Dave Ferguson raises a valid point in my previous post "Are you ready to change?" I have made an attempt to respond to Dave's concern. Please feel free to add your thoughts.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This is a bit tangential to your question, but I saw cell-phone use while driving as a behavior that's widespread among early adopters and change agents.These are often the people trying to get others to change. What's more, my hunch is that they see their behavior as skilled multitasking, and dismiss evidence suggesting that talking while driving is on a par with driving after two or three drinks.So: how comfortable, convenient, effective would they find it to make their own change? To do what the bumper sticker puts gently as "hang up and drive!"One story I see in this is that if you don't want to change, or don't care to change, then change is hard, even if it's rearranging your desk or trying new outfits. All the more difficult if we're talking about significant changes to the way you work (or prefer to work).I'm not defending people who don't change. On the other hand, I think some people who constantl push change might balk at what they'd see as changing back.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I am reminded of the post by Geetha Krishnan on Changing Behavior. As Dave suggests, most of us know using the cell phone while driving is hazardous but we still do it. Similarly, there are several other things that we continue doing though we know we shouldn't be. Dave discusses an interesting point: "What's more, my hunch is that they see their behavior as skilled multitasking..." Many believe that multitasking in reality reduces efficiency and that at any point in time you are actually focusing on one task before you switch to another. (Change Blindness; you cannot be aware of everything) The concern that Dave voices is that early adopters and change agents themselves refuse to change. Like Dave mentioned, people take drinking and driving more seriously than talking and driving. Why?People do not seriously believe that talking while driving can cause any serious harm. This is especially true in the case of early adopters and change agents.Most people spend several hours commuting from home to their place of work and back. Busy as life is, they take this time to catch up with others. Cell phones are also important links between home and work. I will probably not ignore a call from home because I may consider it urgent. (Though I strictly do not use cell phones when I drive. I prefer to stop the car and then attend to any urgent calls. But, that could be because I am sure I can not concentrate on driving and talking.)Curiosity may be a strong reason why people take calls. When they see a name flashing, they wonder 'What could he/she want?" This question has to be answered and therefore, they take the call. Sometimes you just have to take the call. It could be a client, your boss, wife/husband, or a person you have been trying to get in touch with for ages.People genuinely think they call keep the call short (while waiting at the traffic signal) but are unable to do so.When do people 'change'?When it suits them: It is as simple as that. People change when it suits them. I have seen people answer the cell and say I am driving right now and make their excuses. The same people have chatted on other occasions. Therefore, people 'change' when it suits them. This is along the same lines of people 'learn' things that confirm their own ideas or thoughts (read it somewhere on Twitter and agreed this made sense).When people experience a negative experience: Negative experiences impact behavior. It could be a near-death experience, a traumatic experience, a humiliating experience, or an emotional experience. These have huge impact on an individual's psyche. People change to ensure that this kind of experience never happens to them again. When they see a HUGE benefit: I say huge (in caps) because it has to really big from people to change their behavior. What is beneficial for one person may not be the same for another. People may change to set an example and earn a good name. People may change to acquire a goal they have set their minds to.What can we do to ensure a change to encourage a desired behavior? I know most people claim that bringing about a behavioral change is close to impossible through training. I think it depends on what kind of behavioral change you are trying to bring about. If it is a deep routed value/belief/habit that you are trying to change, it is bound to be extremely difficult. In other cases, what are the things that you can do to ensure a change is brought about:Monitor behavior: If it is a workplace behavior (which it is most of the time), ensure that you have monitoring in place immediately after training is delivered. This may seem school-like, but if you are required to bring about a change, the management must show that they are serious about it. Provide positive reinforcements: This again may seem school-like. But it works brilliantly. We had to teach sales executives at a retail store about grooming skills. In the form of positive reinforcement, we had suggested internal competition with announcement of Best Groomed Employee. This worked wonders. The learners were highly motivated after taking the tutorial and we all geared to display the newly acquired knowledge to win the title.Make it a habit: Through monitoring and positive reinforcements, you can ensure that the behavior becomes a habit. For example: people buckle in their seat belts (not in India thought) as soon as they are in their vehicle due to a habit and not because its a rule.Show consequences: In some cases, it becomes necessary to show a cause and effect relationship. It is important for the learner to see the consequence of their actions to understand how the decision they have made it going to effect them.Show them, rather than tell them: Rather than telling them how they should be doing it. Ensure that you show them scenarios in which they get to see the plot unfold. Let the learners arrive at their own conclusions. Ensure that your case it a strong one, else learners will find excuses. For example: Recently, we designed a course for programmers. During the learner testing, we realized that the learners were making excuses for applications by passing the blame on to the users. Therefore, we realized that the impact had to be higher and we had to ensure that all loose ends were tied.I am sure they are still doubts as to whether external factors can change an individual and I think the external factors could play an important role. Rest is upto the individual. If the person does not want to change, nothing you say or do will bring about a change. I don't necessarily agree that people who push for a change may not want to change themselves. I think it depends on what aspect they need to change. Again, if it is an internal belief which they feel strongly about (say religion), change may be impossible. But, if it suits them, most early adopters and change agents will change. I think it is a matter of making sure that it also suits them.Your thoughts are welcome.

I read this interesting post on Have you thought of Character Driven Stories for Your eLearning? by Rupa (@ruparajgo). I was tempted to blog about it myself (thanks for the inspiration, Rupa).What role can a character(s) play in your eLearning porgram?1. Expert: This is probably the most common use of a character in eLearning.Type 1: This type takes you through the course and is a constant feature. You can design an expert who will take the learner through the course. This expert simplifies information or provides useful tips drawing from his experience.The character takes on the role of a mentor. The character symbolizes wisdom and is always present to see the learner through tough situations. He/she could encourage and motivate the learner through the course.Type 2: This type "pops up" when necessary. The role could be defined such that he/she makes an entry to challenge, guide, provide useful information, and so on. This character supplements the content when necessary.2. Peer: The learner is introduced to the world of a peer. We define the environment and then ask the learner to observe the peer in action and help when the peer gets stuck.Peer is the 'damsel-in-distress' (not necessarily a damsel). The peer depends on the learner to help him/her through a tough situation. The learner has to make the right decisions to get the situation under control. 3. Guide: The guide is a another common character in eLearning. I have seen several online courses that have an animated character on the top left corner that lip syncs the audio (Her eyes follow your cursor. It is a little freaky.) I have never understood the value these characters add to a learning program. They are neither experts, nor peers. They are the host, who accompanies you through the course.4. Trouble maker: This could be a boss, an expert, a peer, a competitor, or an enemy. This character challenges the learner at specific instances. Their feedback is blunt, even rude at times. They reprimand the learner if he/she goes wrong and grudgingly accept if they get it right.The relationship is that of power. The character throws a challenge: Let us see how to get past this hurdle. The learner has to make the right choices to save face or 'win'.Like Rupa mentions, characters make the course more lively. Remember the following when creating a character:Give them a personality: I love building a persona for the character. Give him a name, a background, prominent traits, and so on. When creating such a character, I think to myself, what impression do I want this character to make on my learners. Do I want my learners to admire him? Do I want them to empathize with the character? Do I want them to respect him?Ensure Consistency: It is important to ensure that the character is consistent in behavior across the course. You do not want a timid character being very bold in another scenario. The learner will get confused.Weave the storyline well: The storyline must blend in well with your theme. Do not introduce characters in an abrupt fashion. Build a simple storyline. Ensure that the storyline is in sync with the theme. Also, ensure that the storyline will flow smoothly through the complete course. Some become too forced if not thought through.Do not use characters as decorative elements: Characters must aid to learning and the overall learning experience. These characters are not meant to be eye candies.Sharing some great resources on this:Learning Agents Part 1: Why Learning AgentsLearning Agents Part 2: Learning Agents Done WellLearning Agents Part 3: Done Poorly

For majority of my career, I had the privilege of working on some amazing content. After eight years of experimenting with the boundaries of ID in the domain of soft skills, products, and process training, I was skeptical when I got a job opportunity from an IT company. My thoughts were: Would technical training be as boring as I imagine? Do I really want to try my hand at this to see if I can tackle this domain also?Will creativity be restricted? I reached out to my peers and received mixed opinions that left me more confused.  I finally spoke to one of my mentors, Rashmi Varma, who suggested that I should give it a go. My husband kept encouraging me to try something new. I then decided that I would attend the interview. The interview itself was very interesting. I was interviewed by a person who was quite paranoid about technical training. In what way, you ask? Well, he kept asking me if I have done any technical training and I kept replying no, I hadn't. He then started trying to convince me about how difficult and boring technical training is. After a while, I lost my patience and exclaimed 'I have the confidence to work with any type of content. Now, it is up to you to decide if you think I am suitable for this role.' What is it about technical training that people are so scared about? I decided to take the offer and find out for myself. I went in with an open mind. I have now been designing technical training for one and half years and here are my observations: Technical training is also about people: Regardless of the topic/concept, if you are trying to train people, then there is a story to tell. If it is a software application, it is important to tell the story about who will be using it. And, the demystification of a software product gives me immense satisfaction. Most times, we get bogged down by focusing on the complexities of the topic. We should be focusing on understanding the human angle. How do people use it? Most times, even the people who design these products don't know the 'whole story'. Can you find it and tell them so that they do their work better? If you are a good ID, the domain does not matter: If you are a good ID, you should be able to design courses regardless of the domain. At the end of the day, we are here to ensure that we use effective learning strategies to teach. We need to be smart enough to understand 'how things work.' We should be able to ask the relevant questions and get the answers that help us build the story. Technical Training also provides oppurtunity to think creatively: My second project was about an abstract product. This product was very new and the concept was very abstract at the beginning. There was no case study to help as the product hand been launched yet. With the help of the SME, I created a detailed scenario that helped the learners understand the product better. Therefore, you can choose to be creative in any domain. You can design detailed scenarios to help the learner understand how the product will work in the real world. The bottom line is there is no point blaming the content or the tools... we can create opportunities to make it creative. The beauty is in simplification: With most things, especially technical training, the beauty is in simplification. Can you understand the product enough to simplify the explanations you provide? Can you de-jargonize it and say it in a 'simple' fashion? Do not get overwhelmed by its complexities. There are always SMEs to help you understand things better. Ask them the right questions and do extensive research. Keep abreast with the products you work on. It prepares you for when the training does come your way. To summarize, I thoroughly loved the first 8 years of my ID life, and I continue to do so. I do not regret working with technical content. I can now say that I have a complete portfolio! This experience has taught be to overlook biases and see things in a different light.

One of my jobs a few weeks ago was to facilitate sessions at the Rome Share Fair. This included making sure there was some sort of blog post or notes from each session. Well, I fell behind after one session. I got my blog post up on the Graphic Facilitation workshop, and convinced Sophie Alvarez to blog about the Communities of Practice Clinic Etienne and I did, but then there were FOUR more! Mamma mia. Here is one… from the session on New Technologies and Innovative Approaches in Rural Family Poultry. (Slides below) Antonio Rota (IFAD) and Olaf Thieme (FAO) have been working on an approach to small scale poultry farming in rural areas that offers a glimpse into the factors that help farmers succeed in putting food on their table and making  living for their families. We joked that this session could have been called "how to make a development project that works" or, riffing off of Rob Burnet’s talk on Tuesday where he talked about an attention getting technique they used, the "Chicken of Change!" (Graphic recording I did of Rob’s talk is here.) First, a bit about the session. We kicked things off with a human spectrogram (http://www.kstoolkit.org/Human+Spectrogram) to learn  more about the 20 people who came to the session. The group was diverse; some with a lot of experience with poultry and others with less experience but plenty of interest. While there may be more interest in the stars of livestock, cows, I’ve learned that it is poultry, goats and other small animals that are accessible to the very poor and very rural. Chickens can produce eggs and meat for high nutrition, and selling eggs and chickens brings in income.  These little chicks offer financial empowerment for women. But poultry just isn’t on the radar screen and there are not many statistics to help shine a light on chickens and ducks for development. Poultry production can contribute to the MDGs around poverty, hunger, education, gender empowerment, health, and even reduction in HIV/AIDS. Super chickens! I realized as I listened there is a ton of common sense in our work, but what matters is listening and acting on that common sense. Antonio and Olaf shared a story about a village poultry project that, while scientifically sound, ran into some practical problems, like the challenge of finding high volumes of local varieties of chickens well suited to a free-ranging lifestyle, and reasonable ways to get eggs hatched. (Just a side note: in our preparation, Antonio mentioned that some people talked about "free ranging" chickens as "scavenging livestock." Hm, interesting how language might shape  our perceptions, eh?) I was amazed how fascinating all the elements were as Antonio and Olaf told engaging stories. There were issues of vaccine distribution for Newcastle disease. Access to vaccines varies by distance from cities and the creation of vaccine networks is critical.. Poultry raising practices in general vary by distance from cities, with more intense production in peri urban and urban settings where there are more resources and capital. In the very rural areas, women have to make due with what they find locally.  And all these things need to mesh with local customs and practices. So is the big pattern emerging? Yes, context! Local knowledge and adaptation matter. Innovation does not have to mean rocket science. 90-95% of poultry loss is from disease and then second greatest loss is predators, including humans. Villagers developed a simple basket cage to protect their chicks out a wide varieties of material. Breed choices focus on runners who can evade predators and forage in the rural areas, not a slow broiler. In the cities, you can build hen houses for more intense production. To grow more chickens you need more birds. Brood hens only work for small production. So villagers have created simple incubators that can be built in remote locations. Think about it. If you are targeting 10,000 women with 10 hens each…where do you find 100,000 local breed chickens? Large scale breeders offer "Ferrari" birds that require a lot of feed. Then woman have to decide, "feed the birds or feed my children?" These past dilemmas have caused evaluators to say "Chickens don’t work." But they can. Oil lamp incubators were developed by women in Bangladesh. This and related methods are adaptable to different contexts informed by the women’s’ experiences. For example, in the past, telling women to turn the eggs every hour, around the clock was downright impractical. Sponsors provided a lot of training, but people abandoned the work after training. One woman however was successful, but not willing to turn the eggs every hour. She turned twice a day and still the eggs hatched successfully. Voila! Local adaptation. The training was also adapted, moving from two full sequential days, to 28 days of working with the women in doing the work, solving the little problems. This reflected the hatching cycle. This is where the idea of the buffer zone of sand for the oil lamp hatchery was identified and which greatly increased success. Now new village industry is building on local breeds with locally done genetic improvement through cross breeding for village conditions. This is an important remote option of poultry breeds for the poor, rural farmers and populations. Few institutions are focusing on poultry. There apparently is little focused research. No one is doing extensive training. So we need more networking for exchange of information on poultry production. And information that is locally and contextually adapted. The days of projects with blanket design for rural poultry are finished at IFAD and FAO. From now on they will be specifically tailored around social, economic and location specific conditions. Marginal areas need local breeds, local knowledge and resources used for food security. Closer to urban and peri urban centers we can look more at market based systems. We need to listen to farmers and local knowledge about what is possible and use a comprehensive approach, with motivation, training for success as well as technical advice.Antonio and Olaf offered a word of advice to the new player, BMGF. "If they only invest in one of the many technical factors they will fail. We have learned from our mistakes. We know we need a holistic approach. We want to share what we learned." New technologies and innovative approaches in rural family poultry (SLIDES) View more presentations from copppldsecretariat PoultryPublication

Choconancy1 posted a photo:

Choconancy1 posted a photo:

…and I’m not really ready! Can one every be ready for change? I don’t think it is so much ready for change, but living in a way that embraces the fact that change is already happening. Or perhaps this is self justification for my lack of preparation as the host or whatever of the Change: Education, Learning and Technology As I wrote quite a while back in Preparing for my MOOC Contribution , I would not focus on a particular piece of writing. I’m interested in BEING in change. That act of being aware of, engaging in and reflecting on change. In this case, it is about change in education, learning and technology, but I still think I’ll frame this as about US, about practitioners, rather than on those more abstract things of "education, learning and technology." We are kicking things off on Monday with Dave Cormier hosting me at 9am US Pacific on the live platform (Dave, I need a URL please! EDIT: here’s the URL http://t.co/SM9BFhnA) where we’ll draw together on the whiteboard a bit and explore. Explore what? Good question. Here are the things on my mind: Multiplicity of groups… how do we work creatively with multimembership? What is the role of the transversal? Social artists via Etienne Wenger’s definition. (I have a little slide with that which I need to get online ASAP!) One thing I was thinking was to raise the idea of social artists, then ask people to go find stories about social artists in their learning life and share them with the double tag, #change11 and #socialartist Why small things matter. I know… these are all over the place. But face it, I’ve been all over the place lately, so lets just roll with it, right? Then at 1pm Pacific time @giuliaforsythe is hosting a Google+ meetup. So jump on in and join us!

I’m working on getting the chat - which was SUPER rich, but in the mean time, here are the "before and after" slides of our conversation for #Change11. We used the white board a lot! It was really a stream of consciousness hour — not a presentation at all, where we played around with change (what, who), multiple-membership (the heaven and hell of many places/people to learn with and from) and the roles of "social artist" and "transversal." I confess full blown jet lag non-linearity. When I have the recording link, I’ll edit this post and put it in. To those present, what did you walk away with (beyond, perhaps, a headache!) #Change11 MOOC Session - October 31 View more presentations from Nancy White via #Change11 MOOC Session - October 31.

My week facilitating #change11, a very massive MOOC, flew by too fast for me to blink. (See these previous posts for more background.) Between being on the road so much and the distributed nature of the conversations, my head was spinning by Friday and it has taken until today to slow down, reflect and write. I’d like to reflect on both the content and process of "week 8″ where we focused mostly on the idea of "social artists" in learning and technology. Well, honestly, mostly just on the social artist bit. As always, I was too ambitious in my planned scope. I am happy it narrowed down to social artists. That was enough! First, the process. #Change11 is structured around whatever theme or idea the facilitator of the week offers. Up until now that has been kicked off by a piece of writing, a recording or some structured artifact where the facilitator shares his or her big ideas around change, technology and learning. There is at least one synchronous event per week (more often two) hosted on the platform formerly known as Elluminate (now BB Collaborate, and I think worse for the transition). There is the #Change11 daily which aggregates posts from the lead facilitators (George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier), posts and tweets tagged with #Change11. There are some quasi-centralized discussion outposts on Facebook, Google+ (see this tool to find Change11 circles on G+)  and Moodle, but most of the action seems to be on blog posts/comments and Twitter. In other words, the landscape one might traverse for learning and sensemaking is broad and diverse. I’m not the only one trying to make sense of this. See "We are always catching up" http://squiremorley.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/change11-playing-catchup-part-3/#comment-190 and https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/the-selfish-blogger-syndrome/#comment-1666 Of course, I didn’t structure my week around a piece of writing. I was interested in explore the experience of change and how the social artist plays a role in that experience. Instead of content slides, I ginned up a deck full of questions and whiteboard templates inviting people to express themselves together visually, textually and if so moved, to grab the mic. (The before and after slides are here, but don’t expect them to make much sense as a stand alone presentation, and more like digital traces of what we did together. ) I ended with a challenge to find stories of social artists in their learning lives and to blog and or tag them #socialartist. And of course I scheduled both session late in the game, giving few time to get it on their calendar. Did I mention I have been busy? Can you read my sense of guilt between the lines? Yup. Giulia Forsythe then invited me to a follow up session later on Monday, and we had a final hour on Friday where George and Stephen interviewed me which was both interesting and weird. I think I got a little verclempt. Ahem! Judge for yourselves! The first conversation in an accessible, non-BBCollaborate format http://jefflebow.net/node/271 The second conversation http://dtlttoday.com/71/ The third conversation http://jefflebow.net/node/271 (Two of the three thanks to Jeff Lebow! Amazing, dude! Thanks!) I then tracked tags to try and read and comment on most of the blogs that either blogged in general on the #socialartist idea or took up my challenge. Here are a few of the links (and yes, I’m still catching up commenting on some of them! DO look at the comments in these posts! Lots to think about) https://worklearn.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/social-artists-ends-up-being-about-mooc-design-change11-socialartist/ http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/change11-social-artist-and-collective-intelligence/ http://juandomingofarnos.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/change11-social-artist-and-collective%C2%A0intelligence/ http://heli.edublogs.org/2011/11/07/884/ http://silenceandvoice.com/2011/11/04/i-am-a-nancy-white-groupie/ http://silenceandvoice.com/2011/11/06/glass-gandhi-ows-and-social-artistry/ (added Nov 10) http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-delights/p/628320308/change11-mooc-session-october-31 http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/change11-change-happiness-and-social-artistry/ http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/change11-patterns-fractals-and-conversation/ (should I have talked about network weavers? See http://www.bethkanter.org/network-mindset/) Finding social artists everywhere  http://virtuallyfoolproof.com/?p=686 http://coachcarole.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/change11-listening-to-nancy-socialartist/ The Queen Has No Clothes  http://edtech-insights.blogspot.com/2011/11/social-artist-doubts-process-and-feel.html but see also http://edtech-insights.blogspot.com/2011/10/have-processstructure-but-dont-kill.html "We will try a Technology for Learning Forum (T4L-Forum) to develop the pedagogy necessary, working with enthusiasts, wannabes and even perhaps skeptics, but always asking "where is the learning in this"." http://serenaturri.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/change11-triangolare-tessere-e-connettere-il-nostro-apprendimento/#comments (Added Nov9) https://connectiv.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/change11-socialartist-why-small-things-matter/#comments (added Nov 9) http://gbl55.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/change11-how-now-sweet-cow-the-social-artist-who-disrupted-my-mooc-learning/ (added Nov 10 and wonderfully funny and spot on!) http://asaginu.com/blog/social-artistry-culture/ (added Nov 10) https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/the-power-of-passion-for-change/  (added Nov 10) https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/social-artistry%e2%80%a6-a-new-idea/ (added Nov 10) https://connectiv.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/cause-function-intention-change11-accident-coincidence-interpretation/ (added nov 10) Here are some of the tweets archived into a Tweetdoc. So now the content. The alleged synthesis and sense making. NOT! I don’t think I can do it, but here are the things that have been emerging for me through all these distributed conversations. What IS a social artist? So, what is a social artist and why did I think it might be relevant to #Change11? I’m not sure we landed on a clear definition. I started with the concept I borrowed from Etienne Wenger-Trayner, who has talked about the social artist as a person who makes the space for the social aspect of learning. Here is a quote from him from 2008 on David Wilcox’s blog which really resonates for me: "The key success factor we’ve found is learning citizenship where learning citizenship is a personal commitment to seeing how we are as citizens in this world. Let me give you an example: I know an oncological surgeon in Ontario, Canada who asks himself how to provide the social infrastructure for patients to learn about cancer. An act of learning citizenship is to be able to use who you are to open this space for learning. I’ve come to call these people social artists, people who can create a space where people can find their own sense of learning citizenship. "I love social artists. In fact I worship them. First because social artists know how to do what I only know how to talk about; and second because I care about the learning of this planet. I think we are in a race between learning and survival. We live in a knowledge economy where any expertise is too complex for any one person. One person can’t be an expert so anyone who can give voice to that need to work together is a social artist. "I do a lot of consultancy work for training community leaders, but in my heart of hearts I know the real secret of those social artists is not something I can teach. The real secret of those people is knowing how to use who you are as a vehicle for opening spaces for learning.  I don’t really have the words - but I just know when I see it. It is a way of tapping into who you are and of making that a gift to the world … it’s about being able to use who I am to take my community to a new level of learning and performance. "I want to leave you with three questions… How can you act as a learning citizen in this world? How can we as a group help , sustain, celebrate that capability among ourselves? If EQUAL has done a bit of that - how do we capture it, nurture it cherish it? For those of you who are movers and shakers - how can you build an institutional structure that enables people to find their voice in the interests of the people they want to serve? Social artists need to fight … How can we enable a structure that enables those people to do the work that they do? "These are urgent questions. Social innovation is a matter of the heart, not just projects. We need you to do that for the world, not just Europe". You can also hear Etienne talk about social artists (as well as other community issues) in this keynote from September’s ShareFair in Rome. The sketchnote above is from that session. Jean Houston defines social artistry as: Social Artistry is the art of enhancing human capacities in the light of social complexity. It seeks to bring new ways of thinking, being and doing to social challenges in the world. …Social Artists are leaders in many fields who bring the same order of passion and skill that an artist brings to his or her art form, to the canvas of our social reality. (See also the Jean Houston Foundation page) As I juxtapose Etienne and Jean’s meanings of the concept, I am finding out how to link  the roles to learning. From Etienne’s questions "How can you act as a learning citizen in this world? How can we as a group help , sustain, celebrate that capability among ourselves?" I hear the call to recognize the social acts of learning more explicitly and to attend to the people with social artistry skills. Nurture and recognize them. At the least, remove barriers to their participation. From Jean, I glean the parallels of passion and skill from art forms, to the social canvas. The other thread was the juxtaposition of "social" and "artist" — where some had the concept of the solo artist, working alone to create a product of their work, while here the canvas is not only ephemeral through the interaction of people, but the role is inherently WITH people and social, not solitary. One person also noted the tension between the idea of a scientist and an artist which is to me one of the artificial constructs we create by dividing art and science. They have roots which intermingle. Here are some links where people really picked up on the art part, which thrilled me. http://amusingspace.blogspot.com/2011/11/art-of-change.html http://ilikethisart.net/?p=11006 http://lucidatranslucida.blogspot.com/2011/11/every-child-is-artist-problem-is-how-to.html http://www.scoop.it/t/art-a-way-to-feel (belatedly  http://gbl55.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/change11-how-now-sweet-cow-the-social-artist-who-disrupted-my-mooc-learning/ ) In case you want more on visual practices, check out https://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/Visual+Work+and+Thinking Why is social artistry useful? As the week went on and we sought out examples of social artists, and as we did this, I also realized it was useful to tease apart the social artist as a person (their role, skills, talents, way of being in the world) and the practices of social artistry which are often named as process arts, facilitation, network weaving, etc. People pointed a lot to specific practices, like the power of engaging people in using the white board in the online webinar space, how to use both silence and music instead of talking all the time, commenting on others’ blogs, helping them feel heard, designing connecting out into the world into her classroom, asking great questions, and such. I think people really resonated with these familiar practices, but we struggled with the less tangible ones. Like the kinds of people who just open up and hold space for people to be together and learn. The people who do that lightly and without manipulation. The people with big ears, big hearts and generosity of spirit. How do you tie that tangibly to education when we haven’t a clue how to measure it and I think many of us wonder if it can be learned, or it is something some of us just carry with us. The "fluffy bunny" stuff which I know, in my heart, is not fluffy at all, but very profound. I have seen the difference "being seen, heard and loved" means to people. But I can’t call it out in clear, intellectual terms that some people sought. I could not answer them. At the same time, I felt a quick kinship to those who recognized it. Are we finding our tribe? I don’t know. Finally, it was very interesting to note that both the experiences of the synchronous gatherings (particularly the first one) and the concept of social artistry really seemed to resonate with some people, baffle some people and find no relevance for others. This was VERY interesting to me. In The Queen Has No Clothes, George wrote about feel-good commentating: This week’s MOOC #change11 has not held my interest. Without doubt, Nancy White is a charismatic facilitator, using graphical tools to have participants express themselves and develop a particular view. I think this approach (using such graphical tools) is excellent for the participants. I learned long ago that my wonderfully produced mathematical notes were excellent - for me. The iterrative process of producing these and improving them was valuable to me, the writer. My students needed to produce their own versions (yes, to construct their own knowledge), for this to be valuable for them. So the outcome of the process did not mean much without being a participant. Also, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of "feel-good" commentating. Why? Could there be a cultural difference? Hence my Tweet: the Queen has got no clothes on. There, I said it. Tonight I responded: I’m still chewing on what I understand to be underneath - the lack of resonance for you (and others!) about social artistry in the context of change, learning and technology. When we moved into "interview Nancy" mode during the Friday session and George started asking me questions which felt more academic to me, I started to get some insight into the fact that while I know "inside" what social artistry is because I believe I practice it, I still can’t clearly articulate it in a way that fits in with learning theories and the deeper, intellectual grounding that many of you have. I’m a simple practitioner. So making that leap is .. well, hard. As I listened to today’s session w/ Dave and rhizomatic learning, I kept being troubled by his reference of the rhizomatic learner as a nomad. The metaphor of the nomad — at least the romanticized notion of a nomad is a solitary being, forging off on her or his own. This has a disconnect for the social aspect of learning for me. I’m not saying all learning must be in a social context, but a heck of a lot of it is. Those who pay attention to making that space where this learning happens play and important role. Thus the social artist. We ran out of time and never got to the transversalist. That’s another interesting kettle of fish! I need to go back and dig into what George meant about "feel good comments" — what makes a comment feel-good? What other qualities of comments might we use or name? A whole ‘nuther interesting thread. The loose ends…Onward You know what they say. Once you start looking for something you had not noticed before, you start to see it everywhere. Like when I became pregnant with my first child, I saw pregnant women everywhere where before they didn’t even show as a blip on my radar screen. So as the week went by, I kept Tweeting related #socialartist  links. For example, not change11 directly, but related social artist practices from Barbara Ganley http://community-expressions.com/2011/11/04/lessons-learned-part-one-listening/ and from the  Facebook Convo, an link to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology) from Vanessa Vaile who wrote "PS I see strong traces of habitus in Digital Habitats" which of course tickled me! I can even see glimpses of social artistry in this more general reflection on Change11 https://bigreturns.posterous.com/change11-looking-forward-and-looking-back Habitus is the set of socially learnt dispositions, skills and ways of acting, that are often taken for granted, and which are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life. Habitus is a complex concept, but in its simplest usage could be understood as a structure of the mind characterized by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste.[1] The particular contents of the habitus are the result of the objectification of social structure at the level of individual subjectivity. Hence, the habitus is, by definition, isomorphic with the structural conditions in which it emerged. The concept of habitus has been used as early as Aristotle but in contemporary usage was introduced by Marcel Mauss and later re-elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu elaborates on the notion of Habitus by explaining its dependency on history and human memory. For instance, a certain behaviour or belief becomes part of a society’s structure when the original purpose of that behaviour or belief can no longer be recalled and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture. Habitus is the set of socially learnt dispositions, skills and ways of acting, that are often taken for granted, and which are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life.Habitus is a complex concept, but in its simplest usage could be understood as a structure of the mind characterized by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste.[1] The particular contents of the habitus are the result of the objectification of social structure at the level of individual subjectivity. Hence, the habitus is, by definition, isomorphic with the structural conditions in which it emerged.The concept of habitus has been used as early as Aristotle but in contemporary usage was introduced by Marcel Mauss and later re-elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu elaborates on the notion of Habitus by explaining its dependency on history and human memory. For instance, a certain behaviour or belief becomes part of a society’s structure when the original purpose of that behaviour or belief can no longer be recalled and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture. Here are some other places where Social artistry appeared in front of me this week http://paper.li/ikms_singapore/ikm https://www.ohrd.wisc.edu/fullypreparedtoengage/FullyPreparedtoEngage/SocialArtistry/tabid/70/Default.aspx http://einstitute.worldbank.org/ei/story/complementing-structured-learning-e-communities-interview-nancy-white http://thinkingknowledge.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/knowledge-society-knowledge-troubadours-and-social-artists/#comment-179 http://www.entreprisecollaborative.com/index.php/en/articles/217-performance-strategies-et-social-learning http://gforsythe.ca/2011/11/06/rhizome-remix/ Want more #Change11? The schedule is here. The beauty of a MOOC is the way you can sail into ideas, people, memes, and streams. Here are some people and their streams I want to read more of: Cindy Jennings https://odnett.wordpress.com/ Read more of my pal CogDog http://cogdogblog.com Giulia Forsythe http://gforsythe.ca/ Claudia Lamoreaux http://lamoreauxchange11.tumblr.com/ Clark Quinn (who is not, as far as I know, involved in #Change11 but I used some of his stuff) http://blog.learnlets.com/ http://www.organizationdesign.net/

Great stuff from Ellen Wagner that resonate with some of the conversations we’ve been having across the #change11 MOOC on Technology, Change and Education. Take a peek: Education transformation really is a team sport. Old ideas don’t just fade away. Old ideas can be stubborn and relentless. Systemic change calls for many contributors. There are many variables to address, much practice and dedication required to develop expert skills. Transformation demands a clear understanding of what is to be changed, AND the will to see changed implemented. And with all due respect to everyone who claims the ID [instructional designer - nw] badge…We simply can’t afford to all think the same way. For real change - true transformation - we need all ID hands on deck. Scholars, analyts, artists, technologists, evaluators, and managers alike. Big thinkers. Expert practitioners. People who can translate big ideas into actionable strategies and tactics driving real results about things that matter to the communities and stakeholders we purport to serve. via On Secret Handshakes and Making the World a Better Place with ID - eLearning Roadtrip. We have also been struggling with metaphors like rhizome, nomads and social artists. "Team Sport" is another one that has its pros and cons. What I’m really sensing is that we are trying to live into the world of learning in a new way, and our labels fail us. OK, nuff for a quick, throw off post. Back to work!

A friend asked me to share any tips I had after facilitating week 8 of the massively open online course (MOOC) Change11. In the interest of openness, here is a copy of my response! I clarified my hasty email a bit and added a few more things in [brackets]. At 01:44 PM 12/22/2011, you wrote: Nancy - Last summer I agreed to facilitate a week of the change11 MOOC — I don’t know how to say no, I’m afraid. I’ve been so caught up in other responsibilities that I really haven’t followed it much so far. I know you facilitated a week. I have a presentation ready and some texts. Any tips on what I should expect/do during the week? Hiya Friend Haha, I don’t know how to say no either and I did week 8 in the midst of a massive Autumn of travel. I should have my head examined. But it turned out really great because I deeply connected with a few people… we resonated! (See theseprevious posts for more background.) I, unlike most of the other week facilitators so far, did NOT prepare anything. I was aiming for experience and reflection and, besides, no time to prepare. Ha! What is important is to decide on your live events and get them on the calendar. [meaning days and times -- remember this is global so consider time zones].One of the biggest complaints so far is these things are very last minute and people can’t get them on their calendars. Then kick of the week with a live event (which seems to focus energy in this very diverse group) and then follow the hash tag. [My event was focused on a few key questions I put on slides in the synchronous meeting room white board. You can see the before and after versions here. I also did an DLT one on Tuesday and the wrap up event on Friday.  ] What I did to see who was writing or tweeting was to add a #Change11 tag to my Tweetdeck and to read the #Change11 daily  that Stephen sends out with a pretty good collection of links. Then I followed the links and left comments on as many blogs that I found relating to my week. That took a bit of time, but the feedback was that this was really meaningful to people — particularly since we talked a lot about connection in week 8. Then I did a wrap up live event on Friday where Stephen and George peppered me with academic questions which I, frankly, didn’t relate to very well. But we had fun and that was ok. Then I wrote a wrap up blog post and included as many links as I could find to give everyone a little link love and recognition of their inputs for the week. I followed up a bit more the week after, then returned to Change11 lurk mode. (see here, here  and here) The reason I did the follow ups was because I was also talking about something that was a learning edge for me. It wasn’t "complete" and thus learning from everyone’s input was of value to me. Some may find this onerous work (and time consuming.) YMMV. …deleted personal message… Waving with lots of warm holiday choco-thoughts. Happy Solstice! N

Fudge Dark, rich and sweet Fudge! This is the recipe my family has been making for the holidays FOREVER! (Well, at least for the last 40 or 50 years!) Since I am spending time with family and not so much blogging, I thought it would be good to share the recipe yet again. Put in large bowl (really big, big, big) to allow stirring room: 3 packages chocolate chips - 36 oz. total I recommend Nestles or Guittard — don’t go cheap! 1 8-oz jar marshmallow cream - if you can only find 7 oz jars, that’s OK 2 cubes butter- buy a brand name — sometimes the cheap stuff is full of water and it will ruin the fudge — very sad 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Have ready at hand 2 cups chopped nuts optional — you can even add coconut! Put in large kettle. Again, I mean big - the mixture boils up to four times it’s original volume as you cook it! 4 1/2 cups sugar 1 can evaporated milk - not skim or lowfat! Bring the sugar/milk mix to a rolling boil stirring constantly. Cook a full eight minutes timed once the mixture comes to a boil — critical!!!. Take off heat and pour over chocolate/butter/marshmallow  mixture.  Beat with mixer until creamy. Add nuts and spread in a pan to cool. Lick the bowl and beaters before washing! I like to use a cookie sheet with high edges, but the size of pan depends on how thick you like your fudge. Mine is about 13×24. My siblings use smaller pans. My mom uses two Pyrex pans. Cut into pieces and enjoy! I like to put each piece in a little candy paper and pack into pretty packages to give away. But some years, the fudge is gone before that happens.  

Learnlets » Yes, you do have to change. Clark Quinn nails a good one today. In writing about effective learning, he notes: And that’s assuming courses are all the learning unit should be doing, but increasingly we recognize that that’s only a small proportion of what makes important business outcomes, and increasingly we’re recognizing that the role needs to move from instructional designer to performance consultant. More emphasis can and should be on providing performance resources and facilitating useful interactions rather than creating courses. Think performance support first, and communities of practice, only resorting to courses as a last result. This rang my bell as I’m starting to do some research for a client on effective ways for more distributed work place learning. (More on this later, as I want to pick your collective brains.)I’m deeply interested in these intersections on roles. What do we know about the costs of moving towards more performance support for globally distributed, not-all-in-one organization contexts? (I’m talking international development here!) Ideas?

Choconancy1 posted a photo:

visualize it help us see our world clearly maybe we WILL actWow, Gregory Johnson, you are a gift to the world. Scientist, poet and artist Johnson distilled the massive IPCC Climate Change report into a series of illustrated haikus. You can see and download this fabulous material on the Sightlines site (another great resource - hey, give them a donation!)From the Sightlines article:Condensing to this degree is not how scientists typically operate. But, as Johnson proves, scientists can also be poets. Still, he’s quick to caution that this is his own unofficial artistic interpretation and that it omits all the quantitative details and the IPCC’s scientific qualifications.The Entire IPCC Report in 19 Illustrated Haiku | Sightline Daily.

"How Art Reveals the Limits of Neuroscience" by Alva Noë is a fascinating read that asks us to step beyond the idea that we are our brains. It is stimulating me to reflect on some things I’ve been trying to articulate about knowledge sharing and  the transformation knowledge into new ideas, application, etc. It relates to some conversations on how we share knowledge across research projects, between journalists who care about their communities, and people who are trying to improve the world.In observing how our experience of art changes when someone else shares their experience of the work, Noë writes:This shift — from not seeing to seeing, from seeing to seeing differently, from not getting it to getting it — is actually very common. We live and learn, look and ask, bring what’s around us into focus continuously. At least part of what makes art different, or special, is that it yields the opportunity not only to "get" something, perhaps something new, but also to catch ourselves in the very act. In this way, art illuminates us to ourselves.Interestingly, when I started to read it, I was not actually looking at art itself. The experience Noë writes about resonated deeply to my experiences of seeing people take in an idea and transform it into something they can use, apply, and "own" in the very productive sense. Own it in terms of being able to to use it meaningfully. Imagine a way of reducing open defecation, or changing water use habits. Imagine being able to take the building blocks of an idea and transform it into a locally useful solution. She frames it as the "world as the playing field for our activity," and thus the interplay with it."This is not to deny that the world acts on us, triggering events in the nervous system. Of course it does! But the thing is, we act right back. Every movement of the eye, head, and body changes the character of our sensory coupling to the world around us. Objects are not triggers for internal events in the nervous system; they are opportunities or affordances for our continuing transactions with them. The world shows up, in experience, not like a diagram in a brain chart but as the playing field for our activity. Not the brain’s activity. Our activity. Not activity inside our head. But activity in the world around us."Now that I’ve read it, I’m thinking about how art can help me address my challenges with knowledge work!! Take a few minutes to read the article.

flickr photo by cogdogblog http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/8188824613 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) licenseI’m hip deep into this year’s Project Community course with the Hague University of Applied Sciences. Again, one of my fabulous partners is Alan Levine, aka Cogdog. I love working with Alan because we together we identify a need, throw ideas back and forth, then experiment and iterate. Alan is, among MANY things,  a tech steward, so not only can he experiment with present external tools, but he can tinker with our core technology, WordPress, and hack even more functionality out of it. (Want to learn more about Alan and his tech stewardship? Watch this.)I’m a great resource finder/sharer. We have tried a variety of ways to share these resources with our students and to encourage their own resource sharing. We’ve tried curating a library of links in a Google doc, putting them on a WordPress page, dumping them in the program’s Facebook page, Tagboard (for resources shared via Twitter)  and Storify. But we have not been satisfied. So here is this year’s hack from Alan:Nancy and I are exploring ways for the #ProjComm15 to generate a community built resource. There are many ways to group curate content yet most involve asking you to Sign Up For Another Tool And Go There All The Time. We want to try something easier that works into the flow we are already asking you to do- use your team blog.When you find a resource really worth sharing, most typically people push it to a social media stream, our facebook group, maybe even twitter with our hashtag more or less saying "here is something neat". That works if you happen to see it, but it just rushes on by.  We still encourage you to do this as a stream of raw information resource just include a #projcomm15 tag in it; it will flow into our tagboard.But go one step farther. If the resource is really useful, write a short blog post on your blog. Make sure you add a tag (a box for tags is on the side of your composer and add the tag coolstuff (one word, no space), and any othe useful descriptor tags. When published, all of these post will show up on our site via http://2015.projectcommunity.info/tag/coolstuff . Automatically. Without using another new tool.Posts on Projcomm Faculty blog  written by Nancy WhiteProjComm always stimulates me to pay attention to the flow of ideas and resources that come across my screen, so I’m enjoying blogging them. Sometimes I tweet or Facebook the posts right after I put them up to do a little more amplification/cross pollination. If you have anything cool to share, let me know!Source: coolstuff | From the Project Community Faculty

Blogs are ephemeral. Today someone referenced a broken link on my blog back from 2005. I cruised across the page and alas, found many dead links. There was one quote on knowledge management that is still resonant to me… and the blog is gone. (Some of the posts are still visible via the amazing Wayback machine. For example here and here.)Olaf’s Notebook: What is the relation between KM and inner reform?This post from Olaf’s Notebook speaks for itself: What is the relation between KM and inner reform?Knowledge management as social system change requires an inner reform of people involved. Where KM projects are usually ‘sold’ on the basis of business cases, they should be sold on the basis of ‘humanity and consciousness cases’ to be effective drivers for social system change.What can we do if we cannot cope with some aspects of our lives, if we fail in our relationships with other people, if we destroy our opportunities for the future, if we become ill because of work stress? Good chance that we will be advised to start psychotherapy.What happens if our organizations destroy societal trust relationships, opportunities for future generations, if they make workers ill because of work stress, or exploit workers and children in low-wages countries? Good chance organizational leadership receives shareholders’ praise, bonuses, and fame as a captain of industry. No psychotherapy there, and one could only wonder about this double standard.Corporations and governments debate endlessly on corporate social responsibility, draw up sustainability reporting schemes, codes of conduct etc. I do not deny these agreements can represent steps forward toward sustainable corporate policies. However, what is right or wrong for companies and company leaders to do is not so hard to imagine"Source: Full Circle Online Interaction Blog: 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005In a bit of kismet, the Straits Knowledge newsletter arrived today with a link to a paper from my friend Patrick Lambe on Knowledge Organization and Social Impact. There is resonance from Olaf’s writing in 2005.KM as an inner practice. Knowledge (in all its forms and practices) as a core for social impact. Lots of good stuff. Only need time and presence to weave the ideas and make sense. Or to lose things and to find them anew with fresh eyes. To destroy to create.Ah, I dream.

Life is always full of surprises and just under two months ago my old pal and colleague, Brad Beach rang me up to wonder if I’d be game to come down under as part of an International Specialised Skills Institute Fellowship, and be hosted by his new working home, Chisholm Institute TAFE. You know, it is not only easy to say yes to Brad, but I always know it will be a fun adventure. So for the next few blog posts I’ll be documenting what I’m doing, where I’m going, who I’m hanging out with, and most importantly, what I’m eating. No, only kidding. What I’m LEARNING!This first entry is mostly for context setting!After facilitating for the Language Learning Flagship in Honolulu last week I hopped on two planes and headed to Melbourne arriving Sunday night at 10:30 pm to be graciously picked up by Patricia Rogers, my evaluation guru, founder of BetterEvaluation and friend from RMIT. Patricia had just returned from one trip and was about to head out Monday morning, but we were able to have a conversation about our lives and Better Evaluation over a dram of whiskey in the late evening and over coffee in the morning before she was off to the AEA conference in Chicago. I neglected to get a shot of Patricia, but I was quite taken by her counter balancing cat. I think there was a metaphor to start off the trip - keep balancing! (And keep eating, it seems.)You know, friendship networks are amazing. Patricia’s son kindly drove me into Melbourne center. I parked my bags with Arthur Shelley of Organizational Zoo fame. Arthur and his wife Joy was hosting me at their home and Arthur organized a chance for me to do a Liberating Structures session for theKMLF (knowledge Management Leadership Forum)  community on Tuesday. More on that in a separate post.My first stop was lunch with Bella Irlicht, AM, of the ISS. I got to meet the dynamic staff trio of Bella, Ken Greenhill and Paul Sumner.  As we discussed what kind of report they wanted, I mentioned I was thinking about blogging the trip, including pictures and videos. So we took a selfie right on the spot.I did not know a lot about the ISS prior to my arrival, and over a delicious lunch of a fig and ricotta salad (see, I am obsessed with food) we had a chance to get to know each other (both grandmothers) and Bella filled me in on the history and work of the Institute. Being half Italian, it was really interesting to learn that the start of the Institute (1990 by Sir James Gobbo, AC, CVO), which is hosted by the Italian Cultural Center, came from the wave of Italian craftspeople who came to Australia post World War 2 and how Australians could learn from these centuries deep communities overseas, building internal skills here in Australia.I was brought in on the "reverse" program where fellows come in to share knowledge in Australia. My particular fellowship is the HESG Industry Leaders Fellowship Program sponsored by the Victoria Department of Educating and Training and hosted, as I noted, by Chisholm. The plan was for me to work with teachers across the various Chisholm campuses, along with folks from Community Learning and eWorks. Of course, I wove in a few more opportunities as you will see.After lunch and a quick gelato, because Melbourne’s Italian section is superb, I headed back to the business school at RMIT to meet up with Arthur. We had met on my previous trips down under, but this was the first time we’d have time to really chat and learn from each other.I was able to sit in and observe Arthur at work teaching at the Business school on organizational leadership to leaders from Vietnam. It was really useful to see the more subtle parts of his work with the Organizational Zoo cards, and how he negotiated meaning of the archetypes across cultures. I’ve been thinking a lot about how different methods work across diversity (particularly Liberating Structures) and this gave me a bit more insight about how to lightly raise the issues without letting the cultural lessons overshadow the intent of the exercise or process.  I also continue to be interested in the use of cards for learning and other processes. I like the kinesthetic and visual aspects.In the evening Arthur and I chatted nonstop. Like, as they say here down under, a house on fire. I have arrived at the conclusion that we are very kindred spirits. One thought I had right off is to introduce Arthur to some of the Chisholm folks as there is a strong element of leadership in teaching and learning.

This is the second in a series of post of my ISS Fellowship. For context check out part 1.As I mentioned from part 1, Arthur Shelley and I found a zillion things to talk about, so much that when we got on the train to go into Melbourne Tuesday morning we forgot to validate our train fares and had to jump out at the first station, tap our passes and jump back on the train.I was fascinated to learn about Arthur’s process of designing his classes and training offerings. He uses a lot of storytelling prompts and little vignettes to help us NOTICE our practices. This was put into action right on the train. We sat down in facing benches with one other person sitting next to me. We dove right back into our conversation about how we teach and a million other things.Arthur started asking me a series of questions to demonstrate an activity he did. One of the questions was, "how many people are in this conversation." Well, I said "it may be a bit improper to say this out loud, but really, there are three of us as I think the woman next to me has been interested and listening." She immediately admitted she had picked up a thing or two and from that moment on, she was actively a part of our conversation. A musician, she teaches people how to sing and Arthur passed over his card and invited her to coffee to tell her about the Creativity Conference he is planning next year. Instant network augmentation on the train. Instead of staring at your phone, see what can happen?Once in town, and after an amazing slice of toasted and buttered fruit bread at Druid’s Cafe (I’ll be back), I headed off to another cafe to meet Nick Herft of the Better Evaluation team. We’ve talked on Skype, but never met. I was curious to learn about Nick’s key insights after his time working on the project. We met up at my second cafe of the day, Pearson and Murphy’s. Flat black coffee and a friand. mmmm….Nick has seen the revision of parts of the site and tracked user behavior. I was interested in his observations about the challenges of a front page of a site that is SO rich in information and serves very diverse users. Most people arrive via a Google search for a particular topic, with fewer working their way methodically through the site. But without that "walk through" it is easy to miss all the goodies that Better Evaluation has to offer.  I asked Nick if I could do a quick video interview about some of his key learnings and he’s thinking about it - stay tuned!On to cafe #3, Mr. Tulk at the beautiful public library to meet up with old friend Joyce Seitzinger of Academic Tribe.  Hopefully you have picked up by now the threads of my first days on the fellowship - connecting and eating. I particularly wanted to catch up with Joyce not only to just catch up, but to probe her deep knowledge about elearning to inform not only my week working here with educators, but also some work I’m doing on elearning in Africa and in the agricultural finance sector. You see, with a great network, you can improve your research right off the bat by eating and conversing together. In fact, as I look across the days here, conversation and dialog has been one of the centerpieces of everything I’ve done.After a bite to eat we wandered the streets and ended up in yet another cafe. This time I did not get the name, but it was a nice quiet place along the river. Those who know me well will be reassured that I had switched to herbal tea at this point, as we finished our conversations.I circled back to Druid’s to meet up with Arthur and we took a quick visit into the Victorian Library with its fabulous dome. I was impressed with how full and busy the library was, with nary a spare seat to be found.The second to last event of the day and the first formal "event" of my fellowship was to facilitate a session of the Melbourne Knowledge Management Leaders Forum, or the venerable, 16-year old KMLF as it is known. This is my third visit to the group and this time I wanted to share what I’ve been learning and practicing with Liberating Structures.I love how the KMLF meetups start with two traditions: making a social network map of who is in the room, and a bit of wine, cheese and informal networking. I shared a few stories, and then we did a few of the structures, followed by a debrief with What, So What, What Next, one of my favorite quick debrief methods.  Slides are here and a photo collage at the bottom. Stewart French volunteered to drive Arthur and I home, and again, the ride was a fast paced lively conversation, this time on the role of visuals and graphic facilitation, and creativity in general. After a shared bite, then my friend Brad Beach and my overall fellowship host picked me up for the hour ride to Korumburra in Gippsland. Long day, full of friends, colleagues and yes, CONVERSATION. We  learn, live and really enjoy ourselves through conversation!   

This is the third in a series of posts about my ISS/Chisholm Fellowship in Victoria State, Australia. You can find the previous posts here: Part 1, Part 2.Both of my weeks in Victoria revolved around a series of workshops that were generally designed around the idea of increasing learner engagement. We played with all kinds of titles in advance, but of course, once I showed up and started to hear people’s stories, the new theme emerged: Relate and Liberate. I was very inspired by this quote:"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." Lilla Watson (Quote found via The Interaction Institute/ )Coincidentally, an essay by Clay Shirky, The Digital Revolution Has Already Happened" was circulating when I was planning and it really hit home. In it Clay talks about the importance the access online learning has provided.I also wanted to focus on relationship centric teaching using conversational approaches. This was supported by a graphic facilitation workshop, which in the end, applied the relationship centric approach while introducing the joy of visuals and graphic facilitation in teaching and learning. You can read more about that workshop in Part 4.Finally, I wanted to try out some thinking that I’ve been doing around how to shift such a strong emphasis on content to a "three legged stool" approach that looks at the interplay between content, relationship and social scaffolding, and signals (quantitative and qualitative data that helps us make sense of what is happening) not just from our courses, but across courses and options made possible by open learning. That will have to wait for a full blog post, but I’ll slide in my sketch here and leave it at that for now.I was surprised that most of the participants were primarily teaching face to face. In my past visits to Australia to hang out with my educator friends, the emphasis had been much more strongly positioned on the online. So I made sure to talk about both online and offline contexts around the materials and processes. The first group at Chisholm were the Learning Leaders working on community based education. The introduction was strongly tilted towards seeing learning as liberation. I have a deep fondness for community based learning. The subsequent sessions were mostly TAFE educators or designers of learning courses and materials.ProcessIn all of the workshops I tried to hold myself to the standard of walking my own talk. My plan was to focus on identity and relationship as a key to engaged teaching and learning, and use methods from Liberating Structures as a set of exemplar processes to embody this approach. That meant a focus on liberating the intelligence and passion in the room, making time for connections and creating conditions for useful conversations. My role was to be a catalyst, rather than positioning myself as the expert. This is a good thing, because I’m a learner first, expert… well, that is way down my "identity" list!Liberating Structures were part of every workshop. We used Impromptu Networking to identify shared challenges, 1-2-4-All to make sense across those challenges. Then the subsequent structures varied by workshop. We  very successfully used Troika Consulting (I keep calling it by the name I know - Triad Consulting!) and Discovery and Action Dialog (DAD) to help address the challenges each group identified, W3 to evaluate the session, tagging on 15% Solution as the "What Next" step of W3 to identify a simple follow up step. In some of the workshops we ended with a simple appreciative networking activity to note who contributed to our experience during the workshop, and who people wanted to follow up with.In each of the workshops I offered a quick overview of Liberating Structures (see slides) that covered the micro structure concept and some other example structures. But I have found it has been more useful to USE them, then as appropriate, debrief them, rather than "preach" them.  I reviewed the basics of LS by showing a slide about the micro structures, the list of the 33 structures and shared Keith McCandless’ recent thinking about that (fragile) and rich space between over control and under control (goat rodeo - see Keith’s image to the right!) In the workshops there was insufficient time to talk about how to build an entire agenda by "stringing" structures, so I have included some examples at the end of the slide deck. That probably should have a blog post of it’s own!In the session where we did DAD, I really appreciate the reflections about the value of iteration in DaD, and in staying close to the questions that are at the core of the structure to avoid "goat rodeo."  Goat rodeo is everyone doing their own thing. Smart people fall into this trap all the time. In Troika, many people mentioned the freedom of turning one’s back to listen in. In all the structures people noted the deep importance of the starting questions. The more specific the question, the more precise answers are liberated.A fabulous question was "when is it appropriate to use LS." I offered an answer, but I also suggested I email everyone in a month and find out what they have used and done, and we’ll generate an "in situ" answer — nothing like reality!Participant FeedbackIn most of the workshops we did the "What, So What, Now What" debrief and reflect Liberating Structures. I was able to capture a few responses on video. Here is the result:In addition, I received this quote in the mail this past week with permission to quote anonymously:Hi Nancy,Just a quick not to say thankyou for coming out to Australia, visiting us and giving us insight to your perspectives.   Can I just say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and put a couple of things into practice, nothing special but I went into class with a much more open mind and content within myself. I ended up combining 2 groups from 2 campuses for the final 5 classes and although the first night’s turnout was a little lacking, by the end they were developing new workgroups, mixing on their own, helping each other in understanding assessments and to top it off they even arranged a Christmas breakup for both groups together. The last night was purely a submitting work  and as a help session for those that hadn’t finished or submitted all their work and I still had nearly a full class!  They brought in cakes, all shook hands and celebrated and it was a genuinely nice thing to see.  Especially when most stayed around until 8pm on a work night. I wish you all the best in your travels and business.Take care,My ReflectionsIdentity & Good TeachingThis issue came up most strongly in the workshops hosted by eWorks the last day of my fellowship. I took this little visual note on the white board. Our conversation about educators having a strong self identity as educators was the basis of good teaching. Good teaching comes before any facility with online teaching. It always goes back to those basics. This is no surprise, but surprisingly this concept can get lost with online initiatives because people focus so intently on content. Content alone can be found many places. The unique offering of the TAFE institutions is GOOD TEACHING.Conversational TeachingAn essential practice of good teaching - online or offline - is getting immediately into good and useful conversations. I asked people at many of the workshops if they struggled with discussion boards and many raised their hands. I suggested that we need to think carefully and skillfully about how we engage people so that things like discussion forums and web meetings are meaningful, not just things learners have to to. NO TICK THE BOX! This is where we can always improve our skill at designing really engaging questions that people can’t resist responding to, versus canned "discussion prompts."In our workshops, every session was started with a conversational approach that asked people what they wanted to get out of the session and what they had to offer. This activity helped me know what they wanted, and acknowledged their expertise as educators and designers of learning. The process used rotating paired conversation and without fail, the buzz in the room was robust and it was always hard to get people to stop talking. I take that as a sign of engagement! (Yes, they could have been complaining about me or the process… ) But again, this acknowledges identity in the context of meaningful conversation.I asked people how they currently open conversations in their teaching, and how they might change this. One person said he was going to take is face to face group to coffee, instead of starting by reviewing the syllabus. Another was going to use the paired drawing exercise we did in the graphic facilitation workshop to help learners create relationships right from the start. Just two examples!It was interesting to be in rooms with so many smart and passionate people, yet I sensed a reluctance for people to speak up at the full group level. Is this part of the identity thing? IS there a "tall poppy syndrome" issue in these organizations?  It may be some of those things, but for me it was yet another example of the critical importance of breaking people into smaller groups because intense, buzzing, engaged conversation emerged every time at the small group level.Brain Based ApproachesBefore the workshops I happened on a fascinating article on neurobiology. It described how neurobiology might inform our teaching practices, particularly the work of Dan Siegel. He talks about the unity of the "triume brain" of cerebral cortex (rational brain), the limbic system (emotional brain) and the stem (reptilian brain). Siegel "envisions the brain as a social organ," and "the emotional system that develops in relationship." I was taken how he describes a "sixth sense" as "mindsight," and links this to mirror neurons. "What fires together, wires together," is a way he talks about how we learn by what we observe. If we observer our teachers functioning as learners, will we be better learners? I think so…  Siegel talks about the power of associations that people make in order to make sense of the world. Positive and uplifting associations can be more meaningful, encouraging, and benefit change. There was so much in this and I only scratched the surface. But by the second week I had to make a visual…Remember Group ProcessA post on Facebook by the fabulous Chris Corrigan reminded me of some very resonant practices from the Art of Hosting and I grabbed an image to share about the Four-Fold path of Presence, Contribution, Participation and Co-Creation. I am a little shocked when I don’t see many of the deep process work from the facilitation community in teaching and learning. There are natural connections. So introducing across these communities is a particular joy. Going by to my "three legged stool" — this is the relational aspect. How we interact is as important as what we are interacting about.Share Real ExamplesFinally, it was fabulous to hear the examples of the educators in each workshop. In turn, I was able to share about a project I’m working on with an international team sponsored by the Justice Institute of British Columbia and the University of Guadalajara, the  UdG Agora Project. You can take a peek at a recent presentation online about the project from #OpenEd15.Slides & ResourcesRelate and Liberate - Compiled slides, notes and additional materials.Full Circle Associates http://www.fullcirc.com Liberating Structures http://www.liberatingstructures.com The Art of Hosting  http://www.artofhosting.org/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWodPL9C1UI Clay Shirky "The Digital Revolution Has Already Happened" https://medium.com/@cshirky/the-digital-revolution-in-higher-education-has-already-happened-no-one-noticed-78ec0fec16c7 UdG Agora Project http://udg.theagoraonline.net/ and a presentation online about the project from OpenEd15 http://udg.theagoraonline.net/opened15/ Wenger- Trayner et. al. Value Creation Framework - http://wenger-trayner.com/tag/value-creation/

This is the fourth in a series of posts about my ISS/Chisholm Fellowship in Victoria State, Australia. You can find the previous posts here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. While I intended to write these WHILE in Australia, it has, er, ahem, taken a bit longer.When Brad Beach (of Chisholm) and I were noodling on what I might share through my fellowship, I was exceedingly happy that he was willing to step out of the more traditional practices and dive into visual or graphic facilitation. We scheduled two rounds of a 3 hour "Doodle, Draw, Learn" workshops to introduce teachers to the power of visuals for engagement and learning. I think we accomplished this well in the workshops. They also reminded me of something else that happens when we allow ourselves to freely draw. Joy fills the room.As before, I’ll share the content points first as reference, then reflect on my experience and share a few words from the participants. Finally, there is a visual artifact at the end with resources, support materials and a deck compiling all the images from the day.The structure of the workshop is designed around modeling an interactive initial engagement visual activity, unleashing of drawing joy ("I CAN DRAW"), development of icon skills and wrapped up with another visual activity, this time focused on reflection and evaluation. The agenda is communicated using a visual agenda (of course, and from the photo, you can see this works even on wrinkled flip chart paper) and the feedback is captured with video - another visual medium. In the middle I share example visual artifacts and offer a few thoughts so people can get off their feet and rest for a few minutes. This is where we begin the conversation about where to apply visual practices in the classroom - online or offline.All in all, this is a very ACTIVE experience. But people generally report being energized, rather than exhausted. Interesting, eh?ProcessHere are brief descriptions of the exercises, in case you want to try them:Paired Drawing:  I learned this from Johnnie Moore www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/000380.php and have blogged about it. One pen, one paper, two people taking turns drawing a face, one pen stroke at a time with NO TALKING. There are so many ways to relate this activity to your teaching or meeting goals. It is great not only to "break the ice" but to show patterns of communication and collaboration and the interesting effect of assumptions! More photos here.I CAN DRAW: This is again a common and fabulous activity that is used in MANY introductory graphic facilitation workshops. I learned mine from the folks at the International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP) and have seen it done many times with amazing variation. The essence is getting up at a wall and using our bodies to draw circles and lines, play with color using chalk pastels and finally getting a sense of the basics of lettering, including size and proportion.Pastels are messy, but they are MAGIC. Something always happens in the room when we use the pastels. I think this is where the joy really becomes visible.Visual Vocabulary: This exercise builds off of the circle, lines and lettering of "I CAN DRAW" and introduces basic human forms (stick person, bean or shapes, springs, etc.) I reference heavily the work of people like Dave Gray,  Austin Kleon and others who have generously shared exercises, videos and how-to’s online. You see examples of the resources in the slide deck at the end of this post. OH, and I role model imperfection, believe me!Icon Jam: We follow the vocabulary exercise with a quick round of icon jamming, an activity I learned at an IFVP gathering. I start by calling out a word and asking people to do a quick "telegraph sketch" of the word. Then after a while they call out the words. In one workshop I had them label their icons as a future resource. In the second one, I had people move from paper to paper to both see other’s work, to experience what it is like to "draw on someone else’s paper, and to guess the meaning of the icons. I liked this variation a lot. You can find examples of past workshops here, where we often do this on 3×5 cardsRiver of Life: This exercise uses the visual metaphor of a river or a road to stimulate reflection of the past, present and future. In the workshop, the prompt for the past was "what did you expect coming into the workshop." The present prompt was "what did you learn and experience today." The future prompt was "what is your next step using what you learned? What more do you want to learn?" Read more at http://www.kstoolkit.org/River+of+Life and more visual examples here.ApplicationIn the two Chisholm workshops the educators talked about a variety of ways to apply this. There were the expected elements of using visuals to be welcoming and break up text. They spoke of not only the power of visuals, but the power of beauty, as they surveyed the beauty that came out of the "I CAN DRAW" exercise. A few mentioned the utility for working with their more challenging, younger students. Some had to let it sink in, as thinking about visuals in online learning where text has been the dominant form, may take a while.One of our "non Chisholm" participants, Joyce Seitzinger talked about how she will incorporate more visual activities in the "Learner Experience" workshops she is designing.ReflectionsMy key learnings from these workshops affirmed or developed the following ideas:I can get over my attachment that the "I CAN DRAW" exercise MUST be done on large scale paper. We basically had paper that was flip chart sized and I think it still worked. You can’t quite get the full body experience, but it works. This is important because it is hard to find rooms where there is space and permission to do large scale drawing on paper on the walls.Don’t underestimate joy. Make space for joy. Liberate joy!I still would like to find a way to show and practice some of the online options even in a short workshop. I have struggled with this because I feel the foundational experience of working on paper is a must.Video Harvest/Feedback:Finally, I decided to try some video feedback vignettes. After I made this video, I realize it missed half the content of the workshop, so I’ll need to do a second try. I’d love any feedback to help me improve on the next iteration! Slides with Resources: Visual Facilitation in Learning - Resource SlidesRachel Smith on Drawing in the Classroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tJPeumHNLY

This is the fifth and penultimate in a series of posts about my ISS/Chisholm Fellowship in Victoria State, Australia. You can find the previous posts here: Part 1, Part 2,  Part 3 and Part 4.Besides my iterative round of cafe visits in Melbourne, I have also had the chance to hang out with my Aussie friends and see some of beautiful Victoria State. No fellowship journal would be complete without a hint of that beauty. So this slide show speaks for itself of what I saw. And, I must say, I got lost in the Ashcombe Mazes on the Mornington Penninsula, and ate some fabulous chocolate at Mornington Penninsula Chocolates. I had cake to die for at Moo’s in rural Gippsland, and spent most of my nights in Karramburra. I even got to go to a school fete! (Ah, I loved the bake sale.)I went to the Night Noodle Market, the Victoria Library and ate/drank at many of the fabulous Cafes in Melbourne. Mama mia, y’all have a great Cafe Culture! And yet again, I saw no roos. I think they avoid me. Click to View 

Just over a week after I returned from Australia, I’m putting the finishing touches on the blog series documenting my ISS Fellowship in Victoria State, Australia. (Part 1, Part 2,  Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5).This last post is to share a few final thoughts and the rest of the photos! (Are you a glutton for punishment? The set below is compiled from all the workshops. I estimate I was in front of over 180 people across 13 events, include a few I had not documented in previous posts. This includes meeting with some of the Better Evaluation team at RMIT, meeting with a group of my long-term edu-network-friends in Melbourne, and a planning meeting with the Chisholm team to collaborate on a project they are cooking up.It hardly seemed like it was four years ago I was last in Australia. I have deeply benefited from my professional and personal connections made over my 4 trips "down under," and count many educators and education innovators as inspirations and fellow travelers in this learning journey. Special thanks to Brad Beach and his family, without whom this adventure would have never happened, his team at Chisholm, especially Malcolm Jolly who had to constantly remind me where I was headed next and the topic(!!). Patricia Rogers and Arthur Shelley offered me both friendly home hosting and setting up great gatherings in Melbourne. Joyce Seitzinger set up our great social gathering in Melbourne. And of course, to the good folks at the ISS Institute for sponsoring my fellowship.All the Workshop Photos: Click to View