3 funny resources for harnessing social media for training. Lights, camera, action!
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Humor & comedy, Training & development
In this month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors’ newsletter I look at how we can harness social media for training purposes. See the this blog post for the full social media post, this one for social media resources or keep reading for some funny social media resources.
Read the entire newsletter here or download a hard copy of the article. Not already receiving our free monthly newsletters? Whatsamatter you? Sign up here.
- This funny site is a take on the wildly popular, website that displays homemade crafts called etsy. On regretsy you’re asked to judge whether items are for real on etsy or made up, like these ‘upcycled garden art/bird & insect reflectors/pest control/mobiles/party decor’ pictured above – aka CD’s for sale. True or false?
- A delightful coca cola campaign that capitalizes on the element of surprise, designed to spread happiness (& sell more coke of course). You never know what the dispensing machine will give you when you plug in your money to get a coke. 8′ long pizza anyone?
- Some of the funniest twittter hashtags (a twitter hashtag is simply a short label preceded by the # sign, designed to help you search for things in twitter).
Special note: I’m coming back to Vancouver from Kenya for a limited time to teach some courses, including a Social Media course. If you’re in the ‘hood, please join me!
Tags: coca cola, etsy, regretsy, social media, twitter
What’s behind door #1? Self-awareness & perspective
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
My friend Michelle once said in an email …
“‘Go where the door is open’ and it occurred to me – that – that’s what you did Lee-Anne – you opened the door.”
And as I’m sitting here writing this post, from my new home in Kenya, I’m thinking a lot about doors. Which to say yes and throw open with abandon and which to say no and keep locked shut.
Michelle also inspired a recent post (she’s an incredible muse) called ‘Oh, that I could shrink the surface of the world (for some perspective)…’ It’s about what causes distance between people. For this post I’ve put the two together – here’s to door openings that decrease the distance between our hearts and heads.
- If distance is not feeling understood or worse, feeling deliberately misunderstood, then opening a door is seeking understanding. It can be extremely difficult to find understanding but often just the seeking reduces distance.
- If distance is not being able to understand, despite standing on your head for trying, then opening a door is acknowledging the confusion and finding comfort in chaos.
- If distance is not resonating, not relating, not clicking with someone, then opening a door is continuing to search for similarities that are significant.
- If distance is feeling like your colleagues are speaking a foreign language, then opening a door is seeking clarification.
- If distance is feeling like you’re being denied the secret code of inclusion, then opening a door is deciding if you’re with the right tribe or not.
- If distance is feeling more uncomfortable than an ice cube on a hot summer’s day, then opening a door is acknowledging your discomfort. There’s power in vulnerability.
- If distance is thinking you got it, but realizing you didn’t, then opening a door is admitting your gaffe with humour and grace.
- If distance is feeling awkward and being embarrassed, then opening a door is taking a deep breath (or 17 as my friend Dyana Valentine says) and remembering no one ever died from embarrassment.
Because after all, the view from one side of the door can look incredibly different from the other side. Here’s to the view that self-awareness and perspective brings.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: dyana valentine, perspective, self-awareness
3 resources for harnessing social media for training. Lights, camera, action!
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Training & development
In this month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors’ newsletter I look at how we can harness social media for training purposes. See the last blog post for the full social media post, this one for social media resources or stay tuned for the next blog post where I’ll share some resources related to social media, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Read the entire newsletter here or download a hard copy of the article. Not already receiving our free monthly newsletters? Whatsamatter you? Sign up here.
- Did you know some people consider email passe (including my teenager)? Here’s a great video that gives a quick overview of the impact & power of social media (see below) – Social Media Revolution 2011. Love the soundtrack.
- Here’s a link to my social media tagged resources on Delicious – almost 200 resources at your fingertips which you can further refine by searching by topics like facebook, blogs, twitter etc.
- Check out how searchable a particular website is or how it’s graded for social media. Simply enter the url et voila, you’ll get a free report with search.grader.com & marketing. grader.com. Amazing.
Special note: I’m coming back to Vancouver from Kenya for a limited time to teach some courses, including a Social Media course. If you’re in the ‘hood, please join me!
Tags: delicious, marketing grader, search grader, social media
3 steps to harnessing social media for training. Lights, camera, action!©
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Training & development
In this month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors’ newsletter I look at how we can harness social media for training purposes. Stay tuned for the next two blog posts where I’ll share some resources related to social media, both serious & tongue in cheek.
Read the entire newsletter here or download a hard copy of the article. Not already receiving our free monthly newsletters? Whatsamatter you? Sign up here.
First you need some light – aka an awareness of the power of & reasons for using social media in training. Second you need the equivalent of a camera – aka social media tools. Thirdly you need action – aka a plan for how to use social media in your training. Put all 3 together & they’ll bring you some ease & your participants better retention & transfer of learning. Ready? Lights, camera, action!
1. Lights
Let’s shed some light on why you should be using social media in your training preparation, delivery & follow-up. In the words of Jeff Bulla, getting a handle on social media is essential because social media lasts, it spreads & it lets you be found. For a trainer, social media allows learning to do the same (last, spread & be found).
Social media also fits with great pedagogies or philosophies of teaching, specifically a combination of brain-based, experiential, adult & popular education. Allison King speaks about social media as a way of helping us move from a sage from the stage to a guide from the side.
Not using social media will soon be like insisting on using dad’s old 8track or worse, using a horse & buggy to get around. Check out the astonishing social media participation numbers in the chart above from Media Bistro.
Social media allows learners to choose how to participate. Li & Berhnhoff do a great job categorizing types of usage in the chart below. Encouraging flexibility & choice in learning is like the best hot ice cream fudge sundae in terms of increasing both motivation for learning & likelihood for retention & transfer of learning.
2. Camera (the tools)
The amount of information available to us (both on & offline) is growing more than 65% each year. In an IDC survey sponsored by Xerox, respondents said they spent up to 26% of their time dealing with the consequences of info overload. Before you throw up your hands in despair, make sure you take advantage of tools that can help ease your load instead of adding to it.
There are a plethora of tools that easily work with training & development. If you’re not already familiar with the big 6 (blogs, facebook, twitter, linkedin, youtube, flickr) pick 1 & give yourself 30 minutes to play around & explore.
Social Media is all about finding information & getting found. Not sure how to organize your learning material? Use tools like Delicious to organize & tag the resources you like online. Try a tool like netvibes to help you research your next workshop – it efficiently pulls in a ton of links on any topic of your choice & organizes them beautifully. (Can we all say ‘ahhhh – the ease!’)
Not sure if you &/or your content is getting found? Use google key words to see what specific terms people are looking for online. If you’re a communication subject matter expert, you need to know what kinds of words people are actually using in search engines. I like Google’s adwords site, which costs about $10 (1 time fee). Not sure how your website stacks up in terms of findabilty? Or how your website is for SEO (search engine optimization)? Search grader & marketing grader, are 2 tools that will give you an instant report for free. All you have to do is enter your URL. It’s so easy it seems like magic.
Take advantage of tools that are designed to help you manage your online accounts, like Hootsuite. I rarely actually go to the Twitter site because all of my Twitter information, along with Facebook is all in my Hootsuite account. Easy peasy.
3. Action (getting started)
Now that you’ve shed some light (have an increased awareness of the power of social media for use in training), have thought about the equivalent of your camera (specific social media tools), it’s time for action.
Give some thought to where the people you want to reach are hanging out. Do they love Twitter but despise Facebook? Have a hankering for LinkedIn but avoid Youtube? Get yee to the corresponding social media tool & get active. Find out who the influences are in your subject matter area & engage with them. Make a plan for how you can specifically incorporate social media into your training. Check out my google doc for a matrix for how to incorporate specific social media tools to help you prepare for training, conduct a training & follow-up a training.
And if you didn’t already realize it, if you clicked on the Google doc above you’ve already started using Social Media in training. Kudos & congratulations.
Special note: I’m coming back to Vancouver from Kenya for a limited time to teach some courses, including a Social Media course. If you’re in the ‘hood, please join me!
Tags: blogs, delicious, flickr, google, hootsuite, jeff bulla, linkedin, media bistro, netvibes, pedagogy, social media, youtube
How do you say ‘be kind to animals?’ It’s a matter of perspective.
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Conflict resolution
It’s a matter of perspective.
If you’re rule bound, rigid, needing to cover every possibility, fear based and controlling, you may create a sign such as above.
If you’re coming from a place of common sense, kindness, flexibility and faith, you may create an entirely different sign.
Please be kind to the animals.
What’s your perspective? What lens do you look at the world through? (And what effect does that lens have on your perspective?)
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: Conflict resolution, perspective
Training & development learning well May blog post round up
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
If you didn’t catch all the posts this month simply peruse & click what’s below.
Here’s the Rock.Paper.Scissors’ monthly training & development round up for the month of May.
Learn well in the training & development learning well.
Dive deep into the learning well or take a small sip. Shower yourself in training & development or just get your big toe wet.
Refresh & refreshing.
As you wish.
- The Rock.Paper.Scissors newsletter is out: 3 funny resources to amp up your success on your own terms (including a pole dancing fireman)
- Backward glance = forward thinking (or what this hilarious shampoo prank can teach us about perspective)
- We humans were built to learn. What have you learned lately?
- When it comes to learning, our brains love rhythm – watch!
- Oh, that I could shrink the surface of the world (for some perspective)…
- Creativity doesn’t have to mean coming up with something brand new …
- ‘It’s risky,’ said experience. ‘It’s impossible,’ said pride.
- Do you have a heavy, non-useful contact? I did.
- For all those who say their subject matter is too technical to teach it in a fun way….
- A long time ago, before death by PowerPoint by Darr Reynolds
- Are you consistent with yourself? I hope not.
Tags: brain based learning, creativity, danielle laporte, darr reynolds, interactive, life lenses, perspective, powerpoint
Facilitation means to bring ease- Speed Geeking, Dotmocracy anyone?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Training & development
Creative Commons licensed on Flickr by: Sporkist
When I was doing some research on Un-conferences, I came across a Wikki page that listed a number of facilitation styles, some of which I hadn’t heard of before. It’s a handy resource to take a peek at for those that might be familiar to you & those that may be new. Here’s a few below. Check them out & tease out ones that you can try for your next training.
I’m teaching a Social Media course in June & again in July called ‘Transforming Workplace Learning through Social Media’ – me thinks I’ll try a social media version of the Dotmocracy style below. Should be fun!
– Fishbowl – where observers sit round a group that’s being facilitated & take an active role with their observations (I don’t think this technique gets used near enough)
– Speed geeking – like speed dating, only with presentations
– Birds of Feather – informally convening subgroups according to a particular characteristic (eg all CEO’s)
– TeachMeet – include micro-presentations (7 min), nano-presentations (2 min) & random selection of speakers
– Pecha Kucha – the Japanese word for chit chat, are presentations held all over the world where each speaker gets 20 slides with 20 seconds for each slide
– Dotmocracy – is a visual decision making style of facilitation, where people place a dot according to whether they strongly agree, agree, are neutral, disagree, strongly disagree or are confused (see the example below)
Creative Commons licensed by: Jasondiceman
Tags: birds of a feather, dotmocracy, facilitation, pecha kucha, speed geeking, teachmeet
Backward glance = forward thinking (or what this hilarious shampoo prank can teach us about perspective)
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Conflict resolution
When we’re in conflict we tend to do more of whatever it is that’s not working. Yet simply changing your perspective can change the whole game.
What if he’d simply turned around?
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: Conflict resolution
We humans were built to learn. What have you learned lately?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Training & development
Creative Commons licensed on Flickr by: gualtiero
You don’t have to speak the language of the parent in this video to know that his kid wants to read. Badly.
She’s mimicking what she’s seen around her.
Because. Learning is innate.
We humans were built to learn. Historically our survival depended on it. Today, our work depends on it, as does our health & well-being.
Our brains are working to full potential when we’re learning. Soaking it up. Synthesizing. Creating. Crystallizing. Innovating. Inquiring. Absorbing. Applying. Reflecting. Researching. Theorizing. Testing the waters.
What have you learned lately?
Tags: learning
When it comes to learning, our brains love rhythm – watch!
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
Remember those late night TV commercials that put their phone number to a sing songy little jingle (& said sing songy jingle then gets stuck in your head)?
The writers know something good trainers should know.
Our brains not only like rhythm – they LOVE rhythm. Put something to a jingle & it’s ever so much easier to remember.
Need an example? Check out this adorable 3 year old reciting the element table, yes the element table.
How can you work with your participants brains & use rhythm to your advantage?
Tags: brain based learning, rhythm