Many of you may know that for the last few months or so, I have been looking for people who show their work on Snapchat. I recently wrote about it in my blog post titled: Reflections of Snapchat Through Facebook Mutterings. You might ask, why did I do this? The answer is that I didn’t […]
Learning and Working Together in an Intergenerational Film Crew
Many of you may already know that this year, I took part in an Intergenerational Film Project that was sponsored and supported by our local government, the City of Kingston as a community service project. I wrote about it in my posts titled the Benefits of Working With Different Generations and How Working Out Loud Inspires […]
Is Instructional Design Dead?
Is Instructional Design Dead was recently published (in an edited format) in the Training Journal on 10th June 2016. So here’s the full post including my personal reflections (which weren’t in the original Training Journal article). Judging by the amount of articles on the internet written by people who have worked, or are working in […]
Interview with Kim Goodwin from Craft Victoria
You may or may not be aware that I’m a roving reporter for LearningNow TV. I was kindly asked by Colin Steed (@ColinSteed) and Nigel Paine (@ebase) some time ago to provide short reports to this live internet television channel dedicated to people in the Learning and Development in large and small organisations. Last month, […]
My Top 10 Learning Tools for 2016
Play the drum roll sound because it’s that time of year again to share with you My Top 10 Learning Tools for 2016 in Jane Hart’s survey. (Entries close on 3 October 2016 so you still have heaps of time to submit yours!). Every year I submit my learning tools to this survey as it’s […]
Creating a Community Managers Program
For the last two weeks, I’ve been head down tapping away on my keyboard creating a Community Managers Program for a client’s Learning and Development team. Although I cannot share the details of how I created this or what elements I used to do so in the blog due to confidentiality, it’s been an opportunity […]
Jay Cross Memorial Award
Imagine my surprise this week when I heard that I was awarded the inaugural Jay Cross Memorial Award from the Internet Time Alliance. You know when someone tells you something so unbelievable that it takes a few seconds to register before the penny drops? Well that was me this week. I was soon overwhelmed (in a positive […]
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 […]
I See Desk People
Who can forget that 1999 supernatural thriller starring Bruce Willis called Sixth Sense? For a while there, the movie started a trend of people going around and saying to each other in spooky voices…”I see dead people”. We recall this particular line because of the twist at the end of the movie that left audiences stunned. […]
Practices That Don’t Serve Our Clients
Ever since I can remember, every role I’ve had within corporate Learning and Development teams has involved some element of systematising an internal process such as capturing the client enquiry through to servicing the client. These processes were usually focussed inward towards the L&D department as a way to explain our value by measuring our activity. They were […]
A Weekend Learning to Create Short Movies
This weekend I learned to create short movies. I was stuck indoors as it was pretty cold and miserable. I’m not one to go out often unless there’s a specific reason to but the cold weather gave me an excuse to catch up with my reading as well as learning how to use iMovie on […]
Discovering the State of Stillness
On Thursday night I started the More Than Meditation Course through the Lewis Institute of Health and Wellbeing. I was kindly invited by Dr. Daniel Lewis (@Paths2Wellbeing) to attend the course and I agreed. After all, I meditated in the past through group sessions at my local gym and downloaded some apps like Smiling Mind and my personal favourite Andrew Johnson’s […]
How Do You Innovate the Public Service?
Today I attended the GovCamp Dialogue as part of the Public Service Innovation Month (#psinnovate15). The panel @benrimmer2010 @CoraltRoss @Sara_Rice @sarahtmb @rmyardley @AlunProbert #psinnovate15 #gcau pic.twitter.com/4lwnYzDYGo — Helen Blunden (@ActivateLearn) July 23, 2015 The last time I was employed by a public service organisation was over 24 years ago but I have many friends and […]
“Promoting Empathy By Sharing Perspective”
Many people are aware that I watch Casey Niestat’s daily videos as part of my morning routine before I start any work for the day. It’s morning walk, breakfast, coffee, Casey, work – in that order. But why? Ever since I saw his video called Casey’s Wildly Functional Studio a few months back, I was hooked. Here was […]
How to Map Your Personal Learning Network Using Mind Maps and Twitter Lists
Over the weekend, I decided to map out my Personal Learning Network. I had been thinking of doing this for a while so that I could see where there were gaps in my networks to form new relationships and connections with people who were specialists in areas that interest me – either for my own learning or as […]
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 […]
Yammer for Learning & Networking
Many people have asked me what I have been doing now that I’m out of the corporate world and smack bang into the freelance consulting world. It’s now been four weeks out of a 9 to 5 job and the best thing about my new lifestyle is that I don’t have the dreaded commute every morning battling […]
Are You a Twitter Wally?
Here’s a nifty little tool for your next conference or workshop. It’s called TweetWally. I liked the name. Wally – hence I thought it was worth 15 minutes of my time playing around on it. Okay 5. With Australian vernacular, a “wally” is someone who keeps making mistakes but it’s said in a friendly, endearing […]
What’s My Niche…Part 2
For the last few weeks, I have been busy planning. You should see my study walls filled sticky whiteboard paper with my ideas of what I can ‘package up’ and start to sell. It’s been a creative and stimulating time as I let my ideas get ahead of me but at the same time, it’s […]
What Have I Been Up To This Week?
It’s been a ripper of a week. I was introduced to new ideas and discussions that got me excited so I thought I’d cover them off in one blog post although I could easily write a post about each interaction. Skype with @twofacedHR Lady Vanessa Wiltshire It seems awkward to write her Twitter handle (because she […]