This week I've been exploring the power of positive questions in professional development. Yesterday I looked at some questions for setting the stage for learning. Today I want to propose some questions that can help us better define what we want to learn. Professional Development Action vs. Activity This is related in some ways to my earlier post on action vs. activity. I've found that it can be easy to... Read more →

Over on his Learnstreaming blog, Dennis Callahan writes about the difference between signing up for social media and joining: Having a social media account (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve joined. It means you’ve signed up. It’s like signing up for the gym. You can say that you belong to the gym but if you don’t get on the equipment and exercise, what benefit is there to your... Read more →

When you haven't blogged in months and decide, finally, to begin again, it's probably a good idea to explain your absence. In the time since I've last written here, I've been wrapped in a reflective cocoon, working on a new path for my business. This need to re-invent myself has come over me a few times in my professional life. It generally begins with a strong feeling that what I'm... Read more →

For one of my clients, I'm developing an online community of practitioners working for a variety of nonprofit, government and for-profit entitities in New Jersey. We wanted to treat the process of forming and nurturing this community as a learning project so we could share our "lessons learned" with others who are doing this kind of work. Our intent is to write an Issues Brief at the end of the... Read more →

Harold Jarche, like me, is reflecting on his recent attendance at conferences: I’ve been thinking about knowledge sharing, after attending a couple of conferences in a row and heading off to another. One thing missing in these discrete time-based events is that there is litle time for reflection. Most presenters hold back their knowledge in order to “deliver” it just before the big official presentation. This presentation is followed by... Read more →

I've written before about the importance of reflective practice in professional development--the process of reflecting on your development as a professional and recording those thoughts somehow. The problem for most people is that getting in a regular practice of reflecting and recording can be difficult. Developing new habits can be hard, so having a tool to help you along can be invaluable. So, via TechCrunch and Marianne Lenox, here's a... Read more →

Meredith Levinson has posted a series of 6 excellent questions to identify change agents and innovators during a job interview that she got from Amanda Hite, founder and president of recruiting and HR consulting firm Talent Revolution. It occurs to me that these six questions would also be great thought starters for both individual and organizational reflective practice. They are: What do you do to build, manage and maintain your... Read more →

Shafeen Charania makes an intriguing suggestion--that the best predictor of our future failure is our past successes. His premise is that when we've found a course of action that proves successful, we are more likely to become wedded to it. We then resist changing our approach, even when circumstances have changed. This is related, of course, to the tyranny of dead ideas. But there's a twist. In Shafeen's formulation, we're... Read more →

REFLECTIVE DIARY TOOL - Get more Business Plans Here's a neat little tool to support your reflective practice, especially useful for those of you who like a more structured approach. It could be an alternative (or a complement) to the "debriefing" I talked about a few months ago. Read more →

Blogs and educating the eflective practitioner View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: elearning professional) Over at Work Literacy this week, we hosted a great webinar on using blogs for reflective practice. It was run by Paul Lowe, who is a senior lecturer and course director at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. You can access the recorded session here. Just click on the link and... Read more →