Many of the readers of this blog know that I love knitting. It’s one of my long time passions that I have and a craft that is relatively self taught through many years of trial and error. Every year, knitters from around Australia look forward to the National Wool and Sheep Show that takes place […]
How to Play the Ukulele in Less than 10 000 Hours
Many of you know that I am learning to play the ukulele. I started back in February 2014 and in my post “Learning a New Skill – Ukulele Dreaming” I write how it was an impulse buy and how I ‘fell’ into learning to play this nifty little instrument. Now, although many times I may […]
Do The Pecha Kucha
I don’t know about you, but every single time someone mentions “Pecha Kucha” I think about the Horrible Histories song about the Incan Lord “Pachakuti”… Do the “Pecha Kucha” (it’s quite a catchy song)… Horrible Histories – Pachacuti from Matty driver on Vimeo. Pecha Kucha actually has nothing to do with Incas. In fact, they are […]
How Do You Explain Social to Learning and Development Teams?
The most frequent questions I am asked by corporate Learning and Development managers who are seeking my services in skilling up their teams for social learning are: “Can you help our Learning Development team implement social learning into our current programs?” “Can you run a short social learning workshop/webinar/session/presentation for us?” and, “What’s the best social learning system […]
How do you remain relevant in a changing world? Day 1 of Work Out Loud
Well the first day of International Work Out Loud Day is nearly over. I started my week day in a way that I always do – by an hour of walking listening to business related podcasts. This morning I listened to Chris Ducker’s The New Business Podcast – Startup and Small Business Marketing NBP105 on […]
How to Knit a Compelling Story in an Age of Change
One of the biggest questions I (as well as many others in my personal learning network – PLN) have been asking is, “how come we ‘GET’ social and others don’t?” I’ve been asking this same question over and over in my head and I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave over […]
The Village Square
Some years ago I had travelled to Greece, the country of my heritage and landed in Crete. It was the first time I had travelled to Greece and I remember that even though I could speak the language and shared the customs and traditions, there were still many elements that remained foreign and curious to me […]
How to Use Social Tools To Create Learning Experiences
Last week I delivered a webinar for a public service organisation who requested a presentation to their Learning and Development teams on how to use social tools to create learning experiences. I think it went well. (At least, I hope it did! The organiser did say that the attendees were madly scribbling notes and I did get […]
Reflections of Exploring Personal Learning Networks MOOC
Five weeks ago, I started the Exploring Personal Learning Networks cMOOC with enthusiasm and expectation. Jeff Merrell (@JeffMerrell) and I had organised to meet via Google Hangout to have a chat about this but of course, our firewall prevented that from happening as it was during work hours. Instead, we talked via teleconference and I […]
What We Can Learn from Craft Networks: Social Learning in Action
Last weekend, a small group of eight ladies from one of my Craft groups (I’m a member of two) hired out a beautiful house called The Retreat in Woodend, a delightful country town. Even though we meet weekly to share our knowledge and expertise in our respective crafts, we have these getaways to leave our […]
Meeting my Online Community Service Network Face-to-Face for the First Time
For those of you who know me, I have a personal blog and a professional blog and decided a long time ago to keep them both separated. After all, do you really want to learn of my interests and ramblings that aren’t related to learning? Do you really want to know about my community service […]
What I Learned about Social Learning came from….Knitters
Many of us have interests and hobbies that make us use our hands and inspire creativity and satisfaction from having made something from scratch. Whether it’s cooking, woodwork or painting, there’s a feeling that cannot be replicated by any office job. For me, it’s knitting. I’ve been knitting for over 35 years having started the […]
An Old Coaching Framework Comes Good in the New World…Part 2
Some time ago I wrote a blog post on the implementation of an instructional coaching model for structured workbased learning found here: http://activatelearning.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/an-old-coaching-framework-come-good-in-a-new-world/ It’s been a couple of weeks now and already we have some results from that I’d like to share but we are far from finished. I could start off the blog post […]
From Training to Performance to Social – My Personal Learning Journey
Some years ago, my husband and I visited the theme parks on the Gold Coast in Queensland to get some thrills on some of the scary rides. One particular ride at Dreamworld consists of a track that seems to extend high up in the air. You sit in the open air carriage and are jettisoned […]
An Old Coaching Framework Comes Good in a New World
In my current role as an instructional designer on a transformation project, the business has undergone radical change in the recent months. In the past, teams completed processes they had been doing for years and were subject matter experts in their own areas. When something didn’t work, they created their own ‘fix-it’ approach that may […]