Back in 2013, I was working for the National Australia Bank and part of the Digital Learning Team responsible for the rollout of skills programs in virtual facilitation, virtual meetings and Learning How to Learn Online for the entire bank. Our team designed and developed the suite of these courses (I remember those Facilitator Guides […]
Mass Deletions & Deactivations
It’s time for a massive rethink on how I use social media which is providing me with precious little value anymore. In this post I share how I will focus more on creation and sensemaking.
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. […]
Learning Uncut Podcast
Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Michelle Ockers (@MichelleOckers) who has the Learning Uncut podcast. New #LearningUncut Ep 67 explores #Collaboration & #SocialLearning, reducing reliance on “go-to” people in organisations, supporting people to connect, work and learn in digital spaces & so much more. For full Ep highlights click here: https://t.co/gceygOPIgh #Podcast […]
Capturing Video Testimonials
Sometimes we make things really hard don’t we? One of the things we’ve been trying to do is to capture success stories from customers that minimised the to and fro that goes with planning interview times, recording, editing and approving. To share stories of how you go through a process or how you overcame some […]
Without Feedback There Ain’t No Learning
For a while now I’ve been thinking “without feedback, there ain’t no learning”. Why? As you know, I’ve been learning French. I started this year taking a more self-directed approach to the language before realising that I can’t escape the fact that I need to speak it – and by speaking I mean having someone – […]
When Learning Is Hard
This year has been quite a ride when it comes to new learning. Much of it has absolutely nothing to do with communities or corporate Learning and Development. It’s all personal stuff building new skills and capabilities in my work and daily tasks. In my role as Community Manager, I’m also helping out in various […]
A Little Bit of Creativity Every Day
I’ve been enjoying the daily process of creating a video to share what it is I’m working and learning. Although I don’t create these every day, I’ve changed the way I capture these (I used to capture them on Instagram Stories and before that, Snapchat). Now, I simply use the video camera on my phone […]
Thread Helper
I like investigating new tools that help me with my work and learning. I’ve been using Twitter for many years and in recent times, I have been strongly deliberating whether to stay on it or leave. It’s true that I have made many friends on this platform and build a great network of people around […]
Learning Day
Yesterday we had our Learning Day at the company I work for, Adopt & Embrace. We value personal and professional learning and as such we dedicate four full days every year to this. We can set aside our work and our client work (if not urgent), to focus on all aspects of our mandatory compliance, […]
Creating My Daily Stories Old School
This morning I decided to do my “work out loud” story using my phone camera and video editing software on my phone rather than using Instagram Stories (or in the past, I used Snapchat stories). The reason is that as I have an old phone (iPhone 6), Instagram is now becoming glitchy on it and […]
Resources I Use to Learn French
Many people on Twitter have asked me what resources I’ve been using to learn French recently. Others have also shared their own resources and apps they use to learn a language. I marvel at the huge amount of resources we have available – mostly free and readily available to learn a language. I have written […]
Importance of Feedback When Using Video
Many of you already know that for some years since 2016, I have been showing and sharing my work and learning out loud using Snapchat as the video editor of choice. Since early 2019, I stopped using Snapchat because it came too glitchy on my phone. When I first started using it over 4 years […]
Writing a Book
This year we are writing a new book at Adopt & Embrace. Although the topic will be a surprise as more details will be revealed in the coming months, once again, it’s a collaborative effort. In the past, I have contributed to various books that have been published by authors in the Learning and Development […]
Learning Active Campaign
One of the things I have been learning at work is about marketing campaigns. I’m the Community Manager for Adopt & Embrace and as part of the role, I am responsible for looking at ways to have the community be continually aware of what it in there by way of interesting and informative discussions and […]
Learning Power Automate
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of personal learning during lockdown in the following topics: Professional: Power Automate (as a starting point to understand flows and automations BEFORE I learn and build any Power Apps) Active Campaign (campaign marketing software that uses a lot of automations and in some way glad to learn Power Automate […]
How Effective Are Newsletters as Personal Learning Resources?
A couple of days ago, Ramses Oudt @rroudt tweeted an excellent question on Twitter that generated a discussion concerning who writes newsletters focussed on learning how to learn. You can see the thread here which has some recommendations although I might add that many of them aren’t about tips, techniques and strategies for learning how […]
Cleaning Up My LinkedIn Feed
Right. Tired that LinkedIn automatically makes me follow everyone and what they “like”. I like to be in control of what I see in my feed. Found this piece of code and now going to do a mass unfollowing. pic.twitter.com/BUpwG6RTOz — Helen Blunden #AlwaysBeLearning ????? (@ActivateLearn) May 11, 2020 Recently I decided to clean up […]
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 […]
Daily Story Making
I’ve been working out loud since 2016 using daily video stories to show and share the in-moment work and learning I’m doing and in recent times, I’ve just realised how valuable these have been not only to record my daily existence but also for my mental health and well being. You can see them all […]