This week on eLearning Learning, the top two articles were funny to see side-by-side: You can find them on the Weekly Edition.  Both articles may be interesting to read, but it also highlights how hot Micro-Learning is right now.  Lot’s more content can be found on Micro-Learning on eLearning Learning, including it’s Top Ten articles. The Myth of "Micro-Learning"- Bottom-Line Performance, May 13, 2015 Micro-Learning as a Workplace Learning Strategy- ID Reflections, March 31, 2015 Micro-Learning: Making Learning Part of Everyday Tasks- Social Learning Blog, March 11, 2014 6 Ways to Use Micro-Learning in Your Organization- Origin Learning, December 16, 2014 How to create a microlecture?- Edynco, March 26, 2014 Micro-Learning’s Meteoric Rise- LearnDash, May 11, 2015 From Courses to Micro-Learning- ID Reflections, March 5, 2014 From Micro-Learning to Corporate MOOCs- ID Reflections, March 7, 2014 Micro-learning as a workplace learning strategy [Chattopadhyay]- Learning Ecosystems, April 27, 2015 Micro-Learning: Its Role in Formal, Informal and Incidental Learning- ID Reflections, August 7, 2014 eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

An Oculus Rift version of the smartphone game 'Drunk Room' tasks you to escape your own apartment, while inebriated. The post A VR Escape Room With a Twist: You’re Drunk appeared first on WIRED.

Imagine for a minute, if you will, a Dad entering the en suite bathroom to find his girls in the bath. Nothing out of the ordinary if your girls are 9 and 5. But imagine if your girls have propped up an iPad on the counter and are listening to jazz. When you ask, "why are you listening to jazz" and the response is, "Dad, it’s relaxing, calming and like a spa" … do you: Smile, like a proud father? Wonder if their mother has actually taken them to a spa before? Beam because they’ve brought an iPad into the bathroom to play jazz music? Back away slowly hoping you’re not in the wrong house? Fully expect an asteroid to hit you because your good fortune is up? Related Posts:The Recalibration of PlayFriday Fun: iPrefer iPad iScrabbleFriday Fun: The Difference b/t Apple & Microsoft Is …16 Months of Social Learning Platform Insanity: A RecapThe Hare, the Tortoise and the Jackass of Social HR

Sure, we've seen a couple trailers already for Guy Ritchie's new film, but we haven't yet seen one that's five minutes long. It's here now! The post Man From U.N.C.L.E. Brings You The Sexiest Spies appeared first on WIRED.

They are the weak, the bullies, the ruthless They become and personify the finger that points at a scapegoat, gleefully abdicating any responsibility for erroneous outcomes or missed targets. They ascend to positions of power through matador like precision. Their sword is not metal, rather a behavioural style that aims to demean, command or enforce. Collectively there are hundreds of thousands of them occupying roles in organizations across all sectors and geographies. They too are implicated in the woeful levels of employee disengagement. This cohort should be renamed the Mysterium Tremendum Leader; a leader, I propose, that uses their positional power to invoke fear and trembling in its team members. A leader who looks up to Weber, Fayol and Taylor as the triad of perfected management definition. These leaders have no place in the organization of 2012 and beyond. These Mysterium Tremendum leaders, if they are unwilling to reflect on how destructive their leadership style is and who are unable to shift to the TEAM model or the Collaboration Cycle or new Leadership Tenets must be weeded out and replaced. They are not the leaders of today or tomorrow that organizations need in order to build a connected, collaborative and engaged workforce. Related Posts:Future of Work: Add Open Leadership, Enterprise 2.0, Connected Learning and MixNew Leadership Model: An Exercise in BifurcationThe Link Between Leadership, Learning & Organizational PerformanceSideways Leadership of Social MediaGive Piece a Chance

… clocks. It’s a tad important to know the time. Well … unless of course you believe being punctual is poisonous, but that’s a post for another day. If you own an iOS device like an iPad and you travel, like me, you may not have noticed that when you step off the plane in a different timezone, malnourished and groggy, the second you connect yourself to wifi … presto, your iPad’s clock is updated. (sorry gals, not your biological one) When I plug in my (somewhat) archaic Dell laptop powered by Windows 7 and connect to overpriced hotel wifi, my laptop still thinks I’m in the land of Pacific orca whales. One small point which I’m sure will be mitigated in Windows 8. Right? Right??? Related Posts:Friday Fun: iPrefer iPad iScrabbleFriday Fun: All That JazzBosses Should Shift From Scroll to SwipeThe Recalibration of PlayShouldn’t We Just Best Buy Corporate Learning

EA's anticipated shooter from the studio behind the Battlefield franchise was at Nerd HQ, which means so were we. The post Video: Hands-On With Star Wars: Battlefront at Comic Con appeared first on WIRED.

A truly collaborative organization will become a productive force to behold when contribution, in its many different forms, becomes the de facto behaviour of everyone. Give Piece a Chance. To be more specific, give a piece of content, a piece of feedback, a piece of knowledge, a piece of your experience a chance. You have wisdom. You have intellect. You have opinion. You should give that piece of whatever the chance to help others (and the organization) with various goals and objectives, be it individual, team or enterprise-wide. Let others know that your piece might help build an ecosystem of improvement in the organization. In return, encourage others to do the same. You never know what may happen. (remember about reciprocity and interlocutors) Marcel Proust once claimed, "The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes." It is with the new eyes of being a contributor, of giving piece a chance where I believe we will build organizations capable of addressing the chronic disengagement levels, lack of innovation and levels of productivity. Over at HBR, Scott Keller and Carolyn Dewar wrote a wonderful case study involving ANZ Bank in a post entitled, "Three Steps to a High-Performance Culture" on January 26th, 2012. One key paragraph stood out for me: ANZ Bank offers an example: a decade ago, the bank embarked on an effort described as a "unique plan of eschewing traditional growth strategies and recasting the culture of the bank to lift efficiency and earnings." In the initial two years, the share of employees having the sense that ANZ "lived its values" went from 20 to 80 percent, and the share seeing "productivity in meetings" from 61 to 91 percent, with similar rises in the shares seeing "openness and honesty" and a "can-do culture." In parallel, revenue per employee increased 89 percent and the bank overtook its peers in total returns to shareholders and customer satisfaction. A full ten years after those initial efforts, ANZ has sustained its results: its profit after tax has grown at a cumulative average growth rate of 15 percent, putting it well ahead of its industry. It’s a great example of how an organization, in this case an otherwise historically organized hierarchical bank, employed the ‘give piece a chance’ motto to great and sustained success. ANZ might once have been a culture that was closed and disengaged. It might never have given piece a chance. But, through some organizational re-engineering and focusing on a concept like ‘give piece a chance‘, amongst other collaborative and engagement inducing actions, it demonstrated bottom line business results. All we are saying, is give piece a chance. Related Posts:Virtual Worlds in an Organization are not a Time Waster (and other beefs)Case Study: Tim Hockey, a Collaborative & Transparent CEOThe ‘Empire Avenue’ Strikes BackThe Link Between Leadership, Learning & Organizational Performance5 Use Cases for Badges in the Enterprise

Fresh off the Warner Bros. panel this morning, here's Zack Snyder's latest and (hopefully) greatest. The post The New Dawn of Justice Trailer is a Big Step in the Right Direction appeared first on WIRED.

My, how times have changed. Two years ago, people were scoffing at the term social learning. Three years ago, social learning was solely for the nerds like me, whereas four years ago it was a term used solely in academic circles. But during the past year and a half or so, social learning has become cotton candy at the fair. Everybody wants some. In particular, there has been a fair amount of shuffling, repositioning, flanking and acquiring going on in the vendor space as it relates to our fluffy, sugary snack known as social learning. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to recap and provide some analysis on a few of the notable moves. SuccessFactors (SF) buys Jambok, SAP buys SuccessFactors If the SF move to buy Jambok didn’t start the "what’s my strategy" drumbeat in early 2011, the SAP move to buy SF was a full-on drum roll in late 2011. It’s no secret the SAP LMS system needs a fair bit of TLC and I fully expect the SF product stack to find its way into a new and improved SAP LMS, although I suspect it will become more of a true social collaboration platform (on the cloud) for SAP customers. SAP has other opportunities to beef up its social learning story including, but not limited to, Streamwork. Taleo buys Learn.com, Oracle buys Taleo Learn.com was a big boost to the product stack of Taleo by way of the Taleo acquisition move in late 2010, but that boost didn’t last long because just more than a year later, Oracle took a look at its horrendous LMS, talent management and social learning story and bought Taleo in February 2012. Some may argue it’s a defensive play against SAP; that may be true, but I suspect it has more to do with Salesforce and wanting to get properly aligned to the budding cloud strategy on all things talent and human capital. Yes, I believe Rypple was but one acquisition by Salesforce and I fully expect them to take a run at other social learning entities by the end of 2012. SkillSoft re-releases SkillPort with inGenius One of the dark horse social learning platforms out there is SkillSoft and its SkillPort cloud-based LMS. The latest enhancements come in the form of inGenius, a social feature previously found only within its Books 24×7 service. inGenius, as it should, permits users to rank, comment, follow, search and generally interact in the social sphere of usage. Cloud-based LMS with social features? Hello Salesforce? Saba, the "people cloud" company, upgrades and acquires Not to be outdone in the acquisition frenzy, Saba CEO Bobby Yazdani recently purchased HumanConcepts, an organizational modeling and visualization company. You’re asking yourself, "what does this have to do with social learning" right about now, but my bet is that Saba’s social learning story will be improved by the visualization component immensely. Imagine the semantic layer of social learning for a second displayed with out-of-this-world (and collaborative) visuals … all on its new People Cloud? Scrumptious cotton candy indeed. (Oh, and hello Salesforce?) And what is going on at Blackboard and Desire2Learn? First, Blackboard not only begins acquiring companies like Moodlerooms and NetSpot to keep its feet firmly planted in the academic vertical, but it also doubles down on the corporate sector by a) improving its social learning feature set and b) partnering with … you got it, Salesforce to launch Blackboard Learn - an integrated Blackboard social LMS experience into the Salesforce experience. Not to be outdone, Desire2Learn not only completely updated its platform to become a true social learning engine (including integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn), but it also recently hired Dennis Kavelman as COO to complement visionary CEO John Baker. This Canadian outfit is one to watch in the social learning space. There are others I’m watching as well, but I’ll save those thoughts for another trip to the cotton candy counter. Related Posts:HR Doesn’t Need a Seat at the Table, it is the TableThe Hare, the Tortoise and the Jackass of Social HRThe edX, Udacity and Coursera ShowdownSo The LMS Is Dead: Collaboration-Talent Convergence is NextFriday Fun: All That Jazz

Zack Snyder, director of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, has moved Gotham City. Is nothing sacred anymore? The post Zack Snyder Turned Gotham City and Metropolis Into the Bay Area appeared first on WIRED.

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Directors of two upcoming DC Comics-based movies have thought a lot about canon; they just have different thoughts. The post Suicide Squad’s Director Has a Message for Worried Fans appeared first on WIRED.

There is something fascinating going on at Boise State University and specifically the Department of Educational Technology. Let me introduce you to 3D GameLab, arguably an actual example demonstrating the evolution of today’s antiquated learning management system. The brainchild of Lisa Dawley and Chris Haskell, 3D GameLab is an online game-based learning environment facilitated by what are known as quests. What are quests, you ask? Quests are individual learning components such as short videos, diagrams, activities, text, audio, etc., that (when combined together) can make up the learning requirements of a traditional class. Students, however, have choice in what quests they want to gobble up. Imagine students having a say in what aspects of a topic like cellular biology or World War II history they are interested in that can make up the pedagogy of the overarching learning outcome of a traditional course. The students are in charge of constructing their road; the teacher provides as many interlocking bricks as is necessary for the students to build their own meandering path to reach the destination. Students can rank, rate, comment and provide feedback on each of the quests for others to view as well. As an added bonus, dependent on the learner, those quests can be accomplished in isolation, cooperatively or competitively within the friendly game environment. As the learner completes each quest, he or she is not awarded a percentage or letter grade, but experience points instead. These points need to add up to the total point requirement for course completion. And yes, in-game badges and awards are a big part of the environment as well. The project, although conceived by Dawley and Haskell, seems to be intellectual property of Boise State University and through research it completed, a go-to-market business model looks to be in discussion. There is a closed beta under way and thus far, teacher feedback is positive and perhaps glowing. In a comment titled, "I don’t want to go back, ever" Poison Shirt (a teacher in the beta) remarked: Students are moving beyond the standard curriculum to delve into new material, because they have choice, control and self-motivation to keep going. I am spending lots of my time creating new quests to stay ahead of them than I ever anticipated I would have to. This is a good problem to have. Could it be that 3D GameLab has cracked the bottleneck code? Is learning only found in an LMS or classroom? Or can it be portrayed and conducted in a manner such as the 3D GameLab initiative? Quoted in Converge Magazine, Haskell stated: "We do a pretty rotten job at the university level of demonstrating a variety of teaching techniques. [It’s] kind of a way of deconstructing education and making it available to people in a new way." I believe Haskell and Dawley have developed something I’ve been seeking for the past few years. Chunks or small nuggets of learning, available in many different formats, able to be pieced together at the user’s discretion, backed by collaborative-based social learning concepts through a gaming engine could well be the future of learning. Maybe it already is. They would be wise to put together a strong group of advisers to help them through the next few years as I see 3D GameLab making a strong and successful foray into the corporate learning world. It will be one project to watch in the coming months. Related Posts:Shouldn’t We Just Best Buy Corporate LearningThe edX, Udacity and Coursera ShowdownUdacity & Coursera. Is It Really Education Reform?ABC - The 21st Century Learning ModelIs The Root of All Evil the B.Ed Program?

In 2003, when Nicholas Carr penned the piece "IT Doesn’t Matter", an overlooked definition of what he referred to as ‘infrastructural technologies‘ may now be, in 2012, unintentionally defining the relationship between IT and the organization. "The characteristics and economics of infrastructural technologies, whether railroads or telegraph lines or power generators, make it inevitable that they will be broadly shared - that they will become part of the general business infrastructure. In the earliest phases of its buildout, however, an infrastructural technology can take the form of a proprietary technology. As long as access to the technology is restricted - through physical limitations, intellectual property rights, high costs, or a lack of standards - a company can use it to gain advantages over rivals." In the Web 2.0 world of today, arguably the infrastructural side of a more collaborative technology-based society, where we introduce terms such as Consumerization of IT, Shadow IT or SoMoClo to depict what is happening to organizations, employees and the CIO’s office, we’ve perhaps lost sight of why we’re at this junction. (10 years ago we called it ’Rogue IT‘ if you can believe it) Further fodder for your consideration: By 2015, Gartner predicts that 35% of enterprise IT expenditures will be managed outside the CIO’s department and budget PwC indicates that at their "top performer" companies, IT controls less than 50% of corporate technology expenditures Diamond Digital IQ suggests 41% of organizations witness 30% or more of IT expenditures residing elsewhere from IT So … what’s happened? What’s happening? Organizations and its employees outside of IT have begun to, well .. "Occupy IT". Not on purpose, mind you. At least that’s what I think. Those ‘infrastructural technologies‘ that Carr referred to circa 2003 have actually become the de facto technology, choice and user experience expectation of workers inside the organization. ‘Proprietary technologies‘ are becoming extinct, and an organization will now yearn to begin future planning with an ‘infrastructural technology’ mindset first. Business units and its constituents are now employing an "Occupy IT" movement due to, in part, the belief (whether right or wrong) that IT has morphed into the 1% and the rest of the organization is viewed as the 99% when it comes to control of the technology to perform one’s role. The 1% is controlling the experience for the 99%. They are the proprietary mindset. And as a consequence, the organization is pushing back. Shadow IT, Rogue IT, Consumerization of IT … call it whatever you like, is back, growing and not going away. This is not merely about BYOD (bring your own device), nor the recent success of Apple nor is it because Facebook is getting close to one billion users. The organization wants a seat at the IT table; it wants to become part of the solution, part of the infrastructural conversation. The organization, in essence, is camping out in the park trying to be heard, trying to help IT shift to, as Dion Hinchcliffe calls it, the "everythingization of technology". It is at its root a case study in behaviour change. For years, perhaps decades, IT has controlled. Be it the infrastructure, technology roadmap, innovation, ERP, human capital systems … and of course devices, PC’s and laptops, IT was the gatekeeper of technologies and the organization was the recipient. One might argue that they (IT) were the benefactors of Fayol or Taylor in so much that the hierarchical way in which it (IT) was allowed to operate with the organization ensured its proprietary technology plans remained steadfast and unadulteratedly in control. It may never have reached the infrastructural stage for some companies. "Most important is the culture," says Tim Bray when referring to IT and how it must reverse trajectory when designing and implementing enterprise systems. I agree. There may be an upside of shadow IT out there, but the staid, industrial revolution-like way in which IT operates must evolve. The organization doesn’t want to "Occupy IT", per se, but its inadvertent occupation is growing. I can assure you that any organization would be better suited to have IT as a collaborative, proactive and engaging partner rather than viewed as an OPEX cost centre simply in charge of keeping the lights on or, worse, launching roadblocks at any "Occupy IT" intersection. To avoid the current predicament, to avoid the ‘occupation‘, IT might create history by looking back to history. It’s no secret IBM’s longevity and its 100+ year history is as a result of being able to reinvent itself in spite of depressions, recessions, revolutions and dissolutions. Although a marketing effort, the following words from IBM’s "THINK: Our History of Progress; 1890s to 2001" encapsulates my point: Entering the 1990′s,moves into major new growth businesses, principally services and software, and embraces open standards for computing. The company also fundamentally reshapes its culture to refocus on clients and to be more agile, responsive and collaborative. Perhaps IT might look to one of its own and lead the charge to becoming an infrastructural proactive and community driven business unit as opposed to one based on proprietary close-minded thinking. This would ensure the "Occupy IT" movement subsided and cooler, more collaborative heads prevailed. Related Posts:Future of Work: Add Open Leadership, Enterprise 2.0, Connected Learning and MixThe Hare, the Tortoise and the Jackass of Social HRThe Mysterium Tremendum LeaderThe Link Between Leadership, Learning & Organizational PerformanceToo Dot Oh: Making Sense of the Terrible 2’s

Swordfighting? Hand-to-hand badassery? Back tattoos? What's not to look forward to? The post AMC Finally Takes the Wraps Off Its Martial Arts Series Into the Badlands appeared first on WIRED.

The higher education online learning gloves are now officially off. Let’s first recap the dizzying pace of change, announcements and launches that have occurred since the Fall of 2011 between Udacity, Coursera, MITx and the latest free-learning darling, edX. October 10 - Official launch of Introduction to AI (origin of Udacity) as well as Introduction to Databases and Machine Learning (origin of Coursera) December 19 - MITx is announced  January 1 - Charles West Ventures invests $5m into Udacity (or is it Know Labs?) January 23 - Professor Thrun officially announces Udacity thus breaking away from Stanford February 20 - First official Udacity courses launch - CS 101: Building a Search Engine and CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car March 5 - MITx launches first course 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics) April 18 - Coursera (founded by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng) announces $16m in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates April 18 - Coursera announces university partnerships with Princeton University, University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania (yes, the same day) April 23 - First official Coursera courses launch  May 2 - MIT and Harvard announce edX, a $60m venture between the two Boston area universities with the first courses set to launch in the Fall of 2012 It was a mere three months ago in February when I questioned whether Udacity and Coursera were in fact reforming higher education. (Udacity even has a new funky logo since last February) Arguably they already have, based not only on the launch of edX in the academic vertical but continued (perhaps competitive?) innovations occurring in the corporate learning space from Skillsoft, Pearson and Saba among others. And let’s not forget other great ideas like 3D GameLabs at Boise State University or of course Khan Academy and the recently launched TED-Ed or Google’s Search Education. But let’s focus our attention on edX, MITx, Udacity and Coursera. Some of you may be thinking this is reminiscent of the 1990′s West Coast versus East Coast rapper wars with a stand-off between Silicon Valley and Boston-based universities. Thankfully the recent additions of Princeton, uPenn and uMich to Coursera have alleviated that theory. This is not a Stanford vs. Boston Ivy League coastal duel. So what is going on? Money. That’s not a bad thing, but I believe it is about money. How so? Collectively, we know that $81 million dollars has been invested in the three (or is it four MITx?) fledgling online entities thus far. Thrun even put $200k of his own money additionally into Udacity. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the new Academic partners in Coursera have also funded the endeavour, perhaps behind the scenes. Some of that money is being invested by venture capital firms. Unless the purpose of a VC has changed and pigs can now fly, it reasons to stand these funding partners have their eye on a bigger prize downstream. When Harvard realized the Bruins were out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, they decided to get cozy with MIT and their MITx initiative. With each institution investing $30m into the pot (when MITx launched a mere 6 months ago) shows you how much potential new money is at stake. This is a classic example of investing for the long term by all stakeholders from each of the projects. Harold Jarche’s observation with me over Twitter was a classic Jarche-ism. Data; those hundreds of thousands of people enrolling into courses, for free, are submitting an awful lot of data, and perhaps it’s the data that can be sold at a later date by the partners. Think about companies who may be keenly interested in analyzing the online studying behaviours of people. It’s those learners who are receiving a free course that will be (unknowingly?) providing data points to companies in search of trends and the like. There is the possibility that edX and Coursera in particular are using these non-credentialed courses as loss leaders. (see the FAQ of edX - no Harvard or MIT recognition comes with a completed course nor are any credits issued) If the courses are free, and they lead to nothing more than a certificate of completion (affiliated by no university whatsoever) students may want an actual official degree or designation from one of the Academic institutions at some point for their efforts. Do you really think Harvard is simply going to give away their crest for free? MIT? Princeton? Highly unlikely. I see these projects as opportunities to upsell fee-based programs and degrees that otherwise might not have occurred due to the lack of a sales channel. Or possibly the online free courses can add up to an official credential at some point, but the student would have to purchase the actual articulation. For example, a student completes 120 articulated credits via Coursera over a 6-year period, and she wants a degree now to show for her efforts. Through the magic of the partnerships, the student can be provided the degree for a fee. Brilliant if you think about it. What originally was free could now be a revenue stream for the academic institutions and both parties are happy. This approach might even allow for the mash-up of a degree. If I’d like a Bachelor’s Degree from Princeton in the Humanities, perhaps I can come up with my own choose-your-own-adventure curriculum via Coursera and after the articulation has been completed (and I pay the fee) … voila I’m a Princeton grad. What about the corporate learning space? Well, if I were some of the companies listed above, I might be a little worried. I’d at least pay closer attention to what is going on. Where there are VC’s there is (usually) money to be had. And if Coursera, edX and Udacity prove me right, they eventually will get into the corporate learning platform space. I see a day where corporate customers will utilize a cloud-based version of their platform but in a secure, private manner. Those same customers may even utilize content from the academic institutions - whether it’s the free options or aspects of executive education that is highly sought after by corporations and lucrative to those academic institutions noted above. Think about corporate access via edX to Harvard Business School Executive Education and its talent pool. Egads, that’s luring. This disruption that is occurring in the academic space is foreboding; I see it as the potential merge of corporate learning with academic institutions. Either way, the gloves are off. Stay tuned for a wild ride ahead. Related Posts:Udacity & Coursera. Is It Really Education Reform?16 Months of Social Learning Platform Insanity: A RecapInterlocutor: The Word of 2012top 53D GameLab Could Be The Future of Learning

The representative is at Comic Con, cosplaying as himself from the march on Selma 50 years ago. The post Congressman John Lewis Might Have Just Won Comic Con appeared first on WIRED.

Best Buy, a renown electronics retailer perhaps better known for its khaki pants and blue shirt dress code, could be viewed analagously with that of an evolved corporate learning structure. Imagine that you’re at one of their corporate stores. What do you see when you enter the store? There she/he is, the greeter: "Hello sir, how are you today?" As you pass the greeter in this vivid, brightly lit and humming environment there are a number of learning sherpas … the guides on the side not pestering you to buy something, rather, able and available when you require assistance. There are no commissions at Best Buy to make a sale. Employees are there, quite literally, to help you as necessary. Sure, it’s a formal environment with walls, electricity and so on, but it is not a dogmatic, force-fed curriculum. Those learning sherpas do not prescribe the pedagogy. They guide your meandering requirements, your personal learning environment wishes, your own path on an as-needed basis. In the corporate learning space, why can’t our formal learning requirements (and there will always be formal learning requirements) be more like the Best Buy store? Why can’t it be simple, open, flexible and built on user choice? Now, picture yourself at an airport, scurrying down the powered walkways to make it on time to your gate. If you’re at Charles de Gaulle airport, start praying. Those walkways are debatable at best. Peer to the right, against the wall. What do you see? That’s right, it’s a Best Buy Express kiosk. It’s at this kiosk where you can purchase and thus pick up electronics at your convenience. Of course the selection is refined from that of the big blue shirt nation stores, but aren’t these bite-sized chunks made available in a convenient format for times when you need it most? For example, at an airport? Why doesn’t the corporate learning sector think like this? Why can’t it introduce the concept of bite-sized learning chunks? Why can’t it grasp the notion that we all would like to learn at the speed of need? Couldn’t it introduce a concept like Best Buy Express kiosks (metaphorically of course) into the corporate learning space? Isn’t this a nice informal option? Our last example, as you might suspect, has us venturing over to BestBuy.com. It’s at this site where I can peruse the entire catalogue of Best Buy products, but I’m able to do so at my own pace, at my own interest level, and in whatever order I choose. Even more important is that I now can utilize knowledge and expertise from my colleagues (in this case, the Best Buy crowd) to gauge whether they like the product through comments and rankings. Want more? Through the magic of repeat shopping and business intelligence within BestBuy.com, you are provided with recommendations on products you might be interested to purchase. Bought that 80 inch SHARP TV last week? Sweet screen, but did you forget the HDMI cable to connect your Blu-Ray player to the fancy new monster TV that your neighbours are already complaining about? Don’t worry, the site will advise you on this important component. The next time you’re online at the site, it might recommend a new sound system to accompany your massive LED light factory where those same neighbours have now lodged a formal complaint at City Hall. The site is an example of social learning. Thus, why aren’t more corporate learning functions taking charge of their own fate by employing this type of social learning strategy? It boggles my mind to be honest. There are too many goalies in the corporate learning space. There need to be more center forwards trying to score goals. In summary, if you were to think about Best Buy and compare its physical stores, its kiosks and its website to the corporate learning function, you might agree with me. It’s time for everyone in the learning space to start wearing khaki pants and blue shirts and echo the formal, informal and social construct of Best Buy. Perhaps it’s simply another way of looking at the Connected Learning model. Related Posts:3D GameLab Could Be The Future of LearningWhy I Love Newsle16 Months of Social Learning Platform Insanity: A RecapFriday Fun: iPrefer iPad iScrabbleHR Doesn’t Need a Seat at the Table, it is the Table

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For the past two and half years at my real job as the head of learning and collaboration, we’ve been early adopters of a virtual world product called AvayaLive Engage, developed by a company named Avaya. It was formerly known as Web.Alive, and although I’m not a fan of the name change, that’s about the only negative comment I have with the product. If you’re unfamiliar with virtual worlds, you are missing a very important aspect of workplace collaboration. At its core, virtual worlds are online 3-D computer-simulated environments in which users are depicted by avatars and interaction between them can mimic either a given real-life scenario or in some cases a fictitious and alternative world scenario. I won’t delve into the latter and will leave that to those who specialize in such creativity. In a non-fiction, business environment, virtual worlds can be an extremely effective piece of the collaboration puzzle. Here are five examples: 1) Coaching and Mentoring / 1-1 Meetings If your organization is struck by T&E reductions, and you want to continue your coaching and mentoring programs, why not shift it to a virtual world environment? Using a conference call to coach or mentor someone when not in the same city is fine, but a more engaging experience is to utilize a virtual world and conduct the session in a room that simulates a face-to-face experience. The same goes for 1-1 meetings; the virtual world is a perfect place to mimic the face-to-face experience if the two individuals are separated by distance of any sort. 2) Fireside Chats If you believe in breaking the hierarchy between senior management and front-line employees or individual contributors, why not initiate the concept of informal, fireside chats? No script, no notes, just an informal conversation. Better yet, to help others in geographies where they can’t meet in person, why not conduct those sessions in your virtual world? It’s cool, interactive and your employees will love the opportunity to mingle in such a funky way. 3) Induction Are you still bringing new employees into your organization with a two- or three-day face-to-face orientation session? That’s not a bad thing, but what if you did away with such a concept or at least augmented it with the virtual world? Imagine lining up a series of speakers from across your organization, who arrived in the virtual world environment to wax lyrical about his or her role, business unit or history at the company. Wouldn’t that be sweet? The mingling thereafter could be powerful as well. 4) Customers Without customers there really isn’t a company, so why not utilize the virtual world as a way to engage with your customers directly? You could conduct focus groups, instructor-led learning sessions, widget/gadget/service demonstrations, or through the use of contests a way to recognize customers or at least appreciate their business. All from the comfort of their home. 5) Learning Roadshows What if you utilized the virtual world environment to drive an interactive learning roadshow across your organization? Through the use of normal teaching tools, such as polling, voting, PowerPoint (yes, I know), whiteboards, as well as webcams, videos and inline chatting, the learning roadshow could be a hit with employees. It’s social, informal and extremely engaging. I’ve been very impressed with the AvayaLive Engage product thus far. (And no, Avaya did not compensate me to write this.) It has become an integral part to the overall suite of tools and behaviors I believe are necessary to drive engagement, productivity and business results in your workforce. Related Posts:Virtual Worlds in an Organization are not a Time Waster (and5 Use Cases for a Corporate YouTube in OrganizationsHas the Economic Meltdown & 9/11 Impacted our…Interlocutor: The Word of 2012Waiting For SuperExecutive: Why Executives Should Get on the

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I am not intermittent nor ephemeral for I travel on ubiquitous source. ‘Hope springs eternal’ you say? Aye, this rivulet does meander with hope but ’tis crowded by dangling bystanders. Low hanging fruit, I say, but there they remain perched and private. Why so rigid Oak? Don’t you perennially flower? Is it my canoe that frightens your existence? You need not be fearful for we are aided by the youthful, the old, the mature and the rejuvenated. Was it Marc who scared you off? Don’t fret Oak, be strong like you are. Simply soften your stance. This water ought to breathe life into the stoic giants who oversee hierarchy. Oh Sequoia! You loom large. I paddle by yet your cones, so keen, remain shackled. Size matters not. Magnitude is measured by empowerment, by empathy. Ornamental sure, but your impact is not beatific. Your new ‘husband’ should be wirerarchy. I am upriver, seeking the source. Buoyed by Archimedes I scan for riverbank hebetude. Why so dull and lethargic Pine and Birch? Your boredom spills over for all to see. You consume the source for you presume its omnipresence will be in perpetuity. Daft! Lurking over this stream is but one half of your purpose. Please read ‘The Giving Tree’. Oh Arbutus, in the shadow of organizational arbores, it is you who unconditionally gives back. The Salish, perhaps the true captains of the canoe, were mesmerized by your demeanor. Without hesitation, without question. You are the provider of medicine, open-minded & tolerant. Teach those along this tributary to act as you do; selfless, reciprocal, symbiotic. My canoe, it strengthens. Whispers of community lie downstream. For the flow of this brook is invisible and it undulates, but it gains speed. And you, aside from Arbutus, what shall you do? Will you encourage my canoe to collaborate, to create, to cultivate? Spirit of Haida Gwaii; The Jade Canoe by Bill Reid. Photo: Bill McLennan Related Posts:Friday Fun: You Don’t Have an Office?Friday Fun: Get Back to WorkDan’s Personal 2012 GoalsWhy I Love NewsleVancouver is Home to Several ‘Social’ Rock Stars

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