For my pearls of wisdom, you’ll need to visit me at aprilhayman.com.

P.S. Make sure to update your RSS feeds too!

Nice summary of how it differs from other OS and web browsers. Make sure to read the comments as there is an interesting discussion going on what the OS can and cannot be used for as well as issues with a monopoly a la Microsoft with IE.

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Leveraging social media tools, relationships and content expertise, the Information Services team at Sun Microsystems has integrated info/knowledge into programs like engineering, marketing, sales and learning to drive connections, discovery and knowledge sharing. The focus is on employee learning, keeping the organization smart and providing good information to drive good decisions. You will learn about the value of information services, how it relates to learning and development, and see the use of Social Learning Exchange, wikis, blogs, Twitter, and virtual worlds to create an integrated learning experience around information for Sun employees.

Slides available at: https://slx.sun.com/1179275991

Note: Christy had trouble with her connection and had to speed through her presentation. My notes may not be complete with some of her points. Quite a bit of it is paraphrased.

My Notes (all mistakes are my own!):

Good information = Smart decisions

Overview information services: digital libraries & research

• digital libraries & research (DL&R)
• The library has been part of Sun for over 20 years
• 2 employees today (10 originally)
• part of Sun Learning Services
• focus on information services for employees

Information Services : DL&R Roles

• connecting people to content
• connecting content to content
• connecting people to people

From these connections, employees have good connections to learn, good business decisions for Sun

• who they should connect with
• information for research projects

Their role is to reduce that time that they have to spend looking for the information

Portfolio of Information Services

• Content Services
• Information Access – wikis, websites, portals
• Research & Consulting – providing research to people, groups
• Training & Communications
• Immersive Environment

Why Information Services?

Bunch of long quotes

“Get Serious about Informal Learning”

“Best practices: reinventing the corporate library”

“End user update: 2009 overview for information managers”

These quotes are available through the slides link found at the top of the post.

It’s all about the CONTENT….

3rd Party Content Management

• contract negotiations
• relationships management
• renewals
• content pilots
• content integration **
• cataloging
• feedback management

Key Content Sources – for learning

• visuals of what she’s talking about
• in addition to ebooks and ejournals
• wall street journal, safarai books onlin, IEEE journal

Content acquisition process

• importance of content to business
• monitor and integrate corp. goals into decision process
• we immerse ourselves into teams
• communities – social media, email, forums, blogs, etc.

Christy said: keeps a finger on the pulse of the business to provide the information needed.

We know the information vendor landscape so..

• quality of information and satisfaction with product
• conduct trials with targetd groups (justify the purchase and measure the value)

Quite a few journals that focus on engineering and technical information (IEEE, Springer, EBSCOhost, ACM, Harvard Business Review, etc.)

eBooks
- Safari books online
-books 24×7
-NetLibrary
-Springer eBooks – computer science

All integrated and accessible in multiple ways.

Content feedback Loop, Usage and ROI

• Surveys to users, target audience
• ROI work with vendors: productivity, time savings, dollars saved, impact to biz
• Focus groups when possible
• Talk to key target user groups at meetings, events, progects

Christy said: Safari eBooks is very big at Sun and Christy supplied several feedback comments in regards to it.

Christy said: Google Scholar is great! but you need a subscription to access some of the texts

Keys for Learning via Information Services you must

• integrate
• particpate (webinars, etc)
• communicate

URL for slides: https://slx.sun.com/1179275991

They have a Twitter page (libraryresearch)

MyLearning is a learning resource center for employees

• modules include Media, books, news, blogs

Sales U and Services Delivery U

• fairly new programs in the Sun environment
• employees who are going through the programs that there are additional information sources that are related to their area of learning
• as employees look through the site, they see other services that map to areas that relate to their own

Social Media Tools

• Blogging
• podcasts

Social Learning Exchange

• YouTube for the corporation
• Employees can post video to the exchange for others to leverage; examples include
• sales pitch
• informational video on the library

Christy said: User generated content plus library generated content is a powerful combination

Safari Books Online

• employees can create content or booklets for others to access

1Stop is a wiki frequented by engineers within Sun

• particular areas within 1Stop that library has integrated its information into the wiki pages
• RSS feed of Solaris fed into the wiki so it automatically updates without constant maintenance

Informing Employees about Social Media

• She created a blog that is fed to appropriate spots in the enterprise network

At this point, Tony Karrer asked her about how all these information resources integrated into learning (we were running out of time and he wanted her to summarize; had to skip the parts on Second Life). Christy answered that the information services are a learning tool in and of itself. The key integration points are those mentioned at the beginning of her discussion. The focus on informal learning has allowed a window to open for them to integrate more of their services and information into other areas. Information services and learning space are coming together. Information services professional will evaluate content, know and integrate that information across the organization.

Is it easy to search for content using tags? Used a tool, Grocker (sp), to search across resources. The content providers are implementing social tools into platforms. Her department does not have one way to tag across resources because of the various content providers.

Mobile solutions and access outside the system? Content providers do offer some mobile access through mobile devices. The Sun Learning Exchange is set outside the server so employees can access it from their mobile devices.

Technorati Tags: learntrends, Christy Confetti-Higgins, Sun Microsystems, Sun, Merging Information Learning and Social Media

My live notes from the session (all mistakes are mine!):

Organizations are looking for a:

• low cost solution
• not a mishmash of systems
• strategy and solution that will grow
• private and secure

Learning is not just a formal activity but informal when we work with others.

What would adress these needs?
Elgg – solution that addresses all of that

• Fully customizable, extendible (functionality, look & feel) by using plugins
• Access to an integrated of suite of social media tools
• One log in
• Functional environment for social learning & collabs
• Supportive infastructure rather than prescriptive (gives more power to learners)

She installed it onto her servers

Now called SoLearn: Social Learning Space

In Elgg, learning take splace in groups rather than forums/discussions like in Ning. Groups can be closed or open depending on permissions.

Elgg supports tagging across the site making it easy to find content.

Case Study – University of East London

Note: Per Rob’s comment to this post, the correct address is http://connecting.uel.ac.uk/

• wanted to implement social learning environment for two campuses
• formal social learning
• collaborative working at the university

She set up a barebones site for them to try out. Included a similar set of social media tools that she thought was important.

Created groups for projects and courses.

Wasn’t just for students or staff. Almost considered an intranet for the University. Connecting UEL took over the customization and “owned” the site. Came up with a new look and feel.

Now supports a single sign on (was an important aspect of using Elgg)

Discussion about what the term should be to call it: social networking system. This made it easier for buy in with the academics because they did not have to learn a new learning system (Blackboard is their LMS).

Set up a “Getting Started” section as a place to start on how to use the system.

UEL director feels happy with the system and feel they are leading the way with using social engines for learning in the UK.

Case Study: World Wide Funds for Nature (WWF)

Set them up with an Elgg powered site and they worked together to customize it and brand it with WFF color scheme.

Called it Learn2Perform.

Social learning and collaboration platform for WWF employees worldwide.

The company has worked hard to create an active community. Use blogs often.

350 users worldwide; quite a large number of groups have been set up by teams and for projects.

Groups are in the dashboard so they can go right to it.

Use this for their courses rather than an LMS.

Host information and interaction around live events.

“Welcome to WWF” groups for new staff to get integrated quickly into the company. Have access to induction resources before they begin working.

One of the problems is that Elgg or social networking network become to overlap with the internal intranet. This may become a problem that all professionals face. L&D will need to be more involved in intranet set up and use as intranets become more collaborative and learning spaces.

Lessons learned:

• platform choice is important (facebook, ning, and Elgg; comparison on her site)
• name of the site and description are important (social network, social environment)
• social network is not the best use of name
• naming of key aspects of the site
• piloting: make sure there is enough people to see if it really works
• let the site grow naturally and organically and not force it (slow steady growth is better than fast growth)
• promotion: viral marketing techniques (don’t tell everyone about it; work with discrete groups and then they talk about it; others then want to join up)
• usability: big issue; when people use a new system and have used other systems will be influenced by the previous system; users who have not had any social media are much quicker at getting up and running with a system like this (in her experience)
• success measures: how can you measure it?; focusing on the value that it brings to the group; she suggests that the groups determine if their group is successful or not rather than a blanket success measures across the board

Jane’s contact info:
Web: www.c4lpt.co.uk
SoLEARN:www.c4lpt.net
Email: jane.hart@c4lpt.co.uk
Twitter: @c4lpt

Technorati Tags: learntrends, jane hart, elgg, social learning environment

Dr. Seuss?

Well, yes. In his children’s books, he’s explained how to interact with a wide variety of people across many different situations. Dawn Foster, a Community Manager (amongst other wide and varied talents) demonstrates this interesting Seuss fact in the following Slideshare.

What I really liked about this book is that the authors, Alan Berg and Michael Korcuska,  took a large subject and made it readily accessible for several types of users: developers, administrators, instructional designers and instructors. But because the book covers so much for a variety of people, the reader (meaning me) may not truly comprehend all of what is read.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, actually.

Why? Well, I’m an instructional designer and while I may get the gist of web services and plugging Sakai into a variety of external systems (Chapter 11), that particular part of the book is really meant for the IT department (or a designer with a programming background). It was a tough read, for me at least, but I stuck it out and now have a better understanding of what it takes to hook Sakai into a larger network.

Therefore, anyone using Sakai or thinking about using Sakai should read this book from front to back, regardless of your position within your organization. You’ll get more out of it than you realize. I know I have and I’ve been using Sakai for about a year now.

Anyway, if you are an instructional designer or instructor using Sakai, you will appreciate Chapter 9: Putting Sakai to Work. The authors go over the tools and structure of Sakai but then also offer several different types of courses and how to set them up. For example, a problem based course may use the blog tool, the forums, or even the drop box whereas an introductory course would use Sections in addition to several tools to facilitate learning for a large student population. Of course, these are just ideas and suggestions but they are general enough that you get the idea of what can be accomplished with Sakai. Chapters 14 & 15 really bring this section to life and offer an idea of what it would look like in the real world.

If you are an administrator, though, you will definitely want to read Chapter 10 about the administrative workspace. It goes over the admin workspace in detail and the shows you how to set up Messages and permissions correctly. There’s even a section on using Java for those admins who can code. A nice feature is an interview with (wait for it) an actual administrator, Anthony Atkins!

Chapter 3 is a great look at the “bones” of the system whereas Chapter 6 is a detailed description of the quality control that the code must go through to actually make it into a live version. Both can be overwhelming if you aren’t technical but I suggest you read them anyway. At the very least it will give you an insight into why the tools are set up the way that they are.

Chapter 13 has quite a bit of code and delves into common error messages. For those in quality assurance, you’ll find this particular chapter enlightening. For those of us who aren’t, some of the “scary” error messages are explained in a way that makes sense.

The best part of the book, though, are the interviews (scattered throughout), Tips from the Trenches (Chapter 12) and Chapters 14 & 15 (Show Cases & Innovating Teaching and Learning with Sakai, respectively). It is one thing to talk about a program and how it works, it is something completely different to offer stories, vignettes, and real world examples to show it’s functionality. I think these sections are worth the price of admission considering the detailed information they offer on how award winning courses were set up in Sakai, and what worked/didn’t work.

That’s another thing that I enjoyed about this book: the authors don’t hold any punches. If something in Sakai is poorly made or done (the original blog tool, anyone?), then they share that information with you. There is also a short but amusing section on course migration in Chapter 12. Slightly amusing because course migration is a PIA at the best of times but also because I have had some experience with migrating across LMS systems and found that this section was, well, “kind” to this specific feature.

Anyway, I also particularly enjoyed Megan May’s interview in Tips from the Trenches in Chapter 12. She offers some solid advice on deploying Sakai, which is something I had to learn the hard way. But, if you are trying to sell Sakai to management, read over pages 378-379 in Chapter 16 before you make your pitch. The authors offer some good pointers on why Sakai is the best alternative for a CLE (collaborative learning environment).

In summary, this is a truly large book. Large not so much in pages but in ideas and complexity of purpose. I’m afraid this post would be twice as long if I discussed every aspect of this guide. Sakai Courseware Management has this unique ability to reach out to whoever you are in whichever job you do and give you a piece of information that will make working with Sakai that much easier. It also affords a sense of wonder at the sheer amount of man hours spend producing such an elegant piece of software. All for free because they love doing it. My hat is off to you, Sakaigeress*.

Thanks to PackT Publishing for offering me a chance to review this book.

Try before you buy: download Chapter 11: Web Services: Connecting to the Enterprise to get a general feel of the authors writing and instruction style.

* What’s a Sakaigeress? Read Chapter 18: Rogues Gallery to find out!

I also have a CCK09 PLN set up on NetVibes if you want to take a look at it!

Ken Anderson

Perhaps George’s Principles of connectivism may be the definition?

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Leila Nachawati

The Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge text by Stephen Downes included in the course is very helpful. Its description of networks helped me understand the concept of networking and therefore connectivism. I´ve summarized this part that I found particularly enlightning:

What characterizes a network (vs. other entities, like groups) is:

- Diversity: The process involves the widest possible spectrum of points of view, there is interaction between people who approach the matter from a different perspective.

- Autonomy: Individual knowers contribute to the interaction according to their own knowledge, values and decisions (as opposed to acting at the behest of some external agency)

- Connectedness: The knowledge being produced comes from an interaction between the members (not from an aggregation of the member´s perspectives)

- Openness: There is a mechanism that allows a given perspective to enter the system, to be heard and interacted with others.

Steven Verjans

I think the table that George posted in this Google doc is very informative as to the differences between connectivism and other learning theories.

However, I would like to argue that connectivism and other learning theories are not mutually exclusive, but that they describe different learning modes. I made a first attempt in this blogpost to provide some arguments.

Minh McCloy

How about the nots of connectivism? This is as I understand them from Stephen’s Ustream intro – any misrepresentations are mine – don’t hold them against him.

Knowledge is not built or constructed.
As learners we do not make meaning.
Knowledge is not composed of sentences ie it is not propositional.
Knowledge is not transferable nor is it a transaction. Knowledge is not a thing.

And my nutshell understanding of what it is:

Knowledge emerges from the connections; connectivism draws our attention to the networks.

Conctructivism	Connectivism
Legos by WoodleyWonderWorks on Flickr	Magnetx by StevenKing on sxc.hu
Legos	Magnetix

I’m of two minds about my attempt to decipher what connectivism is. On one hand, the above attempt could be considered constructivist since I did, after all, “construct” meaning through logic and language (image and text). On the other hand, I could argue that my attempt was also connectivist since, according to Downes, it was an attempt to create a “set of connections formed by actions and experience.”

Do you agree with my statements? Am I even on the right track to comprehending this slippery thing called connectivism?

Please join soon as space is limited!

But, have you ever considered Twittering yourself?

It hadn’t even occurred to me until today after I sent my resume into a large education company here in the States.

On Twitter, you can find people by their name which is a good way to find colleagues, experts in a particular field, and friends or family. But have you done so with your own name?

I imagine if you have a fairly common name, like my sister, you will find many people popping up. I, on the other, hand only have two other dopplegangers tweeting (I own three of the five accounts that pop up).

So, while you may be thinking “so what?”, I’m guessing that bad press is, well, bad for you. That includes tweets from people you don’t know but share a name with. While I don’t have a perfect answer for how to overcome a flow of information you cannot control, I am going to do the following:

• change my personal account name to something different since it is, after all, personal
• make sure my avatar is consistent for business purposes that way there is a visual identifier even when the name is the same
• be positive/neutral/truthful in my remarks because Mama always said if you don’t have anything nice to say, for God’s sake don’t tweet about it

Have any other suggestions on damage control or positive spin for “twittering” your name?