Joyful Jubilant Learning

Digital Learning and Choosing Your Learning Communities

Our April theme of Digital Learning has illustrated something quite clearly for me:

Whatever Digital Learning we choose will also determine the conversations we have with our globally scattered friends and neighbors, and how we have them.

Conversely, you may choose a virtual community (like this one, our Ho‘ohana Community on JJL) or a social media network first (such as Twitter or LinkedIn). However in making that choice, you will have to learn whatever it takes to communicate with everyone there if you are to fully engage with them (and they with you) in the best possible way.

Pure and simple: We choose how and if we engage

What is that “best possible way?” Well, “best” is pretty relative to each of us individually, and there’s the rub: Best for you may not be perceived as best for the rest of the community.

And there is another truism which frequently emerges: What happens more times than not, is that whatever is easiest for you isn’t necessarily deemed best for everyone else too: Getting to what is optimal for both of you takes some work. Sometimes, it even means building new habits. At some point, people make decisions about what is good enough and they give up on the pursuit of optimal.

That’s life. We all have to arrive at our own reasonable balance.

Marketing guru Seth Godin became an example of this recently when he received some criticism for his decision to write about Twitter. Just one problem: He doesn’t use it. What he wrote was positive, but as someone who is not engaged with the Twitter community he lost some of his credibility with those who are, and feel they are more devoted and fully engaged.

As a Twitter newbie myself, about a week short of a full month’s engagement, I have learned much about the cultural norms there, and feel like I am learning how to speak a completely brand new language, just 140 characters at a time. When do I choose updates that are publicly broadcast, @directed, @included or direct-messaged? Which is the best way to reply to each? Why can’t I get just one stretched picture on my profile page versus the tiled one like others can? When does link-sharing deteriorate to anything less than sincerely appreciated or loved by your followers? When are you perceived as gregarious and generous versus strictly self-promoting and spammy?

And most of all: Why bother learning?

Twitter has taught me an awful lot this month, and I have come to realize that it does take time to learn enough to make a reasonably intelligent stab at answering that “Why bother?” question. It takes time, transparency, and vulnerability: While you are learning you have to engage; there really isn’t any other way.

Further, the community sets the rules of engagement, not you.

When you choose some kind of digital learning you are often choosing a community too, and you are rarely learning alone.

Even when you use something like Del.icio.us, normally entered into strictly for individual book-marking, it turns out to have some kind of social component to it. After I had been using my Del.icio.us toolbar bookmarklet for all my link tagging over quite an extended amount of time, I remember being so surprised the day I went back into my account again to learn how to bundle my tags, and discovered that I actually had a network and fans there –how had that happened? Who were they? Where did they come from? Was I expected to communicate back with them or reciprocate in some way? I went into this mini panic worrying about how unintentionally rude I may have appeared until I learned more about the way that networking happened there.

With Twitter, I am conversing regularly (that is, “tweeting”) with people across the globe who seem to have no interest in anything else I write over and above those 140-character updates. In the beginning, it floored me that those tweets were enough value for my new twitter-friends, jumping into conversations with me just as easily as my older friends established elsewhere did. They click my blog link at my bio to quickly check me out, but even if they choose to follow me (adding me to their chosen Twitter village) they may never read one of my blog posts again (much less my book and about my mission), and have no interest whatsoever in an RSS or email subscription. Twitter is an instant community of sharing humanity in real time, not in experience-driven stories or bloggy thesis presentation. Your Twitter connection can become more as links are followed (and as you choose who you will follow), but not necessarily.

Social has become a pretty literal word.

There has been some rapid and totally unexpected spill-over for me as I surrender my “Why bother?” learning time. I have noticed that my blog posts are getting shorter and less frequent (finally!) for now that I “get” Tumblr and Twitter I more fully understand how short attention span has become no matter how much people may love or admire you. It ain’t personal: When they choose new learning of their own, some time may be stolen from old-style conversations. Our capacity for life has this wondrous yet annoying way of stretching much larger than the time we manage to stay awake and function well! Twitter (and the books I purchased after A Love Affair With Books) has had a pretty dramatic effect on my own RSS feed-reading: Blogs that were “on probation” now have a much shorter time in which to make the cut with me. Am I being more efficient, or less patient?

And the duplicity of reciprocation and paying it forward is not lost on me: I am completely aware of how I may be in the same boat with someone else judging my citizen publishing – and me as publisher.

Let’s bring this back to Joyful Jubilant Learning

What more can we learn from the aha! moments we experience within our Digital Learning here and elsewhere? Most, if not all of us participate in several virtual communities: What experiences can we bring back to this one here at JJL, evolving in our best possible way? How is our own Ho‘ohana Community to get better within the conversations had here, and more supportive of the learning initiatives of all who wish to engage with us?

Please share your ideas, for I am quite positive that every single author here would love to hear them.

~ Rosa Say

Earlier this month: Talking Story and a JJL Twitter Soiree

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Post author Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she currently writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life.

Rosa also serves as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning; her letter for 2008 can be found on our About Page.

For all of Rosa's writing aggregated in just one place, visit her Tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha.

Who are the Digerati?

In Google-searching through some of my curiosities about Digital Learning this month I stumbled across www.edge.org and this page in particular that asks (and then tells us) “Who are the Digerati?” I found it fascinating, and thought that perhaps you might too:

Who are the "digerati" and why are they "the cyber elite"? They are the doers, thinkers, and writers who have tremendous influence on the emerging communication revolution. They are not on the frontier, they are the frontier.

The digerati evangelize, connect people, adapt quickly. They like to talk with their peers because it forces them to go to the top of their form and explain their most interesting new ideas. They give each other permission to be great. That's who they want to talk to about the things they are excited about because they want to see if it plays. They ask each other the questions they are asking themselves, and that's part of what makes this cyber elite work.

You will find links to the stories of forty different web evangelists, fondly referred to by nicknames such as The Impresario, The Saint, The Gadfly, The Buccaneer, and The Citizen (whom I was initially seeking to learn more about when I found this page.)

Enjoy.

“I resent the shallowness of the critics who say that if you sit in front of a computer and participate in online conversations worldwide you are not leading an authentic life. I question the premise that one person can judge the authenticity of another person's life. Millions of people passively watch television all day long. Don't tell me that having an email relationship with someone on the other side of the world is less authentic than sitting alone and watching the tube. For many people, this new medium is a way of breaking out of the virtual world they already live in.”
---Howard Rheingold (howard rheingold pic: Justin Hall & Robin Good)

Post author: Rosa Say

The Learning Life of an Analog Guy in a New Digital World

Yes, I'm an analog guy. I'm old enough to remember pencils, 13 column paper spreadsheets and "10-keys".   When I was in college the "computer" we used to process our (quite) elementary COBALT programming was the size of a living room.

My first "laptop" was a 50-pound Compaq portable that had a 3-inch B&W screen, and didn't even have a hard drive (hard to fathom that 25 years later).

Given this history it wasn't hard to proclaim myself a "dork" when it comes to the current digital age.

In other words, I'm fascinated by it, and always want to learn more about it, but I'll always feel like I'm three steps behind.   A good analogy is learning a foreign language - if you do it when you are a child, it's much, much more easy to absorb and learn quickly.  If you try to do it as an adult, it doesn't "take" as well, and it takes much longer to get fluent. 

That's me and this digital thing.

Nonetheless, despite my "dorkness" I continue to dive into the digital pool, and have come to embrace its many benefits.   Here are a few of my favorites:

1. The Blackberry.  I'm addicted, but it keeps me sane (really).  I'm actually glad I didn't have one in my 20s.
2. Blogging.  Finally, a place to publish my unfiltered thoughts for the world to see immediately after I simply hit a "send" button. Wow.
3. Google. I'm an information junkie, and a supreme search engine like this one is right up my alley. I probably do at least 25-50 searches a day - the last one was to find out the lyrics to the America song "Daisy Jane" (I look up lyrics a lot!)
4. Twitter. (I'm http://twitter.com/starbucker)  This is my latest fascination.  Insta-blogging.  I think this is more addicting than the Blackberry.  And you have to put your thoughts in 140 characters or less - a very good exercise in brevity!
5. Wikipedia.  See #3.  I used to just love reading encyclopedias when I was a kid - now 1,000 volumes of facts are just milliseconds away!

Yes, this analog guy, despite his dorkness, is actually getting along quite well in this new world.

Imagine that!  :-)

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Terry Starbucker is an operations executive for a service company who lives in Connecticut, loves business trips to the Rocky Mountain west, is a founder of SOBCon, and posts his musings and observations about "the optimistic side of the daily grind" in Ramblings from a Glass Half Full. 

Teaching with the heart of aloha in a digital age

Throughout this school year, I have been diligently researching 21st Century students and how to effectively teach them. Route 21 has been a rewarding resource for me. 21st Century Themes focus on Global Awareness, Financial, Economic, Business and Entrepreneurial Literacy and Civic Literacy. Surrounding these focuses, there is an integration of core subjects with skills such as Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Creativity and Innovation and Communication and Collaboration.

From this report:

We all know that learning doesn’t stop when school does, but now more than
ever, learning must be a lifelong pursuit. The rapidity of change, the
relentless advance of technology, the diminishing half-life of knowledge, the
far-reaching effects of globalization – all these factors contribute to a growing
conviction that the best thing we can teach our children is how to teach
themselves.

Certainly the challenge before us in education is how 20th Century trained teachers, with 20th Century developed materials and tools are to reach their 21st Century students. Even though the pieces and structures are generationally different, there is at least one facet that hasn't changed - reaching the heart of the student. In a time when students can learn more independently, communicate more frequently and access information more readily, it is even more important that the teacher personally encourage the hearts of students.

People are more digitally connected than ever before. 29 billion text messages are sent each month according to CTIA! This is up from 7 billion in 2005. However, with increasing distant relationships, students find themselves more alone than ever before. One researcher quoted students to say they felt abandoned.

Enter the teacher who desires to reach the hearts of her students. What a profound impact she can make as she adjusts teaching methods to her students' learning and finds a way to reach their loneliness. As our digital age offers a myriad of opportunities, life change still occurs personally. More than ever, this generation needs teachers who are on the cutting edge with their skills; but, even more than cutting edge approaches is the need to teach with the heart of Aloha.

If you would like to know more about 21st Century teaching, I recommend you begin with these resources.

Essential reading: the why, what, and how of effective technology integration:

· Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom

Twenty-first-century schools need twenty-first-century technology.

· Synching Up with the iKid: Connecting to the Twenty-First-Century Student

Educators must work to understand and motivate a kind of digital learner.

· Technology Integration Instructional Modules

Free modules are available for use by workshop presenters, college professors, or individuals interested in getting started with integrating technology into the curriculum.

(Photo courtesies: Partnership for 21st Century Learning)

~ Dean Boyer, Teaching with Aloha

Beware the meme, it may contain more than it seems

Have you taken part in a meme? I have. I don’t jump on every one that comes along but once in awhile, I do find time to participate when it catches my interest. A meme can take many forms. It can be a set of questions to answer (Five things you don’t know about me, is a popular one). Or a set of instructions to follow (like one book meme I recall, that had you go to the first book in your pile, turn to x page, etc.). Or you input the URL of a blog and it does some analysis to produce a widget to post on your blog and attract additional folks to the meme. Like how much is your blog worth? For grins, I checked on this Joyful Jubilant Learning blog to find:

My blog is worth $127,586.04.
How much is your blog worth?

Of course, we are all richer for the learning we share!

I think this example helps to show that memes like this are generally good fun. They tend to further the sharing of information about one another. They do take time and depending upon the viral nature of them, an individual could get tagged about the same time from a couple of different folks.

Some folks decide not to partake in them and I respect their decision. If the person is one I want to know more about, then it is not a big deal. It actually provides a opportunity to further the conversation outside the meme and achieve the same goal; a deeper relationship.

The most recent widget meme I participated in occurred early in January this year. I picked it up from one blog in my PodCamp group. The meme in this case was a widget that advertised the readability of the blog. I had seen a similar one a year or so ago and was curious to see if there were any changes in readability since then. I posted the results and went on my way.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Michael Pollitt, a free-lance writer for the Guardian (UK). He wrote:

In 2008 I'm losing it

Be nice... no, not my sanity, or my sense of all reason. My stuff.

Then again, losing a certain degree of sanity could be pretty interesting too... I think it was Mark Twain who said, “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”

Something I'll be keeping packed in my bags for the trip down Jubilation Way (nickname and wonder-path for our learning in 2008) is my steady migration to a 'trusted system' (in GTD-speak) of completely web-based tools and archiving. To some people it may sound like a contradiction - a trusted system that I place in the web's hands and not my own hard drive or some good old fashioned filing cabinets?

Exactly. More take-the-risk fun than a Barrel of Monkeys.

I have two reasons.

#1, I have completely lost patience with reviewing, reorganizing, and restoring my old stuff, only to dust it off in the name of a really clean house, and starting the process all over again - both with material stuff, and as a metaphor for the intellectual stuff. Do that enough in a lifetime and your stuff loses its sentimental value real fast.

#2, I have learned to develop tremendous faith in my own creativity and capacity for more learning (yay JJL!). Before that sounds too vain, please look at it from my very practical point of view: I am positive that I can replace or recreate anything I might happen to lose, or I can learn to. Better yet, I can start from scratch and create stuff that is totally new. (Kinda like cranking out blog posts.)

“Use it or lose it” is sounding fabulous as a new mantra. I'm liking new versus collectible, starring role versus variety show, spare versus abundant, and as contentedly streamlined as possible --- in Hawaiian, ma'alahi.

See, even my language of intention is working for me with losing it --- just one Hawaiian word for a bunch of English ones.

A biggie for me in this leap of faith has been learning that I can lose Microsoft Outlook for a romp in the jungle with Gorilla King Google and their entire tribe of monkeys in a barrel. Monkey GMail, monkey GCalendar, monkey GDocs, monkey GGroups, and the newest monkey I've had loads of fun with, Picasa.

And yes, I do mean for my business apps in Say Leadership Coaching and Ho'ohana Publishing too. I've got a few more barrels as well, not just the Google one (like TypePad and 37Signals) but one and all are web-based.

Jan 12 Update: At LifeDev, Glen posted How to Become a Google Docs Power User today if you are interested in learning more about it. One issue I have with Google Docs however is that it won't allow me to upload pdfs --- anyone have a workaround tip for that?

Living dangerously? Nah. Losing it is liberating.

What will you be losing this year?

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Postscript: This was a contribution to our January theme at Joyful Jubilant Learning: Packing our Bags for 2008.

Post author Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she currently writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life. Visit her there, pick up a feed for your reader, and let her know what you think.

If you like what you read here and there, consider spending some time at her new Tumblr log too, Ho‘ohana Aloha. It's another really cool barrel.

What I Learned From Writing Online: It DOES make a difference

Preface: This is an entry for Robert Hzurek’s September writing project, hosted by Middle Zone Musings. I have showcased Robert’s monthly efforts here before, and will likely continue to do so, for he has our magic, magnetic word in them – learning!

There seems to be a kind of convergence brewing in our blogging communities: Here at JJL we have focused our September Forum on Making A Difference. Over on Great Circle, Pete Aldin and company are going to War. Many bloggers are gearing up for Blog Action Day on October 15th. Then last week, this came from Robert Hzurek: Don’t Just Sit There, Change Something!

“So, your challenge, should you decide to accept it, is to a) make a change (big or small, no matter - as long it gets you out of a comfort zone), then b) write about your experience (sure, maybe you just started, but so what?) So, just tell me about what you did, why you did it, and what happened; you know, that sort of thing.”

What does it all mean?

This convergence I refer to seems to be a restlessness, a need for all this reading and writing we do to mean something – a difference, a call for change, for real and tangible action as opposed to just gathering ideas, writing posts or essays about them, and then … nothing beyond yet another round of essays for another month ... another theme ... another march of days spent writing about more ideas unfulfilled.

Well, this is what I have learned: Stuff does happen offline, and in the “real world” because of triggers that were written online, catapulting someone to action. Real stuff, meaningful to someone. Just because you don’t always hear back about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

You have to write for the possibility.

When you write something online, whether in a guest posting, or within a comment, bravely willing to share, and give voice to your ideas, stuff happens.

How do I know? Two ways;

PodCamp Boston 2

What is a PodCamp?

PodCamp Boston 2 is a FREE 2 day Unconference exploring new media community tools like blogging, videoblogging, podcasting, second life, twitter, and more. The event is created by the participants, and everyone had a voice in the experience. Newcomers are welcome and you don't have to be a techie to get a lot out of coming and participating in a PodCamp.

Check out some of the outtakes from the recent PodCamp Pittsburgh (thanks to Chris Brogan for the link) Then consider registering for PodCamp Boston 2!

Why 2?

Duh, 1 was last last year. 2 is coming up this October!

What does it cost?

PodCamp is an unconference and free to all participants. For more information visit the PodCamp Boston web site or register at this link.

Listen to this promo:

See you at PodCamp Boston!

PS - if you can't make it to Boston for this PodCamp check out the schedule to see if there is one in your area.

Community and Learning

While Dean is leading us down the path of "unlearning", and Rosa has struggled with "unlearning", I found this when visiting Nancy's Full Circle blog as my week of vacation concludes.

Nancy White has this nifty slideshow

Great food for thought!

PodCamp Boston 2 - October 26-28, 2007

PodCamp Boston 2 is rapidly approaching. We are into August and October 26-28 feels like it is just around the corner.

It was a great event last year and I expect this year to be even more so. There are already 290 registered for this event.

Are you in New England? You should consider participating!

Even if you are outside the Boston metro area, this should be a good excuse to get here and participate!

The PodCamp website with additional info can be found here: