Via Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day comes A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything. While Western-centric, this is a fabulous example of visual thinking strengths and weaknesses, fabulous work and funny. And not so funny. (I guess that is an essential part of being human!)
Month: February 2010
Collaborative Creation: This Is Me – Librarian Draft
Are you interested in Digital Identity? Do you know about the This Is Me project? It is an ongoing project out of Odin Labs at Reading University in the UK that offers activities and worksheets for people to understand the role and implications of digital identity and explore their own digital identity.
In the past I created a version for people working in international non governmental organizations (NGOs) and now I’m working on one for librarians. The problem is, I’m not a librarian. I could really use some help. Can you take a look and offer edits, feedback, contexts and help improve it ? You can find the collaborative draf here:
This Is Me – Librarian Draft – Google Docs.
If you’d like editing privileges, just let me know.
THANKS!
Monday Video: Backchannels
Joitkse . Finds the best backchannel video (along with her pearls of wisdom.) She is reading The Backchannel (by Cliff Atkinson), which is patiently sitting in my pile of books. Perhaps I should read it before I do a keynote on the 22nd, eh?
What is YOUR history of online facilitation?
In just over a week I’ll be in Ft. Worth, Texas, opening Monday’s session of the Elearning 2010 Conference. My topic is “Online Facilitation 13 Years On: What We Learned and What Do We Need to Learn?” Despite all best intentions, I’m just now getting concrete on what I want to do in this more traditional ‘podium’ opportunity. There are so many things we could talk about. So I’m wondering, what is YOUR history of online facilitation? What are the key turning points for you? And what do you see in the future?
The fabulous ScOPE online community asked these sorts of questions in a 2007 online event facilitated by my friend Nick Noakes, and it was fun to go back and reread them. (Link here, or SCoPE_ Seminars_ Online Fac. PDF)
Here is a little context from me:
I have been living, breathing, obsessing about online facilitation since 1996-97 when I fell down the online community rabbit hole in Howard Rheingold’s Electric Minds. I sensed something important, and sought to give voice to that intuition over the past 14 years. (Funny, when we set on the title, it was 13 years. oops!) Using only my offline facilitation experience, I dove blindly in, sometimes flying, sometimes crashing and burning.
Over the years I started to write about what I was learning and point to the giants upon whose shoulders I stood. Online, that meant among others, Peter and Trudy Johnson Lenz, Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps (for their virtual team pioneering work), Lisa Kimball and the folks at Metanet, Liz Rykert, Howard Rheingold and all of the hosts and facilitators at Electric Minds (old and newer), The Well and the myriad of other communities I have belonged to. Offline I built upon the core facilitation knowledge of folks like Sam Kaner, Peggy Holman, Roger Schwarz, Juanita Brown, Harrison Owen, and many, many others.
In 2004, I took a stab at a more academic review entitled A Short History o f Online Facilitation.
Things have changed. The way technology enables us to be together has dramatically expanded what it means to “be together” and thus our practices of being together. Shifts have happened in online facilitation of communities and networks, for learning, teams, communities of practice, for advocacy and action, for games and play. The horizon is so much broader.
Where to start the story…
Where to imagine where it is going?
Your thoughts?
Monday Video: Students Helping Students
Kindness! Another gem from Michael Wesch’s students, with his amazing touch of a true teacher. After you look at the video, go to the blog post and read about how it happened. Students Helping Students video.