Learning, Innovation, and Instagram (#IITB, Pt. 1 of 4): The Questions That Inspire Us

I’m learning to use Instagram as a tool to foster training-teaching-learning. Not because friends and colleagues told me I should be on Instagram. (They did.) Not because I feel a compelling need to become active on yet another social media platform. (I don’t.) And certainly not for course credits or a grade: there are no grades given in the course I am pursuing—just an opportunity to explore an unfamiliar resource with the support of a tremendously innovative community of learning, under the guidance of a writer-presenter-educator (George Couros) I very much admire.

It started with a question, as have so many of my favorite and most transformative learning opportunities: how can Instagram be used to innovatively foster learning? And it’s the sort of learning opportunity I very much admire. It’s engaging—the moment I posted my first offering on Instagram, I became drawn into brief exchanges with George and my other co-conspirators in learning. It’s multifaceted—an online (mostly asynchronous) book discussion group, functioning as a connectivist MOOC (massive open online course), that includes the opportunity to explore a social media tool (Instagram) as part of the larger goal of engaging in transformative conversations on a topic (innovation in learning) that is of interest to me and those I serve. It’s rhizomatic—expanding and exploding across multiple platforms including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and even blog postings like this one. And it is creative in every sense of the word, including the idea that we as learners engage in the creation of numerous examples of how Instagram can be used in learning (while learning about Instagram itself) so that, at the conclusion of this three-week book discussion/course/community-of-learning-in-action, we will have produced a fluid, amendable “textbook” that can be used by others interested in learning about Instagram in learning.

The online book discussion group/Instagram-in-learning course fostered through this “Innovate Inside the Box [#IITB] Book Study” group begins with a chapter-by-chapter set of readings from and responses to Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL [Universal Design for Learning]and the Innovator’s Mindset, written by George and his co-author Katie Novak. We seamlessly jump from the pages of this trainer-teacher-learner must-read book into Instagram (using the hashtag #InnovateInsideTheBox and more specific chapter-by-chapter hashtags, e.g., #IITBCh1 for postings connected to our exploration of Chapter 1) to learn from posts and comments by George and Katie.

We cannot, if we want to understand how this all works, overlook the magnificent organizational skills George brings to the course. He seeds the Instagram conversations with concise, visually-consistent suggested discussion points; incorporates short videos produced with other social media tools, including TikTok, to draw us in as co-conspirators in the learning process; and obviously gave plenty of thought to creating those chapter-by-chapter hashtags so that any of us, at any time, could easily locate, contribute, and respond to content on the topic of our choice. We also benefit from the unspoken assumption that, with content exploding across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, blogs, and other social media platforms, there is no expectation that “keeping up” requires attention to all those possibilities and conversations; we choose what we can do within the time we have for the discussion/course, and happily work in what is a guilt-free learning zone.

Although I was late to joining the conversations—completing my first post on Instagram near the end of the second week of #IITB—I had been slowly reading and reflecting upon the book from the moment I received my copy. I was also using online resources to learn more about how Instagram works; how to create visually appealing posts appropriate to our goal of using Instagram for learning; and to survey some of the tools available for use in creating posts combining images and text. Attempting to complete and post a couple of contributions each day, it hasn’t taken me long to realize that the combination of text and imagery in those posts, along with reflections in the comments field of each post, are giving me a record of my learning; a quickly-growing resource library of images I can use in other projects I am currently completing; and examples I can use for the remainder of this blog post to show how the entire process is working for me—and might also work for you.

Comments accompanying the first post: Experimenting…always experimenting: the heart of training-teaching-learning. So, belatedly, I’m diving into what is meant to be a three-week innovative opportunity to explore Instagram as a tool for learning through an online Instagram-based book discussion centered on Innovate Inside the Box, by George Couros, with Katie Novak. George, upfront (on p. xxxv), reminds us that great learning opportunities, are fostered through our ability to draw upon our own creativity, our willingness to innovate to the benefit of our learners, and “the artistry of teaching”—which inspired me to go back to this photo I took of a playful work of art and think about how the successful incorporation of art into teaching-training-learning can help us hit the bull’s-eye when we are successful.

Comments accompanying the second post: In a chapter on learner-driven, evidence-informed learning, George suggests that a focus on grades (or, by extension, certificates of completion) rather than achievement reduces learning to “letters and numbers” and leaves our learners “lost in the process.” Fostering learning where “people are invested in their own goals” and where success is judged by evidence of positive transformation, on the other hand, carries learners “above and beyond goals that we set for them”—a lesson I’m re-learning as I participate in the book study group. If I were doing this for a grade or a certificate or if I were participating in a workshop on how to use Instagram, I would probably race through the learning challenges and be done with it; bringing my own commitment to lifelong learning to this innovative opportunity  to study innovation (and Instagram) and taking the time to explore what Instagram might offer me and those I serve through training-teaching-learning-doing, however, is inspiring me to spend much more time than expected preparing each of these posts—with the result that I’ll leave the study group, when the formal interactions conclude, with an understanding far deeper and more useful than anything a grade provides.

Comments accompanying the third post: In his chapter “Master Learner, Master Educator,” George addresses a theme that comes up often with my colleagues: our roles as teacher-trainer-learners are inextricably interconnected; one part of that term without the others leaves us—and those we serve—at a terrible disadvantage in terms of facilitating and taking advantage of effective, positive, learning opportunities. “If you want to be a master educator, you need to be a master learner,” he reminds us, adding, later in the chapter, the wonderful punchline: “…learning has no endpoint; it is a continuous journey with many opportunities to explore.” And the more we encourage our learners—and ourselves—to solve challenges for themselves/ourselves rather than being spoon fed information they/we will not be able to remember, the more we help them—and ourselves—grow into successful lifelong learners—a lesson I continue to see reinforced as I explore the intersection of Instagram and teaching-training-learning by struggling with the tool; experimenting to produce thoughtful, visually appealing posts; and celebrating small victories while continuing to overcome the challenges that each new post provides.

Comments accompanying the fourth post: In his chapter on creating empowered learning experiences, George contrasts engagement (“listening, reading, observing, consuming”) with empowerment (speaking, writing, interacting, creating”) and suggests that “asking better questions” leads us—and our learners—down fruitful paths in developing valuable lifelong skills. There is an acknowledgement that we cannot ignore the basics when we are working with our learners, but the basics are the starting point, not the finish line: “When students are empowered to choose how they can best demonstrate their knowledge and skills, they are able to see the relevance in learning the basics…and are less likely to check out mentally.”
It’s a reminder I appreciate as I explore basic as well as innovative possibilities Instagram provides for training-teaching-learning-doing—not because George or Katie dictate every step I must take as a learner and co-creator in their online book-study experience, but because they are the learning catalysts and I am a willing, curious, engaged, empowered co-conspirator in my own learning process.

So…I’m learning to use Instagram as a tool to foster training-teaching-learning. And I’m learning so much more. If this and subsequent posts about #InnovateInsideTheBox serve as learning opportunities for you and other readers of this blog, then the learning will continue far beyond the three-week online offering, and we will have come full circle in creating when-you-need-them learning opportunities from those in which we have participated, and to which we have contributed.

–N.B.: This is the first in a set of reflections inspired by #IITB, the Innovate Inside the Box Instagram Book Study group.

Changing the World With Samantha Adams Becker (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second half of an interview conducted with Samantha Adams Becker, President at SAB Creative & Consulting and former New Media Consortium Publications & Communications Senior Director, for my book Change the World Using Social Media (Rowman & Littlefield; projected publication date is autumn 2018). Part 1 of this interview is accessible on “Building Creative Bridges” through this link. The entire interview was conducted online using a shared Google Doc, and has been lightly edited.

What major differences (positive and negative)—if any—do you see between your use of Twitter and Facebook?

I think I’m far more liberal in terms of what I share on Twitter. I view it as more of platform for experiments and iteration of thoughts. That’s interesting because my twitter profile is public while my Facebook one is private. You’d think I’d be more discerning about sharing in a public platform but that’s the exact principle that makes me more prone to share on Twitter. It’s a public, come-as-you-are community. Things move so fast that typos are par for the course.

[#covfefe]

LOL

On Facebook, because it’s private, I’m specifically friends with people who have requested a friendship or whose friendship I have requested. It’s more personal in that regard, so my posts are generally about my personal life—photos of my baby, my dog, my vacation. And I try not to post too many times per day out of fear of saturating people’s newsfeeds. Social media politeness! On Twitter, as I mentioned above, it’s not uncommon to tweet five times in a row in the span of a couple minutes—which makes it far more conversational.

And I think that’s the gist—to me, Facebook is more of a one-way street for personal use whereas Twitter is a vibrant continuous conversation!

What is one strikingly positive example of a way that you’ve used or seen Twitter used to promote social change?

The #MeToo movement is an obvious, but powerful, one. Suddenly, people who were scared to share something deeply personal were empowered to tell their stories because other people were doing it. I don’t think that movement could have spread as rapidly on any other platform because of continuous conversation factor. There’s Snapchat, Instagram, and new social platforms emerging all the time, but Twitter has remained loyal to the idea of words. And in spite of the growth of videos and infographics, etc. words. Are. Still. Powerful currency.

Tips to readers of this book who are interested in knowing how to most effectively use Twitter to facilitate social change?

Start by following people you are genuinely interested in. Some percentage of those people will follow you back and become part of your community.

Don’t just tweet how you are feeling, what you believe, etc.—pay attention to what other people are saying and doing. It’s a two-way street. You’d never have a conversation with a friend that’s just you sharing about your life; you’d ask questions and you’d listen to their responses thoughtfully.

If you’re interested in a subject, a simple Internet search of what related hashtags are popular will open up a whole world to you to learn more on that subject. And, if you use those hashtags in your own tweets, they (and you!) become more discoverable.

Anything else I haven’t asked that you think we should be discussing in terms of introducing Twitter for social change to the readers of this book?

Nobody likes an egghead. [The egg icon is the default image accompanying a new account until a user provides a customized image, so the egg suggests a new, inexperienced user to those familiar with Twitter.] Add a real profile photo!

Also, if you’re just starting out on Twitter as an individual or a business, do not purchase followers. You may get a lot of followers, but will they really be interested and prone to act on your calls to action? Relevance is key. You want to surround yourself with people relevant to your work life/personal life etc. Authenticity! Quality over quantity, every time.

N.B. — Paul is currently writing Change the World Using Social Media, scheduled for publication by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. This is the eighth in a continuing series of excerpts from and interviews for the manuscript in progress. 

Changing the World With Samantha Adams Becker (Part 1 of 2)

This is the first half of an interview conducted with Samantha Adams Becker, President at SAB Creative & Consulting and former New Media Consortium Publications & Communications Senior Director, for my book Change the World Using Social Media (Rowman & Littlefield; projected publication date is autumn 2018). The interview was conducted online using a shared Google Doc, and has been lightly edited. The interview began with an exercise that involved jotting down as many words that came to mind after hearing the word “Twitter.”

Obvious things I see as I have all three [of our interview] transcripts in front of me: “sharing” and “networking” came up in all three—no surprises there. Anything stand out to you as you look at your responses to “Twitter?”

I think the idea of continuous conversation and PD [personal development] jump out the most—plus the “unedited” version of Twitter, because it’s a very “respond in the moment” platform.

Let’s go with three themes you mentioned, one at a time: “heart,” “continuous conversation,” and “professional development.” How does Twitter suggest “heart” to you?

Twitter features the heart button, which is the equivalent of “like” on Facebook and LinkedIn. However, in Facebook it seems more common to “like” something rather than share it; whereas on Twitter, sharing (or re-tweeting) appears to be more common. It’s an important distinction that a user makes deciding whether to simply “heart” something vs. re-tweet it. Re-tweeting essentially means you are agreeing with it or find enough merit in it to share it with your own community (unless you add a comment clarifying your own stance). So, offering up a “heart” is like saying, “I like your idea enough to say that I do, but not enough to expose my whole following to it.” It’s very interesting social-psychologically.

Thanks; sort of like second-class social, isn’t it…As for “continuous conversation”: initial thoughts behind that one?

Yes, I think Twitter—more so than any other social media platform—allows for continuous conversation. If one of your Facebook friends made 10 posts per day, you might find that a bit excessive. However, you may find it completely acceptable that a friend tweets 10 times in a day. That reaction alone points to Twitter as a much more embraced conversation/sharing platform. Not only can a discussion continue between multiple users, but you can continue your own conversation. That is to say, if you tweet an article about artificial intelligence in education, and then you go to a workshop on that subject the next day, you’re able to follow up with your reactions and opinions using a specific hashtag.

Perhaps most essentially, a conversation you may have started in person can continue on Twitter. This seems to be very popular at conferences where you may have a brief encounter with a person who winds up being a lifelong friend because you’re able to transition your connection to Twitter and respond to each other’s Tweets.

That very much parallels a theme I’m already exploring in the first-draft-in-progress: the value and inherently unique nature of conversation online—what has become a “moment” that extends over days, weeks, months, even years as a strange variation of a “moment.” You seeing extended conversations like those and, if so, how is that changing the way you view the concepts of time and conversation?

I love the way you are interpreting a “moment.” Twitter now has a moments feature that allows you to add a series of tweets or photos that represents a moment in your life.

Now, a conversation doesn’t have to take place in real-time to be considered deep and meaningful; it can stretch on for our entire lives. I think about the “moment” I met my husband—online. Granted, it was a specific online dating platform, but our correspondence was through a series of messages before we met in person. I’d say that’s a 21^st-century way to describe the “moment” you meet someone, but I also liken it to earlier centuries where people wrote to each other via snail-mail back and forth, and maybe saw each other once [a year] or every few years. Twitter is like that, but responses can instantaneous—if the user sees fit. A user can be inspired by a tweet and meditate on it for an evening or a few days before responding, and that is perfectly acceptable within the frame of a conversation.

I see extended conversations take place all the time, oftentimes organized by hashtags. I think this is what Tweet-Ups are essentially—scheduled conversations (or unscheduled) that are continued once a week, once a month, etc.

[here’s a link to the article that initiated that thought process a few years ago among a few of us in #etmooc [the Educational Technology & Media massive open online course in early 2013]: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1023/2022]

Very cool!

And it actually initiated an ongoing conversation I’ve had in bits and pieces with the authors over the past few years; I was just in touch again with one of them in November—just before I was doing a blended-learning presentation in Los Angeles. A very long, wonderfully extended moment that hasn’t yet ended!

Going back to what you said in the penultimate full paragraph you wrote: what does that suggest in terms of how we can use Twitter (and other social media tools) to promote positive social change? [the one that starts with “Now, a conversation doesn’t have to take place in real-time to be considered deep and meaningful”]

Twitter enables positive social changes by transcending the necessity of a specific time and place. A conversation about climate change, for example, may begin between two people. Another person sees the tweet and then joins. And then another. And then another. The people are geographically dispersed and may not be using Twitter at the exact same time but, because Twitter sparks continuous conversation, people can join on their own time whenever they have something to contribute. And the asynchronous nature of it doesn’t detract from the subject matter or substance of it. In fact, pausing to think deeply about something before joining in is an important part of change.

When Paolo Gerbaudo wrote his wonderful book Tweets and the Streets in 2012, he pretty much saw social media (Facebook and Twitter, in particular) as prequels to social change—that’s where the organizing took place—but the real action was on the streets. Your last comments make me think you and I are on the same page in thinking that social change can actually take place as much online as in the streets—say, through the NMC [New Media Consortium] and #etmooc, for example, where we have spread ideas that filter into online as well as online learning spaces. Thoughts?

It’s not just the concept of a conversation that has evolved, but also the concept of the streets. Think about it—if conference organizers are savvy enough to encourage Twitter backchannels as an essential part of conference participation to extend organic hallway conversations, than that’s the concept of an online hallway.

A street may not be a private or more intimate conversation the way a hallway one may be, but, instead, a giant public space for conversation and action.

At the NMC [which closed upon entering bankruptcy proceedings in December 2017], we were good at carrying forward conversations from face-to-face and virtual events on Twitter. Our goal was to always extend the rich discussions that took place at a set event and ensure that they did not exist within a vacuum. You didn’t have to be physically present to “be present.”

We came up with the Horizon hashtag (#NMChz) as a way for people to respond to Horizon Reports—but also share articles, stories, projects, etc. that were Horizon-worthy. Twitter can take a static report and allow the related discussions to continue year-round. Horizon Street! Population: Whoever wants to be there.

“Horizon Street” is gorgeous! And I agree that the hashtag was part of the experience. Instead of leaving conferences and feeling depressed by impending separations, I always left with a sense of anticipation that the conversations were continuing. I’m struggling to train myself, at this point, that #NMChz is no longer open to through traffic and continuing conversation—but appreciation that #BeyondTheHorizon is a wonderful replacement road that is well on its way to bridging the gap. OK, enough with the road metaphors…for a moment. Let’s hit the third of the three topics you mentioned earlier: professional development. Care to pick up right where you left off and wrap together social media, Twitter, “moments,” and professional development into an operatic grand finale?

It’s true—all these features are connected, and they can add up to one hell of a professional development experience. I think some people may still envision professional development as something that takes place in a room—workshop or boot-camp style—that you or the institution has to invest in. But the integration of formal and informal learning has opened up the idea of personal development to be much more fluid and open to each user’s interpretation. If you feel an experience has enriched your professional life and given you new tools, skills, or knowledge to improve your own work and work environment, then why not call it professional development?

Twitter conversations and moments are ripe for professional development opportunities—the hard part is often the lack of organization and ability to archive. We’re even seeing helpful tools like Storify—that helped create something linear and meaningful from tweets—disappear.

That being said, following specific users, hashtags, lists, etc can be part of a user’s professional development strategy. It’s very much connected with the notion of a personal learning network (PLN) where there is a fixed or expanding community of peers and leaders where you teach other things.

I, for example, love to see what articles my Twitter friends in #edtech share. Just clicking on the links to three to five articles per day and reading them helps expand my own vision and ideas. Even if I don’t agree with an article or a theme, it generates new ideas and new knowledge in me. It seems so basic, but it’s like show and tell. I’m learning something new about a subject as well as how the sharer views it.

N.B. — Paul is currently writing Change the World Using Social Media, scheduled for publication by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. This is the seventh in a continuing series of excerpts from and interviews for the manuscript in progress. The next post will include the second half of this interview.

 

Changing the World Through Twitter

If you want to viscerally understand the power of Twitter, think of the global impact two small words (“Me too”) and their variations in languages other than English have had. Capturing an enormous emotionally nuanced message (we all know someone affected by sexual harassment and/or assault, so what are we going to do about it?), those two words have been repeated countless times to inspire positive action by men and women using Twitter and other social media platforms after actress Alyssa Milano used them in a tweet on October 15, 2017: “Suggested by a friend: ‘If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.’”

Milano quickly achieved her goal of increasing awareness regarding sexual harassment and assault: the hashtag is drawing attention to the often dramatically different reactions people have to the allegations and reality of sexual harassment at local, regional, national, and international levels; I was among those made even more painfully aware of the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault than we already were; and it has drawn me—and many friends, acquaintances, and colleagues—into efforts to shine a spotlight on it and combat it at whatever level we can—via social media, through face-to-face conversations, and through support for actions that can decrease the presence of harassment and assault whenever we see opportunities to do so.

Let’s be clear about the role Twitter and other social media platforms played in what has, through the use of the #MeToo hashtag, become another highly visible and extended global conversation (and sometimes bitter argument) about sexual harassment and sexual abuse. The conversation did not start with the breaking of a significant news story on Twitter, nor did the hashtag #MeToo become a widely-recognized unifying call to action the same day it was created. (The hashtag was first used by social activist Tarana Burke in 2006.) Stories about sexual harassment and abuse in a variety of settings including workplaces, schools and universities, and religious organizations have been published and discussed for several decades by those who accept the veracity of the allegations and want to make positive changes as well as by those who deny the allegations and object to what they see as exaggerations or outright falsehoods. Attitudes and disagreements about sexual harassment and sexual abuse were clearly on display during the 2106 presidential campaign in the United States when a recording capturing Donald Trump boasting, in 2005, of his ability to harass and assault women were widely disseminated through traditional and social media outlets.

The #MeToo conversation expanded rapidly after articles published in The New York Times (October 5, 2017) and The New Yorker (October 10, 2017) documented gut-wrenching allegations that Miramax entertainment company and The Weinstein Company co-founder Harvey Weinstein had engaged in sexual harassment and sexual abuse involving dozens of women in the film industry for at least two decades. Reading the first lengthy and well-documented story in The New York Times that October morning left me disgusted and heart-sick; I found it difficult to even finish reading the lengthy article as I thought about this latest set of allegations showing how someone in a position of power could take advantage of people perceived to have less—or no—voice than those who were making their lives miserable.

Absorbing the numerous follow-up reports about Weinstein and many others became even more emotionally challenging when women—lots of women, far beyond the boundaries of the entertainment industry scandals documented in The New York Times and The New Yorker—began using #MeToo to acknowledge themselves as recipients of unwanted sexual attention by friends, acquaintances, employers, workplace colleagues, or complete strangers. I was absolutely stunned by the large number of women I knew who eloquently joined the conversation through short #MeToo posts. And that’s one of the many ways in which the power of Twitter and other social media tools becomes apparent: what at one time would have been stories about someone else continually become stories about those I know and love and care for—because Twitter and other social media platforms provide a way for voices that might otherwise not have been heard to be heard in ways that inspire people to work together to actively promote the changes they want to see to create the world of their dreams. What might at one time have been stories told within small, isolated groups of people or discussed in local communities became stories shared globally—and very quickly.

“The #MeToo movement is an obvious, but powerful, one [an example of Twitter used to effectively promote social change],” Samantha Becker, the independent consultant and President of SAB Creative & Consulting, observes. “Suddenly, people who were scared to share something deeply personal were empowered to tell their stories because other people were doing it. I don’t think that movement could have spread as rapidly on any other platform because of [the] continuous-conversation factor. There’s Snapchat, Instagram, and new social platforms emerging all the time, but Twitter has remained loyal to the idea of words. And in spite of the growth of videos and infographics, etc. Words. Are. Still. Powerful currency.”

Shining a social media spotlight on those situations you want to change is often seen as positive even in the worst of situations; it is, therefore, well worth noting that the same shining spotlight, used with less-than-honorable intentions, can cause tremendous grief for those unfairly at the center of that spotlight—a theme I will explore fully in a later chapter of Change the World. Using Twitter and other social media platforms carries tremendous responsibility—a responsibility that often is inadvertently or intentionally overlooked by users. As you consider incorporating—or further incorporating—Twitter into your social media toolkit, you would do well to follow advice I frequently give: think before you post. If you are in doubt as to whether your tweet meets the highest, most positive ethical standards to which you subscribe, don’t post. Tweets and other posts can wait; once they are out there, they are impossible to undo.

There is obviously plenty to be done with Twitter to positively change your world; it begins with using it to give voice to those—you and many others—whose voices are not often enough clearly heard. There are plenty of examples, from some of the hashtags (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter, #DACA, #Dreamers, #Ferguson, #LoveWins, #MAGA/MakeAmericaGreatAgain, #OccupyWallStreet, and #ParisAccord) I mentioned in a previous post, of the impact a well-designed and well-used hashtag can have. Whether you agree or disagree with the goals implicit in the movements represented by those hashtags, you can easily recognize that their effective use is part of contemporary social and political discourse—a resource not to be ignored by anyone involved in activism.

N.B. — Paul is currently writing Change the World Using Social Media, scheduled for publication by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. This is the sixth in a continuing series of excerpts from and interviews for the manuscript in progress.

Innovator’s Mindset MOOC (#IMMOOC): Sorry, I Don’t Do That Anymore

The last person who tried to convince me I should learn about something that, to me, held no value probably pushed me well down the road of transition from lecturing and advocating to facilitating, listening, and co-learning—something I remembered while attempting to answer the questions “What is one thing you used to do in education that you no longer do or believe in? Why the change?” as part of my participation in the third season of George Couros’s #IMMOOC (the Innovator’s Mindset massive open online course) last week.

She was a wonderful colleague, deeply immersed in and a strong proponent of using Twitter. And she seemed to believe, in her social media heart of hearts, that anyone not using Twitter was somehow leading a sadly diminished existence somewhat akin to living in the gray, war-devastated zone of a dystopian novel. So, while we sat side by side during two days of meetings, she attempted to convince me that I, too, should be using Twitter. She tried all sorts of things: telling me how great it was. (I wasn’t convinced.) Telling me what it could do for me. (Other social media tools were already doing those things for me.) Talking about who else was using it and how I could be in touch with them via Twitter. (I was already in touch with them in many other ways—including sitting with them in that room during the dynamic conversations we were having during that two-day period.) And finally—after nearly a day and a half of friendly cajoling and strong advocacy on behalf of Twitter, she asked a question that resonated: if I wanted a relatively quick answer to a question or situation that was stumping me, would I want quick and easy access to thousands of people who might be able to provide that answer? When she pointed out that Twitter could provide that level of access, she—and Twitter—had me.

What she also had was a learner who could see how the (minimal amount of) effort required to learn about and use Twitter might provide magnificent, appealing, productive results. So I was won over to Twitter. But not—as I realized at the time and now again as I recall that moment—by her zealous advocacy. It was the act of finally identifying an unfilled need and offering a proposed way to fill that need that finally led me to my long-standing engagement with colleagues through Twitter as one medium for that engagement.

I walked away from that experience with at least two valuable transformations: a willingness to adopt and embrace Twitter as one of many tools I use every day to work and play (including the weekly tweet chats that are an integral part of participating in #IMMOOC), and a visceral understanding of and appreciation for the power a trainer-teacher-learner-doer wields in fostering positive transformations through collaboration more than through wordy explanations and coercion.

It’s a lesson that actually embedded itself into the “Rethinking Social Media” course I have taught many times and will again be teaching in November 2017 for ALA Editions. I start, in the pre-course publicity and in the Week 1 course introduction, with an assurance that I won’t be requiring learners to become short- or long-term users of any of the social media tools we will be exploring. I also assure them that our online learning space is a guilt-free zone: they can spend as little or as much time as they care to spend with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any of the other tools we will be studying as potential tools to further connect them with colleagues, library users, and anyone else they want to attempt to reach through those tools—as long as they reach the learning goals they (and their employers) have established for themselves. I also strive to keep the “lecture” part of the course as short and engaging as I possibly can, with frequent interruptions designed to stimulate responses and learner-centric activities.

Learners in my courses are, as much as they want to be, co-conspirators in the learning process. We learn from each other. We have as much fun as we can as they alter assignments to meet their own specific learning needs in ways that they can quickly apply within their own work (and other day-to-day) environments. And, in the best of situations, we stay in touch for weeks, months, or even years after a course formally ends. Because we understand that learning doesn’t have to be an endeavor with definitive starting and ending points.

We learn by exploring. Doing. Failing. And failing again and again. Until we finally reach the goals we have helped establish and that are meaningful to us, to our employers, and to those we ultimately serve. So I no longer deliver long lectures; my face-to-face and online presentations are designed to be as short as they can be; highly interactive; and responsive, in the moment, to the responses my co-conspirators offer. I try to keep my advocacy to a minimum. And we all seem to be a bit better off—and happier—as a result.

N.B. — This is the fifth in a series of posts inspired by Season 3 of #IMMOOC.

Innovator’s Mindset MOOC (#IMMOOC): Down the Blended Reading Rabbit Hole Again

The new-to-me practice of reading intensively beyond the page as part of my participation in the third season of George Couros’s #IMMOOC (the Innovator’s Mindset massive open online course) struck gold again this morning.

Slowly making the transition from Week 2 to Week 3 of the six-week virtual voyage in this highly-interactive, rhizomatically-expanding course, I was rereading the section of The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity detailing the eight characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset and decided to spend a little more time with the fourth item, which centers around the idea that “Networks are crucial to innovation” (p. 52). Because I was following my newly-established habit of reading a print copy of a book while sitting in front of a laptop computer or with a mobile device handy ­so I would have immediate access to online resources, I made the leap from printed page to an online resource to learn more about a writer Couros mentioned in that section of his book. The result was that instead of having only a passing familiarity with Tom Kaneshige through Couros’s one-line reference to his work, I ended up reading the entire (short) piece Couros mentioned. Picked up a new, wonderfully evocative phrase (“Liquid Networks”) that connects with other familiar but differently-named ideas (including Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the third place as a place where ideas are exchanged, are nurtured, and thrive). And walked away with a much richer, deeper appreciation of Kaneshige’s work than I would have had if I had stayed within the confines of the print edition rather than making the piece by Kaneshige an integral part of the book I am re-reading.

I almost made it through the next paragraph without again weaving print with online content, but wanted to know more about Couros’s next reference—to Steven Anderson’s remark that “Alone we are smart, together we are brilliant.” With little more than Anderson’s name and the knowledge (from Couros’s writing) that Anderson is a “well-known educational speaker and writer,” I had little difficulty tracking him down with the keyword search “Steven Anderson educator.” And was completely surprised to find the full quote at the top of Anderson’s Twitter account. Which struck me as being a bit odd since the tweet was posted in September 2013 and it is October 2017 as I write these words.

“Could he,” I wondered, “be one of those people who rarely uses Twitter, so hasn’t been active since that four-year-old post was written?

“Did someone just finish retweeting it so it again appears at the top of his feed?

“Or is something else going on here?”

It only took a few seconds to see that there were more recent—much more recent—tweets there, including four posted within the last 24 hours…one of which was a link to a magnificent resource (a chart displaying “12 Principles of Modern Learning” and including short descriptions of the “principle,” along with a “reality” and an “opportunity” for each principle).

My head is spinning. I have, in less than 10 minutes, gone from being completely unfamiliar with Anderson’s work to seeing that he has a tremendously valuable (free) online resource (his Twitter feed) for any trainer-teacher-learner-doer. Exploring that resource in the most cursory of ways, yet walking away with another resource (the 12 Principles chart). And taking the natural step of following that Twitter feed so I will have Anderson’s wisdom and resources as additional elements of my own ever-expanding blended (onsite-online) learning environment.

And the learning doesn’t stop there. I’m still curious about why that four-year-old tweet is at the top of the feed. So I go back to the top of the feed, look at it a little more carefully, and realize that he has used the “pin” function within Twitter to assure that it remains in that top-of-the-feed position so any of us visiting his feed will see that tweet before we see any others. Which makes me laugh at myself because I have been using Twitter for several years. I help others learn how to explore and use Twitter. And am seen as being fairly adept at using Twitter. But. This. Is. The. First. Time. I. Have. Noticed. That. I. Can. Pin. A. Tweet. And it’s very simple: highlight a tweet I have posted. Choose the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the tweet on display. Choose the “Pin to your profile page.” Accept the “Pin this Tweet to the top of your profile” option that has now popped up on my screen.”

There’s one final step to take before I return to re-reading that chapter of Couros’s book. I’m doing this for #IMMOOC as much as I’m doing it for myself, and a central element of participating in a connectivist MOOC like #IMMOOC is to connect with my course co-conspirators, so I use tinyurl.com to create a link to the tweet with the “12 Principles,” transfer it into a tweet I am composing, then add the #IMMOOC hashtag to the tweet and send the whole thing out into the Twitterverse so my MOOCmates, friends, and colleagues will have access to it. Learn from it. And retweet it so this latest personal learning moment grows rhizomatically and helps change our view of our world—one tweet at a time. Then return to The Innovator’s Mindset to finish my morning reading.

N.B. — This is the fourth in a series of posts inspired by Season 3 of #IMMOOC.

ATD ICE 2016: Tapestries, Transformations, and Pedicabs

Memorable learning experiences (e.g., workshops, webinars, and well-designed conferences) often are tapestries of personal experiences and shared wisdom-of-the-crowd moments—and there is no doubt in my mind that the ATD  (the Association for Talent Development) 2016 International Conference and Exposition (ICE) that is currently unfolding in Denver can be described in those terms.

There are several thousand of us here. Each of us is having our own personal conference, with its own spectacularly transformative learning moments. And there is a communal (collaboratively shaped and shared) experience that, as I wrote in an earlier piece, transcends time and physical space. Each of us—whether we’re actually physically onsite, participating from an offsite location via the Twitter hashtag (#atd2016) and other social media resources, or, in the best of all worlds we can imagine and actually help construct, creating a completely blended experience—brings our own unique experiences and expectations to our world-sized conference “room.” Each of us also benefits from the shared moments ranging from hallway conversations and discussions over dinner to the we’re-all-in-this-together communal experience of inspiration that comes from being with thousands of others in a huge auditorium while enjoying a keynote speaker’s presentation. (This, in its own way, extends as well to our offsite co-conspirators, aka fellow learners, who are creating a conference-as-learning-experience by reading and responding to what we are also creating in the Twitter backchannel, on Facebook, on Periscope, and elsewhere. )

Each time I participate in a conference onsite, online, or both—the blended approach is one I increasingly pursue with increasingly-lovely pleasures and rewards—I end up walking away transformed. I consciously attempt, through my writing and the use of tech tools including Storify, to capture and extend those moments of transformation so they won’t be lost to me or to colleagues interested in pursuing their own equally delightful individually and communally-constructed pleasures and rewards. And just when I mistakenly believe I have explored and shared all there is to explore and share in this admittedly odd approach to blended-learning, I find myself experiencing another five-year-old-child’s moment of wonder.

(almost) no one left outside the conversations at #atd2016

The almost naïve sense of wonder this week has come from further incorporating simple (low-tech) phone calls into the more high-tech, innovative blended-learning mix that is becoming increasingly familiar to many of us. It started a couple of days ago when, even before getting out of bed here in the hotel where I am staying, I saw that one of my cherished training-teaching-learning-doing friend-colleague-mentors (Maurice Coleman) was already up on the other side of the country and posting items on Facebook (for shame, Maurice: posting on Facebook before noon on a Saturday!). Missing the sound of his voice and the unique insights he would bring to the table if he were physically here, I called with the intention of talking with him for no more than a few minutes; more than half an hour later, we had completed an exploration by phone that helped me connect what I had experienced in an entirely different blended environment a week earlier with what was unfolding here—part of the process of constructing my personal conference-as-learning-moment here at ATD ICE 2016.

Because it was such an unexpectedly stimulating and rewarding moment and because it was becoming an important thread in the tapestry-in-progress I am creating, I repeated the call to him yesterday morning after seeing him, once again, posting before noon on a weekend. And that’s when the ATD ICE 2016 magic leapt to a higher level: the result of our conversation was that Maurice—who is not (yet) an ATD member—actively joined the #atd2016 conversation. And colleagues here onsite started interacting with him via #atd2016. And then another of my non-ATD training-teaching-learning-doing colleagues jumped in by retweeting one of Maurice’s conference tweets. And I started interacting with that colleague via the conference Twitter backchannel, too.

a combination of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and “Fellini’s Roma”

As Maurice and I were finishing our second ATD-ICE-2016-by-smartphone conversation, he asked me to give him a blow-by-blow description of a walk I had taken with friends here the previous evening because he was intrigued by how that walk had begun at the end of a three-hour-long conversation with one group of colleagues in a local tavern and somehow extended for the duration of a combined walk/pedicab ride to a restaurant where we continued that conversation with a slightly reformed group we acquired on our way to dinner. He grew more and more incredulous as I told him how we would unexpectedly meet someone who then joined the group while others peeled off as needed to participate in other conversations/learning moments. And I suspect his jaw dropped a bit when I told him about the brief stopover in a hotel lobby where, while I was attempting to send a direct message to a colleague via Twitter, I turned around to discover that the intended recipient of the tweet was walking across the lobby to say hello to what then constituted the core of that particular iteration of the group. She eagerly accepted our invitation to join us as we made the spur-of-the-moment decision to take pedicabs the rest of the way to the restaurant. (You probably already know that breaking a group of six trainer-teacher-learner-doers into groups of two and creating a mini-caravan of pedicabs up a major thoroughfare in a city like Denver is going to result in a wonderfully bizarre scenario that looks like a combination of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Fellini’s Roma. We were happy. The fabulous pedicab drivers were happy. And no residents of Denver appear to have been injured in the course of our move from hotel lobby to restaurant dining room.)

There’s so much to unpack in all that I’ve attempted to describe here. And there’s so much more ahead of us as our conference-as-personal-and-communal learning moment continues to unfold. But what is clear to me at this stage in the game is what I said to a close friend over dinner the night I arrived here: what I most look forward to at these conference-as-learning-moments is the experience I don’t yet know I am going to have.

That’s the magic of learning.

N.B.: Paul’s onsite participation at ATD ICE in May 2016 includes the following activities:

• Signing copies of Workplace Learning & Leadership on Tuesday, May 24 from 12:30 – 1 pm in an “Author Meet & Greet” at the conference bookstore. 
• Facilitating “Ed-Tech Trends: Identifying and Incorporating Them Into Your Workplace” session on Wednesday, May 25 from 10 – 11 am                                                                                                                     

The “10 Tips for Incorporating Ed-Tech Into Your Own Development” article he wrote for his session has been published and is available on the ATD Learning Technologies blog, and he has three brief reviews attached to books available in the ICE bookstore onsite here in Denver.

 

ATD ICE 2016: The Size of the Room, Revisited

As several thousand members of ATD  (the Association for Talent Development) from all over the world gather in Denver for our annual International Conference and Exposition (ICE), it would be easy, at times, to forget how large the rooms in which we are meeting are.  The myriad ways in which countless members of this spectacular community of learning are helping to expand our concepts of what it means to “attend” a conference or participate in other learning opportunities. And how inclusive we can be with just the slightest bit of creativity, innovation, and effort.

Our ability to draw people in, as I frequently note in conversations with colleagues and in learning opportunities I design and facilitate, has increased exponentially through increasingly far-reaching and widely available tech tools. There is the obvious use of a Twitter backchannel to somewhat blur the lines between onsite and offsite participation in conferences and other learning opportunities like ICE. There are the moments shared on Facebook in ways that strengthen our already strong sense of community. There are Google Hangouts and numerous other tools to turn huge geographical distances into virtual spaces that make us feel, at a visceral level, as if we are all in the same room even if that room extends over hundreds or thousands of miles. And there are even the much older, more familiar, and often overlooked vehicles (including telephones) that we can turn to when we don’t want to be left behind or don’t want to leave cherished colleagues behind. The result, of course, is a richer, deeper, more nuanced level of participation in our associations and with our colleagues than has ever before been possible.

I think about how much reaching out occurred today (Saturday)—the day before ICE formally opens—and I marvel at what all of us have accomplished together and how many people we’ve already drawn into our global conference room. Seeing that Maurice Coleman (a colleague in Maryland) was already active on Facebook early this morning, I called him from Denver for a brief conversation, mentioned that we will have a very active Twitter backchannel (#atd2016) here, and invited him to expand the room by skimming the feed over the next several days, retweeting what appealed to him, and, most importantly, reacting to the tweets he saw so he would, as I have already done numerous times, become part of the conversation and the overall conference experience in which so many transformative conversations take place in our blended onsite-online environment.

…using every possible means to draw others into the conversations…

Lucky enough to be part of inspiring, thought- and action-provoking conversations throughout the day with some of the most creative, innovative, and passionate trainer-teacher-learner-doers I know (including a couple who live in Denver but are not affiliated with ATD), I looked for every possible opportunity I could pursue to draw others into those increasingly dynamic and inspiring conversations while also sharing thoughts from those non-ATD members with my fellow conference attendees.

It was obvious that everyone physically present at every table I joined was doing the same thing. At times it involved little more than calling out to someone who happened to be passing by a coffee shop, tavern, or restaurant where we were sitting. At other times, we would reach out or respond by Twitter to invite others to join us where we were or simply include them in on the conversations by tweeting out what seemed worth sharing. And at one point, when we were thinking about a colleague who had recently experienced a personal tragedy that left kept him from traveling to Denver to be with us, we simply called him from the place where we were all sitting and passed the phone around to be sure he knew the physical distance did not at all represent a separation from his ATD family at a time when contact with other members of that family would be particularly meaningful to him.

I heard people colleagues excited about—and getting the rest of us excited about the ways in which they are working to produce results-driven learning in their workplaces. I heard colleagues talking about the innovative approaches they are taking to leadership training. I sat with Sardek Love, a cherished colleague who has done more than anyone else I know personally to mentor colleagues younger and older than he is so he strengthens us and our profession (and helps all of us better serve those who look to us for assistance) rather than giving even the slightest thought to the possibility that he might be creating completion for himself. We just don’t think that way; we revel in our own growth and in the growth of those around us, knowing that every step forward makes all of us better, builds a stronger community of training-teaching-learning-doing for all of us, and, as ATD so wonderfully suggests, creates “a world that works better.”

And as my day draws to an end and I already look forward to even more stimulatingly transformative moments over the next several days, I think back to that initial conversation with Maurice this morning. Savor the pleasure of being part of an amazingly dedicated group of learning facilitators who make a difference every day—every day—by doing all they can to be sure the doors through which we pass remain as open as they possibly can be. And hope that everyone reading this finds way to place a hand on the doorknob that just needs to be turned the slightest bit to make the door open to him or her, also.

 

N.B.: Paul’s participation at ATD ICE in May 2016 includes the following activities:

• Signing copies of Workplace Learning & Leadership on Tuesday, May 24 from 12:30 – 1 pm in an “Author Meet & Greet” at the conference bookstore
• Facilitating “Ed-Tech Trends: Identifying and Incorporating Them Into Your Workplace” session on Wednesday, May 25 from 10 – 11 am

The “10 Tips for Incorporating Ed-Tech Into Your Own Development” article he wrote for his session has been published and is available on the ATD Learning Technologies blog, and he has three brief reviews attached to books available in the ICE bookstore onsite here in Denver.

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 5 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

The learning event has ended; the learning process continues. And, when all is said and done, one of the many important ways by which any of us can and will measure the success or failure emanating from Mount Prospect Public Library’s 2016 Staff Inservice Day “From eLearning to Learning” (the day-long exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work) will be through the transformations it actually does or does not manage to produce for those involved and for those they/we serve.

As mentioned in earlier sections of this case study of how a day-long exploration of e-learning can lead to more productive, effective, and creative use of e-learning within an overall learning landscape, we already know positive, potentially far-reaching transformations were occurring. Co-conspirators (the onsite participants in this training-teaching-learning-doing opportunity) clearly expanded their definitions and understanding of the state of contemporary e-learning and the possibilities it provides in workplace settings. Some of them posted their first tweets as part of the process of gaining a richer, more nuanced vision of how Twitter and other social media tools can be engagingly integrated into onsite as well as online learning opportunities to the benefit of everyone involved. Many of them contributed ideas face-to-face and online to expand the use of e-learning among staff members and among library users near and far. And some of them used Twitter to talk about what they hope and intend to do as a result of what they experienced.

As a co-learner as well as planning team member and presenter/facilitator in “From eLearning to Learning,” I know even I left feeling unexpectedly and significantly transformed by my involvement. I’m sure there is a wonderfully academic term to describe what I felt as the day came to an end and during the hours of reflection and conversation I’ve had with colleagues since leaving Mount Prospect, but I keep coming back to something far more basic and visceral: it blew my emotional pipes out! I was stunned. Elated. Inspired. And, at times, close to tears. Because everything was so…much…more…wonderfully and overwhelming intense and inspiring than even I expected it to be; I already carry a deep sense of gratitude to the staff members who invited me into the process and to those magnificent staff members who pushed the learning envelope so far during our onsite and online time together that day.

Among the continued-learning opportunities I already have pursued is the opportunity to expand upon and adapt in my own way a learning approach I saw Tom Haymes, a fabulous New Media Consortium (NMC) colleague, use during his own “Idea Spaces” presentation at an NMC conference a couple of years ago. His onsite Idea Spaces presentation and discussion gave all of us plenty of room to learn from him in the moment, to learn from each other in the same moment, to reflect upon what we were hearing and learning, and to see the “event” as part of a process.

More significantly, Tom created a beautifully expansive learning opportunity that helped me see how onsite and online learning could seamlessly be interwoven. His slide deck was posted and available on an Idea Spaces website (which, as I glance back at it in writing this part of the “From eLearning to Learning” case study, has expanded tremendously and magnificently since I last visited it.) The site itself was and remains a stand-alone expansion of what he was sharing with us; it was and is, at the same time, an integral part of the onsite experience. It includes a variety of resources for those of us interested in pursuing the topic in our own way. On our own time. Whenever we want to continue the training-teaching-learning-doing process. And, with that in mind, it occurred to me that what all of us designed for the onsite “From eLearning to Learning” experience easily translates into a modified version of what Tom modeled through his use of WordPress as a platform for the onsite version.

Tom (and many others) have used WordPress as a virtual course meeting place. I’ve used my own website “Previous Presentations” page as a central virtual meeting place for ongoing use and exploration of the material we all developed through the planning process and our onsite participation, and have added links to  the content to the “Presentations/Courses” page of this WordPress Building Creative Bridges blog, which serves as a secondary website/learning resource to expand the reach of what I do and document. I’ve also made minor modification to the slide deck I posted so there are references to the other current components of the suite (including the Storify document). The Storify document ends with a note providing a link to the PowerPoint deck with extensive speaker notes. This five-part case study on my blog is becoming an integral part of the suite by including links to other components at the bottom of each of these articles, and there are references to it sprinkled among the other resources and promoted via my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. And I’m looking at fine-tuning and providing access to additional resources that came out of the planning and day-of-the-event interactions so anyone interested will have a road map they can follow in the same way that Tom’s Idea Spaces continues to serve as a virtual road map and very real, tremendous source of inspiration nearly two years after I participated in the onsite version.

So, there we have it: the current state of e-learning and a view toward pulling it into the overall world of learning rather than being something all-too-often mistakenly seen as inferior to other types of learning. We learn onsite while incorporating online learning opportunities that produce potentially long-lasting, useful resources openly shared with anyone who might benefit from them. We learn online synchronously and/or asynchronously so that learning occurs at our moment of need, when we are ready and primed for it, rather than being where we were a decade or two ago—largely dependent on the availability of teachers and trainers who stood in the front of a room and lectured at us. In the contemporary learning environment onsite and online, there often is no front of the room. The room is the entire world, the learners are fabulous, often self-motivated, inquisitive and collaborative co-conspirators in the learning process, and in the best of situations we are able synchronously or asynchronously to enter the room and work with our co-conspirators to produce positive effects that ripple out into our extended community of work, service, and play.

I look back at the annotated, lightly-edited Twitter transcript on Storify and smile as I reread a few of my favorites among the many wonderful tweets that came out of our time together:

• “Whenever @paulsignorelli says ‘co-conspirator’ can’t help but thnk of mvie ‘The Conspirator’ abt plot to assassinate Lincoln #mpplsid16”
• “Transformation today; we now recognize #elearning spaces; they’re everwhere! #mpplsid16”
• “So important to stay excited about elearning long after today #mpplside16”
• “What can we do to commit to #elearning after today? Make the time for the things we want to learn about! #mpplsid16”
• “I just got elearned #firsttweet #mpplsid16”

And as I reread and reflect upon the content and the entire experience–and feel in a very real sense that the moment has not yet ended—I respond synchronously and asynchronously, both humbly and with a tremendous sense of elation and in the spirit of moving from elearning to learning, to that learner who just “got elearned”: “I learned.”

NB: This is the fifth of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.

From eLearning to Learning (Pt. 4 of 5): A Case Study in Blended Learning

The unexpectedly explosive and transformational decision to try using Twitter to incorporate positive onsite-online e-learning experiences into Mount Prospect Public Library’s 2016 Staff Inservice Day “From eLearning to Learning” (the day-long exploration of how staff at the Library can better define and incorporate e-learning into its work) was almost an afterthought. It came up and was quickly adopted during a final planning meeting the day before the event, as I mentioned in the third of these five “case study” postings.

It’s not as if Twitter as part of our e-learning landscape is unfamiliar to trainer-teacher-learner-doers; we use it extensively in learning opportunities ranging from conference backchannel discussions to tweet chats along the lines of what #lrtnchat, #etmooc, and many others do. I often, through the “Rethinking Social Media” course I designed and facilitate for ALA Editions, call attention to the intriguing, cutting-edge work Rey Junco has done with Twitter and other social media tools in academic settings. And I’ve been lucky enough to experience high-end, dynamically-facilitated blended environments through participation in events creatively crafted by the New Media Consortium and other organizations.

But using it as a way of helping our “From eLearning to Learning” co-conspirators (the learners shaping and participating in the day-long event at the Library) opened doors none of us even began to imagine at the moment during which we initially discussed creating and using #mpplsid16 as a way of showing how social media tools can creatively, effectively, and easily help us redefine our learning spaces.

We primed the pump to engage in some major onsite rethinking about e-learning at the beginning of “From eLearning to Learning” by showing a few photographs taken within the Library and asking “Are These eLearning Spaces?”

E-learning space?

E-learning space?

E-learning space?

Within the first few minutes of my highly-interactive 45-minute keynote presentation/discussion, very few people responded to the question with a “yes.” By the time we finished that initial keynote/discussion period about what the term “e-learning” means in our learning environments, almost every hand in the room shot up in response to the same question asked while the same images were again on display—an acknowledgement that any space in which we have Internet access is potentially an e-learning space. (One lovely note I received at the end of the day built upon the conversation with a suggestion that made me smile: “Your Elearning spaces slide needs a picture of my Dodge Caravan.”)

More importantly, that rapid expansion of everyone’s vision of what the e-learning landscape currently encompasses provided an amazing demonstration of the way a well-designed learning opportunity, developed collaboratively with learners and their representatives, can transform learners (and learning facilitators) within a very short period of time.

Having suggested to our co-conspirators that they could use Twitter as a way to take notes to which they could later return, and as a way to extend the reach of our gathering far beyond the physical walls of the various rooms in which we were meeting, I turned my full attention to the onsite setting during my keynote presentation. I didn’t return to Twitter until we had our first break—the one between the keynote and the first of three periods set aside for breakout discussions. I was absolutely floored by the level of tweeting that was already occurring. Some people were responding (very positively) to what was taking place; others were observing what was happening around them. And a few were sharing content in those Twitteresque 140-character bursts that shot around the world. The result was that we were beginning to work onsite and online simultaneously, and a few of the tweets were being retweeted by others across the United States and in Europe (apparently attracted by my occasional use of the combined hashtags #learning and #innovation).

Seizing the opportunity during the break, I retweeted a few of the more thoughtful tweets and responded to a few of the tweeters—which, of course, set the tone for an extended onsite-online expaned-e-learning-environment conversation that was still continuing as I rode a commuter train from Mount Prospect into Chicago early that evening.

Recognizing the potential there for a stand-alone learning object that anyone could continue to draw upon as long as it remains available, I remained in my hotel room an hour longer than anticipated before heading out for dinner; I knew that if I didn’t collect and transfer those tweets into a Storify document that included light annotations to set the context for what had just occurred, I would lose the in-the-moment excitement the entire experience had generated. It was available to anyone that wanted to seek it out less than four hours after “From eLearning to Learning” had adjourned. It also has become part of an overall “From eLearning to Learning” suite of freely accessible resources for anyone interested in trying a similar experiment within their own learning environment; links are included at the bottom of this post.

I was part of the first-rate Mount Prospect Public Library Staff Inservice Day planning team that designed and facilitated the process. I was the keynote presenter-facilitator, and trained the staff facilitators who led the breakout sessions. I know Twitter, I use Twitter, and I adore what is good about Twitter. But even I remain stunned by the depth of learning and the nuances contained within that particular Storify item. It has plenty of playful exchanges. It has tweets acknowledging the conversational nature of the “From eLearning to Learning” Twitter feed. It has lovely, poignant tweets about personal learning experiences—including one about how the Library director posted her first tweet as a result of what she was experiencing that day. It had some wonderful comments about how much staff enjoyed and learned from the event, and how enthusiastically they are looking forward to building upon what we built together in the best of all possible experiential-learning (hands-on) approaches—something fun, engaging, meaningful, replicable, and actionable.

But what stands out to me most as I continue rereading it, skimming it for previously-missed gems, discussing it with friends and colleagues, and learning from what all of us at Mount Prospect Public Library created out of our individual and communal learning experiences within that very attractive and dynamic community of learning, is how much it captures the wonderful results flowing from onsite-online (blended) learning opportunities that are learner-centric, goal-driven, and designed to produce results.

Next: After “From eLearning to Learning (Continuing the Training-Teaching-Learning-Doing Process)” 

NB: This is the fourth of five articles documenting the process of helping to plan and facilitate a day-long exploration of how to effectively incorporate e-learning into our learning process. Companion components to “From eLearning to Learning” currently include a PowerPoint slide deck with extensive speaker notes, a facilitator’s guide, a lightly edited and annotated Storify document capturing that part of the conversation that occurred via Twitter, and online shared documents that contain content added by the learners during throughout the day of the main event. Some are shared here through those live links with the express approval of Mount Prospect Public Library training staff. For help in developing and facilitating a similar event tailored to your organization, please contact Paul at paul@paulsignorelli.com.