ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

My Twitter mosaic

Not that much Red Nose day action, then . . .

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Presentation: a content strategy for your content

Great presentation here from Kristina Halvorson from Brain Traffic on the importance of content online and how to manage it. Would have liked to have been at the presentation.

[Posted on Junta 42]

Content Strategy: The Care and Feeding of Your Biggest Brand Asset

View more presentations from Kristina Halvorson.

Learning from work experience students

I have decided to start asking our work experience students a few questions about how they use the web. This is what I found out from our current student (aged 15 and female):

• Has a mobile and laptop

• Spends 5 hours an evening online

• Primarily uses Facebook and MSN messenger to talk to friends

• Uses school web site to access files, file homework etc

• Uses shopping sites such as Asos.com

• Doesn't use Twitter, read blogs and doesn't use email much.

How people respond to a downturn

Interesting piece in The Guardian on how we respond to a downturn.

Couple of points stood out for me:

1 We innovate in a downturn. We have to because old ways of working just don't work anymore. That means lots of opportunities. Danger is that organisations are too slow in changing and get caught out. What happens if you are traditional organisation with no culture of innovation?

2 We do things differently. It has been great to see employers try different approaches to saving money from their mostly costly asset - their people. Instead of cutting people employers are putting a freeze on recruitment, trying four day weeks, looking at new working patterns, flexible working, cutting bonuses, freezing pay rises.

Social media tools for HR and training

UPDATE: A cautionary tale of social media in the workplace. 

Following on from last week's presentation at Wolverhampton's Learning Lab, I have decided to pull together all the links and useful info on HR and web 2.0. These will links will appear on the slides from our presentation which will be posted on the Learning Lab site shortly. Thanks to Michael at XpertHR for some of these links.

Research

Web 2.0 and human resources - a June 2008 report by the CIPD
The Facebook Fear Factor – New CIPD report urges HR to view Web 2.0 advances as an opportunity rather than a threat. Download CIPD March 09 report on web 2 for HR  [2.3MB PDF].

More details on how Web 2.0 can help drive organisational performance will be discussed in an interactive session at the CIPD’s annual HRD conference on Wednesday 22nd of April at ExCel, London

Six Ways to make Web 2 work from Mckinsey.
 

Practitioner tips

52 ideas on using social media within HR by Michael Specht - check out the comments too. And here is a presentation by Michael on Web 2.0.

Social media for HR execs - presenetation by Carmen Hudson, senior manager, Talent Acquisition, Yahoo.

Worth doing searches on Slideshare for Twitter and social media - there are lots of great presentationers by HR practitioners. And don't forget to share your presentations too.

Couple of great posts from the Fistful of Talent Blog. Again, check out the comments too.
5 Must-Use Social Media Tools For HR & Recruiting Professionals In 2009...
5 (More) Must-Use Social Media Tools For HR & Recruiting Professionals In 2009

And help get a sense of social media uptake in HR by taking the Corporate social media assessment from Talent Tecnology blog.

Follow the conversations

Get an RSS reader and see who is saying what. Start by looking up the top 50 HR blogs.

Hit the forums at HR Space, Training Zone and HR Zone.

Look up training and HR people on Twitter through Twello. HR Zone has compiled a list of UK HR professionals on Twitter. 
 

Employer guidelines

• IBM social media guidelines.

• Edelman online behaviour policy.

Web 2.0 impact on HR and training

Jeremy @rhemagroup is talking about the HR function and its role as an internal police force.

He says there needs to be a paradigm shift for HR - as people are talking to each other in spaces such as Facebook. Need to tap into this and enagage with employees.

Also talking about the disruptive nature of social media tools and what employers need to do to engage employees.

Emerging theories around learning and social media

Dr Sian Bayne from school of education, Edinburgh University, is showing her Friend Wheel representation of Facebook. She is talking about theories around social media and learning.

Notes images of scholarship are bound up in paper publishing. Time to break away from the 'page metaphor'.

Shares a study of 3 higher ed programmes using social media. Used virtual ethnography (Hine) - how to make boundaries between real and virtual.

Themes: new literacies, appropriation and taming, the uncanny (strange views of second life)

Wiki - volatile and movable text. Students feels it is a more formal space than a discussion forum. Like editing others' work but issue of netiquette. Holyroodpark wiki space as an example

Roland Barthes - death of the author quote - 1977. 'A text is made of multiple . . .' used to expalin wikis.

As for taming - blogs used in conventional course design.

Uncanny - a Freud term. Sian is talking about Second Life and its weirdness - how students find being in Second Life - out of body experience, reanimation, zombies, anxiety, troublesome.

Need to teach a pedagogy of uncertainty. This uncertainy is exciting. An ontological issue.

Higher education stilll requires written work for assessment although student practices are online. The institutions need to catch up.

Web 2.0 in learning

We have prof Robin Mason from Open University. Just raised Paul Bradshaw's Twitter learning experience which Robin didn't seem that interested in.

BTW, Robin is author of The E-learning and Social Networking Handbook.

So, Robin is saying the implications of web 2.0 learning are:

• There isa need to reduce course content

• Need to structure online discussons

• Valuing content from online interations ie using at coursework.

Problems

• collaborative learning makes the course less flexible than traditional distance learning

• Schedules of busy people mean holidays etc can be a real hindrance to sustained participation

• Students feel more guilty failing their peers in collaboration than they do their students i individual work

Teaching and learning in Second Life

Kathy Trinder, a learning technologist is talking about how Glasgow Calendonian University and use of virtual worls in learning and development.

Emphasises the fact this is still new to higher education and that there is a lot of experimentation.

Started with staff and students attending evening classes = development of a comunity around 2nd life. Aim was to get through early adopter issues.

Ran competitions to find projects - got 9 entries from around GCU.

Projects from law students, clinical students and psychology students. 

Examples:

Computer tech students wanted to learn more about Artificial Intelligence. So they created a robot/simulation to see how AI algorythm worked. Third year students built the simulator for thefirst year students. Peer teaching proved powerful.

Xray simulator - in real life these machines cost a lot - to help students learn how to do x-rays. Much easier to get 150 students to train on simulator.

Student support in second life. Enable students to approach her without the stigma - as adifferent(anaynous) persona. Not right for all students, but good for some. Plan to build some support spaces in  second life.

Law of second life project.

Virtual ward to practise decision making processes around patient needs.

Exciting - new open source version of Second Life called OpenSim - avirtual worl on a USB stick.

Kathy gives an example of a student who takes tutorials in Second Life. And highlights the collaborative nature of online games - crucial skills for business.

Blogging from learning lab @ Wolverhampton Uni

Today I am  doing a presentation on social media tools for HR and training. I am co-presenting the session with Jeremy Francis from Rhema Group. He asked me to help him out so here I am.

The session is one of the many put on by Wolverhampton University Learning Lab.

This is the order of sessions:

Session 1 – Kathy Trinder – Glasgow Caledonian University
Teaching and Learning in 3D Virtual Worlds: The GCU Experience

Session 2 - Professor Robin Mason – Open University
The impact of Social Networking on Higher Education

Session 3 – Dr Sian Bayne – University of Edinburgh
Researching social media for learning

Session 4 – Jeremy Francis – RHEMA Group, Martin Couzins, Reed Business Information
HR and Training 2.0

I'll be attempting some live blogging throughout the sessions plus some tweeting.