Social Learning Systems

SocialText Offers Free Services to up to 50 Users

SocialText is offering free seats for up to 50 users to access some of SocialText’s functions. User will gain access to:

• SocialSignals - SocialText’s spin on microblogging
• SocialText Desktop - an Adobe based application
• SocialText People - social newtworking
• Dashboard - customer homepage
• One Workspace - wiki area

From SocialText 

 

Socialtext free is an offering aimed at mainstream use for up to 50 people within an organization to collaborate using Socialtext's social software platform. Employees can join or create their own private collaboration networks by using their work email address at Socialtext.com. In addition to the new free offering, the company announced the immediate availability of SocialCalc, the first social spreadsheet program that simplifies version control, reduces errors and increases productivity for distributed teams.

http://www.socialtext.com/

Jack Welch and Chancellor's Online University

Business Icon Jack Welch is Lending his name to a new Online University Program. The former General Electric CEO is buying a 12% stake in Chancellor University System LLC. Chancellor will name its MBA program The Jack Welch Institute.

See the Wall Street Journal article here.

Best Resources for Creative Commons Content

Here is a link to a really useful blog showing more than 30 sites where you can find free media to use.

"SitePoint has gathered up over 30 of the best resources online for audio, video, images and more for finding just the perfect Creative Commons licensed item for use in your next project. So, have a look around and get inspired!

These are files you can use in the creation of web sites and other media, free of charge. However, do be mindful that there are different degrees of the license, and some of them are for private use only, or they may require that you include an attribution to the original creator. Make sure to read and understand the various licenses, and which one each file you discover uses."

Check the Creative Commons Licenses here.

Sitepoint.com.

Social Learning Systems

Liz Vasti comments on Social Learning, Social Networking, eLearning, mLearning, Knowledge Management & Corporate Education. She believes that social learning is the next evolution of eLearning and enjoys reporting on trends in the education industry. Liz has 25+ years' experience leading technology and curriculum initiatives for employee and customer education.  

 

 

Opera Unite and the Internet’s Unfulfilled Promise

The platform is designed to better facilitate multiuser online applications and to give users greater control of their data even while making it available (if they so choose) to others online.

Opera Unite

This, from Lawrence Eng, a product analyst for Opera Software:

"Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use. With Opera Unite, everyday non-technical users can serve and share content and services directly from their own computers in the form of intuitive applications. That sounds kind of cool from a technology point of view, but what can you do with it, and why is it important?"

Eng goes on the say, "I imagine that many of us would lose most of our personal contacts if our favorite Web mail services shut down without warning. Also, many of us maintain extensive friend networks on sites like MySpace and Facebook, and are, therefore, subject to their corporate decisions via “Terms of Service” and click-through agreements. Furthermore, what does it mean anyway to be connected to hundreds of our “closest” friends? What about our real social networks, the people we want to interact with on a regular basis (like once a week, or even every day)"

Opera Unite applications can be just about anything. It’s up to developers, companies, entrepreneurs, end users, and anyone with a vision of what the interpersonal Web really means, to take that vision and build the next generation of applications to bring people together online in brand new ways.

• Check out Introduction to Opera Unite for a guide to getting it up and running
• Read  Unite developer’s primer for more information on creating Opera Unite services

Interested parties will need an Opera username and password (the same one you use on My Opera, Opera Link or Dev Opera), and they'll need to start thinking of a name for their computer.

http://www.opera.com/

Matt Jones - Why I Hate Social Media

This is a great article from Matt Jones on Ad Age...

He says, "People are interesting. Ideas are interesting. Stories are interesting. Real stuff is interesting. Brands are interesting (or, at least, some of them are). Even ads can be interesting. But media? Media just connects those things. It's a conduit. Media is not interesting. Not even the "social" kind."

"What would happen if we acted on the implications of social media, rather than just use it as cheap media? What if we recognized that social media is really only shorthand for the multi-channel, hyper-connected, user-generated, co-created, always-on world we now live in -- a world where the good gets what it deserves and so does the bad?"

----
Matt Jones is director of strategy and planning for Jack Morton Worldwide in New York. In April he moved to New York from Sydney, Australia, where his clients included Ford, Microsoft and Sony.

Misunderstood Millennials

A recent Sibson Consulting survey reveals interesting data about members of the Millennial Generation.

“Contrary to popular opinion, the Millennial Generation are not generally needy and unfocused. If understood and managed properly, they may be your overall best employees,” said Joseph DiMisa, senior vice president and salesforce effectiveness practice leader at Sibson Consulting."

Key survey findings - Millennials:

• Are more productive and work more efficiently than initially perceived by employers
• Are highly motivated and strive for success
• Are very goal oriented and ever-critical of their own performance
• Are interested in a career in sales
• Strive in an environment where team goals are infused with individual performance linkages
• In sales, Millennials’ performance is equal to or greater than that of other generations
  
  MORE:
• There is a divide between employers and Millennials when it comes to customized, digital communication
• Employers often fail to create “generational harmony” within their organizations—the lack of understanding between generations leads to numerous missed opportunities
• Companies are not properly aligning strategies within their organizations to attract Millennials
• Millennials are entering the workforce in increasing numbers and their population is already greater than most employers perceive it to be
• Millennials don’t respond as favorably to group/team goals as to individualized goals. Employers’ view is that they perceive team goals negatively.
• Millennials are known to respond better to different forms of communication than older generations, but 71 percent of employers are doing nothing differently to reach them.
• Millennials indicate that 86 percent use e-mail formatted for delivery to a portable device; 60 percent use instant messaging; 24 percent have a personalized Website; and “every single” Millennial who participated in the survey communicates via text messages.

When designing compensation plans for millennials, Sibson recommends:

• Establishing higher base salaries while lowering bonus amounts (mix of pay adjustment)
• Individual performance mechanics with team based acceleration (can reverse this)
• Including quality or customer service metrics
• Incentivizing with reward-based mechanisms that motivate versus punitive controls in plans
• Implementing well-aligned performance management programs that tie to your compensation plans
• Defining role and position competencies clearly, which are linked to base pay merit programs
• Placing an emphasis on total rewards, such as work-life balance, advancement opportunities, and personal development

In a recent article called Motivating the Millennials,  Kassia Shishkoff offers some ideas for incentives for Generation Y. 

In the article, Anthony Luciano says, "The first year or two is very important because that's when you're going to get them [to stay]. If you’ve got someone for five or 10 years, odds are you’re going to have them for 20. But in order to get them to that mark, you’ve got to incent them a lot in those early years. They want constant and fast feedback, they love electronics, they love things that fit their peer set. Traditional items may not excite them at all."

Social Media - Important Tool in Keeping Employees Engaged

Social Media is an increasingly important tool for communication.

In its “Employee Engagement Survey,” the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation teamed with Buck Consultants to determine how organizations are communicating with employees to keep them engaged and productive. The survey includes responses from nearly 1,500 participants representing a broad industry and geographic base."

Key Findings:

• Almost four-fifths (79 percent) of the respondents report that they use social media frequently to engage employees and foster productivity, outranking even email (75 percent).
• Company blogs are the most popular social media tool currently in use (47 percent), with discussion boards ranking the highest for future planned use (33 percent).
• Current use of social networking sites such as Twitter (21 percent), Yammer (20 percent), and Facebook (18 percent) is significant, but organizations are planning to use those tools even more in the future.

The Social Media version of the report is available here.     

Formal and Informal - Social Learning

Jane Hart presents some great information about social learning. On slide 15, she discusses some of the possible obstacles organizations face when implementing social learning within the corporation. This is the third in a series of presentations.

Jane's blog is found here.

Supporting formal and informal social learning

View more Microsoft Word documents from Jane Hart.

Synchronous and Asynchronous - Blurring the Lines

A Gen-X member of my team asked me how to distinguish synchronous from asynchronous learning. The normal time-bound definitions were my answer, but as we discussed this issue a little more, I realized that there is definitely a blurring of the lines with Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies becoming so widespread.

See the article Adam Nelson in Chief Learning Officer Magazine from June 2008:
Synchronous and Asynchronous: What's in a Name?

"If 500,000 people take a self-paced course over a 10-day period and converse with each other informally afterward, isn’t that closer to the true meaning of synchronous?"

Good question.