially, integration is central to great learning.”

via @1ernesto1 – 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the College Classroom

“all our HR and org design theory is based on nothing but dogma“; which is why we badly need new organizational & management models

RT @zecool – NB Community College Fredericton relocates to the University of New Brunswick; expect more physical mergers in higher education as costs increase

via @charlesjennings – “When it’s just so obvious NOT to train it’s painful to watch it happen”

via @Pistachio How to be Happy in Business (Venn diagram) – Reminded me of another Venn diagram (your purpose) by @DavePollard

College/university education at the undergraduate level is now merely credential farming

10 simple things (SlideShare) we can do to change our food system

via @gbrettmiller Theoria cum Praxi » Cynefin, concept work, and the role of deliberate practice

In chaos we are forced to develop novel practices, therefore we need chaos for innovation; then from  @nickcharney My favourite Nietzsche quote: “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star”.

Flow

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Scott Leslie has put together a number of media resources on the concept of the educator as disc jockey (DJ), including:

Open Educator as DJ Wiki

OE as DJ on Prezi (cool)

Metamedia Links & Comments

I like Scott’s diagram that looks at the flow of being an open educator. Flow is the operative term, because like digital media, everything is in Beta, constantly changing.

As hyper-connectivity breaks down the walls between institutions and specialists, like universities and professional teachers, so too are the lines blurring between teaching and learning online. The components of Flow for Open Educators are not all that different from what I’ve described as the flow of personal knowledge management for individuals:

As learning and working get integrated in our networked lives, we not only become lifelong learners but lifelong educators. Teaching and learning are part of the same continuum. Previously separate fields like knowledge management and learning design are being put into one great online digital blender. As Mark Pesce says during his presentation on The Power of Sharing, the only thing that a network can do is share (and it’s happening in ALL directions).

Bridging innovation and commercialization

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Events during the past week have re-focused my attention on research, innovation and commercialization, especially as it pertains to learning technologies. I was engaged for my second time as the Scientific & Technical Evaluator for the SynergiC3 project, on behalf of the funding agency:

The main objective of the SynergiC3 project [a joint venture between l’Université de Moncton, the National Research Council of Canada and Desire2Learn] is to create a productivity enhancement framework that will allow a content development team to effectively manage its resources as well as provide tools that will significantly decrease production times and costs of developing learning resources while augmenting quality.

Meanwhile, David Campbell asked about the potential for a research campus in our region, “I’m always on the lookout for interesting economic development examples that may have relevance to us here in New Brunswick.” Several years ago I had completed a “diagnostic assessment” for the Miramichi region on the potential for “applied research, development and innovation options”, and recommended two economic development strategies – Community Wellness & Sustainable Living, with details on how the public and private sectors could work together. Each option included information, communication and learning technologies.

Here is some of the background material from that report on bridging research and commercialization.

In a series of three articles [not available online], Alan Cornford stated that increasing public R&D spending will not increase innovation capacity, as only 3% of public R&D spending results in measurable innovation. The only way to measure innovation is through the outputs of R&D – specifically local wealth generation. Cornford stated that there is plenty of venture capital money available, but not enough finance-worthy ventures. The key to driving innovation is having the right people.

Even more interesting is that Cornford showed that private sector investment has 15 times the return on investment as that of the public sector. His main recommendation was not to weaken public R&D spending, but to strengthen it through private partnerships, especially with small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Cornford favoured enhanced R&D tax credits and the channeling of government investment into “community innovation idea outreach” to communities and SMB’s.

Pertinent to any discussion on our region, Cornford believed that where local SMB R&D receptor capacity is limited (as in most of Canada), the universities, polytechnics and colleges can conduct applied R&D for local SMB’s and therefore benefit from these increased R&D investments, while community SMB innovative capacity grows. Closer to home, in 2002, Dr. Alan Cornford produced a report for ACOA – Innovation and Commercialization in Atlantic Canada [emphasis added]:

The four provinces of Canada’s Atlantic region face several challenges in achieving their competitive potential. Advancements in communications and information technologies can remove some of the region’s barriers associated with the small population base and geographic distance from major markets. Nevertheless, growth of a knowledge-based economy that either capitalizes on existing natural resources or supports new industry sectors will require significant changes in culture, attitudes and approaches to innovation and commercialization. With only a small foundation and infrastructure upon which to establish this new economy, Atlantic Canada must build partnerships and collaborate more than ever before.

Cornford went on to say:

Atlantic Canada requires an aggressive investment program, with funding increases focusing predominately on industry-driven applied R&D. An appropriate balance of relative capacity in each of the stages of the innovation process is also critical to accelerating competitiveness and creating a robust and innovative economy.

The table below is based on Cornford’s synthesis of innovation and commercialization development. It shows that both Innovation and Commercialization are supported by culture, awareness and understanding – key components of our educational systems. Cornford shows the stages of Innovation and Commercialization as separate but related.

I concluded that Stage 4, where Innovation and Commercialization meet, may be the “sweet spot” for any regional initiative on research development & innovation, helping to bridge university and college research (Innovation) with the needs of SMB’s (Commercialization). What is most interesting is that this is a core component of the SynergiC3 project – proofs of concept, prototypes and pilots.

Stage Innovation

Using know-how to develop a new product or process

 Commercialization

Applying the results of R&D in a commercial setting
1 Basic Research —
2 Dissemination —
3 Applied Research —
4 Proof of Concept Prototype, Pilot, Pre-seed Investment
5 — Pre-commercial Seed Investment
6 — 1st Venture Investment
7 — 2nd Venture Investment

I suggested that the community college, on whose behalf I was developing options, should focus on Stages 3 & 4. Areas of overlap occur in these stages and this is where a college can create the most value. In order to work at these stages, the college needs “upstream” and “downstream” partners. These include research universities and NRC upstream with industry and investors downstream. Staking out a niche that enhances the work of universities, NRC and NRC-IRAP would be easier than going into a perceived competitive role.

Manage what matters — collaboration

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Knowledge is personal and it cannot really be managed, though we continue to try. Artifacts of knowledge can be managed and in many cases they can be helpful to others. Learning is the same, I can’t directly transfer my learning to you, but I can try to teach or even train you, based on some good practices. We each have to learn for ourselves, though we can take advantage of the knowledge artifacts passed on by generations of people. It’s also getting easier to take advantage of what other people know as we get more connected online.

My own focus has been on personal knowledge mastery because managing how each of us makes sense seems to be the required foundation of anything resembling organizational knowledge management. The same goes for organizational learning – it cannot even be conceived to exist without individual learning. When it comes to learning and knowledge, we may be going down the wrong path when we try to put these into organizational buckets and manage them.

As Dave Jonassen has said many times:

Every amateur epistemologist knows that knowledge cannot be managed. Education has always assumed that knowledge can be transferred and that we can carefully control the process through education. That is a grand illusion.

We need people in organizations who can learn and gain knowledge themselves, though not necessarily by themselves. At the organizational level we need people who can work together or in concert on solving problems. Organizations should focus their efforts on helping people work together. It’s about work, or performance, not learning and not knowledge. “How can we help you work?” should be the mantra of all workplace support departments.

Learning and becoming knowledge-able are now basic requirements for every worker. These are basic requirements for life, as much as food and water. We don’t manage what or how our employees eat and we don’t need to manage their knowledge or learning. We can make it easier for them to learn and share knowledge though, just like putting in a cafeteria or a water fountain. Workers need support and tools to develop these personal processes but the organization should stay out of the business of knowledge and learning and instead focus on collaboration.

As Stephen Downes wrote on one of my previous posts:

collaboration means ‘working together’. That’s why you see it in market economies. markets are based on quantity and mass.

cooperation means ’sharing’. That’s why you see it in networks. In networks, the nature of the connection is important; it is not simply about quantity and mass …

You and I are in a network – but we do not collaborate (we do not align ourselves to the same goal, subscribe to the same vision statement, etc), we *cooperate*

In a networked society, we are re-learning how to co-operate as we take our networks with us, wherever we go. Once inside an organization it is necessary to focus our group work on a task or mission and that requires collaboration. Collaboration is what organizations should primarily focus on. Successful collaborative efforts are the measure of a successful organization. All of that focus and energy on managing knowledge and learning is wasted because it can’t really be managed anyway.