Continuous Learning & Development

New: The Road To Financial Armageddon Series
Another interesting story about transformation. This time it is about personal cashflow management. How Trent Hamm managed to turn the looming bankruptcy of his family around and turn it into a sustainable financial success. Cashflow Management is key for any successful sustainable endeavour.

1) Web 2.0 in HCM
What it will do for Human Resources HR function ?

2) My prediction for 2008 - groupware is so cool
Why 2008 will be the year of web based groupware ?

3) Personal Learning Environments
What is are personal Learning Environments and what are their benefits ?

4) All about conferencing
What conference tools are around and what are their costs, etc ?

5) Personal Learning Environment for language learning
What does a Personal Learning Environment for language learning looks like ?
Fanatastic, this is just what I was looking for. This shows the state of the art in learning, wow . It also lists a very interesting free collaborative environment for language learning called MyHappyPlanet.

6) Jobs and Careers in Social and Collaborative Learning
What are the future or emerging jobs in careers in social and collaborative learning ?

7) How to become  a professional blogger ?
This is a great post on professional development. I find this a very good description of how someone transitioned over years into professional blogging. A must read in my opinion.

The Ten Most Marketable Web Development Skills ?
What are the current marketable technical skills for a web developper ? This post was published in December 2007. For each technical skill the author listed links to relevant learning resources. Excellent!

9)e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students
How to collect all your notes, lists, links, etc. online for free ? How to get 5GB free storage space ? How to create free mindmaps and flowcharts collaboratively ? And many more interesting helpers….

10) How Tom Peters is using a wiki to collect real life management stories ?
Another example on how to collect collabaretively knowledge continuously for your
development.
You want to know about the management guru Tom Peters, check out his Blog.

11) 1000 True Fans
What does it take to build a sustainable living online ? Article by Kevin Kelly, founder executive editor of Wired News.
How this would translate into a winning strategy in making a living through teaching online is explored by Brian clark in his article: A 20-Step Process For Finding Your 1,000 True Fans.

12) Doing Business in Second Life (A Virtual World)
How people make a real living in a virtual environment ? These are one of these emerging jobs that did not exist just a couple of years ago.

New: Doing Business in Second Life (A Virtual World)
How people make a real living in a virtual environment ? These are one of these emerging jobs that did not exist just a couple of years ago.

1) Web 2.0 in HCM
What it will do for Human Resources HR function ?

2) My prediction for 2008 - groupware is so cool
Why 2008 will be the year of web based groupware ?

3) Personal Learning Environments
What is are personal Learning Environments and what are their benefits ?

4) All about conferencing
What conference tools are around and what are their costs, etc ?

5) Personal Learning Environment for language learning
What does a Personal Learning Environment for language learning looks like ?
Fanatastic, this is just what I was looking for. This shows the state of the art in learning, wow . It also lists a very interesting free collaborative environment for language learning called MyHappyPlanet.

6) Jobs and Careers in Social and Collaborative Learning
What are the future or emerging jobs in careers in social and collaborative learning ?

7) How to become  a professional blogger ?
This is a great post on professional development. I find this a very good description of how someone transitioned over years into professional blogging. A must read in my opinion.

The Ten Most Marketable Web Development Skills ?
What are the current marketable technical skills for a web developper ? This post was published in December 2007. For each technical skill the author listed links to relevant learning resources. Excellent!

9)e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students
How to collect all your notes, lists, links, etc. online for free ? How to get 1GB free storage space ? How to create free mindmaps and flowcharts collaboratively ? And many more interesting helpers….

10) How Tom Peters is using a wiki to collect real life management stories ?
Another example on how to collect collabaretively knowledge continuously for your
development.
You want to know about the management guru Tom Peters, check out his Blog.

11) 1000 True Fans
What does it take to build a sustainable living online ? Article by Kevin Kelly, founder executive editor of Wired News.
How this would translate into a winning strategy in making a living through teaching online is explored by Brian clark in his article: A 20-Step Process For Finding Your 1,000 True Fans.

Using collaborative activities is one of my favourite tools to make training more engaging and lasting experience.

I found a fantastic example of doing an evaluation of your synchronous training (classroom or virtual) in this post from Elliot Masie.
503 - Oprah e-Learning? Search and Your LMS :
“2. Tips for Trainers: Re-Design the Class Activity: Here is a different way to do an end-of-the-class evaluation. Instead of a smile sheet, ask your learners to, in small groups, re-design the program.  Give them 10 minutes and ask them to do a rapid re-design of the Sequence, Scope and Activities in the class.  You will be pleasantly surprised at the great ideas and rich data that this will yield.”

By engaging the learners at the end of the training this way you can be sure that they retain more from your class than just filling in an evaluation form.

Prior to any of my trainings I like use a short survey to increase the attention level of the participants. An option I use is to ask the major questions that will be addressed during my training and how relevant these questions are for the target group (rate 1 = irrelevant to 5= very relevant). A free survey tool is Kwik Online Surveys. My benefit is that I can better prepare the training for the target group.

I have created a wiki around developmental assignments.

One of the best ways to learn is to teach it to others. Therefore I will be listing some free tools to use to teach virtually. This list is not complete. I will do some maintainance over the next couple of weeks as I am going to test the tools before listing them here.
It is up to you what tools you finally use to teach to others. I like to make teaching a rather engaging and action oriented process. There are a number of tools to support this:

1) Scheduling tools:
To schedule a synchronous activity such as a Webinar I like to use Doodle. This tool allows you to poll your audiences’ prefered date for a synchronous event.

2) Sensibilisation: (Pre Event or Post Event Activities)
I like to sensibilize my audience especially when I have some key slides for them.
Just the other day I polled one of my audiences after delivering an online presentation via Netmeeting with a free tool called: Kwiksurvey. During my presentation I had introduced a list of factors having an influence on successful leadership career development. In the poll I let the audience rate each factor’s influence. After a week I shared the results with them.
Another way to use the tool is to poll your audience before delivering a presentation or a training. I usually have one main question for each slide I am going to use in this kind of events. By letting the audience rate the importance of each question before I get a good glimpse on which will be the key questions and therefore the key slides for them.

If I am in not so goood mood than  I call a one day up to a five day training a shot in the arm. It is a quick fix with happy, tired faces at the end and two days later probably 70% of the aquired knowledge is lost.

How often have I been to trainings where I suffered the death by Power Point Presentations and with little or no real planned networking sessions. Or I have been to trainings with lots of excercises but still when I look back I ask myself how much do I remember and how well did I network with the other participants.

Here today we have now all the possibilities to improve the blend yet these options are hardly used.

Training could be made so much more effective and sustainable if the different methods are used well.

My ideal training consists of face-to-face meeting(s) where the focus is on networking and collaboration and group exercises.

My ideal training also consists of virtual methods that will prepare or follow the face-to-face meetings. For the Presentations I would like to use interactive engaging Webinars.

My ideal training looks at collaboration during the total training phase.

I would like to have a place where the learners connect during the extended training period - such as a virtual classroom management system (e.g. Moodle).
Where they find resources and excercises and where they can start there own learning journal blog. 

My ideal training does not stop here. There should be a non-directive coaching process following the training which will help to sustain and apply the knowledge.

My ideal training is a journey and not a short holiday which connects people with the same learning goals.

My vision is to use Web 2.0 for continuous learning & development and find new ways of collaborative learning and development. More in my recent post.

Today I am still around Edublogs and what widgets I can use to build a community who shares the same interest than myself.

I want to have an RSS Subscriber link on my side.

I will be looking at free collaborative Education and collaborative social networks in the coming weeks. There are already some projects around that are interesting to watch. I will also look at some free tools to use for your own webinars and virtual classes. For the learners I will give you an update on free learning management where you can track your learning path.

I enjoy webinars if they are delivered in an engaging way.
But still too often the webinars I have participated in were delivered in the same way as presentations. And therefore all the magic was lost.
It was very difficult during theses classes to listen to the presenter and not to start multitasking.

What was your experience with webinars ?