Objects of Interest

After attending Alt-C, my colleague (@briannido) and I headed to London to visit with some clients and for a little sightseeing. While heading over to the Thames River Festival, we came across a beautiful rainbow that appeared over the Tower of London.

Here are some pictures that I took.

We also had lunch at the British Museum, which was a real treat. The company was great and the food was yummy!

I always like to include reflection in the classes that I teach and I think it is an important part of the professional development process, too. Last week I had the pleasure of attending Alt-C 2011 (#altc2011.) Alt-C is a "the UK's leading membership organisation in the learning technology field. Our purpose is to ensure that use of learning technology is effective and efficient, informed by research and practice, and grounded in an understanding of the underlying technologies, their capabilities and the situations into which they are placed."

While I spend most of my time networking and learning online, I always enjoy attending conferences in person. There is a certain synergy when you get a bunch of like-minded people in the same physical space, especially when you bring educators together to discuss new ideas for teaching and learning with technlogy!

Visit the conference website to see videos from this year's conference. Stay tuned to the Alt-C YouTube Channel for videos from this year's conferece - http://www.youtube.com/clipsfromalt

Read the RSS feed of conference blog posts to see what people were learning (and saying) during the conference. 

Particluarly memorable was the final keynote delivered by John Naughton, educator and journalist. Read Steve Wheeler's (@timbuckteeth) recent blog post summarizing the event.

I was flying home from Washington, DC this week (spent some time in the office,) and I was reading through some reports I has saved to read later. Exact Target published a white paper titled, "LETTERS TO THE C-SUITE: GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA."

To help executives understand social media and its impact on business, they asked a dozen of the industry’s top social media experts to offer their insights. Contributors included:

• Jay Baer
• David Baker
• Sergio Balegno
• Olivier Blanchard
• Jason Falls
• Ann Handley
• Joseph Jaffe
• Kyle Lacy
• Valeria Maltoni
• Shelly Palmer
• Trey Pennington
• Jeff Rohrs. 

 TIM KOPP,Chief Marketing Officer, ExactTarget, started off by listing three things to remember about social media and business.

1. Marketing is no longer a department—it’s a state of mind.
2. The conversation’s happening with or without you. 
3. Social is social—not a silo. 

Some of my notes from the different sections of the report:

OLIVIER BLANCHARD -  Social media is a set of communications channels that can be used for different functions. Social media can serve the specific purposes of every department in an organization, very much in the way that the telephone can.

ANN HANDLEY Don’t leave social media solely to marketing. Chances are, creative people who love your company exist in all corners of your organization.

JOSEPH JAFFE Social connections are not a new concept. What is new is the sheer magnitude of the speed, scale, and reach of social networks, the amplification and power of the megaphone that levels playing fields. To be successful, think like a small business. R.E.A.C.H. out and touch someone – Responsive, Empathetic, Accessible, Connected, Human.

VALERIA MALTONI Being connected is a process. It begins with the creation of contexts and frameworks guiding your interaction with customers, creating and serving content, incorporating research, and continually improving. Customer intelligence is central. To succeed with social media, you need to start thinking about marketing as a system that integrates people, processes, and technology

SHELLY PALMER In the Information Age, there are no gatekeepers, no pundits, no leadership, just passionate points of view. Perhaps the legacy of this technology will be the empowerment of a true Fifth Estate with a collective mind of its own and the ability to amplify the voice of the people above all others.

JEFF ROHRS If you’re going to get serious about social media, you must:

1. Identify the passionate voices within your organization. Passion is the critical component to social media success.  
2. Empower those voices to speak on your brand’s behalf. 
3. Mobilize a cross-functional social media team to meet regularly and develop, measure, and continuously evaluate how your company should engage through existing and new channels. 
4. Leverage technology to ensure timely, consistent, and informed social media participation.

I attended #speakchat last night and the topic was Gamification. I have been seeing a lot of talk about gamification in the business and education worlds. This is an excellent explanation by Gabe Zicherman (@gzicherm) titled - The Year of Gamification - 2011.

I loved this video explaining the benefits of building and maintaining an ePortfolio:

I listened in on this webinar yesterday and it was very interesting. Slides posted here - 

http://c4lpt.co.uk/library/janes-articles-and-presentations/social-media-and-its-impact-on-how-we-learn-in-the-workplace-2/

The presenter, Jane Hart, blogged about her ideas today. 

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/08/24/social-media-and-the-smart-worker/

Some of my tweets while I was attending: (@nancyrubin)

Smart Workers - Find content, create and share content, join and build communities, improve productivity - @c4lpt #sociallearn

Trends in media and learning - BYOD - people bringing their own devices to work (and school!) #sociallearn

Informal learning happens all the time in the workplace - social media is impacting learning in a very powerful way - #sociallearn

Learning is like an iceberg - only small percentage visible (formal) in organization - a lot is invisible - informal #sociallearn

Social Learning Best Practices: A Prezi!: http://bit.ly/pGQSAA #sociallearn

Workers today need Just In Time Information - need immediate access to information to solve the problem/task at hand. #sociallearn

Quick start guides and screencasts IMO are more popular than training. Review resources on own time, when they need access - #sociallearn

Study: Surfing the Web at work makes you significantly more productive | Articleshttp://bit.ly/nd92iN #sociallearn