If you are doing anything in the learning arena (either formal or informal learning – just helping people “get it” in terms of doing something or knowing something), be sure to follow Jane Hart’s E-learning Pick of the Day, and link to her other sites and blogs as well, including her homebase, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, and Social Media in Learning. Her August update of “Top Tools for Learning 2009″ lists the top 10: Twitter, Delicious, Google Reader, Google Docs, Slideshare, WordPress, YouTube, Skype, Google Search and Audacity. Fast up & coming, Hart says, is prezi – which we hope to try out in the next few weeks. We’ll let you know how it goes. Have any of you tried prezi yet? I’ve been experimenting a bit with it….embarrassing as it is, I get a bit whoozi with the screen moving around so much – but the possibilities are fantastic – and I’m sure this old powerpoint dog can learn some new tricks!
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Earlier this week Karen Huffman, (an incredible thinker, and even more importantly “doer” with National Geographic), mused on her Facebook status whether it was ok to “re-write dreams based on life changes.” Oh yeah. It’s not only ok, it’s necessary. I empathize with Karen’s wonderings, as do many of us. Our dream for our life at 40 sure isn’t the dream we had at 21 – nor should it be. As we move closer to anything — either physically or metaphorically — the details become clearer to us — we can see more pieces of the dream and perhaps the environment or terrain surrounding the dream have changed. That environment or terrain is life’s realities. As those realities change, we may adjust our dream. I say “may” because sometimes the dream is broad enough, that it is the details that change rather than the essence of the dream. Sometimes you just develop a whole new dream. Either of those scenarios is ok – and is quite understandable. It’s the same with organizations. It’s ok for an organization to “re-focus” or adjust the lens on their vision of where they were headed. Maybe the environment has shifted and that destination ain’t what they thought it was going to be. C’est la vie. What’s important is that they keep looking forward, they keep scanning the horizon and sending scouts out to explore what’s ahead. In otherwords, when the realities for organizations are shifting, they tend to hunker down and focus on operations Continue reading Dreams & visions are meant to change – honest I just watched Citrix’s webinar that they co-hosted with workshifting.com and gotomypc.com on “Thinking Outside the Cubicle: The Evolving 21st-Century Virtual Office”. It certainly wasn’t a good webinar, but I did stick through most of it because I’m so hungry for anything that looks at how people are working, are going to be working and the organization implications of working from anywhere. My forecast is that in the next 5 years we won’t be searching for the right label for this (is it workshifting? working remotely? virtually? off-site? outa-sight?), because it will be so normal and built in to our work processes and organization norms. Telecommuting (yet another term) has increased 39% since 2007 in the US — and it will keep on growing. The best nugget out of this webinar was a quote from Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research, who says this evolvement “will force firms to expand their digital footprints, harness social software, crisply define their culture and examine their real estate and energy policies.” Yep – and as the social software improves so that people can truly collaborate, seeing and hearing each other in such high-definition that they can sense when someone’s getting agitated, more organizations and more individuals will embrace working from wherever. Particularly as those employees born after 1985 come on board; organizations in which employees can work from anywhere realize that the most productive workplaces, especially for younger employees, isn’t about control — it’s about clear expectations, flexibility, respect, responsibility and Continue reading Workshifting: work is where you are Moira Fraser of the new Zealand Parliamentary Library is presenting the results of a 2009 survey on the use of ICT tools in parliamentary libraries. There were 32 responses from 27 countries, from Albania to Zambia. with respoect to the involvement in the organization of the contents of parliament website, 4 have no involvement, 4 are responsible for the whole website, but most (ww) are involved in some aspects of the website. Often parliamentary libraries’ involvement is with another group such as the Office of the Clerk, Senate, House of Commons. Although 17% of the libraries in teh survey were not involved in the creation of parliamentary data baes, 23% were doing so and making them accessible through the intranet, and 60% were doing so on both the intranet and internet. Not quite half of the parliamentary libraries are involved in teh application of mark up languages for indexingmetadata in parliamentary documentation. The majority of responding libraries classify and evaluate web resources to respond to the parliament’s information needs, and they mostly make them available on teh intranet. A range of tools are used to encourage collaborative work, including blogs, wikis, Lotus Notes, Google Suite, SharePoint. Although no libraries have social networking policies, many are encouraging the use of these tools, and Chile is leading the charge. All libraries have websites to inform citizens on the work of parliaments, but also in use: webcasts and TV, alerts & RSS, Twitter, YouTube (UK), blogs, Flickr and podcasts. Full details will be Continue reading ICT Tools in Parliamentary Libraries Rosabeth Moss Kanter has such a fabulous way of saying things. Her definition of insanity, “doing the same things over & over expecting different results,” is timeless and one that even our teenage daughter recites. Her Change Master blog encouraging organizations to “dread” change is, again, bang on. As she so rightly advises, “Get in touch with every negative aspect, all the things that could go wrong. Then figure out a way to get that negative force on your side. In short, “Dream your worst nightmare and invest in it.” In fact, identifying all the things that can go wrong allows you to build a practical implementation plan. There’s a very old yet very useful tool for this that guides a group through the nightmare – or the potential barriers – to developing a plan that acknowledges & navigates potential landmines: Vision: specify the changes you want in place – what’s going to be different in the future, whether that future is 3 months or 3 years away. Barriers: ask everyone what hurdles & headaches they see preventing those changes from happening — “what’s giving you a pain in your stomach?” often gets very meaningful & honest responses Influencing Factors: then have what may be a difficult but absolutely essential dialogue about which of those barriers you can actually do something about; which hurdles do you have some influence over? no influence over? or total influence over? For example, how can you engage employees to help them see “what’s Continue reading “To Master Change, First Dread It” Moss Kanter Workshop day The Library & Reseaerch Services for Parliaments section of IFLA is meeting at the Joint Parliamentary Library building in Rome, a former monastary (where Galileo was tried) with wonderful frescos, marble, wood as well as a fantastic view of the top of the Pantheon from the cafeteria on the 6th floor. What an amazing venue for a meeting. Tuesday started with a workshop on leveraging technology. I participated in the workshop with Donna Scheeder, Director, Law Library Services, Library of Congress and Moira Fraser, Parliament of New Zealand. My presentation slides are here and the others will join mine shortly. On Wednesday our large group of about 250 from more than 50 countries, learned about the Italian Parliament, their Joint Parliamentaty Library and ended our day in the Senate which was first used in 1861 followed by a wonderful dinner in a fantastic atmosphere. More to come. Perseids Meteor Shower So today’s Google pic so reminds me of Toronto weather this summer — dark, stormy, noisy, with lots of flashes of lighening. However, it is really for the Perseids meteor show which peaks tonight. Maybe we’ll be able to see it in my neck of the woods, but I wouldn’t count on it! |
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