2011: A writer’s odyssey

Wow! 2011 was a big year of writing for me, with 2 self-published books and over 40 blog posts.

My books are available on Amazon, and I have listed the year’s blog posts below for your convenience.

Thanks for reading!

Social media

• Social media extremism
• Smash your wall
• My Twitter hero
• Who owns the photocopiers?
• 20 hot resources for customer-facing social media
• LATI: A better way to measure influence on Twitter?
• A circular argument
• The big myth of social networking
• Foching up social media

Mobile learning

• The 4 S’s of mobile design
• Mobile learning – Push or pull?

Informal learning

• Viva la evolution
• Doctoring the Informal Learning Environment

Content development

• Toying with emotion
• 14 reasons why your multiple-choice quiz sucks
• 3 hot resources for best practice multiple-choice quizzing
• The 2 sources of freebies
• Australia’s Nobel Laureates
• On the Money

Books and e-books

• When is an e-book not a book?
• E-Learning Provocateur: Volume 1

Awards and events

• ElNet Workplace E-learning Congress 2011
• I’m a Best Australian Blogs nominee!
• When it rains it pours
• 8 interesting things at CeBIT
• Everything connects at Amplify
• Winners are grinners

Cartoons

• Selective democracy
• Where’s Waldo? – The Minimalist Edition
• Foolproof hiding spot for your key
• Recent changes patroller
• Respect for Klout

Other

• Top 5 things I hope not to hear in 2011
• Observations of a Critical Theory newbie
• The Parable of the Monkeys
• Ode to the naysayers
• The A to Z of learning
• Learning vs Development
• Eye of the tiger
• Does L&D belong in HR?
• When augmented reality isn’t
• Psst…! 15 inside tips for sales reps
• A question of leadership development
• The unscience of evaluation
• Clash of the titans

Winners are grinners

It is with much pride that I share the news that I have won the LearnX Best Learning Leader Blog award!

This is a very prestigious award in the Asia-Pacific region, and I am honoured to nominated let alone be selected.

Congratulations to my fellow winner in the category, Ainslie Hunter, who authors the excellent blog Courses That Matter.

I wish to thank everyone who nominated me. I’m glad you think so highly of my contribution to the discourse.

I also wish to thank those who have taken the time to add comments – both positive and negative. The life blood of a blog isn’t just the thoughts and experiences of the blogger, but also his interactions with his peers.

So with renewed vigour I shall continue my quest to provoke deeper thinking… :o)

When it rains it pours

Hot on the heels of being nominated for a Best Australian Blog award
at the Sydney Writers’ Centre, I have also been nominated for the
Best Learning Leader Blog award at LearnX Asia Pacific.

Thanks again to everyone who has nominated me, and I’m sure any further nominations wouldn’t go astray!

I’m a Best Australian Blogs nominee!

W00t! I’m a Best Australian Blogs nominee!

If you enjoy my blog – or at least it provokes your grey cells – I would really appreciate your vote…!

Thanks :0)
 

My award-winning IQ

Today I had the honour of collecting a Best Blended Learning Solution Award (Gold Level) at the 2010 LearnX Asia Pacific Conference.

The blended learning solution in question is “IQ”, an intranet-based portal that I developed for my colleagues at my workplace.

My driver for creating this portal was the realisation that, in a big corporation like the one I work for, knowledge is distributed everywhere – on random intranet pages, in obscure folders, in people’s heads – which makes it really hard to find.

As an L&D professional, my concern was: if someone wants to learn something, where do they start?

The answer is IQ

Essentially, IQ is a site that centralises learning resources for staff. It doesn’t host content itself, but rather points you in the right direction.

For example, if you want to attend an advanced negotiation skills workshop, you can look up the sessions delivered by our preferred training providers.

If you want to read about leadership, you can refer to our book list or search our e‑book catalogue.

If you want to do a self-paced course on Java programming, you can jump onto our e-learning platform.

In this way, IQ covers the full range of delivery modes that are available to our staff, from face-to-face classes and online courses, to books, e‑books, podcasts, blogs, wikis and other social media. I’m also keen to add information about our mentoring and coaching programs.

It’s our first port of call for learning.

So what?

Reading this, you might be scratching your head and asking yourself what all the fuss is about.

I’m the first one to put up my hand and say, as a blended learning solution, IQ is really simple. It doesn’t involve any new whizz-bang technology. After all, it’s an intranet site.

But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that it’s also an important step in the evolution of the learning model at my workplace.

It shifts an instructivist pedagogy towards a more constructivist and connectivist one.

It transforms a formal learning environment into a more informal one.

It returns the power (and responsibility) of learning back to the learner.

That’s why I’m so pleased to claim this award. It’s not just a pretty trophy to sit on my desk; it’s the validation of my instructional design by my peers in the industry.