I recently read Rutger Bregaman’s book Utopia for Realists and How We Can Get There. Here is my review of his book: We are currently living in the best period of life and we can construct a society now with the best ideas – that strangely, aren’t new ideas at all. His big ideas are […]
Notes on The Old Man & The Sea
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” – The Old Man & The Sea – Ernest Hemingway Sometimes when you pick a book out of your shelf without preparation, without knowing what the book is about, or knowing what to […]
Notes on What Is to Be Done by Barry Jones
“I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for” [Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 1881) The following is an outline of the chapter and headings of his book. Preface Explains his first book Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the future of work which was published in 1982 where explained what we […]
Notes from a World Without Work
Here are my notes from Daniel Susskind’s A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond. Introduction Introduces John Maynard Keynes term “technological unemployment” (link points to the data of this happening in Australia in coming years) as in what the progress had done to horses would eventually do to human beings to […]
Reading Challenge for 2020
My year in 2020 consisted of a LOT of reading much of it due to being in lockdown for much of it. Every year, I set myself up a Reading Challenge using the GoodReads app. Over the years, the pace of reading books has increased however, it means it’s at the expense of doing some […]
What is Life Long Learning?
Although this is not a definition I looked up anywhere but basing it on my own understanding and my own experience of it, I would say lifelong learning is the practice of continuing learning through your entire life. It’s not entangled with the trivialities of the questions of ‘what’, ‘how’ and even ‘who’ is responsible. […]
Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights – Book Notes
Why did I read this book? Gifted book Saw people talking about it on my Twitter timeline People rave about this book and wanted to see what the fuss was about. Initial Thoughts Entirely all story based from current and historical stories of advances in different fields from politics, history, medicine, police, finance. First story […]
Book Tube Reviews
I love to read. A couple of years back I decided to read more fiction as a means of getting my focus back and I wrote about it in the post Reading Books as Sense Making. At the same time, I was also watching many Book Tubers review their books online so I thought I’d […]
The Expertise Economy – Book Club
Started the Expertise Economy by @kellylpalmer today with big thanks to @srjf for pointing me out to it. It’s my Christmas reading. So far, so good! pic.twitter.com/oRG8yRNDSy — Helen Blunden #AlwaysBeLearning????? (@ActivateLearn) December 24, 2019 The following are my responses to Simon Fogg’s (@srjf) book club questions for The Expertise Economy by David Blake and […]
We Wrote a Book on Microsoft Teams But Who’s It For?
This morning I put down some thoughts into Twitter about who may benefit from buying our book that we wrote at Adopt & Embrace on Microsoft Teams. I wanted to collect my tweets here before they got lost into the Twittersphere Never Miss a Blog – Subscribe to Receive a Monthly Email Email Address First […]
Doing A Booktube
I’ve written a lot in recent times about getting some of my time back to get my headspace out of thinking and talking about work all the time (at times it felt I was thinking about learning and development 24/7 and my mind had to take a break). The way I’ve been doing this is […]
Reading Books as Sense Making
Many of you already know about my return to fiction reading after becoming so frustrated with reading only what other people were reading in the area of Learning and Development, Marketing, Business and Entrepreneurship. I think I reached a saturation point with those because it was the same people talking about the same books, talking […]
The Lieutenant
Last year I became obsessed with learning all I could about how Australia was settled. My interest in Australian history was inspired by an Australian author David Hunt who wrote Girt. I had gone to the publishing event of his second book True Girt at Black Inc in Hawthorn where the audience asked him questions […]
Work Book Clubs As Social Learning Experiences
I’m putting it out there. I don’t understand people who say that they never read books – or even worse, “never have time to read a book”. They may as well say that they don’t value their own growth and personal development. The easiest way to learn something new and incorporate it into our lives […]
This Week’s Snap Stories of Personal Learning Week of 18 September 2017
Here are this week’s snap stories of personal learning commencing 18 September 2017. Monday 18 September 2017 Today while waiting for a family member to have a day operation in hospital, I decided to work out from the hospital cafe to prevent me driving back and forth from home. On the hospital walls, they had […]
Books, Books and More Books
Ever since I was a young girl, I loved to read. My parents used to say that I carried a book everywhere. This hasn’t changed but rather than carry a book, I carry a library. Having all your books on one device is both a blessing and a nightmare. Confronted with so many choices to read, […]
Book Review: The Online Learning Idea Book by Patti Shank
For my May review, I thought I would look through my bookshelf and decide on a book that was relevant to the work that I am doing today. As my project work ramps up with the company I am contracted to, delivering training to employees in two countries is going to be challenging so it […]
Book Review: Preparing Instructional Objectives: A Critical Tool in the Development of Effective Instruction by Robert Mager
Obviously I am taking my new year resolution to read all my reference books in my well-stocked library at home and write a review on each of them seriously. One of the most critical skills for an instructional developer to have is to write effective instructional objectives. I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost count […]
Book Review: Analyzing Performance Problems or You Really Oughta Wanna, How to Figure Out Why People Aren’t Doing What They Should Be, and What To Do About It by Robert F. Mager and Peter Pipe
Long title I know but if the authors haven’t given you an idea that this book MUST be in your Instructional Design reference library than I don’t know what else I can do to alert you to this fact. Many years ago when I was a young Instructional Designer in the Royal Australian Navy, we […]
Book Review: The New Social Learning by Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham
Training often gives people solutions to problems already solved. Collaboration addresses challenges no one has overcome before. Last week, I overheard a colleague say that she saw a post on Yammer regarding a customer service situation that occured in the company. She communicated this to the Change and Communications team sitting near her and queried […]