Corporate Learntrends 2009 Sessions

Day 1

Dawn
Convergence in Learning

Early Bird
Extending Learning to the Edges of Organizations
Learntrends Live: Reuters case study

Mid Morning
LearnTrends Live: Jane Hart
Building a social learning environment by Jane Hart

Late Morning
LearnTrends Live: Harold Jarche on PKM
Personal Knowledge Management

High Noon
Merging Information, Learning and Social Media

Early Afternoon
Learntrends Innovation Awards 2009

Day 2

Dawn
The Immernet Singularity

Early Bird
Reinventing Organizational Learning

Day 3

High Noon
LearnTrends: Microlearning

This is my start page, my Personal Learning Environment, PLE, my list of aggregated resources for the Learntrends 2009 event. It is a real example of a PLE, Personal Learning Environment.

LearnTrends 2009 – The Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations Conference, November 17-19, 2009
The theme/focus this year is on Convergence in Workplace Learning.

- Event Schedule
- Elluminate Sessions
- Learntrends Forum
- Learntrends Recordings
- Live Blogging

- Google Blog Search
- Bookmarks on Delicious
- posts on WordPress
- Twitter Search

These 2 useful sites aggregate blog posts from many Learntrends participants:
- eLearning Learning
- Alltop eLearning News

John Mak asks:

Who am I? What is your identity in social networks?
How would emotions impact on social networking?

He also shows some videos in his post.

I would like to discuss this topic with John. Since I am a reading/writing-preference learner, I searched for text references about Emotions in Social Networks. These are the references I have found

- CCK09: help with some clarification please

hey, if i’m a node, i want to do more than connect and fire…i want to think, to feel, to be…
Im ok with a metaphor of synaptic firings, but as a human filled with love & self importance & some regard for others, i also know i am more than this.

- The importance of emotions | Why are emotions important in life

Emotions help us to become aware of our needs. All emotions derive from needs. When we feel that our needs are being met, we experience feelings of comfort. The better we are at getting our needs met, the more peaceful and comfortable our lives will be.

- Emotions

Emotions are our feelings. Literally. We feel them in our bodies as tingles, hot spots and muscular tension. There are cognitive aspects, but the physical sensation is what makes them really different.

- Emotional Intelligence in online and community learning

As this is the second round of Connectivism CCK09, I am more interested in how “EQ” and emotions propagate through the network, or at least how people would perceive their learning being influenced by the emotions of those nodes, connectors, instructors, co-learners, bloggers and others in the communities.

- Maru’s blog: How do we deal with emotions in a network?

Are we willing to discuss our emotions openly?, Does dealing openly with participant’s emotions really promotes learning?

Emotions are important for connections but how and where do we deal with them in a network?. I bet some research been done on this, could any of you share links on the subject?

- Twitter: “pointless babble” or peripheral awareness + social grooming?

I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of people who are joining its ranks are there to be social. We like the fact that humans are social. It’s good for society. And what they’re doing online is fundamentally a mix of social grooming and maintaining peripheral social awareness. They want to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable. They want to share their state of mind and status so that others who care about them feel connected.

- on the danger of twitter : D’Arcy Norman dot net

But, I fear that the strengthened social connections are not worth the cost borne in superficial thinking. Being more closely connected is an extremely valuable thing – and Twitter is somehow able to make my connections to people online feel almost tangible, almost real – but not at the cost of shallow thinking.

- cck08 Being there and suddenly very lonely | World Wide Wiser

But yesterday, during the Ustream session on Elluminate, I suddenly felt very lonely and estranged. It was of not any importance that I was there, I felt not seen and not heard, I had nothing to say. It was to difficult to read the chat and listen to the session-leaders at the same time. I had the feeling that all other participants knew each other very good and for a long time

- Personal Circles – Life With Alacrity

Describes our Support Circle, Sympathy Circle, Trust Circle, Emotional Circle and Familiar Stranger

…the personal limits described herein instead define the limits placed on how many people an individual can know with various degrees of intimacy.

– Emotion Becomes “Tractable” to Neuroscience

The amygdalar circuit pulls people away from dangerous situations by giving them emotions like fear and anxiety, when activated. The left prefrontal area pushes people toward new, challenging situations by giving them emotions like hope and optimism, when activated. A person with a healthy, well-adjusted emotional life experiences the appropriate emotional response in situations of danger or situations of opportunity.

- The Psychology Of Emotions, Feelings and Thoughts

This book puts forth the idea that life is divided into three groups, emotion, thinking, and feeling. These three groups make humans feel in certain ways, thinking, physical stimulus, and emotion all contribute to feeling. But what is the difference between a thought, an emotion, and a feeling? Is there an overlap between the three? Probably, since any emotion can be broken down into the sensations and real events that caused it, and these events all lead to emotions, feelings and thoughts. So emotions, feelings and thoughts all might have the same source, they are just expressed differently in the mind. Where do your emotions, feelings and thoughts rate on a scale of clarity? Where do they rate on a scale of focus and attention? How does understanding the psychology of ones emotions, feelings and thoughts lead to a long term increased consciousness?

- Where’s the Emotion? The Forgotten/Left Out of Biological Basic Needs

Maybe physical necessities keep numbers up and a heart ticking, but aren’t emotional desires a large part of what differentiates organisms? Aren’t our conscious minds- and understanding ourselves- a different, but perhaps just as real need- or desire- worthy of mentioning, even at the most basic biology level? If we’re taught in first or second grade about basic physical necessities- it seems that, in addition to teaching that food and water are necessary, we should be taught about emotions, even to the smallest degree that we could understand at that age.

- A Macro Cultural Analysis of Emotions

Educators typically emphasize conveying information and facts; rarely have they articulated or modeled the full learning process replete with emotions of confusion, fear, sorrow, apathy, anger, jealousy, pride, and enthusiasm. Because emotions are integral to educational practices such as learning, persuasion, concentrating, and cooperating on projects, it is vital to understand and address them. Understanding emotions requires comprehending both their specific, distinctive qualities (e.g., palpable visceral qualities), and their general psychological features that they share with other psychological phenomena.

- Emotional Competency – Emotion

Emotions are ancient mechanisms that mobilize us to deal quickly with important interpersonal encounters. They have both a primal aspect and a motivational aspect. Emotions act as primal beacons, guiding us along the path of survival.

- Youth Use the Internet for Moderating Emotions.

He found that when kids are stressed they use technology to help moderate their emotions. That is, when kids in his study found themselves under stress, they interacted with technology to both moderate their moods and access social networks. Through the Internet, they accessed entertainment and information and sought “social compensation” through recognition and relationship management.

I hope you also find these references useful to learn about emotions in social networking

I used Typealyzer to find my Online Sapiens blog personality. I analyzed the newest 10 pages of this blog. 80% of the results indicate that the author of this blog is of the type:

INTJ – The Scientist
The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it – often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

You can learn more About Typealyzer and Psychographics

I found Typeanalyzer via Suifaijohnmak’s Weblog

I would like to learn about your blog personality.

This is what happened last year in CCK08 when our instructor was missing to one of our sessions

This year, The Daily CCK09 newsletter was not available to the course participants during 4 days. I wanted to know what other participants where feeling without The Daily so I started a thread in the Moodle forum, CCK09: The Daily is Down – What is the impact on the course?

These were some comments in the thread:

- James Neill – Thursday, 24 September 2009, 04:04 PM Daily Down? No problem in a world of network plasticity (aka neuroplasticity). What are we missing? Downes’ personalised collection of daily notables – he or others can and do post just as much elsewhere. Could even be seen as advantageous as other connections step up.

- luz pearson – Thursday, 24 September 2009, 06:35 PM The course is elsewhere. The Daily is great reading for breakfast: it gives you an order, makes you feel that even if you can´t participate on discussions, read posts, comments or nothing, you are still with the flow…you can still be connected. The truth is that CCK09 keeps on going. Let´s think they did it on purpose to let us get something out of this. The instructor is the network you can make?

- Maijann Ruby – Friday, 25 September 2009, 04:15 AM I thought it was very generous to provide ‘a Daily’ in the first place.

- Jane Brotchie – Friday, 25 September 2009, 06:30 AM This week the postings are noticeably fewer. Is it because the Daily is down or are people struggling with the theories or has the first flush of excitement given way to work pressures? I confess some of the theoretical arguments are way over my head so I’m struggling to find my place. I wonder how many lurkers are feeling the same? I think for those of us who are new to this way of working, any anchor point is useful. I’m a bit of a list person (sadly) and having a place where I can consider my day is useful. Come to think of it, maybe I should make my own Daily – or is that what a PLE is?

Cosimo Urbanowicz – Friday, 25 September 2009, 12:12 PM
The most useful way to think about it is to imagine that the daily is down intentionally — to provoke us to build our own! Where do you think the conversation is most visible/ active right now, beside this forum?

Eric Calvert – Friday, 25 September 2009, 02:08 PM
Nice “glass half full” way to look at the crash, Cosimo. I think maybe an unintended benefit of the way the course has been structured is that learning continues despite one of the instructors being temporarily knocked out. Had all conversation depended on Downes’ server, it would have been a catastrophic disruption (for us, I mean. I’m sure it feels like a catastrophe for Downes…) rather than a temporary inconvenience.

and Riitta Suominen also posted about this topic

The CCK09 assignment for this week was: “……in particular, share resources on networks that you encounter in your browsing this week.”

CCK09 – Social Network Theory:

- Introduction to Socia Network Theory
- The Dunbar Number
- The Tipping Point – Connectors, Mavens and Persuaders
- Granovetter – Strong and Weak Ties
- Small World and Scale Free Networks
- Popular Social Networks
- My Twitter Social Network

Introduction to Social Network Theory:
- Social Network Analysis
- Networks: Theory and Application — Open.Michigan via – Benjamin Stewart
- orgnet.com – Social network analysis – Projects, Cases & Research
- T N T – The Network Thinker
- T N T — The Network Thinker: So many people, So little time
- orgnet.com – Innovation Happens at the Intersections
- How to Save the World
- Introduction to Social Network Methods

Sobre Redes (in Spanish)
- Teoría de redes sociales – Indianopedia
- Redes. Revista hispana para el análisis de redes sociales
- Propiedades de las Redes – CCK09 « Conexiones
- Quíenes usan Twitter en la Argentina (Parte 1) via Sabrina De Vita

About the Dunbar Number
- Twitter Friends and the Influence of Influentials – Skillful Minds
- Social networks that matter
- Twitter under the microscope – First Monday
- Life With Alacrity: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
- Robert Paterson’s Weblog: Magic Numbers

About the Tipping Point – Connectors, Mavens and Persuaders
- Applying Gladwell/ Tipping Point theories to twitter users
- Impact as a 21st-Century Library Media Specialist
- The Form of Money: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen
- Are you a Connector, a Maven, or a Salesman? – Stepcase Lifehack
- Creative Perch – Connect with a Maven
- Creative Perch – Get Connected
- Creative Perch – Connect with a Salesman
- Daily Kos: Mavens, Persuaders, Connectors and Us
- Tipping Point Toast for Communities? – edublogs

About Granovetter – Strong and Weak Ties:
- The Strength of Weak Ties – Granovetter seminal paper
- Social Networks And Group Formation – Boxes and Arrows
- Weak Ties Vs Strong Ties, Advantages and Disadvantages – Social Network
- Jim Moore’s blog – Note on why blogs matter: The Strength of Weak Ties
- Memetics meets Granovetter. Many-to-Many
- Social Networking Tools to Develop Strong, Weak and Potential Connections

About Small World and Scale Free Networks:
- Asynchronous discussion groups as Small World and Scale Free Networks
- The worldwide air transportation network
- Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks

About Social Networking
- Egocentric and Object Centric Networks
- What kind of Twitter User are You? | JR Farr
- Twitter: “pointless babble” or peripheral awareness + social grooming?
- Twitter VS Facebook « Sabrina’s Weblog
- Visualizing Relationships on Twitter and Social Networks
- Maintained Relationships on Facebook | overstated
- Life With Alacrity: Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
- LinkedIn Facebook Twitter – Different Connection Style
- LinkedIn Connection Approach Rethought

Characteristics of my Twitter Social Network:
- What Type of Twitter User Am I?, Online Sapiens
- TweetStats :: for emapey2
- Map of emapey2’s Twitter Friends, via Silvia Andreoli

CCK08 Forum: Networks
- Who Are the Good Informants in your Network?, CCK08
- CCK08: Which is the most successful network in history?
- CCK08: Norming of the Nodes

When I receive a direct bookmark in my Delicious Inbox from someone in my Delicious network I feel honored because I know my fan was thinking about me. My fan knows which are the topics I am more interested in and has decided that the bookmark will be really useful to me. My fan wants to alert me and make sure I read the bookmark!! We are communicating with each other.

I would like to give thanks to Laura Malita and Gabriela Grosseck who are my 2 Delicious fans who have sent to me (send) most bookmarks I have received, so far, directly in my Delicious Inbox

I would also like also to give thanks to to my friend Luz Pearson. When she asked me, Why do you like so much Delicious bookmarks sent to you? she inspired me to write this post.

Related Posts: Related Posts: Using Del.icio.us in Education « Online Sapiens

This is my start page, my Personal Learning Environment (PLE), my list of aggregated resources for the CCK09 Connectivism open online course. It is a real example of a PLE, Personal Learning Environment.

The Daily News: The Daily
Moodle LMS: Course: CCK09
CCK09 Blog: Connectivism & Connective Knowledge
Participants (needs login): CCK09: Participants
Elluminate: CCK09 Live Sessions
Recordings: CCK09 Recordings

I think that by using my PLE for the CCK09 open online course it is easy to follow the conversations, and make connections:
Google Blog Search: cck09 – Google Blog Search
Twitter CCK09: cck09 – Twitter Search
WordPress CCK09: Cck09 Blogs Posts on WordPress
Delicious Bookmarks: Recent cck09 Bookmarks on Delicious
Wiki in Spanish: Actividades Semanales

These are my own CCK09 blog posts and bookmarks:
Emapey’s CCK09 Bookmarks: emapey’s cck09 Bookmarks on Delicious
Onlinesapiens CCK09: Connectivism « Online Sapiens Blog

Claudia Ceraso posted:

Whatever makes a post or blog a gem is that blogger’s ability to express what other people wish they could, but they can’t. Yet.

How does all of that networked learning start to happen?
I think there is a simple structure:
Content first, people second.

Claudia, I usually find better content by following Google Blog Search and Delicious Tags feeds than following individual blog feeds. Yes, I am searching for content and not for bloggers.

But I will follow blogs from my friendly connections. I need to keep up with what they are posting to comment, learn and teach them.

I am also always searching for new connections for my PLN (Personal Learning Network). Newbies, can become the future top bloggers. It’s better to already have them earlier as connections in your network

I need to give thanks to Jay Cross and Learntrends, hosts of corporate learning online conferences. They allowed me to present at the April 2009 Learntrends Online Conversations on boosting the performance of organizations through learning.

They hoped to keep the conversation platform open for 24 hours, enabling people to continue the dialog around the world. I knew they needed to fill some empty spaces in the agenda. So I thought I would not find a better opportunity to make a presentation online.

I was so excited!! I have chosen the topic: Selling eLearning in your organization, naming and overcoming the obstacles. I requested to make the presentation only on April 20 2009, in the evening
My presentation was accepted and added to the Agenda on the morning of April 21, a few hours before the opening of Learntrends Conversations.

My presentation was scheduled for April 22, 4.00 GMT (1.00 am in my country). I have requested this time, early in the morning, because I knew they needed to fill those empty hours and at that hour everyone at home would be sleeping, so I would not be distracted.

I soon found that all the articles I had on “Selling eLearning in your organization, naming and overcoming the obstacles” were authored by only one blogger. I didn’t want to use my presentation to talk only about what some else had already posted!! So, the Learntrends Conversations Online Event started, I needed to listen to other presentations, it was April 21 on the afternoon and I still didn’t knew what to talk about on my presentation. I had no topic, yet!!!

Listening to other presentations gave me the clue to what to talk about so, for me, it was really worth the time to have listened to other people’s presentations. I didn’t have much time to reflect about the topic I had selected, though

The night arrived and my presentation was only a couple hrs away. I was so nervous and I started walking in my backyard. After walking during 30 min I felt ready to start my presentation

I didn’t expect what happened later. I expected to talk during 15 or 20 min and perhaps about 5-10 min of Q and A. My presentation lasted 61 min!!!!, since there was no one scheduled after me.

There were 20 people in the Elluminate room but you really don’t know how many of them are really there listening to you. I remember that Jay and 2 or 3 others asked me some questions. I want to give thanks to all of them. They were so kind to spend their time, listening to me, and while my English was bad, they seemed to be really interested in what I was talking about.

Update – During my presentation I talked about the importance of using email in elearningl! Everyone uses email to communicate and collaborate online.

An example I have found is that the University of Phoenix was using Outlook Express and Newsgroups to teach online courses.

Now, some months later, I just read about Google Wave

Millions of companies have sharepoint, wiki’s etc. and they ARE NOT USING THEM. They keep sending emails to each other with recent updates in documents. They have done so for years.

So what is the solution? Stop calling it google documents and start calling it google wave. Make it look like email. Make it feel like email. Make it just replace email all together.

It’s like giving all the idiots out there shared revisioned document control, but putting an email-like interface on top of it and tell them ‘its just like email’.

It’s brilliant because this one will actually work. The challenge was never technical. We have seen all this before. But not integrated like this and masquerated as if it’s email.

And you have to be a real out-touch-with-reality geek to not realize that.

Even Google recognizes the importance of email!!

My Elluminate session was recorded. You can listen to my presentation, including the backchannel, from my Archive.org Moving Images page

I want to give special thanks to Jay. He was always online attending the conversations!!! Sorry Jay for this late post. It was a long post and not so easy to write for me.

I want to give thanks to my British friend Nicola Avery who was the only friend so kind enough to have some Skype Video Talks with me which gave me the confidence to make a presentation online, speaking in English.

I want also to give thanks to David Delgado who was kind enough to give me feedback about my presentation