Michele's Personal Learning Project

Learning Project Update

2008-02-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

An interesting week on the personal learning front. I ended up writing an entire series of articles for The Bamboo Project based on my case study with Shari. So from a blog posting point of view, I did a combination of case study/how-to blogging. Shari is also writing a guest post about the experience from her perspective so we can get a little bit more into the mind of a "newbie," although Shari is pretty tech-savvy--or at least completely fearless once she has an idea of what she wants to do.

I'd intended to publicize the survey this week, but decided to wait until next week to start collecting information.

This week I did a conference for Job Corps--280 staff. In each session we discussed wikis, blogging, etc. in terms of career development and job searching. In most cases their awareness of the technology seemed to break down along age lines. The younger folks were all into social media (they actually found me for the training through a Google search that turned up my blog and LinkedIn profile), while the "older" ones (many of whom were younger than me), usually didn't know what any of this was.

What was slightly disturbing about this is that their target audience is 16-24. But I know from past experience that 1) many are technophobes and 2) there's a tight control on Internet access that makes some school districts looking like Internet Shangri-la. These don't generally combine to create a high quality Web 2.0 experience.

Web 2.0 and Job Search: Some Options

2008-02-08T10:14:00.001-08:00

Just finished my second call with Shari, my Web 2.0 case study. We discussed her priorities in job searching right now and then reviewed some potential options for addressing them.

Organizing the Job Search and Locating Job Leads
One of Shari's needs was to create a dashboard for conducting her job search. She'd already signed up for a gmail account, so what made the most sense was to show her how she could use i-Google to set up a customized job search page. We could have also considered Pageflakes or Netvibes, but I'm operating from the belief that it's better to connect to what people know and are already using.

Over the phone I talked Shari through setting up her i-Google page and adding the tabs. One of the advantages of i-Google is that it has a lot of widgets (they call them gadgets) that are related to job search (Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Indeed.com, etc.) so when Shari created her "Job Search Sites" tab, she was able to automatically add those gadgets to the tab. Now she just has to type in her search terms and all in one place she'll have constantly updated leads.

To further organize things, we discussed how she could add:

Bookmarks to the job search sites that don't have RSS feeds (many of them) and to her online portfolio.
A Mapquest widget so that she can see how close jobs are to her or quickly get directions for interviews.
A dictionary gadget--she says that she's always looking up words.

Then I walked her through setting up her Google calendar (which she's also embedding into her i-Google page), including showing her how she could get her daily agenda automatically emailed to her each morning. She loved that one.

I also showed her how to set up Google Alerts and we talked about how she could use them to monitor what was being said about her online, as well as to keep an eye on specific companies or trends. She immediately set up a vanity alert.

Finally, I showed her how to use Jott. This will be a great option for Shari because she's a self-proclaimed talker and Jott will let her create emails, blog posts and calendar updates using voicemail.

She's not sure if she wants to use her Gmail account in her job search, but I told her that if she did, I could show her some tricks with labels and filtering that she might want to use to further automate some of her job search activities.

Professional Branding
Shari's other key need right now is to start marketing herself to potential employers. She's currently meeting with a career coach to come up with her "unique selling proposition," which is something she'll need to start branding herself. She wants to have both an online portfolio and a blog, so I suggested that we start with setting up her portfolio so she could begin organizing and loading her materials while she continues to think through her brand. Once she has that in place, we can then look at setting up her blog and how she wants to have it support her brand.

I suggested that Wikispaces would be a good place to start for creating an online portfolio, so I walked her through setting up a site and showed her how to create new pages, edit, embed widgets, etc. She has a lot of presentations so I also showed her Slideshare, which can be both a good way for her to be able to embed her presentations into her portfolio, but is also a form of networking/marketing for her.

Her goal will be to start loading up this working version of her portfolio. Next week, after she's met again with her coach, we'll discuss how she can begin to get more targeted by creating employer-specific portfolios that highlight the skills and achievements related to different jobs. We'll also be looking at setting up a blog. I'm thinking we'll be using Blogger for that--keeping it all in the Google family. Although I'm going to give her the Wordpress.com option, too. I like the tabs in that, which might lend themselves better to Shari's purposes.

Key Learning

Shari told me that discussing all of these tools in the specific context of a concrete need was a huge help. Rather than some general, "aren't these cool?" kind of discussion, I could show her in a very clear way how these tools could benefit her. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, they made her feel excited and energized because she could see the clear connection specific to her situation. It probably didn't hurt that needing to find another job feels really compelling--more compelling I think than needing to stay updated for job you already have.

I walked Shari through a lot of the set-ups, each of us clicking through on our own computers. Because she's fairly tech savvy, this worked for us, but if she'd been less comfortable with technology, I would have needed to use some kind of screen-sharing option.

Shari seems like a pretty adventurous person, willing to try things out and give them a chance. That's helping in this process too.

I'm trying to show her a lot of examples. I think this is contributing to showing the relevance.

This is an interesting process and clearly it helps to provide more coaching and opportunities for discussion.

Learning from My Web 2.0 Survey

2008-02-08T03:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since I posted because I've been working on pulling together a survey for my project. I'd forgotten how time-consuming it can be to get the right format and questions going.

I ended up with a few different versions of the thing. Fortunately Christine Martell volunteered to give my survey the once-over because version 1 missed the mark in a lot of ways. During our call on it I began to wonder what exactly I'd been thinking when I pulled the questions together. I had two major issues with the first version:

Not asking the questions I needed to
Not having the questions in a user-friendly response format

These are, of course, deadly flaws that I think were fixed in the next round.

I'm planning to launch the survey next week, both by sending it around to some key people, as well as putting it on The Bamboo Project to be shared. The survey is here.

On a tool note, I used Survey Gizmo, which I've grown to love. I use the free version and I'm consistently amazed at how full-featured it is. I particularly like the range of question types I can ask and the fact that there's a reporting feature that will tabulate all my data. I also have a choice of export formats I can use if I want to pull my data over. VERY helpful and its ease of use and features actually makes me want to do more surveys. Great tool that I highly recommend.

Entry into Social Media for Learning--Is Blogging the Best Route?

2008-02-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

One of my big questions right now is what is the best way to enter into using social media for learning. I've talked to a few "newbies" now and all have found their way into this space through blogging, which is how I started as well.

In an interview yesterday with someone who's agreed to be one of my case studies, she talked about starting to blog through a group blog. Some of her observations:

She's a "talker" so she likes blogging as a way to share her thoughts and engage in conversation.

Some email exchanges have begun as a result of her blogging efforts, but she'd also like more interaction through the blog.

She's been coached through the blogging process by someone who has had some experience and that's been helpful.

She had some previous experience in Dreamweaver, so making connections between blogging, word processing and HTML that she'd learned in Dreamweaver have also helped ease the blogging transition.

Right now she's in a career transition, so we're working on how these tools can help her find job leads and market herself to potential employers. We're looking at:

Setting up a job search dashboard using a portal approach like i-Google or Netvibes.

Creating an online portfolio, similar to Beth Kanter's portfolio.

Having her start her own blog, as right now she blogs primarily for a group.

Setting up a social media resume as a potential portal into her portfolio, etc. I sent her samples and within an hour, she sent me back the beginnings of one, so clearly Google Page Creator is fairly user-friendly, although I'm sure it helps that she's had previous experiences with HTML.

I'm in the process of setting up a plan for working together. I'm also looking at creating an email survey and an online survey to get some more info from other newbies.

Key Questions

2008-02-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

These are some of the questions I have right now:

Why aren't a lot of people using Web 2.0 tools for learning and professional development?

Do they not know about the tools?

Do they know about them but find them difficult to use?

Do they tend to see learning as more event-based and therefore something that is supported mainly through workshops and classes, rather than through an ongoing process like blogging or reading RSS feeds?

What different learning needs do people feel they have that could be addressed with online tools?

What about documenting learning and professional development online--what do people think about online portfolios?

What are the skills that people need to develop in order to get the most out of the tools? I did some previous thinking about this before--how does this tie in?

What would motivate people to start using the tools? Are they even necessary in the ways I think they are?

What are the entry points into using these tools for people? I started blogging before I started using RSS, but other people might want to start with RSS and Google Alerts. Others might start with a personal landing page or with using del.icio.us. What's the best way of educating people when there are so many different ways to come to this stuff?

What can we do do to facilitate better relationships between those who are more technologically advanced and those who are new to the technology? I'm noticing a definite sense of frustration on the part of those who have been using tech and I fear that this is part of what slows the process--no one wants to feel like they're being told they're an idiot if they don't adopt these tools.

Thoughts on the Blog Posting Formats and Structuring the Learning Process

2008-02-03T14:46:00.001-08:00

Right now, these are some of the ideas I have for how I want to use the different blog posting formats to study this issue:

I want to do some learning profiles of and interviews with people who are interested in using social media for learning, but who haven't had many experiences with the technology. Related to this, I'm considering putting together and disseminating a survey, although the down-side of using this format for information-gathering is that my target audience may not be reading blogs!

I'd also like to do at least one case study, working with someone in identifying their learning needs and issues, identifying the tools and processes that will best work for them and then coaching them through the process. I want to document how it goes, potentially using multimedia, too--I think it would be great to have audio, for example.

It would be interesting to have a case study participant do a guest post on what it feels like to use these tools to really get a feel for what it's like since it's so easy to forget once you're immersed in all this stuff.

Related to the guest post idea--I like the idea of having an advice post or series of posts from someone who's new to social media for learning giving advice to those of us who've been around for awhile on how we could better help them.

A contrasting options post would be good for making some comparisons between different types of tools for particular needs.

Ultimately I'm thinking that a series of instructional posts may be the outcome of this whole process--I definitely know that I want some kind of product to result from all this, although exactly what it would be is still evolving for me.

My Previous Thinking

2008-02-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

This is a collection of the posts I've already written related to newbies and social media.

The Social Media Spiral

The Social Media Spiral Re-visited

The Social Media Helix and Learning

Venturing Outside of My Web 2.0 Bubble

The Personalized Learning Environment Starter Pack

My primary conclusions at this point are that early adopters of social media have a qualitatively different approach to using Web 2.0 tools for learning and professional development. This means that to work with the next wave of people we can't use the strategies and inducements that worked with this first group of people because their experiences of the Web are not the same.

I'm also thinking that we need to do a better job of scaffolding--linking these new tools to the tools that people already understand and use. We may also have to do more work in skilll-building. My impression of early adopters is that they have more of an experimental approach to learning that lends itself to being self-directed, while this may not be the case for later users of these tools.

And I'm Off. . .

2008-02-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

I'm setting up this blog to document my progress on a learning project I've set up for myself. From February 4--March 4-2008, I'm going to try out 18 different blog post formats to learn about how to help social media neophytes use tools like blogs, wikis and RSS for professional development.

I've set up a wiki to support my experiment at Blogging4Learning. I'll also be commenting on my progress at my main blog, The Bamboo Project.