Activate Learning

You are here: Home / Vlogging / This Week’s Snap Stories of Personal Learning Week of 27 March 2017

by

This Week’s Snap Stories of Personal Learning Week of 27 March 2017

Here are the snap stories of the week of 27 March.  For some reason Monday seems to have disappeared which is unfortunate because I had a rant about the two fundamental skills of any modern worker that have been the most useful to me.

These skills were:

  1. Building a Personal Learning Network; and,
  2. Personal Knowledge Mastery (see more about PKM by checking out Harold Jarche’s (@hjarche) great blog Life in Perpetual Beta).

Of course, to any person in any business, both of these are meaningless (what I have learned is to keep things simple so I just say that my skills were to “build a network” and “get smarter in finding stuff”) so I got a bit frustrated that I wasn’t making inroads with people who don’t “get it”.  By “it” I mean online networking and collaboration behaviours and briefly contemplated whether I should just leave the Learning and Development field entirely and move into Marketing (however, I’m told that some people there don’t “get it” either).

What inspired this rant? (The one time I’m glad that Snapchat got rid of my snaps after 24 hours….)  

Well interestingly, I started to use a simple analogy to describe a particular new curation platform at work in order for the business to understand it.

Before I knew it, many people started referring to this analogy quite openly to others.

I think I was more annoyed at myself for not simply explaining my own work and Activate Learning Solutions business in terms that people understand.  I kept sticking with the ‘learning’ and ‘performance’ and it dawned on me that I needed something else – something inspiring? Something engaging? Something different.  Words that a marketer would use. Not a learning and development person.

Let’s face it, “learning” brings up negative connotations of classrooms.  So this was my rant for Monday and for whatever reason, my snapchat story got swallowed up (but more like I accidentally deleted it). Just as well… I was getting kinda emotional in the video. The ups and downs of being in my own business and the realisation that my focus was ALL WRONG.

People want the sizzle not the sausage.

People want someone like Tony Robbins or Gary Vee to inspire them – not some nerdy woman close to middle age and who likes to knit QR codes telling them about the importance of taking charge of your personal learning.

So I made a little pact with myself to never mention the word “learning” when explaining my work. It’s going to be pretty difficult because, hey, I’m ActivateLearn. *shakes head and roll eyes*

So here’s Tuesday instead.

Tuesday 28 March 2017

Today was Tuesday Book Club and I did a review of Data Driven, a book that I strongly recommend for any Learning and Development professionals to take a performance-based approach to their work. I read the book over the course of one weekend after seeing it on a colleague’s desk.  Although the title doesn’t inspire interest, the book was written in such a way that it’s quite readable and you can’t help but see yourself in the scenarios presented.  It’s all about using data to make effective decision around what solutions to implement.  I also panelled

I also panelled PSK Event Neuroscience in Organisations which was fantastic.  It was the first time I was a moderator and I loved the experience of being able to ask questions and tie in the concepts to everyone’s talk.  The audience was highly participatory asking many questions and overall, time just flew.

The Periscope Broadcast is here: https://www.periscope.tv/LearnKotch/1OwxWPdBkmWKQ?t=1m39s and https://www.periscope.tv/LearnKotch/1yoJMezdNkdJQ?

Wednesday 29 March 2017 Work Out Loud Wednesday

Today was a doozy.  I talked about my process for coming up with a Content Curation Strategy.  I step through my thinking about how I’m going to tackle my brief.  I am determined NOT to go into solution mode and already set up many interviews with the business to start the ball rolling in trying to understand the gap of content curation skills in the business – but also understanding the value that this new capability brings to the organisation and what that may translate to with regards to results.

For whatever reasons, my follower count has jumped and more people are following my channel.  This is neither an aim for me nor something I’m actively pursuing.  If anything, I’m using Snapchat simply as my own ‘on the go’ video editor where I can capture my thoughts, what I’m working on, what I’m learning as well as snippets of my day especially now, where I simply don’t have as much time as I had in the past to blog.

The other amazing thing about Snapchat is that I’ve built a small little community who follow and respond to my snaps and I’m constantly meeting people around the world and learning about what they do. For example, today I chatted with someone from Alaska – an Alaskan Athanabascan. How cool was that? Never in my wildest dreams would I have met anyone from Alaska – me in the southern most tip of the earth and she from the north.

The world is an amazing place and I simply cannot fathom the idea of why some people hate social media or can’t see its value in building personal learning networks.  It defies belief that people are denying themselves wonderful opportunities to network and connect with people from all around the world. Or that they’re afraid to experiment, or explore or worse, think it’s a waste of time.  I JUST DON’T GET IT. 

Thursday 30 March 2017

Today I attended the Melbourne Learning Summit.  I had no idea that this event was around my local area.  It is a closed LinkedIn Group of Melbourne Learning and Development Managers.  Hosted by LinkedIn, we gathered at their funky Melbourne office and had a presentation on Growth Mindsets and the importance of Learning and Development practitioners being open to change and working closely with the business.  Much was mentioned about Human Centred Design and as someone who has been doing this for years (through Human Performance Technology) I wondered about the overlap of this model with the more funky, more marketable, more sizzle term of “Human Centred Design”… see what I’m saying?

So that’s my week.

Next week, we are resuming normal Snapchat viewing.  My focus is on building the Content Curation Strategy, Framework, Practices and Principles for the organisation and I’m quite excited about this type of work.  I don’t envy the work of any Curator in an Organisation because if I find it difficult curating and building networks to tap me into content that supports me for my own work; I can imagine how difficult it would be for someone who curates for organisations themselves – and having to consider things like organisational social media policies, content within to meet code of conduct guidelines; and curate content of all types to cater for different people.

Curating for one is hard enough.  Curating for many deserves respect. 

 

 

Never miss a post! Subscribe to our mailing list to receive curated blog posts.