A trend in outsourcing is one-on-one outsourcing of services. This is nothing new of course, since when you hire a painter to paint your house, you are already in an outsourcing relationship. New is the fact that internet technology paves the path for new kinds of outsourced services. One-on-one tutoring via the web is such an example. You can hire a tutor to explain different concepts and subject matters. Sometimes with an Indian accent according to CNet News. One example of these tutoring services is TutorVista.com. This website offers 24-hour online tutoring services for students in all grades through high school. The programs cover a wide variety of regular school subjects and also provides standard tests. I wonder if there also are free peer-to-peer tutoring websites besides these commercial offerings. The main challenge will be the indication of the quality of the tutoring, since you don’t know what you don’t know!

Last night we watched Avatar, and I must say I was absolutely blown away by the 3D production, the special effects and the overall, gripping storyline. If you haven't watched Avatar yet, I strongly recommend that you do so, for the absolute entertainment value that this James Cameron epic provides.While watching Avatar I suddenly had a brainwave for a blogpost. The movie had triggered a few thoughts in my head about Learning and Development. Let me share them with you.Creativity is often about 'Synthesis'With all the 'oohs' and 'aahs' about Avatar set aside, if you look hard, you'll realise that the movie is essentially very similar to two other previous Hollywood hits -- The Last Samurai and The Matrix. Essentially, if you combine the storylines of those two movies and give them a space twist, then you end up with Avatar. No, I'm not trying to say that James Cameron plagiarised those two stories (though it would be quite smart if he did), all I'm saying is that the movie indeed seems like a synthesis of those two great movie ideas.Often creativity isn't necessarily a brand new idea. It can even be a brand new idea from the combination of other great ideas.Synthesis can transform your classroomSo, taking that thought about synthesis ahead, there's a case for us to think about how synthesis can transform your classroom. At DevLearn, Erika and Julia from Google demonstrated a few simple ideas of how they are combining technology with good old classroom facilitation to make the learning experience more engaging. Here are some ideas I really liked:Are you teaching people how to write well? Ask them to write a blog post and ensure that every student posts comments about what they liked and what they didn't. As a teacher, post your comments as well.Are you teaching people how to code? Use Google Code Labs to provide them code snippets that they can collectively iterate from. Use the revision histories/ comments to provide feedback and to correct coding patterns. Are you trying to share instructional resources? Create a Google Wave and embed it into your class homepage. People can discuss the problem amongst themselves, but at the same time make a private submission to the instructor if this was an assignment, test, etc.Are you preparing for a sesion where you don't know what to expect? Use Google Moderator to crowdsource questions and discussion points for the event. That way you can ensure that you deliver only what people want to learnThere are other exciting ways to enliven your classroom. One of my favourite blogposts of 2009 was the one Tom Kulhmann wrote about how empowering your learners. Tom gave out 3 ideas to creatively use technology in your classroom, which included giving your students a social media project. Tom put together a quick demo of what such a project could look like, using Vuvox (see below)You don't need to do everything within eLearningThe concept of synthesis needs to stretch into the domain of online, and technology assisted learning as well. No, I'm not saying that this isn't a creative field -- it's perhaps one of the most creative aspects of modern L&D. That said, I still see the huge tendency with instructional designers to try and do everything from within elearning. Its important to remember that the end goal is not to create a really flashy elearning course. Its not even to try and craft an exquisite learning experience. The end goal is to enhance workplace performance. I remember reading an article by Jay Cross where he said:"As we attempt to do things in an instructionally sound manner we can get TOO focused on doing things in an instructionally sound manner…and lose sight of what the business needs. Often what the business needs is 'good enough' and 'enough so that someone can continue to do his/her job.'"Social Media and other emerging technologies allow you do what's 'good enough' and do it just-in-time. There's very rarely a need to do everything within flash-based elearning. Here are a few ideas you can use, to complement your elearning to create a rich, effective, learning experience (to eventually enhance workplace performance).Leverage your Learning Management System: If you're using an LMS, in particular Moodle then why not create bite-sized elearning modules and let your LMS provide an exploratory interface to your content? That way, you save the effort in creating complex branching across sub-modules. Also, LMS's such as Moodle provide an excellent set of social and interactive tools to make your course engaging. Patrick Malley has written an excellent article about how you can use Moodle in a game changing fashion.Combine different tools to achieve the right impact: Just because you need one interactive activity in your course, doesn't mean you need to break the bank by employing a dozen Flash programmers. Pull custom Flash based elements into your rapid-elearning course if you need to. Take a look at the demo below (Articulate skin by Kineo), where I've pulled a Flash activity inside Powerpoint. If you're suffering from a common cold, then you need a tablet not a dozen vaccinations! You can even bring the web into your course, as Tom says here and here.Can you really solve the problem with eLearning alone? Often the solution to a performance problem could be an elearning course plus some follow up coaching. Consider what it'll take to really enhance workplace performance. If necessary provide the manager with some training within industry style support so they can actively coach their people.I'm sure there are dozens of other ideas to creatively enhance your courses using the concept of synthesis. And of course, you don't want to break the bank! What ideas have you tried in order to make craft effective learning experiences? Post your ideas and suggestions in the comments section. I'd love to hear more.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Field day in December???Now I know what your thinking, it's December and it's 20 degrees out, but I just presented at a state conference on this subject and wanted to make a blog on it while it was still fresh in my head. When physical education teachers are presented with the task of creating and overseeing a field day it can be a bit overwhelming. Than once you start thinking about how you are going to accommodate/modify activities for students, it can seem staggering. Hopefully this blog can help calm your nerves and give you some ideas on how to make your field day accessible to everyone.When you are creating a field day for students with disabilities there are a few things to take under consideration. For a successful field day you need to think about:How you are going to utilize your parasActivitiesTransitions to stations ThemesThemes: For this subject I don't have to much to say. When it comes to themes just make sure that they are broad enough that you can integrate many different types of activities into it. Make sure it isn't so narrow of a theme that you can't think of more than two activities to go with it. Here are a few ideas for themes:Car washSummer timeCars/NASCARJungleOlympicsTransitions and placements of stations:When coming up with your field day, think about the placement of your stations. This is a part of organizing a field day that is sometimes overlooked but is very important to having a successful field day. You do want three activities in a row where the students are using up all their endurance. Instead build in a few stations that are fun and the students can engage in the activity without wearing themselves down. When creating your field day layout think about creating visual supports on each station to help guide students on how to best particapte in the activity. This will be beneficial to all students, but will be extremely helpful for visual learners, like many students with Autism.Visuals and other tools can be a great asset for your para professionals. Creating map for  your pars and volunteers will not only give them written directions that they can keep glancing at but will encourage them to be more involved. Let them know that you value them and have taken the time to make a map to help them with the field day.Here is a list of a few other considerations that you may need to prepare for depending on your student's needs:Make sure that all mobility issues are addressed. Make all your stations easily accessible for student whom are chair users.When sounding off on a megaphone or horn to let the students know to change stations, let a student who is sensitive to loud noises use the horn, this will help reduce anxiety.Keep a majority of your stations short and sweet. Many children (not just ones with disabilities) have short attention spans. Having short stations that are active and fun will increase the student's ability to be engaged.Activities:Adapting activities is about looking at your specific student's needs. So for this section I will list different adaptations that may be utilized for specific disabilities.Physical Impairments- Use adapted equipment( bowling ramps, lighter balls, reachers, etc.), for students with MD have frequent breaks to reduce fatigue, modify rules of games so that the game is still competive for everyone(maybe Billy only has 3 pins to knock down and John has 5)Intellectual impairment- Simple (1-3 steps) instructions, modify game so there is less external stimuli( if there was a game where students had to fill buckets with certain colors, limit the buckets), give them a peer buddy, extra visual/verbal cues, use a picture of the student on the place where you want them to beVisual impairment/Blind- Use bright visually stimulating objects, use bells, a guiding line for running activities, beep balls, a sighted guide, have someone clap at a finish line,  incorporate games where everyone is blindfolded( minefield)Emotional impairment- Design games that limit competition, let students compete against their own scores rather than compete against other students, THINK ABOUT THEIR GROUPING( many children with emotional impairments will act out more often towards certain students), use more cooperative/team building games rather than competitive games like building a hoop house where students try to create a house with 3 hula hoops and the group must crawl through it without the hula hoops collapsing Severely multiple impairments- Modify the games so that students are able to use eye gaze and other forms of communication to engage in the activity, use bright visually stimulating objects, use bells, create sensory stations such as one where they put their feet in a small pool and try to feel as many marbles and other tactile objects as possibleAutism- Visual maps of the field day, prepare your students for field day with a social story, visual supports for the activity, give the student a peer buddy, incorporate activities that meet your student's unique sensory needs(such as a log roll station for children with vestibular needs)Getting others involved:Working with para professionals in the P.E. setting can be difficult at times. Many para professionals think that because they are in P.E. they do not need to particapte. This is why the P.E. teacher should be creating a strong collaborative relationship with the paras for the entire year. Ways to get your paras more involved:Try to incoporate them in lesson planningGive them lesson plans in advanceLet them have a space in your office to keep there stuff, like in the special education classroomsGive them clear expectations by having classroom expectation posters on the wallsIf you have a strong relationship with your paras throughout the year, than you should have no issues once field day comes around. But if you are experiencing any issues, try some of the suggestions I have given you from above. On field day, some paras may be in groups of children they haven't worked with before. Make sure your paras know your students needs and are give specific instructions on how to best address their needs.When the field day experience is all said and done, send out a survey monkey to all of those who helped out. Find out how they thought it went and how they think it could go better.Quote of the day:"A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done."- Fred Allen

Behavior Management TipsAs a teacher I know that sometimes the most difficult part of teaching is keeping student's behaviors under control. So I thought I would make a blog about some strategies I have used to help curb some of these disruptions.First let me tell you a little bit about my teaching background to help you understand where I received some intense knowledge/experience in behavior management. When I was in grad school, I was on a grant program and had to work a certain amount of hours in the field each week to  fulfill my grad school requirements. In this program I worked a decent part of my hours at a k thru 12 school for the emotionally impaired. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and this experience would impact my behavior management techniques greatly. In this program I had was fortunate enough to be able to teach adapted physical education to the students at this school. We had a large range of reasons of why the students ended up at a center based school for the emotionally impaired. Reasons ranged from being defiant, fighting all the way to sexual assault. To say the least, when I first arrived to the school I was pretty intimidated by the school, the students and their "baggage". Quickly my  feeling of being intimidated led to intrigue. I saw how well the students behaved when they were given consistent rewards and consequences. I started to see the students and their "baggage" in a different light as well. I viewed the students who had experiences that I could never imagine, and who needed someone that they could rely on more than anything else in the world. Then I finally learned enough techniques I could use to help prevent behaviors, redirect behaviors and give appropriate consequences to shape behaviors.Now that I have given you some of my background story on how I have had an unique experience with behavior management, let me give you some tips and advice on how to best prevent and deal with behaviors. Something my mentors, Dr. Davis and Dr. Dillon once told me, there are 3 parts of a child when it comes to their ability to learn, there is the child's natural abilities, their environment and the learning styles. You can only adapt their environment and the way you present the information, so focus on those components to try and make a positive impact on the child. Something to consider when looking at how to adapt your environment and teaching style to help students be successful when looking at their behaviors.The first thing you need to consider before you start trying to shape a child's behaviors is who that child is. Taking the time to get to know the child, building a relationship and letting them know that you value them and their opinion can sometimes solve behavior issues. Once you have established a real relationship with a child, they will be more motivated to try and help you to solve classroom behavior problems. When getting to know your students you will find what motivates them, what sets off their behaviors and how to deescalate behaviors once they have begun. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.Nelson Mandela Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_education.html#UzSrdqQwquEy9ZXI.99Preventive Strategies: Let's now discuss preventive strategies. In the education field, there is a big push for preventive strategies. There is very good reason to have this big push. If you set up an environment to decrease the incidents of disruptive behaviors then of course this is a huge component of behavior management. Here are a few preventive strategies that you might consider using in your classrooms/gyms:• Give a student a seat closer to the teacher• Do not confront the student openly in front of their peers• Give the student frequent hall talks to review expectations• Put up visuals of classroom expectations• Use a stop light system, where when the stop sign is up, no one is able to talk, or they get a strict consequence• Put in a reward system that can be earned for good behavior• Give student's sensory breaks• Planned ignoring•Have a chart for a student to monitor there own behaviorAnother important aspect of shaping behaviors and motivating students to be successful in your classroom/gym is to monitor their behavior closely. Using behavior chart to tally their behaviors or giving a comment about why and how their behavior occurred can give you real insight into why they might have acted out. Here is an example of a very simplistic behavior chart.Behavior Systems:Now as I said before, every student is completely different. What strategies work and don't work will depend on the student, the environment, and consistency. I can't stress enough the importance of consistency for students who exhibit extreme disruptive behaviors. Now let me describe to you the system that was used at the school for students with emotional impairments. It was extreme, but I have adapted for my classrooms for students with Autism, Intellectual Disabilities and Physical Disabilities. The system is broken down into 5 levels. Every level that a student climbs up, they receive more privileges and independence. An example of a privilege is the ability to go to the bathroom without an escort or eventually going to a general education setting for parts of the day. Students would gain points to advance levels by not receiving either a reminder, breaks or being sent down to a center (a padded room where they would be closely monitored). This program is extremely motivating for students who lack the self control to be successful in unstructured situations. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that you utilize a behavior system where you use a padded room as a consequence. But nonetheless, there are some valuable points to be made from this example.First, students being knowledgeable about their behavior expectations and consistency are key. The students in this program were all very aware of the system and knew how to follow the rules. Students will test boundaries, it is just human nature, but when they test boundaries it is important that they get the same consistent message for behaviors every time. Otherwise it can be confusing and the bad behavior is at risk to being reinforced.Second, not all behavior systems need extravagant reward systems. Simply giving students jobs like cleaning equipment, erasing the board, or passing out paper can be quite motivating. Just remember that it is key for them to know how to earn this reward and that you are proud of them when they succeed. Lastly, a 1,2,3 and your out! warning system works great for a behavior management plan. For my classroom, I have adapted a students behavior plan and have applied it to the entire classroom. There are different consequences at every stage and the last one is being sent to the office. Reward Systems:Now that I have discussed with you preventive strategies and consistent consequences, let's discuss the most important tool to use when creating your behavior management plan. A reward system! Reward systems can be created for individual students or for entire classrooms. Using intrinsic rewards is proven to provide more sustained motivation. Getting your students to feel good about what they have done and to work hard for their own reward is always the ultimate end goal. When struggling to motivate students, creating a reward chart where the student picks what they earn is a great idea. Have the student help design their own reward system, so that you know it's highly motivating. Then give out tickets that the students can earn for good behavior. I have found that using rewards on an intermittent basis is quite helpful if the behaviors are not too severe. Using rewards intermittently gives the student a message that the desired behavior is rewarded and praised from others. Although in real life, a good behavior will not always be met with a physical reward.Other interventions:There is a wide variety of different methods that one may utilize to help students be more successful in their school environments. I personally I have found that peer mediation sessions work very well with students who are having conflicts with another student. I have used peer mediations for students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities and students who have Autism.  The peer mediation interventions have been very successful. What I have done for these individual cases is I created feelings sheet with pictures that they could use to point to when they are discussing their feelings. Here is an example of a simple peer mediation sheet that the students could use to express themselves to one another: I have found that using peer mediation is usually very successful because the students are the one's trying to find solutions to their problems. They start by each student having time to tell the other person how they are feeling and why they are feeling like this. The students than have time to discuss with the other student and a peer mediator how to best solve their problems. They than make up a contract and all the parties involved are given the choice to agree to it and sign it. Because this puts all the responsibility onto the students, I have noticed that this strategy works quite well.  Something else that I have left out of this blog is the importance of getting parents to agree with your behavior management techniques and be on board with your behavior plans. This may not work every time and it may take sometime for the parent's to understand and accept your techniques. Just remember that it is a huge asset to have the parents back you up at home when the students are misbehaving. Trying to build a strong and positive relationship with the parents is vital to the success of your behavior management plans. Here is a list of other interventions that may work with some of your students:Student contractsStudent planners to communicate effectively with parentsStudent to Teacher conferencesConferences with ParentsStaff meetings about individual student's behaviorsAfter thoughts/Resources:Looking back at this blog, I realize that behavior management is a huge part of teaching and cannot be summarized in just one blog. I hope some of this information is helpful for you while you are teaching in the field. Here is a list of different web sites that pertain to behavior management that may be quite useful for you:http://www.bbbautism.com/behavior_management_strategies.htm    A website that is specifically created to help you with behavior management for children with Autism.http://www.do2learn.com/BehaviorManagement/BehaviorManagementStrategies/index.htm          Really great website called Do 2 Learn that provides a good amount of free tools that can be used for behavior managementhttp://www.crisisprevention.com/Resources/Knowledge-Base/General/Behavior-Management-Strategies-and-Techniques     A good site that sets out nice steps on how to remain calm and in control during challenging situationshttps://www.teachervision.com/classroom-discipline/resource/5806.html   The Teacher Vision website has really great articles and free printables on a variety of subjects and behavior management is no exception.  Quote of the day:"He that would be a leader must be a bridge."- Welsh Proverb 

From time to time the field of Corporate Learning is subject to discussions on the labeling of the discipline. We have come all the way from Training and Personnel Development. Currently we are in the Human Capital Development era. Just another try to pimp the discipline? Clive Shepherd wrote an interesting comment on this development. He states: "I do know what capital is, and it isn’t people … People are not capital because they cannot be employed in place of money to purchase assets or to cover expenses … If anything, the concept of human beings as assets is even less credible than it used to be, because, with increased mobility of labour and severe skills shortages". I think his statement is spot on and Human Capital Development is just a way of stating: "Look we are doing some strategic things here, we are adding value to the business!" This probably is an attempt to counter the criticism HR professionals constantly having to deal with. In my opinion re-labeling the discipline isn’t the answer. More fundamental changes are needed for HR(D) to become business partner: Increase business understanding and general business acumen. Don’t talk jargon and develop professionalize the ways of working. Leave the administration and operations to services centers or outsource. Get out of you ivory towers in Corporate HQ and start listening to your clients. Forget about ROI and deliver services the business is asking for. If the fundament is right, the labeling is just about internal marketing. And I must say Human Capital Development sure sounds trendy and appealing. I can imagine that it looks impressive in internal Powerpoint presentation for executives. So, what should we do? Should we use a label that is appealing, but not correct from a theoretical standpoint. Or, should we be true to our profession and use a label that is authentic.   Please help me out on this one and join my poll (see sidebar)! What is your preferred label for the field of corporate learning and development?

Wow, its 2010 already - a beginning of new decade! It seems like the last year and even the last decade, just went by in a breeze. There have been so many developments in the L&D space in this last decade that have really revolutionised this field. It's as if it was yesterday that Jane Bozarth very smartly predicted that "Trainers won't be replaced by technology. They will be replaced by trainers who are willing to use technology." This is more true in this decade than it ever was earlier. To greet the new year, I thought I should do a quick post outlining the changing role of the corporate trainer. Today's post follows on from two of my previous posts of a similar nature, which you apparently found interesting:From Training Specialist to Learning GeneralistInstructional Designers need more skills than just writing!The Six Hats of a TrainerYes, I've read De Bono's work and his "Six Thinking Hats" were an inspiration. In fact my six hats of a trainer are indicative of the various roles that an intelligence age trainer needs to play and as a consequence the different ways she needs to think. Now before I get out of this with egg on my face, let me clarify that I don't expect one person to be good at all of this overnight! That'll take intuitive aptitude! My friend Vijay Colaco takes strong objection to the word 'training' and believes it's akin to how we make animals do our bidding. Vijay OTOH prefers to think about corporate education (on the lines of 3 Idiots), where individuals make informed decisions about the steps they take. What I hope is that as we enter an exciting new decade, traditional trainers can look at their roles with a bigger sense of responsibility and the satisfaction of being able to contribute to their organisations in a more complete fashions. In effect, we'll craft more effective learning experiences and eliminate waste most ruthlessly.So here's what wearing each of these hats amounts to.Being a Teacher"As teachers we focus on helping people acquire general cognitive abilities, rather than on particular performances in specific situations"The role of the teacher is fairly traditional. Most corporate trainers are pretty good at this already. The key to effective teaching is the ability to help people develop new strategies for thinking and acting. That said, the focus is less on performance improvement and more on new learning. Its important to note that while a lot of modern trainers scoff at teaching and term it as passive, it has its own place especially to empower novices. While teaching is not new to existing trainers, a lot of us could use help with our presentation skills. I find Garrey Reynolds' Presentation Zen to be a great resource for teachers to learn how to effectively prepare, simplify, visualise and deliver a sesssion on any topic.Being a Facilitator"As facilitators we're helpers and we assist groups in working together in various contexts to reach the best possible conclusions or decisions."The game starts to change here a bit. While teachers aid the acquisition of new knowledge and understanding facilitators make it easier bringing out and focusing the wisdom of the group, often as the group creates something new or solves a problem. Facilitators need to have the ability to stand back and let the group perform and interfere only when they see a need to course-correct. The act of facilitation involves creating group interaction patterns that bring out the best learning. This could be limited to facilitating just business as usual meetings or even large scale conferences. In the recent past, my favourite resources for facilitation related wisdom have been ex-ThoughtWorker Jeremy Lightsmith's website on Facilitation Patterns, Steven List's Blog and his interview on Open Spaces with InfoQ and also Patrick Kua's blog.Being a Coach"As coaches we actively enable our coachees to develop specific behavioural competencies, as a consequence helping them achieve or improve their performance in certain contexts."As I've said earlier as well, coaching is a fairly underestimated way of creating learning. That said, I believe coaching to be an "on the ground" job that happens continuously. It's something that should happen on the job and all the time -- it should not be an intervention. That said, to create a crop of good coaches corporate trainers need to don the role of a 'coach coach' or 'master coach'. Through their efforts they need to make mentorship a common practice across teams and organisations. There are far reaching consequences of this investment. There's greater organisational understanding of how people learn. In time, learning becomes common practice and a continuous process rather than an event. In time, the organisation also learns that elearning or training or social media aren't silver bullets and that every extrinsic effort to creat learning falls flat without the intrinsic support of coaching and mentorship.Being a Designer"As designers we use creativity and analysis to build instructional solutions that make complicated tasks and concepts simpler."If you've followed this blog then you know that I feel Instructional Designers need more skills than just writing. Instructional design is easily one of the most skilled professions in the learning industry and when we wear this hat, we are responsible to translate learning visions into concrete resources. I deliberately call this hat that of a 'designer' only (as against instructional designer) though, because I feel that we need to look beyond instructional design alone. I feel we get way too caught up in making things instructionally sound as against picking the low hanging fruit of aggregating 'not-instructionally-sound-yet-useful' information. As a hardcore pragamatist, I often care less about instructional soundness if aggregating useful content gives me a quick win and an easier way to get to a learner. This is not to say that instructional design isn't valuable -- its just that pragmatism and a shorter time to market will give us a sharper edge this year.Being a Technologist"As technologists we stay on the cutting edge of technological innovation and harness technology to make the learning experience more effective." There's no denying that technology is occupying an increasingly large space in education of all forms and at all levels. To avoid technology will only be to live in a state of denial. I can only request my 'training' colleagues across the world to embrace this as an extension of their existing skills and know that this is a great way to utilise their experience of influencing people's learning. Informal Learning is largely accepted as a highly effective way of creating continuous learning and technology is a great way of enabling informal learning. As technologists 'trainers' need to continuously stay on top of emerging trends in the marketplace and we need to embrace the 'don't worry, be crappy' mentality. As innovators, we need to release early and release often and stick our necks out for things that we see potential in. So are virtual worlds the coolest new trend in learning technology? Or is it alternate reality? Or then is it social media? Let's raise our awareness of these trends and at least get our hands dirty to start with. And let's not stop at that alone -- if we see value, let's be prepared to take this to the next level by increasing our engagement with our IT departments to articulate the benefits, risks and issues using shared vocabulary.Being a Consultant"As consultants we ruthlessly eliminate waste and evaluate at our learning offerings from the perspective of the business, ensuring that we continuously deliver the most efficient solution (instructional or not) to achieve the performance expectations."In a previous post, I've pointed to quite a few resources that can help us build our consulting skills. While I talk about Consulting last, its definitely the meta-hat for all the above hats. As service providers to our organisations and clients, we're all consultants. Not only do we need the ability to engage our stakeholders, but we also need to articulate the value of our approaches and determine the right solution to performance problems in the business. Its not enough anymore to be a glorified order-taker for the business -- we need to go several steps forward to look at the entire value stream we're addressing and how our interventions will affect its performance. So, in my opinion, if there's one hat we'll always wear in this decade, it'll first be the consulting hat - to problem solve first and then wear the right hat to implement the solution!My blogpost is limited to my own experiences with L&D over the last few years, so I have to turn to you for inspiration. What roles do you think trainers will have to play in years to come? What roles are you having to play? Please post your thoughts in the comments section and let me know what you think!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

 Fundraiser Ideas on a Snowy DayCurrently I am snowed in at a relative's house so I thought that I would spend some time trying to push my fundraiser and list out some keys to having a successful fundraiser! If you are around January 25th, you should come to Woodland Lanes in Livonia for some fun and exciting bowling! We are going to have a 50/50 raffle and a "silent auction" where you can buy tickets and use them to try and win the gifts you want the most.   5 Key Ideas For Your FundraiserWhen trying to put together a fund raiser here are a 5 tips to keep in mind: Advertise it anyway you can (Facebook, flyers, blogging;), and remember to tell everyone). As one blogger put it, "Be shameless when it comes to putting yourself out there."Setting a date can sometimes be the hardest part of organizing a fundraiser, make a secure date as quickly as possible and than everything else will fall in placeSet a goal for your fundraiser. Is the fundraiser's main mission to get publicity, make money, reach out to other organizations, or a combination of different goalsSet a clear purpose for your fundraiser, let people know exactly why they need to be charitableTake a list of donors names and addresses at the fundraiser and send them Thank You letters to let them know they will were noticed and that you appreciate them  Quote of the day:"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."  -Nelson Mandela  Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.Nelson Mandela Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_education.html#UzSrdqQwquEy9ZXI.99Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.Nelson Mandela Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_education.html#UzSrdqQwquEy9ZXI.99Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.Nelson Mandela Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_education.html#UzSrdqQwquEy9ZXI.99Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.Nelson Mandela Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_education.html#UzSrdqQwquEy9ZXI.99

A few months back Patrick Kua wrote a blog conjecturing if the lack of retrospectives is really a smell. Pat mentioned how he was very lucky that the team had some really strong people who got things done and kept the project 'continuously improving'.To quote Patrick,"It’s amazing what a bunch of energised, passionate and people with the "solve the right problem once" attitude can achieve."Reminiscing this post from Pat, I had a few thoughts:Given we agree that:retrospectives are a 'best practice';and that they are a tool for improvement;is it fair for us to say (at least theoretically) that we can take this 'best practice' to an extreme level just as rationale behind extreme programming may suggest?Second, Agile methods (at least theoretically) assume a team composed of the 'best people' who are 'generalising specialists' or 'versatilists'. The key to having a really strong team could then be mechanisms that not only encourage strong communication, but also those that allow teams to recognise problems, find solutions. That then will fuel continuous improvement, perhaps making retrospectives purely an optional ritual.What could these mechanisms be?My passion for retrospectives set aside, I realise that the practice is definitely more than a decade old in the mainstream. Things have changed significantly since then.More teams understand the value of solving problems 'just in time';Command and control leadership may have not disappeared from the horizon, but leaders are slowly discovering their roles in empowering their teams to take more control of situations and problems.Technology is changing fast and our ability to use tools to make problems visible solve them is fast increasing. Here are a few ideas I had to increase communication and to recognise and solve problems on a team. These ideas don't necessarily negate the requirement of a retrospective, but they can perhaps take us one step further to being high performing teams.A low tech method - daily 'hot topics'A few months back, we were a team of 7 people with Ritin Tandon at the helm as the team lead. Ritin devised a method for us to recognise issues and solve them on an ongoing basis. In the team area, Ritin put up a flip chart called "Hot Topics". Everytime anyone in the team had something to discuss or a non-urgent problem to solve, they'd put up a sticky on the flipchart. At the end of the day, one of us (often Ritin) would facilitate a quick discussion around our hot topics and we'd volunteer to solve the problems then and there. If we expected that a problem would take time to solve, then one or more of us would sign up to work on it and we kept reporting back progress to the team. Its been a fantastic practice and for the investment of a few minutes each day, we got a huge sense of fulfilment by taking blockers out of our way. What we were doing was a bit of a mini-retrospective each day and that helped us be a continuosly improving team.A hi-tech method - use Web 2.0 tools to surface and resolve problems.There are quite a few tools these days that can help create high quality communication in teams. Two tools that I think can be really useful to surface and resolve problems in a team are Google Wave and Google Moderator.Google WaveGoogle Wave follows the paradigm of blips. It could be quite easy to create a retrospective playground on Google Wave where you create brainstorming blips (Keep Doing, Stop Doing, etc) on the wave and people can add their thoughts and following discussion under those blips. In fact I think this could be even better than a ritual retrospective where we often don't discuss issues because of a lack of time. Using this method, people can actually choose to comment on every issue they feel passionately about instead of restraining themselves only because others don't see the value in their thoughts yet!Google ModeratorGoogle Moderator is a great social application to crowdsource ideas. You could potentially ask your team an open ended question about ideas for improving the project. As the team posts it ideas, members can vote up the ideas they like the most and provide commentary on its implementation. Over time, you have a nice prioritised list of improvement activities for your project. As you implement these ideas, the burning need for a retrospective may disappear. Obviously, I'm not speaking from too much experiential wisdom (the lack of proper screenshots is a tell-a-tale sign) and I acknowledge that these ideas may not eliminate the need for retrospectives completely. In fact the goal isn't to eliminate retrospectives (they're obviously a very useful exercise) -- the goal is to continously improve so that the retrospective isn't the only place to achieve this. What do you think? Please let me know by posting your comments on this blog. I'd love to learn from your experience.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

A few weeks ago my local newspaper published a piece on Lifelong Learning that expressed concerns about the lack of support the Dutch Government is giving to it. The argument is that there are good intentions, but action is missing. "No one is against Lifelong Learning, but we need more people promoting it actively", according to Theo Bovens of the Dutch Open University. His institute is facing a decrease in new students year after year. You can argue if this is an indication of a lack of interest in lifelong learning or it is pointing at a different problem. But anyway, more concerns are raised. The article points at the fact that it is not possible in the Netherlands to get a Government sponsored scholarship for picking up a study beyond your thirties. Also the cancellation of attractive tax deductions and the limiting of subsidies is doing Lifelong Learning no good according to the journalist. The government should take its responsibility in financing Lifelong Learning instead of leaving it to organizations and individual employees. In my opinion the government is already betting on a new horse called Innovation. The article continues with the scary perspective that this behavior will lead us to disaster. The Netherlands will not reach their goal of having 20% of the workforce following a part-time course or studying besides work . Is this alarming? Well, when you look at the fact that the Netherlands are at 16.6% and above average in the EU, there is nothing to worry about. But when you consider the Netherlands having knowledge economy and innovation high on its priority list, it might be alarming that Slovenia has passed us and also Sweden and Finland score significantly higher. But there is hope. Research into Lifelong Learning is in general only focused on formal education (Education Permanente). It is about quantity in money spend on and students that go through education and training programs. Although it provides some information on the bias for learning in a country, there is much more than just the formal side of learning. Lifelong learning is as human as eating and sleeping. It is a natural thing, that occurs regardless of classrooms and instructors (in some cases even more effective in the absence of these). Especially in times of rapid change in knowledge, technology and methodologies formal approaches are too slow anyway. So, let us be the best in informal learning. It won’t help us make us reach our Lisbon goals, but it will help us forward.

The Essential Sensory Integration GuideFor today's blog I was going to focus on children with sensory needs and how we can try to best meet their needs. I believe that sensory issues are becoming more and more prevalent(maybe just better recognized) in the teaching world and it is important to address these issues so that the student is better able to learn and develop. I will take you through each of the 6 sensory systems and activities that can be utilized to meet these needs.What is a sensory need?Sensory needs were best explained to me by Temple Grandin, a leader in the Autism field, at a conference I attended about two years ago. She said something along the lines of  "Sensory needs are like having a cup(this symbolizes our sensory need) that needs to be filled with water(this symbolizes the sensory stimulation). We all have a cup, but some of us have different sized cups. If you have a large cup(hypo sensitive) than you need a great deal more water than most people to fulfill your needs. If you have a small cup than you only need a little bit to fulfill your need and it is easy to overfill this cup and make you feel overwhelmed. There are different sized cups for each one of our sensory systems and not all of them are the same size either. So where as my cup for taking in auditory input may be very large and I need a lot of water to fill it, my tactile(sense of touch) cup may be very small and I don't need much water at all to fill it." I believe that this paraphrase helps one understand sensory processing disorder(SPD) a little better.Here is a picture that I hope represents the idea as well:The Different Types of Sensory NeedsSensory issues can manifest themselves in a variety of ways. They can appear to be behavioral, panic attacks, attention deficits, or they can cause a student to struggle to interact with others. But I have witnessed on many different occasions how these concerns can be greatly reduced through sensory integration activities.For example, when I was finishing up my student teaching I was placed in an elementary ASD program. I had a student who was extremely bright and was doing academic work that was years above his grade level. But at the same time this student would avoid any peer interactions and would rather focus his attention on playing an Ipad(visual stimulation) or bouncing on a hippy hop ball(vestibular). For an end of the year field trip we went to a local swimming pool. Once this student was in the pool he was a totally different child. He was intiating play with his peers and playing appropriately. Because of the tremendous amount of sensory input that swimming gives to our system he was able to not feel overwhelmed and able to interact with his peers in a meaningful way.With sensory processing disorder there is a large variety of different needs. Some children are hypo-sensitive and crave extra stimulation. Others are hyper-sensitive and just a little of a certain stimulation can be quite overwhelming. Here is a list of the different unique sensory needs that a child may crave or be quickly overstimulated by:Auditory Visual Gustation(Taste)Olfactory(Smell)Vestibular(Balance)Tactile(Touch)Proprioception/Kinesthetic(Body Awareness)**The Proprioception and Kinesthetic sensory systems are not the same but are frequently lumped together. Visit this site to read about the differences. Proprioception WikiHow to Address Sensory NeedsHere is a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs picture for students that I created:I really wanted to focus on the physiological needs of the students for this blog. It is a well accepted fact that if a student is not fed, is homeless, sick, or lacking sleep they will not be able to function very well in school and it is vital that those needs are addressed so that the student is able to learn and grow to their best potential. The same goes with addressing sensory needs. A student with SPD has a biological need and we as educators have to try to address them.When thinking about activities that help integrate sensory input to include in your day remember that many of these different categories cross over. Such as dancing activities can help a child's auditory, visual, tactile, vestibular, and propriceptive systems.Depending on if the student is hypo or hyper sensitive is how the activity is done. Changing the force or speed of an activity may be appropriate to address whether they have hyper or hypo sensitive sensory input system. For example, a student whom has a vestibular hypo sensitivity may need to be slowly rolled on a large hoppity ball, where as a child whom has a vestibular hyper sensitivity may need to do the same activity at a faster rate.Sensory Integration ActivitiesHere are is a list of the sensory need and different activities that can be utilized to best meet the child's unique needs:Tactile: Any water activities, arts and crafts activities with tactile objects like putty and finger paint, massage, bare foot activities, dance, and crawling through tunnels. This is the child that will benefit from creating things with their hands and using manipulatives for math. It may be helpful for this child to differentiate between objects through using their sense of touch. This child may be more successful in class if they are able to use a fidget toy during class.Visual: object manipulation activities like baseball or tennis where the game or objects can be modified, this may be done through changing objects colors or size, and/or it can be done through modifying the games speed or distances.  Other activities that would promote visual  sensory integration include tracking, sorting objects, and scavenger hunts where a student has to find different objects. Make sure that with these students, whatever you are trying to draw their attention towards is bright, colorful and visually stimulating. Auditory: Activities like goal ball that strongly use auditory recognition, localization and discrimination, activities that depend on student's auditory memory, activities where students create their own sound effects(for example creating a radio show). Other ideas that may help auditory sensory integration are music therapy headphones during class work, headphones or ear plugs to reduce noise, and the removal of or placement of cork boards on the walls that will enhance echoes.Vestibular: Any activity that includes spinning, log rolls, balancing, jumping on trampolines, scooters, tumbling or swinging. A great way to promote vestibular integration is through using hippy hop balls as seats. Proprioceptive: Activities that involve naming body parts, movement activities done in front of a mirror, juggling, yoga stances and imitation of movements. These students will excel in work where they are constantly moving. Using theaters and charades in the classroom/gym are great ways to help these students be successful. A student who would benefit from propriceptive sensory integration may also benefit from frequent breaks.*For this blog I am not going to cover activities for sensory integration for taste and smell.For more information on how SPD can affect how a person with SPD communicates with the outside world here is this very moving and inspirational youtube video titled "In My Language"Quote of the day:One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.-Carl Jung

There's a shift happening and its all around us. We may not be a part of that shift yet, but I'm sure each one of us will soon be. We might want to think that technology is changing the way we collaborate and yes that's true! But there's a lot changing in the way we think as well. Managers are starting to think differently, staff definitely has a mind of their own and are more empowered each day and the focus on collaboration is much more than we saw even 3-4 years back. Over the last week, I've been thinking about the nature of this shift and I've tried to distill down this change into four main areas. Let's see how we're changing! From Single Source to Crowd SourcedThere was a time when we believed in single sources of good information. Popular authors, popular textbooks, popular magazines, popular news channels, popular radio stations, all led to the birth of Mass media. People believed these authentic sources of information because the people that created information were hugely qualified and apparently quite talented in their field. There was no arguing with that, was there? Organisations were quick to follow this route and then came the age of file repositories and Quality Management System (QMSs). In fact the best people in your organisation would sit all day and do nothing but document 'best practices'. Depending on the policy of your firm, either your manager would have access to this information or you'd have restricted access to only the QMS of your department. And I remember from my experience in my first few jobs, that I wasn't even allowed to share a useful document with a colleague in another department. Apparently that was for 'information security'! Even when it came to project documents, it was either the tech-lead, business analyst or the project manager who created these and the rest of us just looked at them in amazement and were passive users of these documents. This was truly the age of Nupedia style documentation, characterised by control, bureaucracy and long drawn approval processes. Things have changed significantly today. Most firms worth their name have some sort of collaborative document management system in place. The death of Nupedia and the subsequent success of Wikipedia has led to the large-scale adoption of wikis in the corporate world. Most importantly, organisations have realised that many heads are better than one. Crowdsourcing is turning out to be new corporate buzzword, and as Andrew McAfee might say, mobs have started to rule! The clamour for social and informal learning is getting louder each day if you believe the Internet Time Group. What you'll notice though is that in teams, its not just senior people that are creating valuable information -- everyone is. Teams are quick to adopt tools like Media Wiki or Google Sites to create collaborative workspaces. The responsibility to create knowledge doesn't just rest with managers now -- everyone's responsible. Which brings me to my next point. From Command & Control to Collective OwnershipManagers are still the bosses and there's no denying that. But with the advent of collaborative, team-based approaches like extreme programming and agile, the definition of leadership is fast changing. Command and control still exists in the workplace but we're doing more to encourage collective ownership. Take the classic case of Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel based project plans. The only person who at any given point has any idea about where a project is the guy looking at the project plan. Let's flip this over now and bring it over to the collaborative project environment. In this place the team has a card wall instead of a project plan on the manager's desktop. The tasks are represented on swimlanes with each swimlane representing the status of the tasks in it (eg: New, In Analysis, Ready for Development, etc). Team members can pick up cards from the wall an move them to completion across its swimlanes. If there's a bottleneck, the team see's it and rectifies it. Everyone takes responsibility for doing the best they can and the project manager doesn't have to be a supervisor assigning work. At any point, everyone in the team knows what's going on with the project. Its collective ownership in practice. Modern project management tools are starting to embody these very characteristics. I work for ThoughtWorks and there's no secret that I'm a big Mingle evangelist. But trust me, Mingle is definitely one of the best project management tools that you can lay your hands on. It uses the card wall metaphor for the team to have visibility into whats going on. Its web-based, so all you need is a browser. It has various reporting and visualisation modes for your project data and packs in its own wiki for your team to collaboratively create documentation. I strongly recommend that you download it and take it for a spin. Mingle's free for a year for a team of upto five users, so its really great to try out if you have a small team. From Inward Looking to Outward LookingIn my first job, I was not allowed to share documents from my department with people in another department. To do so would be an information security violation and consequently a firing offence. For any problem I faced, I could only look at my team because others had absolutely no idea of what kind of work I was doing. In a similar way, people in other teams had no way of using my help, because just like I had no idea of what they were doing, they didn't know what I was good at. Things have definitely changed. We're more keen on breaking down silos and departmental boundaries are become more and more porous each day. We don't have to be only inward facing to find our solutions -- we can ask our friends in other departments, we can find people with similar interests who aren't in our companies, we can look outwards to our Linkedin contents and the blogosphere to find solutions. The possibilities are limitless. As we break down walled gardens in the enterprise, knowledge sharing improves, the cream rises to the top and everyone can benefit from everyone's thinking. Wikis and cloud computing using platforms like Google Apps are making this almost an out of box exercise. From Structured to FreeformEmail Is Dead... Long Live Email!View more presentations from Wrike com.One of the enabling forces behind all of this perceptional and behavioural change is obviously technology and I can't help but remark how the preference for platforms is changing. We loved email and we still do, but there's a huge shift towards more free form and frictionless tools. So while email was the cool thing a few decades back, we've moved to wikis and blogs, then the cloud and now Twitter and Google Wave. To supplement good old email, Twitter and other microblogging platforms support status updates while Wave supports in team collaboration, planning and discussion. The phenomenon of emergence allows us to still have structure only we don't need to develop hierarchies and complex taxonomies -- the structure appears over time, based on the patterns of usage. The larger the group, the quicker this pattern emerges; the smaller the group, the more people need to have a reason to participate. Technology is not just cooler, its more representative of the way we think and participate.As you can see, the shift is real -- its happening all around us. All we need to do is give in to this change and evolve. Its an exciting time already and the future promises more - dont you think? Let me know by adding your thoughts in the comments section. If you liked this post, you may like my other posts on the topic of Enterprise 2.0. Also next week, I'm speaking at the Agile Bengaluru 2010 conference on the topic of "Facilitating Dialogue in situations of Conflict". It promises to be a great event, so please come over and interact with all of Bangalore's Agilist crowd. And don't forget to swing by and say hi to me and other ThoughtWorkers. I'd love to see you at my workshop as well.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

This week I formally kicked off for my ultimate corporate learning experience: the start of my own company. This milestone is set with the registration at the Chamber of Commerce today. In September 2007 we (me and two partners) will be in business with Atrivision. We will focus on the link between organisation, learning and technology delivering practical solutions for organisation. I will update you on the exact details of this new venture when we are in business in september. For this post I want to focus on the learning aspect of this excercise. What struck me is the learning experience you go through setting up a company. And what surprised me (or maybe not) is how little of this is covered in formal education. I finalised my MBA just a year ago, but I must say you face a lot of new challenges they don’t cover in a business administration study. And, you learn to cope with them very rapidly in action. I ‘developed’ my own blended learning program on the fly with some formal workshops at the Chamber of Commerce. These covered issues like ‘How to set-up your financial administration’ and ‘Formulating general terms & conditions’. I added a lot of semi-formal learning reading books for specific knowledge and entrepreneurial inspiration. These ranged from a review of the Entrepreneurship module from my MBA (I faced a transfer issue regarding this knowledge following the course in 2006) via Million Dollar Consultancy to Purple Cow and ZAG. The Dutch book "En nu laat ik mijn baard staan" ("And now I am going to grow a beard") also served as a source of inspiration. Besides this semi-formal part I found the informal part very helpful, consisting of several meetings with experts in accounting, tax, contracts and (venture) capital. Last but not least we are part of the TOP(Temporary Entrepreneurial Positions) programme of the University of Twente. This enables us to be part of a network of Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurs. And, this also gives us the opportunity to work with a scientific and business mentor. For the scientific part Prof.dr. Joseph Kessels will be our mentor and we already had an inspiring meeting with him. His book on HRD in the Knowledge Economy will serve as a guide for defining the value proposition of Atrivision. In addition to all this we also will have our offices at the Knowledge Park just opposite to the Campus. I am therefore thrilled by the idea that the learning will continue at full throttle in the upcoming months. We have established a learning ecology or social network that will be a sound basis for informal learning. I am confident that we are going to be successful with our new company. But if not, then at least we had a wonderful learning experience that will stay with us for life. For everyone looking for a course or study to follow, I can recommend setting up your own company. Or you can join Atrivision, since we will be an entrepreneurial network organisation willing to share learning with you!

Hi all! Obviously as a teacher I have nothing better to do than make a blog about education on a Friday night.When we are working in a day and age of technology and in the information era, we need to constantly keep ourselves updated on new and innovative technology uses. This is not only to keep our student's attention and give them a fun medium to access the curriculum. We also want our students to learn how to use different tools online and how to find valuable resources using the internet. Here are 6 different websites that may keep your students on the edge of their seats as well as help teach them the skills and strategies they will need to lead a productive life!1. Our first site that teachers should be using is Kids Blog. This is a great site to use for your kids to communicate with one another and/or different classes through blogging. You have complete control over the blog and it is totally private. For our students who are living in a more and more technological world, this is a great tool for them to learn how to communicate with one another using the web. Sadly, many people with disabilities have very limited social lives once they have graduated school. I believe that it is very important for these students to know how to communicate via the web. Just like myself, a student could create a blog on whatever interests them and find people with similar interest through blogging or other social medias. The way I have used this in my classes is at first I lead the student's blogging with articles I have found. Next they are to comment on one another's blogs. Then as the students become more and more familiar with the site, I have them start blogging and commenting about their goals, what they have learned in our class, how they will apply learning about using a blog, and discussing the day's objectives. Planning:2. If your like me and you are a complete scatter brain at times, Planboard can do you wonders with your organization of your class schedule and lessons. Planboard is an easy to use website that not only gives you a great formula to create your lessons but gives you a great scheduler as well. This website has helped me to create a more structured environment in my class by helping me structure my lesson planning.  Formative Assessment:3. I have two excellent websites for formative assessment. The first is the one that I use of a near to daily basis. This website is called Exitticket. With this site you can create short or long quizzes that the students can take on their phones or on a computer very quickly. Once they take the quiz they will instantly go to your computer and you can see the results of your class as well as the result for an individual student. This is does a great job telling you if you need to reteach a lesson and it can provide very valuable data that is stored on the site. This site gives you a calender to plan out what mini quizzes you will give ahead of time. Exitticket is a great way to start and/or end the class period. 4. The next website I'm going to share with you is called Socrative. Although I am not as familiar with this formative assessment website, I have heard numerous wonderful things about it. This site can also be accessed by students using their phones and or a regular computer and it runs quite similarly to Exitticket. So which ever format suits you best you should use right away! Curriculum: 5. Now I will get to the websites that can really help you with your curriculum and instruction! I know being in a self-contained special education classroom, there are many different levels that the students are at depending on the subject. It can be extremely hard to teach to all of these levels at once. The website Khans Academy is a brilliant tool I use in my math class on an almost daily basis (although it covers Language Arts, History, Science and Art as well). This is a completely free website that helps students find their level of need and it guides them through videos that were created by a former Harvard graduate. Some of these videos also feature celebrities like Lebron James to help peak the student's interest. The website helps student find goals that are suitable for them and it allows the student to earn awards once they have met their goals.  The website gives the student a chance to practice their skills and receive help through hints and videos.I have used this site as a station for my students during centers and as an extension for my kids who need to be extra challenging material. This site not only helps me differentiate for my class but it also takes great data on a vast amount of subjects and well defined objectives.6. The final site that can be very useful for your classroom is Terraclues.com. This site may not look like much once you visit the site but it is a great tool to use for creating scavenger hunts and for allowing your students to create their very own scavenger hunts and play each others. You can create your own scavenger hunts by simply giving clues to the students about a location and than putting a marker on a Google map. The students complete the scavenger hunt by using Google Map and the clues you gave them to find the locations. Once they find a location you can write a quick blurb about the location and give a website that has more information on the location. Quote of the Day:"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." -William Ward

At ThoughtWorks we're looking for versatile learning professionals in India with a keen interest and experience in social media. This role will be based out of either Bangalore or Pune. This depends on the current location of the applicant and in case of really exceptional candidates we can consider a telecommuting option. While we're still trying to define the boundaries of this role, here are some of the key expectations and skills required:Key ResponsibilitiesWork closely with Instructional Designers and facilitators and find creative uses of social media to enhance our existing learning programs.Design new programs with social media as the primary mode of deliveryEvangelise the use of social media as a mode of learning in the organisationResearch latest patterns in social learning and keep ThoughtWorks on the cutting edge of learning technology adoptionWork with existing community leads to ensure that these groups support continuous learningWork with Marketing and KM to leverage existing resources for learningWork with lead Instructional Designer to develop the most effective learning strategy for a performance problemKey personality attributesA strong background in eLearning/Instructional Designer/Facilitation/CoachingPassionate about technologyExceptional communication Skills (Oral, Written & Presentation)Good understanding of emerging knowledge management principles and paradigmsGood understanding of the implications of Web 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0Excellent networking and relationship-building skillsGood research skillsAbility to collect and assimilate ideas and content from multiple sources internal and externalDeeply self motivated and independentComfortable managing multiple high-priority knowledge requests simultaneouslyExcellent organizational skills and attention to detailsExperience ProfileOverall experience of atleast 4-5 years2+ years of experience in Social Learning/Collaboration/Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 or allied areasEmail me if you are interested : smoghe at thoughtworks.com© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

If your not doing anything on Saturday, March 22nd you should come down to Wayne State University for a fun day that is full of activities that are specially designed for the people with Visual Impairments. The Non-Profit I'm with, Camp Abilities Michigan, is putting it on for a disability awareness day! Anyone can come and participate, volunteer or observe. All you need to do is register online at Activity Day Sign Up.  From our Activity Day, we hope that you walk away with an experience that will change your perspective on people with disabilities forever. Through these activities you will start to understand the impressive amount of concentration and hard work it takes to engage in these sports. Hopefully this will be an insightful day for everyone and you will gain a new sense of respect for people with disabilities.We will start by explaining all the rules and passing out eye shade masks to the participants. We will be playing 2 games designed for the visually impaired and we will also have a few extra fun activities. Here is a description of the two sports we will be playing.Goal Ball: Goal Ball is a game currently being played at the Paraylmpics. Every player in these games wears a eye shade mask, to prevent any advantages. The objective of the game is to roll a ball, which contains bells in it, past the opponents goal line. To stop the ball the defense must try to stop the ball using their entire bodies. For this game the player needs to utilize their sense of hearing to block the ball as well as communicate with their team. A lot of strategy can develop if you are communicating well with your team. This is personally my favorite of any Paraylmpic sport I've played before. Beep Baseball/Kickball:Beep Baseball and Beep Kickball are played very similarly. Like Goal Ball, all the players must wear a eye shade mask. The game requires a beeping ball, two beeping bases, and outfield place mats. When the batter hits the beeping ball, he runs to the base that makes a loud buzzing noise.  While this is going on, a sighted person calls out different numbers for the outfield to go and try to find the ball, only one person is called from the outfield at a time for safety reasons. If the outfielder finds the ball before the batter touches the base, than the batter is out! This is another game that focuses on one's sense of listening, but with this game there are other events taking place and the players must be able to differentiate between sounds and run towards them. Our main objective for our Association is to promote physical activity and social interactions for people with Visual Impairments. Please come out and if you have any questions just contact me at: scmcnamara23@campabilitiesmichigan.org.Quote of the Day:"If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation." - Helen Keller

It has been quiet on my weblog for quite some time due to illness. Lying in bed gives you some time for reflection, but I’d rather be up on my feet. Especially during the start-up of a new business. At atrivision my partners have not been sitting still. We were present at the Performa 2007 with a booth and two seminars. Also we have been able to launch our weblog (Dutch) at www.atrivision.com/weblog. Now I am back in the saddle I hope to be able to contribute to both this and the atrivision blog and be able to do some work in the meantime.

When: Wed, Jan 20, 11:00 am GMT/ 4:30 pm ISTHere's an invitation for an interactive webinar on "Succeeding with Globally Distributed Agile" with Sameer Deans, Delivery Manager, ThoughtWorks. This talk will shed light on choosing Agile practices for your software development project and on what happens when the offshore value proposition comes along with the fact that the delivery team is spread over several locations. What you will learnImportance of basic Agile methodsHow to structure a team in a distributed Agiile environmentPractices to overcome challenges in communication and visibilitySpeaker ProfileSameer Deans is a Business Analyst, Project and Delivery Manager at ThoughtWorks with ten years’ industry experience. He is experienced in Business Process Design and has domain knowledge in Banking and Financial Services, Requirements Analysis and Agile Development Methodologies to client engagements. He is responsible for the initiation and growth of several communication channels for distributed development.Click here to register.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

This post will be done a little differently than some of the others blogs I have posted. This blog is my personal opinion about why Adapted Physical Education is a mostly unknown field within education. As a philosophy of mine, I like to brainstorm solutions to problems rather than just point out problems themselves. So with this blog, I implore you to leave some comments on how we can try to fix these problems and make adapted physical education a more well known field.Here are a few reasons that I believe Adapted Physical Education is not a common discussed field in education.The Benefits Are Not Well Known To Public:One of the major factors with Adapted Physical Education's obscurity is that the benefits of APE are not well known to the public. Physical Education teaches to three learning domains: cognitive, affective and pychomotor. It is well documented that from APE, students with disabilities can gain greatly in motor movement, cognitive prowess and social skills. Children with special needs can gain major self-esteem/self-image benefits from participating successfully in group activities and feeling that they are contributing to a team. APE can provide a hands-on approach that can lead to cognitive improvements which teach to a different learning style than a traditional classroom setting. The most obvious of the benefits from APE are the physical benefits. Students with disabilities need to learn fundamental motor skills and physical fitness to help them lead healthier life styles as well as have more opportunities to engage in recreational activities. If these benefits were more effectively publicized, I believe that would be a tremendous opportunity for the APE field. General Physical Education Is Being Cut: Picture is from sparkpe.orgThe picture above shows the cuts that have been made to public schools over the last few years and how this has affected P.E. directly. As you can see, these are pretty substantial and it may prompt some to start thinking why APE is necessary if we do not even have general physical education. Although I strongly advocate that you write your local representatives to try and deter these cuts, one must keep in mind that Adapted Physical Education is a right that many students under IDEA are entitled too (this is explained more in depth in a past blog). With these cuts in physical education, it seems that the government is putting health and fitness to the wayside, although we have an obesity epidemic in America. With these cuts, the government is sending a message that PE is not as important as other academics. I believe our youth need PE now more than ever, and our children with disabilities need PE coupled with direct and individualized instruction to improve their quality of life. Lack of communication within the digital age:I have surfed the internet for hours trying to find different Adapted Physical Education blogs and resources. The truth is, it is a small field and the resources I have found are limited. I believe that as a field, we need to use digital media (such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs) more effectively to try and convey our message about the importance of APE. Although I have been to many terrific conferences and have met a multitude of passionate APE teachers and gained a lot of ideas from them, we need more resources that are available for our practitioners. We are currently living in the Information Age, where the internet can connect us with one another in mere  milliseconds. As a field, I believe we need to be using this technology more effectively to communicate with one another and with the public. Using blogs/social media to connect to others could greatly enhance instruction and awareness in the APE field.With that being said, here is a list of great resources that can be found on the internet that pertain to APE:This is a resource to use to find out what APE is and how to become APE certified.The Sport and Development website has a nice section on adapted sports and it describes the benefits of sports and physical activity for people with disabilities.  PE Central is a well-known website that has activities and lessons for PE teachers. The site also includes a section on APE that includes a decent amount of resources. A blog from the Friendship Circle that discusses how to best include students with disabilities in the gym setting. There are also a few good examples of what a Adapted Physical Education setting should look like. Here is group of APE teachers who make videos on how to modify cues and equipment from California. Laws and regulations not being properly enforced:In my opinion, the greatest reason why Adapted Physical Education continues to be an after thought in many districts is because states and local districts are not properly enforcing schools to comply with laws and regulations. Whilestates and districts are neglecting APE, it is our students that are suffering. Trying to bring awareness of the importance of APE to our local and state representatives is a major and necessary priority. Now the question is what is the best way to go about this?After Thoughts:As an educator, I want my field to expand and benefit more children. I believe we can accomplish this through having an open dialogue about how to best solve this crisis of obscurity. I would love to get some feedback on this blog and start an online dialog about how to find solutions to this ongoing problem.Quote of the day:Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. -Lou Holtz

Last month when I was in Sri Lanka, I tried a local dish called Kottu. Kottu's a simple, yet complex street side dish and it contains roti bread, carrots, beans, onions, other vegetables, eggs, meats, coconut oil; well almost everything you can imagine, thrown onto a pan and tossed together. Hold on - did I just say 'everything'? That's a bit of a magic word for anyone in the learning world. "Teach them everything that they need to know." OR"Let's ensure we cover everything!" OR"In this course we'll teach you everything you need to get started." I'm sure most of us have heard each of those statements and more and perhaps said some of those things ourselves in our career. The funny thing is, that at the back of our minds, all of us realise there's no way we can teach people 'everything' they need to know. That said, with stakeholders breathing down our necks and the demands of each role at the back of our minds, it's tough to figure how we can let people get off training without teaching them 'everything' they should know. In recent days, I've been using Learning Paths to determine the right learning strategy to develop capabilities for specific job roles. In fact we've tried this approach with some success in some of our strategic consulting initiatives as well and I'd like to share this really simple technique with you. Read on to learn more...Introducing Learning PathsA learning path is nothing but a chronological representation of an individual's learning journey from Novice to Expert in a specific job role. It can look as complex as a multipage document, but for me it looks like a variant of the picture above. There are a few key elements to a Learning Path:Job Expectations & Recommended ReadingEvery job has some expectations against it. As a L&D professional, not only do I like to know the expectations for the role I'm supporting, but I also think that the learner deserves to know without ambiguity what the role expects of her. That way there's a tangible set of goals to work against. A lot of roles have recommended texts to support people at all levels. Making a list of the most important books and resources for the job is always useful not just for new starters, but also for us as learning professionals to design the right learning experience. Foundation Skills Foundation skills are the absolute bare minimum skills to start a job. As simple as that. An amateur journalist will not start editing articles on her first day. A novice salesman isn't going to generate regional sales reports. The key to determining foundation skills is to ask yourself (or the SME), "What are the things the novice performer will absolutely not do in their first month on the job?"Intermediate SkillsIntermediate skills are usually tricky to figure out. The best I can define them is by saying that these are skills people need after having spent some time on the job and after having gained sufficient mastery with their foundation skills. For example, I can ask a novice analyst to elicit and articulate customer requirements as a foundation skill, but it make take the novice some time before she can lead sessions with the team to estimate these requirements or to lead showcases with the customer or to run planning meetings. These will be intermediate skills for the individual. Advanced SkillsTo pick up advanced skills the learner needs to work with other experienced people. No amount of teaching can give people confidence with advanced skills. It takes time, support and on-the-job support. Coming back to the example of the journalist, if she is expected to take over a complete beat with no experience of doing so in the past, she'll most probably need some apprenticeship before she is ready to go on her own.Acquired SkillsLastly, there are acquired skills. These skills come with experience alone. Only when people try, fail, try again and get their hands dirty with a number of things and start building appreciation for a their surrounding ecosystem do they pick up these skills. As an example, a business analyst will gain the skill of facilitating workshops and managing requirements pipelines only over a period of time and with experience.Adopt the right Learning StrategyThis bit of simple, upfront analysis helps us in a few ways:Individuals know where they stand in their learning journey at the company. Instructional Designers know what the pre-requisites and assumptions for designing learning for any stage are. This way we can avoid throwing the kitchen sink at any module we create (elearning or not).Stakeholders know exactly what kind of support to invest in, to help people grow in expertiseOnce we've drawn up a Learning Path, devising our Learning Strategy becomes all that much simpler:We know which skills we can influence with teaching and traditional elearning -- foundation skills and an initiation to intermediate skills lend themselves quite well to these modes.We know that practicing intermediate skills and learning advanced skills needs mentorship and coaching.We know that it takes not just on the job support, but perhaps also interaction with other practitioners and a robust knowledge sharing strategy in the organisation to develop acquired skills. Most importantly this takes patience, because people need experience to develop these skills. Informal Learning, can perhaps shorten the time to mastery, though!I'm still trying to develop my thinking around Learning Paths and your feedback will help me in finding the most effective way to apply this technique. Please share your thoughts by commenting liberally in the comments section.If you liked this article, you're likely to enjoy my other posts on similar topics:The Agile Elearning Design Manual - Think Small (Iterations, Action Maps, Storyboards, and Mini-Modules)Using the Dreyfus Model to engage people in your Online Learning programPut your learners on a diet - consider a pull based approachEmpowering learners in an Induction Program© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

If your a parent of a child with Autism than you probably have looked far and wide for programs that were designed around your child's special needs. Well look no further than Athletes with Autism(AWA)! This is a fantastic program that has been servicing children with Autism in the Detroit area for over seven years. Oh and did I mention that it is absolutely free!?!I have been associated with AWA for over two years now. With these experiences, let me explain to you how this program is completely unique and how your child could benefit from joining the program.What is Athletes with Autism?Athletes with Autism is a Detroit-based sports program that is trying to promote fitness, motor skills, socialization and independence in children with Autism. Athletes with Autism provides 3 different recreational sessions per year. Two sports/skill related sessions in the Fall and Winter and a swimming session in the Spring. All of these sessions take place at Wayne State University. Meet the VolunteersThe athletes are put into small groups of 3-5 with a 1:1 ratio of volunteers to athletes. Athletes are able to work in a one-to-one environment with a volunteer and build a strong bond with that person. A majority of the volunteers at Athletes with Autism are Physical Education college students or Speech Pathologist graduate students. This makes for a great learning environment for the athlete. Not only is the athlete receiving invaluable motor skills training, but they are working in a one-on-one setting with future professionals who are building upon the athlete's speech abilities. The volunteers for this program make for an unique group of future educators that can deliver a wide variety of important skills that a child with Autism would benefit from for a lifetime.Incorporation of TechnologyOne of the most amazing aspects of the program is the AWA app that they use with the children. The AWA app contains social stories, visual schedule, a timer, visual/video representations of motor skills, and a reward system. The social stories/visual schedules are used throughout the sessions and are specially created to help relieve anxiety and tell the student what is going to happen next.The timer is used for students that may need a visual to help reduce anxiety. It can be used before a transition or to track how long a student can have a break/reward.The visual/video representations of motor skills are used to show a visually stimulating video on how to correctly carry out a motor skill.The reward system will shows the students a visual representation of how many tasks they must perform before they receive a reward.Structure of the SessionsEvery session starts as a large group coming together and reading a welcome/warm-up activity social story on a projector, then the group engages in a warm-up activity. The groups then go into their separate smaller groups. The speech pathologist in each group conducts a skills practice social story on the iPad. The children engage in the skills practice which can range from practicing one's basketball dribbling to learning the backstroke. After the timer goes off, athletes come back together in their small groups and read a game social story on the iPad. The athletes will then play in a game that was specially designed for their unique needs. After they have finished the game, they will go back into the large group setting and read a good bye social story as a group. Personal Experience:From my own experiences at AWA, I found that it was a phenomenal experience. I gained a better insight for whom I was as an educator and as a person. It was one of my first experiences of working with children with disabilities in a physical education setting. I quickly found out that physical education for children with disabilities can be extremely beneficial for the child. Throughout each 8 week session (Spring is 6 weeks) I saw the children grow leaps and bounds from where they were when I first started working with them. They would interact more with their environments and with their peers. The children would also gain valuable motor/sports skills that they could use outside of the program to interact appropriately with their peers.In graduate school, I conducted a study that looked for a link between the AWA program and social growth. We found that from the start to the end of a single session, athletes were tripling the amount of times they were initiating and reciprocating peer/coach interactions.  I would recommend this program to any parent who has a child with Autism and wants to see them develop more age-appropriate social/motor skills. With these skills that this program helps to ingrain, the child will become more independent and live a more fulfilling life. Quote of the Day:"If I could snap my fingers and be non-autistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am." ― Temple Grandin

These are live-blogged notes from Jeff Patton's session on Story Mapping which I couldn't upload until late next morning, due to a lack of internet connectivity.Jeff Patton: Started doing XP in 2000 (ex TW'er). User stories part of Extreme programming at the time, so he has a decade of experience of this thing. Claims to have figured this out only in the last 1 year. From my experience I know Jeff to be one of the most respected analysts in the industry and a name to reckon with in the area of agile customer experience.Its common practice to use user stories in SCRUM today. 'Everybody touches these user story things today'. Developers, BAs, testers, product owners, what have you.A lot of responses came out to define User stories:WishlistRequirements defined in the words of the customersmall usable output valuable to the customerunit of functionalitybusiness process to be implemented in the systemnon-functional requirementshas a notion of value or prioritya unit of testable functionalityTherefore: "User stories are different things to different people."So we can't all be possibly right. But we are!So who is a consumer of a user story?A developer may needimplementation detailssmall in scope - shouldn't take too much timeA tester may needAcceptance testsUser's perception of functionalityA user may care about whether the user story lets him achieve what he wantsA product may owner care abouttime to marketcost to builda project manager may care aboutno of resourcesschedule, cost, quality, constraintsrisksis it estimable?a business stakeholder may care aboutreturn on investmentqualityburn-rate? did they mean velocity?how does this fit in my product strategy?competitive advantageis it big enough to give me profit?a UX person may care aboutrole/ persona we're building foruser's goal?meta-details of the story? a.k.a contextis it big enough to give me feedback?By the time we address all these concerns and put all the details in, it becomes a real 'fat' document that perhaps needs a binder to hold! Everyone has a view on what the user story needs to have. Its really easy to abandon good old stories because its not easy to fit all this fluff into them.Jeff threw out the word 'boundary object'. User stories are a boundary object -- its information that's used in different ways by different communities. Its interpreted differently across communities, but has enough immutable content to maintain integrity. The big challenge is to make user stories all they mean to different people without making them into requirements specification documents.User stories are still a 'token for a conversation'.Here's where story mapping comes in. Jeff then started off to demo building a story map and asked the group to come up with ideas for products.Jeff picked an application for people new in Bangalore to know about auto-rickshaws, destinations, right prices, etc. They called the application - autorickshaw registry. The 'business value' of the application:public should be able to use this report behaviourpolice should be able to regulate auto driversthe public should be able to get auto-rickshaw information from this siteThe benefit for the stake-holders would be:police can do their job better - provide more safety (overall better law & order)the public sees more accountability for auto-rickshaw driversJeff ordered the story map by putting the persona on top and placing high-level coarse grained scenarios/goals under them and then user story-like requirements under them. This continued for a while with the story map -- with a really passionate customer who just kept hammering her needs onto him. Jeff did his best to facilitate and come up a with a story map. You can take a look at Jeff's blog to know more about the process of story mapping.The cool thing about the story mapping process is that it tells a story of the system more than an isolated story in a flat product backlog. As Jeff would say, "the new product backlog is a story map". The fact that its attached to a concrete, real persona makes it meaningful. The ordering of a story map often is:Business Value (the purpose of the system)Personas (the people involved)Category of functionality (user activities - cluster of things that people do. eg: ordering and pricing rickshaws, SMS activities)Actions performed (user tasks)Details for that taskJeff suggested that we should beware of templates (as a, i want to, so that) - they're useful but shouldn't be dogmas. A story map exactly explains all those three parts without getting caught up in the template.An important point he mentions is that discussion is crucial to the process -- we can't be getting into a 'feature bucket' without understanding the system, the context and the value it brings.Story mapping is an approach to organising and prioritising user storiesStory mapping shows decomposition and typical flow across the systemReading the activities from beginning to end, helps us understand the flow of the systemProduct discovery workshops help us understand the product we're building as a story map. These sessions may include discussion on:the purpose of the systemcustomers of the sytemusers, their usage and consequently the value they'll get out itA few things to remember about story maps:Building a story map may need a huge open space -- even floor space is coolA story map for a reasonable sized system can actually fill a room (can get very, very long)Adding tape lines t the wall lets participants organise stories into layers. Each layer makes a release!Planning incremental releases can be facilitated as a collaborative event. It was really cool to see a video of the process from a Brazilian client of Jeff's. Great culmination to his hugely informative session. You can email Jeff for a PDF of the handout for his session. I think you will be able to find them on his website too.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

The Non-Profit, Camp Abilities Michigan, recently bought some sports equipment for the visually impaired. Since we are just starting out, a lot of the equipment we are testing out and seeing if we like them or not. For this blog I thought I would review the products and describe their functions.Electronic beeper A loud beeper that can be utilized for a child with a visual impairment to try and track something down. We will use this during a game of beep kickball/baseball by using the beeper rather than bases to run to in a gym setting . The reasoning behind this is for safety purposes. Using the beeper, we can stop it at an appropriate time rather than have an athlete run through a base and potentially fall down and hurt themselves. Trainer Goal BallThe simple goal ball with 2 bells is a must have piece if equipment!Beep Kickball The official beep kick ball is probably my favorite piece of equipment we have bought as of yet. It is durable and the beeping volume is perfect for an indoor gym or for an outside game. Foam beep ballA more generic beep ball than the beep kickball. I like how inexpensive this ball is and it feels quite durable as well. After pressing the inside button the beeps start to go off every 2 to 3 seconds so a student with a visual impairment can track down the ball. Website of the month:Educanon.comSince I have found this website I have not  been able to get off of it! This site enables you to take videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and Teachertube and add questions intermittently to it. The website allows you to set up classes and have them watch videos with built in discussion questions. The site has an assessment tool that let's you see how your students scored on the questions related to a video. This website helps you plan out a lesson to go with a video and gathers data at the same time! Whether you are teaching 3rd grade, college biology or giving a presentation at a conference this site will make your life easier!Quote of the week: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.Robert Frost

In an article for CLO Magazine e-learning researcher Josh Bersin described three trends to watch for Corporate Learning in 2008. Researchers like Bersin, with their strong connections to vendors of corporate learning solutions, might be slightly biased towards creating hypes. On the other hand the trends he described are too generic and vendor unrelated to suspect him. According to Bersin the year 2008 will bring us: Talent-Driven Learning Programs: forward-thinking learning executives are emphasizing talent-driven learning programs — particularly in areas such as leadership development, onboarding and career development — to support talent strategies. The New Learning On Demand: We have been writing about rapid e-learning, performance support and informal learning for years. Conditioned by Google, RSS feeds, YouTube and other popular tools, employees are now expecting to find answers on any job- or company-related topic in seconds. Get Ready for Self Published Content: Today, organizations can take "off the shelf" tools for blogs and wikis and use them to create communities of practice that facilitate such informal, on-the-job learning. The are not very surprising and maybe even heard at the end of 2006 too some extent. But, it is always good to read some confirmation of directions taken with corporate learning initiatives in organisations.

As promised, here are the workshop outputs from the session Rixt Wiersma and I ran on the topic of 'Facilitating Dialogue in situations of Conflict' at the Agile Bengaluru 2010 conference. It was a really enjoyable session for us as participants and we had a wonderful crowd that impressed us with their keen interest in the humanistics of Agile software developments At the end of the exercise, here are the thoughts that teams had about dealing with conflict. I don't have record of all the tips and discussion that cameup in the debrief, but this was all the stuff that the teams wrote up on their flipcharts. Behaviours that facilitate dialogueBehaviours that hinder dialogueAn initiative to get the bigger picture (what are we trying to achieve here? who is involved?)Understanding the problem well, before jumping into solution modeTimeboxing often helps the team rally to a decisionListening to everyone - no views ignored (came up multiple times) Being focussed on the discussion at hand and the goal in sightAn openness to clarifying doubts at the moment they aroseCollective ownership - participation from the whole groupRespecting and acknowledging other/ differing opinionsDeciding a strategy to begin with and iterating from there (came up multiple times) Everyone trying to understand one anotherAsking questions and seeking opinions. eg: What do you think? Do you agree?Speaking in a calm tone of voiceNo language barriersLogical ThinkingAgreeing to disagree (concurring with the team)Interest based negotiation Getting stuck in your own views of the situationToo much focus on the process of the discussion than on the rationale presented or even the resultOver-ruling others. A strong voice often stops others from expressing themselves freely and in the end may prevail as the only voice.A hurry or unnecessary 'push' towards decision makingAvoid making assumptions. Make assumptions explicit if anyForcing your thoughts on othersNot letting others speakPersonal conflicts!Not making understanding explicit. (People don't have visibility into all aspects of the problem)Unequal participationHidden agendas and biased prioritiesPositional bargainingSidestepping the emotional side of the conflict. (its important to address these concerns) Here are the slides from our talk, just in case you're interested. Thanks everyone for attending -- hope we get the opportunity to do this in other places as well. Facilitating Dialogue In Situations Of ConflictView more documents from sumeet.moghe.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009