Last spring I agreed to be a steering group member for Competence & Capability Development Community for Excellence Finland. It has about 900 members and organizes monthly events. Riitta my colleague at Nokia, was looking someone to continue on her behalf and since life long learning has been one of my interest areas for years, I agreed to join in.
Steering groups members are asked to organize one session, providing practical examples, so I offered to run a Workshop on “Mobile Learning & Web 2.0″ and promised to introduce opportunities of social communities (Facebook and Ning), microblogging (Twitter & Yammer) and virtual worlds (Second Life and Sun’s Project Wonderland) as well as examples of mobile learning applications used within Nokia for strategy sharing and competence development. So September 24th, 2009 we had a workshop in Design Factory, Otaniemi.
We had a very interesting afternoon with good discussion – and I promised to share examples included in presentation and links demoed with participants. And instead of doing that with traditional e-mail – I would write a blog post about it – so it would be easily shared with others as well.
We started the workshop with short selections from two You Tube -videos:
- A vision of a student today - describing the changes in learning & life from students’ perspective – by Michael Wesch’s students
- Did You Know – describing the change around us – by originally Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod …
And we continued with questions how communication and work life are changing and how possibilities for learning in business & work life are changing as well. In the workshop I introduced examples and described possible uses of social media for learning and competence development. – People in small groups discussed what would be the possible benefits of using certain media and what concerns did they have .
I decided to use examples that are describing how the work itself is changing … how we work and how we learn as well.
As introduction I gave overview to social media channels. We started with a quick test, how much people knew about social media, and how much they had used them. For EFQM conference we had session related to Quality & Web 2.0 and we used Facebook Group Quality & Connected Life Web 2.0 prior to conference for discussion and sharing examples. I shared examples how work is accelerated and changed by use new media & crowd sourcing – Google Marketing book done in 32 hours in Finland, We are Smarter than Me book creation & Japanese Otetsudai Networks using mobile devices, Rendez project site build on Drupal, Dell Idea Storm & IBM Jams.
Examples at personal level- Jeremiah Oywang, Luis Suarez & Sacha Chu – provide views to how professional people shared their findings with others and sources they are using for their personal learning.
Professional organizations have long been important for professional development – now use of social media communities provides new possibilities also between face-to-face meetings. -I used Sometu -Ning Community ( Social Media Supporting Learning) as an example.
Microblogging with Twitter – provides fast channels for information sharing. Using examples from a recent Twitter 140 Conference , and many people in Twitter helping in preparing the workshop, I shared stories how Twitter can help in professional learning.
Some use of new media I demonstrated directly from internet, using Delicious bookmarks , Linked In and a live Google search, based on comments and question from participants.
In group discussions workshop participants game up with several possible benefits. Social media can help in finding latest information, being better connected to experts also internationally. It can provide access to new thinking and ideas, and provide context for co-creation, possibility for instant sharing both experiences and information. Social Media applications can give new possibilities for efficient knowledge management, it can be fun and entertaining and can provide new business possibilities. Most applications are free and some were perceived easy to use.
During the discussion people were concerned with security & privacy and excessive use of time. Finding relevant information, meaningful and value adding communities and people can be challenging. Using many media channels can lead to information overflow and superficial use of information. Separation of professional & private life was one of the concerns and also , digital divide, how some people might not have possibility to participate. Difficulties with registrations, access, visiting various sites and also technical problems ( firewall restrictions, etc.) could hinder use of social media. In some organizations cultural discouragement - perception that social media provides channels for entertainment, not for professional development, does not encourage people to explore possibilities.
Participants saw many possible uses of social media for professional development and learning . Finding ways that work best for you personally will require some experimentation – but it is well worth it. The world is changing and so are practices with learning and professional development.
- In Twitter the 1st step is to find a professionally interesting person, start following her/him, and gradually experimenting
- InYou Tube – look for content lectures / presentations
- In Facebook – look for professional groups or start one of your own
- In Ning - look for professional groups
- In Linked In – participate in some professional groups
There are so silver bullets, or simple solutions – creating personal practices takes some effort, but luckily in social media you can find people who can help in your exploration. Jump in, learn & enjoy !!
Recommended books:
- Dan Tapscot & Anthony Williams (2006) Wikinomics
- Barry Libert & Jon Spector (2007) We are Smarter than Me
In Finnish:
- Tuija Aalto (2009) Nettielämää – Sosiaalisen median maailmat.
- Leenamaija Otala & kaija Pöysti ( 2008) Wikimaniaa yrityksiin – Yritys 2.0 Tuottamaan.
In trying to get people up the curve on social media, it will be an interesting test to see how many will leave a comment on this blog post. You’ve made good points about becoming more person-centric (i.e. following specific people of interest). The next step will to move from being passive readers, to become truly interactive.
It’s taken me a few years to evolve my web persona and the tools I used. One of the biggest hurdles is changing the way of reading social media — from primarily a browser to primarily a feed reader — so that reading content becomes as fast as reading e-mail.
(I have to admit that I’m last generation in using offline e-mail clients, rather than webmail. I’ll take any edge in productivity that I can!)
Interesting topic!
Great post, and thanks for the mention (btw. we wrote Nettielämää together with Marylka Yoe Uusisaari).
Similar kinds of worries arise among media people, I notice as I look at your listing of issues. Perhaps one uniquely to my company, YLE, is the highlighting of reputation and trustworthiness – how does one know who to trust online. There’s a lot to learn in the new environment indeed.
Thank you David, Outi & Tuija ! It really takes time to learn use of social media, and become conversational. We had nice workshop with good discussions – continuing that would be nice.
I attended Minna’s presentation at Design Factory. I have been frequent everyday user of email since 1988, but, like most of my email friends, have perhaps heard but not yet personally tackled social media.
About 16 years ago I attended another session at the very same campus of Helsinki University of Technology. At that time I belonged to a Finnish group using the latest electronic technology in education. Sitting by computers, we were introduced to something very new: the concept of web sites and instant access to global information. Still now I remember the exhausting moment when I realized the immense possibilities of this new step.
Minna’s presentation at Design Factory reminded me of what happened at that session 16 years ago. From the plateau of using regular email, Minna took us higher to the hills of social media, till now unexplored by most of us in the audience. Further, she showed how we could reach there by several pathways: FaceBook, Twitter, Linked in, Second Life, You Tube, Ning etc.
For me, this raised the question of still widening gap of digital divide. Before the era of social media, the gap has been between email users and non-email users, nowadays typically sharing non-user grandmothers and grandfathers from their digitally active grandchildren.
Since the introduction of social media, the digital divide widens, sharing even regular email users into several categories from completely illiterate to less and more active social media users, not to mention the grandparents who are swept away from this new map completely.
Still more puzzling is the digital gap at schools. The gap widens between the teachers and their students. In good old days the teachers – and older people in general – were on the better side of the gap, asking younger ones to follow. But now: the students are not only seen to run away, up to the hill, but to vanish with pace, out of sight altogether.
So, here I stand, puzzled, knocking on the first doors of social media, trying to find the right path to the hills where my spiritual friends already have their camp fires.
Thank you Jukka, for very thoughtful comments.
Your concerns of digital divide are very, very valid. However, I hope that social media applications could also provide some solutions for bridging some gaps of digital divide.
New technology & social media can also combine grandparents, with their grandchildren. Making it possible for them to be better connected and be closer to each other. This happened to the mother of my friend and her nephews studying outside Finland. It was grandma that first tried out Facebook and then Skype calls
I’ve also seen my mother in law – getting excited with computers at the age of 70 years. She never took any interest before, but now she is doing genealogical studies over the internet, searching new information from family communities and exchanging information with other researchers.
In schools and in workplaces situation gets really interesting. Are current teachers motivated, and willing to take in use new approaches offered via social media and learn together with their students? Luckily here as well social media can help, and offer possibilities for sharing experiences.
Hopefully we can help people, where ever they are, find their own personal approaches for using social media also for meaningful learning.
minlii, your two examples reminded me of the ever forthcoming small notches we have to overcome to enter the next stage in intellectual or technological progress. In your example the need to get in touch with the nephews abroad was a notch for the mother of your friend. She overcame it with Facebook and Skype. Small pain, great gain.
In another example you told about how genealogy computerized your mother-in-law. In Christmas Eve 1986 my late mother, then soon becoming 70 years of age, had a similar change. Till that eve, she had a huge genealogical survey on thousands of small slips of paper. While we others were waiting for Santa Claus, my mother enthusiastically examined – for the first time in her life – my computer and found, how she could easily change the order of anything written, delete, add in-between etc. This all was an easy notch for her to overcome, and later to publish a 400-page genealogical survey. Later, I wrote an article about her Christmas Eve enthusiasm. It was entitled “Mummoni ja Macintosh” (in accordance with the title of a contemporary book by Paavo Rintala, instead of the more truthful “My mother and Apple IIc”).
But now to the main point:
If only we could grow carrots as long as sticks and use them to encourage people to overcome the small notches on the stony and lingering pathway of progress! I think our Competence & Capability Development Community for Excellence Finland currently stands in front of such a notch. Your example of using a (personal) blog for spawning the fruits of our monthly gatherings is an excellent example.
This kind of mutual and interactive forum or fora continue the discussion first amongst the actual audience, then amongst our 963 members and further amongst anybody interested around the globe. It would also serve as the forum for gathering information about the needs of our forthcoming schedule for 2010-2011.
Currently, I am also running another community, the association of 127 very small Finnish upper secondary schools. Many of them routinely use modern e-learning technologies on the daily basis. Standing at this crossroads of quality and education is challenging in terms of spreading information of new developments.
To start with, do you recommend this Word.Press.com as a basis for our Competence & Capability Development Community, or would you prefer some other form of group communication? I am going tomorrow to Turku to attend our next workshop (about risk analysis within quality management). That might be something to continue with.
Hi Jukka – I would warmly recommend creating Ning – community. http://www.ning.com – It provides very good environment – for discussions, blogs, sharing pictures, links, documents, promoting events etc. etc. etc.
WordPress is great for blogging – Ning is better for communities, where several people could participate.
There is also possibility to create subgroups – e.g. one for steering group members.
I really liked the booklet for Finnish upper secondary schools – that provides excellent source of information of good practices and helps creating meaningful connections between schools.