“I have decided to categorise the use of social media in the following 5 different ways:”

1. IOL – Intra-Organisational Learning – how social media tools can be used to keep the organisation up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives
2. FSL – Formal Structured Learning – how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within education and training – for courses, classes, workshops etc
3. GDL – Group Directed Learning – how groups of individuals – teams, projects, study groups etc – can use social media to work and learn together (a “group” could just be two people, so coaching and mentoring falls into this category)
4. PDL – Personal Directed Learning – how individuals can use social media for their own (self-directed) personal or professional learning
5. ASL – Accidental & Serendipitous Learning – how individuals, by using social media, can learn without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)

Harold Jarche in his turn produced the following chart to interpret Hart’s listing. I find this a great model to use as basis for my own research on how to categorise different kinds of social media, suitable for different kinds of learning situations, especially to apply to the organization I work for myself.

Digging a bit deeper into Hart’s research, I found that she had already done lot’s of work in this respect. In the chart under this link she catergorised specific ways that different types of social media can be used in each of the 5 categories. All with great and inspiring examples. This is something I can discuss with the trainers I work with myself….with enthusiasm! Thanks again Jane!

(hint: it’s not in a classroom)

Something to consider when preparing for and delivering a training. In my previous blog on didactical hints and tips, I already stressed the notion of bringing work into the classroom and paving the way of bringing what has been learnt in the classroom on to the workfloor.

How do you do that as a trainer? What hints and tips do you have to ensure knowledge transfer of your participants?

Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Below I listed just a few links that I consider a must-see for all trainers that I work with. These are very useful resources when preparing for training or presentations. Apart from consulting these sites there are numerous things a trainer can do to ultimately prepare  the presentations effectively: from using #tags in twitter to using Google scholar to find academic research and analysis about the content of the presentation. More of these tips later on in Renee Reports. First these links; Check it out and HAVE FUN!!!

American Rhetoric

A great website on speeches with an online speech bank, the top 100 speeches of all time (fully written and in audio) and a nice data bank on the greatest movie speeches. A great site to get you all set for the right mood.

TED Talks

Very inspiring talks (videos) by remarkable people that present ideas worth spreading.  Presentations are short (no longer than 17 mins) but in many cases ‘jaw-dropping’ . Note of warning: very addictive.

Slideshare

Upload and share your presentations, word docs and PDFs in this huge data bank. Check what has already been created on your subject matter and improve your own credibility by just sharing.

Delicious

This is a social bookmarking webservice for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. I started using it myself and it really structures your webmemory. Tags Tags Tags!

Speaking.Alltop.com

“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.” – Clay Shirky . The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you by collecting the headlines and the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic of your interest.

Design.Alltop.com

Same for the abovementioned, but this one for collecting great pics.

Source: Presentation2.0

But let’s start at the beginning. Why am I so interested in social media anyway? Well, this question can be answered by just watching the TED talk I posted below. I watched this talk by Clay Shirkey first about a year ago. By means of his examples and illustrations he explains the role and potential of social media in such a clear way, that it just got me inspired to explore more about social media and how social media can be used as a fun and useful tool in both my private and in my career.

Here’s the video. Enjoy!

My personal objective for 2010 is to research the effectiveness of applying Social  Media in the training of professionals. I would like to examine to what extend social media can be used as an education channel and how social media can have a positive influence on the learning curve of trainees. The next step would be to find out how social media should be used to optimize result effect and impact in training, and possibly develop that into a concept of learning that can be used and integrated into the “Learning by Linking” concept of the Knowledge Centre of the CBI (where I work).

An investigation that could be of interest to trainers I work with in the CBI, or any professional educator anywhere in the word. During the course of this research I will keep you posted with my progression in this field by my blogs, links, and tweets on different channels. (Twitter: @boelaars, Linkedin, Facebook ).  But what I sincerely hope to establish, is the interaction with and between different trainers around the world, debating on this subject in order to come to the creation of advanced and applicable knowledge on social media in relation to training professionals.

Therefore I would like to invite you, whether you are a professional trainer or not, to post comments, show interesting links, and get connected to each other. All to the benefit of us all.

Let me kick-off by sharing an interesting article by Greg Ferenstein, posted on January 10th 2010 on Mashable:

“3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology“.

Let’s all make this work. Looking forward to your comments.

Read and learn!

http://tinyurl.com/yd2ucpj.

Being stuck to horizontalism however provides the opportunity to really figure out a few things on internet where normally time does not allow me to do this extensively. During my impression of a vegetable, I am attempting  to become a bit of social media power user (or at least try to approach this status). How to optimize my twittering activities, integrate blogging into other different social media, and perhaps even explore how to use the google wave. (yes I have a wave account already)

Any hints or tips are welcome

Keep you posted!

This more or less marks the spot for the end of a journey. But just of a physical trip to Colombia that is. Not so much the end of another journey, namely the challenge to create a rewarding network of great colleagues and friends. From several people I received encouraging reactions about the Renee Reports. The number of readers have indeed also gradually increased. That’s fantastic.

 I’d like to thank all the readers for their commitment in following my observations and adventures. And of course thank you to all the responders who were not afraid to just place a comment.

 Now that I am back in Holland it does not mean that I will stop writing Renee Reports. I will definitely continue to post on anything that amazes me, anything that makes me curious and wonder, and anything funny or serious that I experience. Most of it will most likely be about the thrilling adventures in and around the CBI headquarters, but I won’t neglect topics of lighter themes. I aspire to do this twice or three times a week, so you can check regularly what Renee Reports. Hope you keep on doing this.

What I will definitely continue to do daily is Micro-blogging on Twitter. This is also where automatically you will be notifies as soon as Renee Reports are published. And what’s more, is that it creates a nice network of friends who easily follow and communicate with each other. So in return of my everyday sweaty delivery of these blogs over the past weeks I ask you all to just go to www.twitter.com , register and follow @boelaars. I promise to be the first to return the favour to follow you too!

Do you follow me?

Keep in touch!

Two programmes however really excelled this year. Firstly the training sessions on Effective Trade Fair Participation was very high rated because of its practicality and relatively new field of knowledge that was transferred. For many people this training had literally opened their eyes.

But the number one top training this year, according to participants’ surveys, but most of all according to the local Proexport advisers, was this past training on E-Business. All of them appreciated the concise, but effective way in which the new media landscape was depicted, how web 2.0 and social media could be used as competitive advantage and of course the high number of very practical hints and tips to improve performances on websites and how to generate the right and more traffic.

Congratulations to Jorn Moraal and Paul Blok. CBI is proud to have you on board!

All organisations agree on the importance of effective, long term communication with clients. Still many believe that there is still a distinct border between the use of social media privately and for business purposes. To my opinion this border is becoming less and less relevant. We already see many corporations engaged in commerce on Facebook, being top of mind in review sites and creating groups in Twitter and Linkedin. In addition the number of influential bloggings rose considerably.

The phenomenon of sharing information in conjunction with the hideous increase of mobile applications is also a trend that is happening at this very moment. With more people connecting and sharing info via mobile this creates increased opportunities to engage clients any where and any time they want. People can share product reviews and product links via their cell phones, and blogs, pictures and other interests are linked directly to Facebook and Twitter.  Sharing no longer means email.

 This is basically all happening now. And to my opinion organisations like the CBI, existing by its core business of sharing knowledge, dependent on its key players in the field, should have a social media policy quickly, with rules of engagement across different networks, formalizing some kind of view on the use social media, how its employees, its clients and suppliers should function within these networks, or else this will simply be enforced by its users.

Critics say that companies in developing countries will not have the facilities to operate effectively within these social media because of a technological backlog. Well, this is simply untrue. These people need to wake up! Especially companies with an ambition to export to overseas or companies who long have established exports to Europe have yet gained fast access to these networks and social media. Most of them are already in there!! And I know this from experience. I keep contact with participants of CBI training sessions from Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia, Philippines, Ecuador, Peru, Senegal, Egypt, Bangladesh and even Madagascar (yes Tsitohaina: I’m talking about you… Congrats with your marriage!) And technology will enhance further, especially with mobile applications, being cheaper in purchase and faster in use, people in DCs are closing the gap today.

So here’s my mission to try and convince my organisation to embrace social media and make sure that next to CBI staff, as many exporters, BSOs, trainers and experts will be doing the same soon.

And I think we will be much supported by our very own clients.