The story of how I got to speak at #LT11UK….

….. begins in the Summer of 2010.

I was speaking on the telephone with the fantastic @juliewedgwood on the subject of my progress with using learning technologies since attending LT10, when she suggested that @DonaldHTaylor may be interested in the story as a potential session for LT11… I joked about this…. mulled it over…. dropped Don an email….

… and so it came to pass that at 1400hrs on Day 2 of Learning Technologies 2011 I found myself co-facilitating a session entitled ‘Taking the next steps‘ with @simbeckhampson

I remembered the presentations at LT10 being broadly broken down into 2 types:

The sage on the stage with a pocket full of Bullet Points.And the ‘guide by your side’ with a pocketful of interaction and activities.

It will probably come as no surprise to you to hear that the content of the latter still resonates with me today and indeed Julie Wedgwood (who has become a friend and has delivered that same session back into my organisation for me) falls into that category.

It was that same impact that I wanted to have on those delegates who were kind enough to attend my session at LT11. Here are the simple steps that I took in planning and preparing my session.

Given that my session was about my ‘journey’ over the past 12 months I thought it would fit quite nicely into a calendar format.I identified 12 tools that I had used over the preceding 12 months and slotted 1 of these into each month, which then formed the basis of a PowerPoint deck.I asked my friend Sam, to create a desktop calendar from my PPT slides and then ordered 100 of them

I added some autotweets to each of the slides order to feed the #LT11UK Twitter backchannel.Given the target audience for my session I anticipated that many of them might not have a Twitter account (not yet anyway!), so I set up a Text Wall (courtesy of @xlearn) to allow non-Tweeters to experience participating in a back-channel.I realised that as I had only 25 minutes to cover a 12 month period that I would not be able to cover each of the 12 months, so I created a slidecast using Slideshare which allowed me to cover each of the 12 months in greater detail due to the lack of time pressure. Here it is:

At that point it was time to put everything in the laps of the Gods and as Nike would say

The footage can be viewed here (please not that is appears that this site is still being edited (at least I hope it is) but you’ll get the idea)

The actual presentation went as I had anticipated, however the feedback I received be it  face-to-face, via the backchannel or peoples blogs was phenomenal and quite humbling. I had never thought for a second that such a ‘simple introduction’ to Learning Technologies would have pushed so many peoples buttons. Some people have commented upon the unusual, non-linear, delegate-driven presentation style that I used, others have mentioned how passionate I was…

… whatever the reason, the key factor for me was that people enjoyed it and gained some small measure of motivation of it. I wish you all the very best for your future implementation of Learning Technologie and if I can be of any help or assistance then please don’t hesitate to contact me.

On a final note a BIG “Thank You” to Julie Wedgwood for being the catalyst to me speaking at LT11 and to Don Taylor for taking a ‘punt’ on me.

Did you attend my session?

What (if anything) did you take away to action?

How is the action progressing?

Why not provide your responses in the comments box below?

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The Dangers of “Push” Training: A True Story

February 25, 2015 by davidgrebow13

This post was written by Susan Fry, Vice President, Creative Strategy, KnowledgeStar.

A recent experience proved how dangerous adhering to the old “push” model can be. In consulting with one of the world’s best-known NGOs, I conducted an exhaustive series of interviews with Managers and Directors at different levels, located in countries around the globe.

This NGO is funded to do work throughout the world improving health — which also means working to eradicate deadly diseases or control outbreaks. The interviews quickly revealed that members of the NGO in one country were not sharing information that could be extremely beneficial to coworkers in other countries, even though doing so surely could have eliminated suffering and saved lives.

Deeper investigation revealed that the NGO had a long-established culture of “hoarding” learning and training and doling it out to those that the top management had decided they wanted to bring into “the fold.” When a favored few rose to the top in their own country, they were invited to the world headquarters located in a vibrant, wealthy city, where they were wined, dined and welcomed into the elite “inner circle.”

They then moved to the headquarters city to take their new positions, where they communicated information to the other “elites,” occasionally returning to their home countries. The pattern had been in place for years and there was little desire to change it — even though changing to a learning culture could clearly make them much more agile, effective and successful in meeting the stated goals of their organization.

This exposes one of the dangers of a “pull” learning culture as well, where inputting knowledge is power. If I go to my PC, it is KIKO (Knowledge In, Knowledge Out). The technology systems that enable the learners are only as good as the information they contain. If the underlying culture is still embedded in the old command-and-control hierarchy in which knowledge is power, then selectively sharing knowledge will become power.

The culture is the bedrock upon which leaders, learners and the enabling technology is built. In a true learning culture people instinctively believe that sharing knowledge is empowering and automatically act on that belief.

This is yet one more reason to build a real learning culture and not just erect a facade that might be able to pass for one.

View the original article here