By midnight Friday, November 18, please answer in a comment:
a.What social media tools you already use for your personal or work use, if any. Examples: Facebook, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer, etc.
b. Your level of experience and expertise with each. Are you a once-in-awhile Tweeter, or are your running your own community on Facebook or Ning?
c. What do you hope to accomplish by learning more about using social media in training? What problem to you hope this will solve?
ONE MORE THING:
d. What is one thing about our first session (November 14) that surprised you, caught your interest, or gave you something new to think about?
I've included my own comment as something of a template for you, but you don't need to copy it. There are no rules: Just please tell us something that will help us learn a little more about your experience.
You can post with just your name -- you don't have to have an account or login (for this blog, for now).
2. Before midnight on Sunday, November 20, please read over everyone's comments; try to add a comment that extends the conversation a bit.
See you next time!
Jane
My dissertation research was on communities of practice -- specifically, one comprised of training practitioners -- and developed an interest in ways members of communities could work together and learn from one another more effectively. My favorite tool is Twitter, and I have developed a vibrant personal learning network (PLN) of smart people who share many of my interests. My work involves learners that span geography and time zones, and work shifts, so I am interested in using social media to help extend my reach to them. I am also interested in social media as a knowledge management/learning organization tool.
ReplyDeleteHi Jane,
ReplyDeleteI have used Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and recently signed up with Twitter. I actually deleted my personal Facebook account a few weeks ago because I was so tired of the boring comments and games, but you have inspired me to re-open a new, career-oriented account. Brand new to Twitter, so haven't used it yet. I hope to learn more about using all of the tools and to help decide which one(s) will work best for my department, as well as for me personally. One of my biggest goals is how to evaluate people who are not in the room with me.
The thing that surprised me the most was how truly outdated our company intranet is and how wonderful it will be to re-create our resources using some of these tools for more interaction.
I use Facebook on a daily basis to check in with family and friends. I tend to respond more to other people's comments than to add my own posts. I just signed up for a Twitter account and am slowly getting more comfortable with it. I hope to learn how to extend training beyond the classroom and help employees continue to gain knowledge once in their role. The thing that gave me something to think about was the benefits of using a blog and how easy it should be to make it work for our department as a resource tool and collaboration method.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if anyone else had to create a google blog account in order to post comment but that was the only way I could post.
ReplyDeleteMy responses:
a) Use FB for personal use and LinkedIn for business (discussion groups and job postings). Have used Yammer and also have a Twitter acct. but never tweet (don't know why people choose to follow me!)
b) Have dabbled with these tools and participate in some T&D LinkedIn groups as time permits.
c) Hope to get out of this course some ideas that I can present to leadership for using these tools to engage our students BEFORE and AFTER they attend our workshops.
d) Found it interesting how others are using blogs & wiki's to support training or even deliver training. My company wants to be an innovative culture so it's time to look to explore new ways of doing business.
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ReplyDelete(Deb Bowden) I use Twitter, LinkedIn, and a corporate blog. I used Facebook regularly until about a year ago when I closed my account due to their ever-changing privacy policy and settings. I am a one-in-awhile Tweeter but regular reader, keep a current profile on LinkedIn, and post and comment regularly to my internal community through my corporate blog. As others have already mentioned, I hope to learn more about effectively engaging learners pre-, during, and post-training using social media. I think this will help me/us be more current, help me/us more effectively engage younger adult learners, and help me/us down the path to creating, nurturing, and growing virtual learning communities (communities of practice). My biggest takeaway from yesterday's session was to see and hear what others are doing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments from everyone. A thread in the conversation is the need to help learners engage before and after formal events. Challenges here are not just about tools but about figuring out how and where learners will engage, and about what, and how we can support them in that. There's also a need to reflect on our own roles and the place of L&D in this; frankly, I know some classroom trainers who really aren't very interested in what goes on outside the 4 walls of their realm. It's an interesting time...
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ReplyDeleteI have a Facebook account that I use very rarely and have considered closing. I maintain a LinkedIn profile, and have set up groups for my undergraduate and graduate students in an attempt to create a virtual mentoring environment; I also use Linkedin to provide recommendations for my students. I don’t have a Twitter account however I have been considering creating one, but want to have a clear idea of its use first. I hope to find ways to incorporate these tools in my various classes as well as use them to maintain links with my students. The first session opened my eyes to blogs; I had never considered using one before but now can see that we can use a blog as a replacement for our biweekly newsletter.
ReplyDeleteI have a Linkedn profile that I check fairly regularly to see what others are doing and follow discussions and job postings. I created a Facebook page in the summer simply to understand what it is all about, but NEVER post to it and find it as just a distraction with people putting things on there that I really dont care about. I have a Twitter account that I just opened for another workshop, but could not tell you how to get into and also find it as a distraction at this point. I hope to get a better understanding of how to utilize social media to support and sustain learning and to better meet the needs of the newer generations of learners. This first session opened my eyes to the fact that many people just assume that people are familiar with all of these concepts such as blogs, wikis, and how to use them. It quite frankly overwhelmed me and I was thinking about how it might be perceived by the learners who are not familiar with it either. I see one of the roles as trainers is to make sure the learner is very comfortable with how to navigate the tools before sending them off to utilize it. I will definitely need to, like anything, continue to experiment and practice to utilize these tools effectively and efficiently.
ReplyDeleteHi Jane,
ReplyDeleteI am a tourist in Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in. I look more then post. I've been more active since I started using Flipbook, because it feels more digestiable for me. I am trying to be a "gardner" inside our company and have started a social learning group on our internal sharepoint site, where I do post often, but with little response. I'm comfortable with technology, but like most my colleagues, I don't have a lot of time to figure things out. I'm hoping to find intuitive learning solutions, to provide just in time learning and knowledge shareing and change our learning approach to be more experiental, exciting and part of the daily workflow. I'm not sure anything struck me in the first session. But I am very much looking foward to the next one :)
Hi Classmates!
ReplyDeleteI shared a Social Media Quotient Quiz and Answer Key in the Training Mag discussion area that I came across and thought you might find as interesting as I did. They were developed by Courtney Hunt, PhD and she gave me permission to share. Measures the depth and breadth of one's knowledge of social media tools. Not surprised that my score indicates I'm a novice. : )
Some context for my responses: I'm a university professor teaching in a graduate school of management in the states and an undergraduate BBA program in Europe. One of the courses I teach where I deal with social media regularly is digital marketing strategies (from a strategy and not a technology perspective). I also have a consulting business and do training and development for multinational corporate clients, both classroom and online.
ReplyDeletea.What social media tools you already use for your personal or work use, if any. Examples: Facebook, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer, etc.
On the personal side, I use Facebook to keep up with my family. Professionally, I use LinkedIn with colleagues and students. In my teaching at the University I use the LMS eCollege, Blackboard and I’ve just started using Moodle. Each of these has social-media like functions that are similar to blogs (threaded discussions) and wikis. In my corporate training, I also use SharePoint sites and
I share training materials via a OneNote Web App at my Windows Live Skydrive account. I also use browser-based, password protected Mind Mapping apps such as Mind42.com with both my university students and corporate training participants.
b. Your level of experience and expertise with each. Are you a once-in-awhile Tweeter, or are your running your own community on Facebook or Ning?
By far my greatest experience is with the social-media like functions I use in my university courses. I’ve dabbled in everything else at one time or another and assigned and monitored class projects using blogs, mash-ups, wikis and Second Life.
c. What do you hope to accomplish by learning more about using social media in training? What problem to you hope this will solve?
In terms of corporate training, I’m most interested in finding a robust, reliable social media solution for training pre-work and post-work. I’d like to be able to facilitate my participant’s personal networking and collaborative creativity before, during and after training. So I guess I’d sum up the problem I’m trying to solve as how to build better relationships and learning communities.
d. What is one thing about our first session (November 14) that surprised you, caught your interest, or gave you something new to think about?
Our first session helped me realize how futile it is to address these issues focused on a single tool or limited set of tools. The area is dynamic with new solutions appearing constantly. I really need to force myself to be more platform-agnostic and to focus on the bigger picture of what I want to accomplish before I start messing around with the bright, shiny objects that are the tools. In other words, I’ve been very tools-focused in the past and I need to be more solution-oriented going forward or I’ll just continue to spin.
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ReplyDeleteHello -
ReplyDeletea) I have a facebook account.
b) I do not visit the site too often, only once in awhile.
c) I hoping to get specific ideas of how to use Social Media to extend the message delivered in training sessions.
d) I was pleased to see examples of how blogs and wikis work.
RMendels- Thanks for posting some additional materials! I'm looking forward to reading them.
ReplyDeleteDr Dale, thanks for introducing me to Mind42,looks like something I can really get some use out of in the near future, and with my classes.
ReplyDeleteDale said: " I realized how futile it is to address these issues focused on a single tool or limited set of tools." Yep -- if there's one thing I encounter over and over again, it's people who ask, "Which one should I pick ...?" without much idea for how they will use it, with whom, and for what. There are just so many variables. In my experience the tool itself (themselves) are really almost secondary to the strategy and goals of using them. I have twice now before going to print been asked by editors to come up with a checklist or decicision-making tool, and while I finally did it I fought it both times. It's about social, not media.
ReplyDeleteJen Crabb--
ReplyDeleteI use Facebook socially, but had not really considered other potential uses! I also keep up to date with family through blogs, but have not been very active in creating new online materials. I have a LinkedIn account, and have actually been able to reach out to resources (my connection has another connection, who has another connection) that would not have otherwise been available.
After our first session last week, I created a wiki through PB Works for a community event I'm organizing--it's been fun to collaborate through that means! I also started a Twitter account--I have liked looking for bite-sized pearls of wisdom through Twitter, but don't really get how to use it yet.
I am a facilitator, and as much as I'd like to think people learn just from my presentations, I get that they learn more from each other, and both before and after class. I came to this workshop to look for ideas, and have already benefited from the ideas Jane has shared--as well as the ideas others have posted! Our first session was a good reminder of how easy it is to create content, and what a broad range of media we can use to do it!
Although I have my own blog for family and friends, and I Facebook (lurking mostly rather than active use), we are definitely behind in using these tools at work for our employees. The best we've done so far is set up some news channels, but they're not interactive enough.
ReplyDeleteI am most interested in assigning pre-course and follow-up work to start off with as I will need to ease my older suspicious colleagues into non-traditional methods, but I know that going forward I want to encourage our managers (and other groups) to have online discussions instead of dragging them to one location monthly to talk.
This workshop is giving me great ideas how to start - thanks!
Jenn Crabb, this needs to be a poster on the wall of every classroom: "I am a facilitator, and as much as I'd like to think people learn just from my presentations, I get that they learn more from each other, and both before and after class."
ReplyDeleteTania had trouble posting so I asked her to send her comments to me:
ReplyDeleteHi Team!
A. I use FB and Linkedin regularly
B. I'm very comfortable using FB and Linkedin. I'm not interested in Twitter.
C. I'm interested in learning how I can integrate social media in my training at work - I want to know what are my options and how to successfully implement them
D. I'm excited to see I'm not the only one who wants to learn more about social media/social learning!
Take 3!!!
ReplyDeleteSocial media tools used: LinkedIn(twice/wk), Twitter(3-5 times/wk), FB(5-7/wk), WordPress(1/month), Fitpro (exercise blog-3 times/wk).
I'm very comfortable using these tools for personal use. Would like to explore more ways to leverage them for training. Through this training, I hope to discover ways to incorporate social media in an environment with tight firewalls, intermittent connection issues and slow connection speeds (international audiences). I am look forward to uncovering some best practices for overcoming these hurdles.
Main learning from last week: Blogs could be a useful tool for pre/post-course work and for capturing participant's feedback prior to class. Wikis could be leveraged for knowledge sharing among team members and cross-functional collaboration with SMEs.