ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

The right to request training, please. You must be joking

So the government suggests that emplyees should have the right to request training (like a flexible working request) and guess what? Employers ie the CBI et al are up in arms because they will have to foot the bill ie they don't want to pay whilst employees are on training courses.

Ah, it's so refreshing to know that employers are so keen to train their employees.

Considering most adults spend 40 hours a week for 45 years of their life in the workplace, the number one and most obvious place for continuing development is the workplace. So why can't employers be more enlightened about learning and development?

The you-want-training-pay-for-it-yourself mentality will at best encourage employees who are keen to learn to get trained and move on - knowing it is up to them and no one else to learn and develop. That equals poor retention of employees who want to learn - arguably the typoe of people that should be reatined and developed.

At worst employees won't take it upon themselves to learn. Is that the type of person employers want? Of course not.

The Government proposals are good - let's hope that business does not derail them

 

Feedback from LCC digital journalism workshop

When I started the session I asked delegates what skill they wanted to develop over the coming year. This is what they said:

• How to turn news stories into features
• Online skills
• News writing
• Learn the rhythm of being a journalist
• How to construct a story (although that had been taught on their course)
• Shorthand
• How to interact with the audience (online)

A couple of delegates also wanted to build contacts - which is obviously key for a journalist. I put it to the group that there are now many ways to build contacts both off and online.

I provided the delegates with a feedback form which asked the following questions:

• Did you find this workshop useful? They all said yes and were very positive.
• What other material would you have liked to have seen covered?
• What was your opinion of the trainer?
• How else could this training session be improved?

I also provided delegates with the option to leave their email so I could email them links to digital journalism blogs - something they all wanted me to do.

I'm not going to provide all the answers to the feedback here BUT all delegates did like the session and thought the trainer was good (knowledgeable and enthusiastic were mentioned a few times).

Learning points for me
The room was a bad room for training - I was stood in the middle of a computer room with a pull down screen that made it difficult to see my presentations

1. I raced through a piece of group work. In fact, I changed the format of the group work because the room was not right for it. What I ended up was a quick fix. It was OK but could have been better.
2. Setting some aims at the start with the delegates is a great way to anchor the session, to keep focus and to help conclude.
3. I did not provide handouts - some did ask for them so must provide in future.
4. This group had different needs to that of the journalists I have presented to. I really do need to think about who is in the session and how much knowledge and experience they have. From this I can design a relevant session and set the right tone.

After the session I talked to course tutor Sue Dawson. She said LCC is looking at reworking its courses to cover media convergence.

She is keen for me to come back next term. I'll take that as success.

Next iteration of the Aspiring Editors' Group to kick off

On Thursday I have the first meeting of the Aspiring Editors' Group at RBI. I have posted on me setting up this group and am very proud so many members of the first group became editors.

Nine journalists are attending and I have three senior speakers too. All very exciting as the speakers will be spelling out what the company expects of editors in terms of skills, experience and capability.

With the media changing so rapidly it will be interesting to hear what the speakers - RBI's editorial development director, organisational development director and a publishing director - feel is important now.

Knowing enough about technology to influence technical teams and to understand how technology can benefit the business must be high on the list. As must be editorial leadership. After all, change needs leaders to show teams the way forward.

But, it's all new so we also need our editors to be risk takers - to try things out and to seize opportunities and to inspire their teams to do so.

Domain mapping etc

Hmmm, just lost a post I had written. Things are a bit odd and I blame my attempts at domain mapping this typepad blog to my itsdevelopmental domain.

Let's hope I can work out what I am doing very soon as the headers on my posts are the same size as the body text. Looks NICE.

I am going to save and hopefully retain these few lines.

Adventures in domains here I come.

Digital journalism workshop, London College of Communication

Just finished a two hour session with ten students on the last day of their four month post-graduate journalism course at LCC, Elephant and Castle, London.

Went really well and was quite an eye-opener. I condensed the course I ran at RBI into two hours. Feedback on the feedback forms looks to be very positive but we covered a lot of ground and I think delegates were really enagaged, if somewhat surprised by some of the key messages.

This really is new stuff for a lot of them.

More of that tomorrow, but in the meantime here is a pic of the classroom - yes, a computer room full of Macs. Quite a shock for a PC man!

Learning NOT training

Just changed the description of my blog - only a slight change of deleting 'training' and adding 'learning'. BUT an important change as training does conjure up classroom-based teaching- a one-off experience of limited value which is provided whether you want it or not (sometimes, anyway).

Learning on the other hand emphasises the role of the individual in the development process. That is where the emphasis should be, so learning it is.

Career development workshop #2

Have been given the go-ahead to do my career development workshop again. This time it will be called a digital journalism workshop and will focus in on new skills required by journalists.

I have reworked the session plan and have introduced a short session on setting up an RSS reader. A simple but essential tool for any journalist.

This will take place later this month.