Shouldn't We All Be Learning Digital Literacy Skills?

A few weeks back, I was doing some thinking about 21st century workplace literacy and wondering why edubloggers and workplace learning bloggers weren't having more conversations about what constitutes "literacy" in a radically changed workplace. I would argue that by anyone's definition, digital literacy should be part of what we mean when we talk about the skills that all workers need to be successful. I'd go so far as to... Read more →


Combating "Birds of a Feather" Syndrome

For the past few days I've been deep into thinking and learning about homophily, our tendency to connect to people who share similar backgrounds, experiences, interests and values. I've been excited to see a conversation beginning to occur both here in comments and at other blogs. It's interesting to see the conversations evolve and new pieces being added to the puzzle. As I continue my reading, discussions and thinking, I've... Read more →


Why the Internet is Making Me Stupid

I learned a new word this week--"homophily," which is the tendency for people to associate and bond with others who share their interests, values, culture, demographics, class etc. This is the all-too-familiar online behavior I was remarking on earlier this week in my post on 21st century workplace literacy. There I noted that it seems like edubloggers tend to associate online with other edubloggers, while the workplace learning folks are... Read more →


25 (Free) Tools for Professional Development and Productivity

I've been writing this week about Jane Hart's analysis of the technology tools being used by workplace learning professionals vs. those being used by educators, trying to identify why educators seem to be making greater use of social media. One issue may be that workplace learning professionals are not as familiar with social media tools in learning. Fortunately, Jane has created an excellent resource to address this--her 25 Tools Professional... Read more →


Jane Hart's Top 100 Tools for Learning: Looks Like Workplace Learning is Still Web 1.0

Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has posted her Spring 2008 Top 100 Tools for Learning, a compilation of the top 10 tools identified by 155 elearning professionals. A complete analysis is here. Delicious now tops the list, knocking Firefox to number 2, but what's really interesting to me about this quarter's version is Jane's observation about who is using which kinds of tools: A wide... Read more →


The Stages of Personal Learning Networks

I'm out the door, but wanted to share this. Jeff Utecht has come up with a nice graphic depicting the stages of developing a personal learning network (PLN) that I think captures the different phases of using social media for learning. You can see the graphic here. (I'd share, but his Flickr license is All Rights Reserved.) Jeff's stages are: "Stage 1 Immersion: Immerse yourself into networks. Create any and... Read more →


In Which I'm (Almost) Convinced of the Value of Twitter

I've been trying Twitter off and on for months now and just couldn't get excited about it. I hear all these great things, but somehow it just wasn't connecting for me, which is a little unusual since I tend to take pretty quickly to new technologies. So when Jeff Nugent from the Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Teaching Excellence emailed me about what he, Britt Watwood and Bud Deihl were... Read more →


False Starts and Learning Through Conversation: An Interview on Social Media and Learning with VCU Staff

UPDATE--Be sure to check out Britt Atwood's take on our discussion here. The other day, I had the great pleasure of doing a Skype interview with Britt Watwood, Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl of the Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Teaching Excellence. I've been corresponding with Britt on a variety of topics for awhile and Bud and I had bonded over Jott. Through our interactions and though reading their blogs,... Read more →


Becoming a More Reflective Individual Practitioner

Yesterday I blogged about how I believe that technology--most notably blogging--has taken the concept of being a reflective practitioner to another level. Today I want to talk in more detail about that and about how we as learners can better incorporate reflection into our practices as professionals. Building Reflection Into Your Individual Learning Practices In my research on this idea, I ran across a very nice 4-page summary on reflective... Read more →


On Being a Reflective Practitioner

Last week, I blogged some reflections on a learning project I started that has stalled, at least for now. Then I blogged about Nancy White's recent experiences in facilitating a class, which led to a great exchange in comments that forced me to reflect further on my own assumptions about facilitation. This led me down a path of thinking more about the practice of reflection and how one of the... Read more →