Top 100 Articles of 2011

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This is my 4th Annual Top 100 Articles list.

From nearly 500 links to articles, blog posts, slideshows, reports and (this year also) infographics that I saved in my 2011 Reading List, here are the 100 that I enjoyed and/or impressed me most in 2011.  This year I’ve added a quote beneath each link to give you a taster of what it is about.  As you will see  for me this year’s reading has not been about social media tools per se, but how they are impacting personal, professional and organisational learning practices and behaviours.

To the right you will see this year’s Wordle that summarises the main themes in this year’s list (click on the image to see it full size).  You can compare it with those for 2010, 2009 and 2008 Wordles/lists.

January 2011

1 - Interdependence: a sense of purpose, Harold Jarche, 2 January 2011

“Work and learning, as they merge, become increasingly interdependent activities. People haven’t changed over the years but with the Internet we have an opportunity to create work structures that may actually meet our core needs.”

2 – Lurking is learning Part 1 and Part 2, Dan Pontefract, trainingwreck, 8 January 2011

“To those that have questioned whether all online participants must actively contribute to a blog, wiki, etc. in order to actually learn, I say bunkum. Hogwash. Claptrap. Bollocks.”

3 - When I grow up – we never intended to work this way, Kevin Jones, Engaged Learning, 11 January 2011

“When we were young, the stars weren’t even the limit.  We had our goals high and proudly told others what we were going to be when we grew up.  As we grew up, plans naturally changed, and we adapted.  But who would have thought we would have spent a lot of time on activities that would be of marginal value?”

4 - Social learning for business, Harold Jarche, 20 January 2011

“Here’s an elevator pitch, in 10 sentences, for social learning, which is what really makes social business work.”

February 2011

5 - Dare to share: a new culture of collaboration in the enterprise, Socialcast, 8 February 2011

“Collaboration is based on the idea that sharing knowledge through cooperation helps solve problems more efficiently. In the enterprise, this principle couldn’t be more true, especially as more and more employees are engaging with one another through asynchronous, socially-geared technology.” 

6 - Dear Kirkpatricks: you still don’t get it, trainingwreck, 12 February 2011

“ Let me be clear – training is not an event; learning is a connected, collaborative and continuous process. It can and does occur in formal, informal and social ways every day in and out of your job.”

7 - Why best practices don’t work for knowledge work, Luis Suarez, Enterprise Collaborative, 20 February 2011

“”Best Practices” are the worst thing you can apply to any kind of knowledge work. Any kind.

March 2011

8 - Corporate learning trends – what endures during recessions, Kevin Wheeler, 3 March 2011

“Training and learning departments have always been looked upon as optional because they champion formal learning. Classrooms are the worst possible place to transfer skills or knowledge and every CEO who downsized a training function knows this instinctively. Therefore, training functions are downsized or eliminated during recessions. This last recession has been true to form with many organizations trimming learning back deeply and early. So what is needed is a fresh look at things – a new approach.”

9 - Enterprise collaboration requires critical new skills, Deb Lavoy, CMS Wire, 8 March 2011

“The way we currently think of working was formed by a command and control, industrial age of process, manufacturing and efficiencies of scale. Collaboration is a different model. It depends on people, not process. It depends on outstanding communication — because collaboration requires thinking and acting together. We are in an age where we have created technology that makes this easier, but we are still evolving our understanding of how best to do it. With this new way of work, comes a new set of critical skills.”

10 - “I’m not an idiot” – a letter from an agonized adult learner, Geeta Bose, IDiot, 9 March 2011

“I’m an adult, literate, and a professional. I manage my finances, my investments, wealth and health with equal ease. I manage my family, team, career, and social needs effortlessly. I see no reason why I cannot manage my learning and training sessions. But my training managers tend to think otherwise.”

11 - Unleashing the power of networked learning, Martha Stone Wiske, Harvard Business Review, 21 March 2011

“What’s different is that the top-down, center-out approach to traditional education is dramatically diminished. Learner-generated, informal interactions, short messages, and nonverbal media are the norm in these networked learning situations.”

12 - The power of conversations, Charles Jennings 22 March 2011

“The effective use of conversations is part of one of the most important challenges learning and development teams face in producing effective solutions to business problems. The challenge is to move the focus from designing learning solutions around knowledge acquisition towards those whose aim is to help development of ‘real’ learning and understanding. These are two very different things.”

April 2011

13 - The 90-9-1 collaboration paradox: Orgs should aim to reverse it, Dan Pontefract, trainingwreck, 2 April 2011

“Our quest in the corporate world, therefore, is to help employees recognize that for the sake of their personal and career growth, along with the growth of business results for the organization, the model needs to be flipped around such that 90% are actively collaborating, 9% are somewhat collaborating and 1% do nothing.”

14 - 21 signs you are a 21st century teacher, Brave new world, 2 April 2011

“Yes, the phrase (is it a definition?) 21st century teacher has been bandied about and annoys some people, but whatever you want to call it, shouldn’t we all, as educators, use this checklist to check our relevance?”

15 - Building a personal learning network (PLN), Jane Bozarth, Learning Solutions Magazine, April 2011

“In an age with so much information, I find that my PLN is wonderful in helping me filter important content and directing me toward good new books, blogs, and other resources. I’ve learned a great deal about what other folks do all day, what other jobs entail, and what challenges others face in their roles. I find that often now my PLN is my go-to ahead of Google.”

16 - What is the future of the Learning & Development department? Ross Dawson, 5 April 2011

“The context for my question about the future of the L&D department is that I don’t believe there are meaningful boundaries around learning in a high-performance organization. Just as there are dangers in segregating responsibility for knowledge in a department when it should be central to the organization’s strategy and structure, learning should far transcend where it usually sits within companies.”

17 - Fun: the key to better team collaboration, Georgina Laidlow, WebWorkerDaily, 12 April 2011

“While businesses focus on choosing tools, prescribing acceptable network policies and measuring ROI, the easiest way to get staff to collaborate is, well, to make it fun.

18 – The cultural imperative for a social business Part 1, Maria Ogneva, 18 April 2011 and Part 2, Maria Ogneva, 21 April 2011

“To be externally social, an organization must problem-solve, exchange information and collaborate across departmental lines.”

19 - The other side of learning: “performance is everything“, Conrad Gottfredson, Learning Solutions Magazine, 26 April 2011

“What is more, today’s work environment doesn’t tolerate learners stepping out of their workflow to learn unless it is absolutely vital to do so. And the actual nature of 21st century learners is resistant to learning options that are delayed and removed from the here and now. They are self-directed, adaptive, and collaborative in their approach to learning. These kinds of learners will ultimately abandon outright our formal learning solutions if what we provide them fails to efficiently prepare them to effectively perform at their moments of “Apply.” Why? Because when facing a traditional course that fails to do this, today’s learners are predisposed to simply walk away and look elsewhere for the shortest path to successful performance.”

20 - Imagination: creating the future of education and work, April 2011

“This site doesn’t just present theories and ideas, but rather actionable solutions that can be immediately and easily implemented in service of a relevant education for American students who need to gain proficiency if not mastery of core subject areas while at the same time being prepared for the reality of future work. Imagination is a broad topic, encompassing everything the mind can conjure, so the findings in this report are focused on those that overlap with the changing world of work.”

May 2011

21 - On competencies and compliance, Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 3 May 2011

“What we should be looking for are competency assessments, based upon real performance, not knowledge test.  Certainly, pilots have to perform appropriately, as do surgeons. They are measured by real performance.   It’s not about courses.  If they can’t perform, then there are knowledge resources, whatever might be helpful, but it’s not like they have to take a course, unless they want to.”

22 - Mapping informal and formal learning strategies to real work, Tom Gram, Performance X Design, 4 May 2011

“Instead of over generalizing the value of any solution it’s best to truly understand the skill and knowledge requirements of the jobs, roles or initiatives you support.  I’m not talking about task or needs analysis (through both are valuable tools).  Instead go up one notch higher and categorize the types of “work” you support in your organization.  Almost all work, indeed entire organizations and industries, vary on a continuum of two broad factors: task variety and task standardization.”

23 - Roles in communities of practice, Joitske Hulsebosc, Lasagna and chips, 9 May 2011

“Does a learning community or community of practice need roles to function well? Should you officially assign these roles to people or is it best if people spontaneously fullfil certain roles? What about the self-organising power of communities?”

24 - A better way to teach, Jeffrey Mervis, Science Magazine, 12 May 2011

“Any physics professor who thinks that lecturing to first-year students is the best way to teach them about electromagnetic waves can stop reading this item. For everybody else, however, listen up: A new study shows that students learn much better through an active, iterative process that involves working through their misconceptions with fellow students and getting immediate feedback from the instructor.”

25 - The case for online social networking in education, Jose Picardo, 14 May 2011

“Online social networks provide teachers and students with a platform in which they can interact beyond the constraints of the school walls, and with which the teacher can provide personalised feedback and support.”

26 - 10 mobile questions, Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 17 May 2011

“I advocate not thinking about courses on a phone, but instead about augmenting formal learning and augmenting performance.”

27 - Who needs training again? Charles Jennings, Entreprise Collaborative, 17 May 2011

“there are far more effective and efficient approaches than training that address this challenge of improving ‘speed-to-competence’. It’s just that they seem to be out of the range of vision of many L&D practitioners.”

28 - Moving toward 2020: the learning decade, Fast Company, 25 May 2011

“To be sure, not every company is a learning company; but more and more organizations recognize that learning can help solve the most vexing economic and financial problems of the day. As a result, we predict that the years leading up to 2020 will be known as “The Learning Decade.”"

June 2011

29 - Learning is the new work, Jay Cross, Chief Learning Officer Magazine, 13 June 2011

“In a world of rapid change, learning can never stop. A worker cannot tackle new challenges, take advantage of new information or make judgment calls on novel situations without learning along the way. More than merely being embedded into work, learning has become integral to work. Social learning at work does not exist outside of that context. Likewise, informal learning can’t be isolated from work itself. Learning is work.”

30 - Joining is important to social learning, Dennis Callahan, Learnstreaming, 17 June 2011

“You need to join in order to participate but what if you’re having trouble joining? How do you learn more about joining without already being part of the group?  You can’t, but there is a solution: Joining is part of the learning. Join and start participating.”

31 - The history of email (infographic), Mashable, 18 June 2011

“In its 40-year tenure as a form of communication, email has run its course from the domain of über nerdy computer scientists to one of the most common ways to keep in touch, both personally and professionally.”

32 - Four things L&D must do to stay relevant Part 1, Donald Taylor, 17 June 2011

“The world of learning at work is changing and we need to change with it. This is not a matter of adopting some new, hyped technology nor of championing the latest fad in training techniques. The shifts in how we work in the West are fundamental and long-lasting and are not susceptible to superficial solutions. We are now in a global economy where most organisations derive their value from their people’s knowledge, skills and attitudes.”

33 - 60 seconds on the Internet, Geeks are Sexy, 17 June 2011

“60+ new blogs.  1,500 blog posts. 168 million emails sent. 695,000 Facebook status updates.”

34 - Students becoming curators of information, Langwitches, 12 June 2011

“Images like the following ones, visualize for me the urgency for all of us to become information literate to wade through the incredible, ever increasing, amount of information being created and shared with the world.”

35 - 7 reasons Twitter is central to my life, Ross Dawson, 20 June 2011

“If we consider ourselves to be as neurons in the emerging global brain, then Twitter is today the single most important platform accelerating the flow of messages and ideas out of which a higher-order intelligence is emerging. Certainly, most of the messages on Twitter are in themselves essentially valueless. However there are sufficient messages that have value, and more importantly the emerging mechanisms on top of that, out of which a global brain is being born.”

36 - The science of social timing, digital buzz, 22 June 2011

“On any given day, the best time to tweet is about 5pm, when about 6% of all re-tweets are made. While about 1-2 tweets per hour seems optimal for click through, mid-week or on weekends, at noon or 5-6pm. Meanwhile, Facebook is much more likely to drive shares and CTR on Saturday, around lunchtime, so long as you don’t post more than once.”

July 2011

37 - Teaching versus learning, Wired Science, 2 July 2011

“Oh? So I am saying teachers are worthless? Or maybe that teachers are like the Emperor? Not at all. Well I am sure we have all had a teacher that was like the Emperor, right? I am saying that the word teacher maybe isn’t the best thing to associate with teaching. One of those words needs to change.”

38 - Don’t forget the YOU in social learning, Dennis Callahan, Learnstreaming, July 2011

“Learning can be like exercising.  You actually have to do the work in order to receive the results.  Yes, you can (and I do) learn a lot from others but nobody can learn for you.”

39 - Future work skills 2020, July 2011

“This report analyzes key drivers that will reshape the landscape of work and identifies key work skills needed in the next 10 years. It does not consider what will be the jobs of the future. Many studies have tried to predict specific job categories and labor requirements. Consistently over the years, however, it has been shown that such predictions are difficult and many of the past predictions have been proven wrong. Rather than focusing on future jobs, this report looks at future work skills—proficiencies and abilities required across different jobs and work settings.”

40 - When training is not the answer, Marc Rosenberg, Learning Solutions Magazine, 11 July 2011

“Too often, we offer training solutions (including eLearning) for problems that we know are not training related. We know better, but for reasons that are often, but not always, out of our control, we revert to what’s comfortable and what’s expected. So let’s take a step back and look again at key performance problems, and how to decide whether or not training is the proper response.”

41 - The challenge of organizational learning, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2011

“Disseminating insights and know-how across any organization is critical to improving performance, but nonprofits struggle to implement organizational learning and make it a priority. A recent study found three common barriers to knowledge sharing across nonprofits and their networks, as well as ways and means to overcome them.”

42 - Consulting 2.0, Luc Galoppin, Management Exchange, 16 July 2011

“What would our sector look like if we gave our value proposition a little twist? What would the results be like? The difference a subscription makes over a contract … “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change“”

43 - Employees using own gadgets ‘more productive’, The Telegraph, 18 July 2011

“According to a YouGov survey, businesses who let employees use their own technology see productivity increases of up to 30 per cent.”

44 - Confessions of a semi-retired lurker, Steve Bachelder, 21 July 2011

“Okay I confess – I used to be a lurker – there thats it I’ve admitted it to the world.”

45 - State of the Internet now!  July 2011

“The Internet is a strange, huge beast. It is getting bigger, faster and more mobile each day. Ferocious social networks fight each other to be on top and gain more of our attention and personal information. An entire economy is generated from our browsing habits. This is the face of the Internet now“

46 - How social media has changed the way I think and learn, Part1 , Part 2 and Part 3, Jimmy Hobson, July and August 2011

“Communicating in this way has allowed me to get the best of both worlds: interaction with many people, and the chance to consider my responses. No, wait, it’s actually more than the sum of its parts, because I get an extra synergy from talking to people this way, and that’s the ability to change my attitude. This way I can learn from my mistakes without the usual embarrassment that I might feel in a social setting. If anything I’ve become more willing to dare to express controversial opinions, because the ethos of the medium does seem to encourage experiential learning. No more ‘drill and fill’ for me thank you very much!”

47 - The Mobile Worker Movement, Inside Enterprise IT, 8 July 2011

“Employees want to use their personal mobile devices in the workplace. And many potential new hires make this is a condition of employment¹. The good news? Companies that develop a strategy for supporting consumer smartphones and tablets stand to gain significant benefits.”

48 - Is 16th century teaching the future of education? Kirsten Winklery, big think, 31 July 2011

“I think to prepare your children for the society they will be living in, learning Ruby on Rails, PhotoShop or FinalCut with a private tutor are going to be the new violin lessons.”

49 - The limits to what you can learn online or alone, Dave Pollard, 29 July 2011

“I’m wondering whether some critical skills and capacities are far better learned face-to-face, real-time, in a group. We often learn well from observing others doing and learning. And it seems almost ludicrous to think that essential skills like collaboration, empathy, mentoring and facilitation could possibly be learned online or alone, no matter how brilliant the simulation of others’ presence the Internet or self-paced learning exercises and case studies might provide.”

August 2011

50 - What can blockbuster video teach us about learning and performance, David Kelly, Misadventures in Learning, 2 August 2011

“Learning Professionals cannot sit back looking at the changes going on with social media and not acknowledge the impact it will have on our profession. We’re not simply talking about social media tools here and whether or not they can be used in learning programs.  It’s much bigger than that.  We’re talking about a fundamental change in the way people communicate.  How can that NOT impact learning and performance?”

51 - Willingness v Ability to change, Mark Britz, 3 August 2011

“I think that another kind of asteroid has struck the L&D world …it’s called a global financial crisis. The weather is getting colder but the good news is that we are not Brontosaurus. We are not our Organizations …we are not our Departments, we are individuals within who are built to anticipate change, accept change, and be agile of mind. We can work within our systems to change them.”

52 - Social and workplace learning through the 7:20:10 lens, Charles Jennings, 4 August 2011

“For me, at its heart 70:20:10 is all about re-thinking and re-aligning learning and development focus and effort. It involves stepping outside the classes/courses/curriculum mind-set and letting outputsdrive the cart – thinking about performance improvement and helping people do their jobs better rather than spending the majority of time and effort on inputs – learning content, instructional design etc.  Of course the inputs are important at times, but we need to keep our perspective. Content and design are not the most important inputs to the learning and capability development process.”

53 - The pros and cons of MOOCs, Lisa Chamberlin, Tracy Parris, eLearn magazine, 4 August 2011

“MOOC, the acronym alone can make a learner instantly smile with the remembered joy of online learning camaraderie, or shudder at the memory of a massive and often obtuse course.”

54 – Real power of learning is social: Part 1 and Part 2, Charles Jennings, LearningPool blog, August 2011

“People are more likely to retain the learning they achieve through experience. And this type of ‘informal’ or workplace learning has been shown to be generally better received, more effective and less costly than its formal counterpart.”

55 - How social learning is like gravity, Dennis Callahan, Learnstreaming, 13 August 2011

“Throw a ball in the air and it comes back or jump off a step and you come back, there’s gravity.  Watch two people talking over coffee or several people working on a problem together, there’s social learning.”

56 - Is the 90-9-1 Rule for Online Community Engagement Dead? Socious, 11 August 2011

“So, maybe we don’t need to be so dire about how many people engage in your online community. Based on this data I would suggest a new rule (with a little rounding): The 70-20-10 Rule of Community Participation. Has a nice ring to it doesn’t it!”

57 - Backchannel learning in an organizational setting, David Kelly, eLearn magazine, August 2011

“It’s in that sharing that the backchannel becomes a great representation of social media being used as a tool to support social learning, which is a concept more and more organizations are placing focus on. For organizations that are looking to leverage technology to support their employees’ social learning, a backchannel is an excellent resource to consider.”

58 - Beware the “M” word in communities, Nic Laycock, 19 August 2011

“Social learning, where there is no hierarchy, peer learning, learning communities, communities of practice, SoMe based groups on all the various platforms – dominantly characterised by informality and mutuality. But we still talk about ‘management’ of communities! Why?”

59 - A group of would be friends, Jon Miles, 21 August 2011

“Die hard ostriches will only choose to get involved with something that offers them something for nothing. But could a programme change this? Could active engagement by a learning programme add job enrichment and therefore make someone love their job more? Well I have seen this happen. Jane asked me to tell her about it. This is that story…”

60 - What happens when social networking collides with the corporate intranet, London Business School blog, 3 August 2011

“There is a deep gulf between the sterile, one-way and almost Orwellian practices of the corporate IT network and the rapidly-evolving, chaotic organism of today’s Intranet.”

September 2011

62 - Social Business Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does, Neither Does Enterprise 2.0 Deb Lavoy, 7 September 2011

“‘Social business’ is not about technology, or about corporate culture. It is a socio-political historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating. “A new perspective is changing how we think about society, politics, interpersonal relationships, science, government and business. New approaches are emerging. Learning and self-expression are exploding. Values are changing. Leadership is changing. The economy is changing. Change itself is changing — it is accelerating and becoming the norm. “Business structures founded on command and control, automation and process are giving way to structures that are less hierarchical and more dynamic, designed to engage people’s hearts and minds to make a difference in the world.”

63 - Is the traditional corporate university dead? Karl Moore, Forbes, 7 September 2011

“The corporate learning departments of the future must cultivate a ‘culture of learning’ throughout the organisation. The keys to this culture include encouraging reflection, enabling knowledge sharing, and instituting learning as a continuous process. While there may still be value in formal classroom learning, more of it will need to happen informally, through initiatives like webinars, brief workshops, and ING-style Knowledge Cafés. Companies will need to transform learning from a formal event or activity into something more akin to what is called collaborative (or social) and emergent learning. These types of initiatives focus on topics that are highly relevant and in-the-moment for managers and workers, and where the sharing of ideas and exchange of opinions lead to creativity and innovation.”

64 - Social power and the coming corporate revolution, David Kirkpatrick, Forbes, 7 September 2011

“This social might is now moving toward your company. We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves. A few have joined cause with WikiLeaks and its terrifying stepchildren, upending the once secure corridors of the US State Department and Pentagon. “But most are ordinary people with new tools to force you to listen to what they care about and to demand respect. Both your customers and your employees have started marching in this burgeoning social media multitude, and you’d better get out of their way—or learn to embrace them.”

65 - QR Codes, explained by CommonCraft, September 2011

“An introduction to QR Code technology which makes the real world clickable like a website.”

66 - Take control of your social media, Tulsa World, 12 September 2011

“Managing the use of the Internet or activity on hand-held devices can not only save time, but also can help relieve stress and anxiety.” 

67 - The 2020 Workforce and the LMS Disconnect, Dawn of Learning, 16 September 2011

“We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jeanne Meister for Xyleme Voices. Based on insights from her book, the podcast looks at trends and predictions about what the workforce will look like in 2020. Jeanne packs a tremendous amount of valuable information into a 19 minute podcast, so it’s worth a full listen, but here is a small glimpse.”

68 - Nature finds a way, Mark Britz, Learning Zealot, 18 September 2011

“A simple truth revealed – people will connect, people will share, people will collaborate. It’s in our DNA to be social, it’s our nature and that life, uh . . . finds a way.”

69 - Refuting every point, Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 23 September 2011

“I have written on numerous occasions that to learn how to be a plumber or a mechanic or anything else is not to memorize some ‘body of knowledge’ – not only would this knowledge be useful just a few years out of school, that approach to learning would render you an inflexible, and ultimately terrible, plumber or mechanic. What the evidence tells us (if people would just look at it) is that becoming a plumber or a mechanic or whatever is to adopt, and embody, what Wittgenstein would call a form of life - a way of seeing the world, a way of looking at problems and learning solutions, a way of experimenting, communicating, imagining and thinking.  It’s when we rely on an old set of ‘best practices’ that are anything but that we do the most damage to children and students. It’s when we think we know, but do not, that we callously commit the most grievous damage.”

70 - Social business: revolution or differentiator, Seth Gottlieb, 26 September 2011

““Anything social is about people and their connections. To be authentic in social business, your business has revolve around people. You can’t fake it. You can’t talk about people as “resources” and then turn around expect them to feel like they are members of a community. Treat someone like a resource and he will behave like a resource. He will not invest his personal identity to advocate for an organization. He will save his personality and creativity for whatever community treats him like a person. That may include friendships he has formed at work but not to the organization itself.”

71 - The 9 types of collaborators, Central Desktop, September 2011

“Collaborators come in all different shapes and sizes. We’ve identified the top 9 types of collaborators that typically exist within an organisation. Ranging from early adopters to social butterflies to the begrudging sceptics, we’ll sure you’ll recognise more than a couple of the characters.”

October 2011

72 - Take control of your online informal learning experience, Dennis Calahan, 6 October 2011

“Think of your learning as a river  .. using time as a horizontal axis … and depth as a vertical axis”

73 - Social Media for Learning, Jane Bozarth, Learning Solutions Magazine, 4 October 2011

“Learning practitioners are well advised to start paying more attention to learning as it really happens – all day, as we interact with one another, as we go about the business of executing our job tasks or schoolwork. Where do workers struggle? How much time do they spend looking for something, or someone? Where is mentoring happening? How about job shadowing? Are the organization’s workers turning for help from LinkedIn groups or Facebook communities? Where can we as learning professionals become part of the daily workflow rather than a separate entity offering formal scheduled events? How can we be partners in shared learning, rather than an outside entity only delivering it? ”

74 - Do I/we act upon Steve Jobs’ words or am I only nodding but not acting for change, Inge de Waard, 7 October 2011

“There is something that happens when people get their death certificate. When Steve Jobs addressed the Stanford students  he got a lot of one-liners out: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” and “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. Stay hungry. Stay foolish”. A lot of us nodded when we heard those words and we think “yes man!” but do we act upon this call for action? Do I act upon it, or do I simply keep seated in my chair, behind the same desk I have seen for 5 consecutive years? Do I take what I have learned in these past few years and move towards a new, personal knowledge action goal? Will I live my life? Will you?

75 - In a complex world, continuous learning and simple truths prevail, Charles Jennings, 16 October 2011

“The most important single thing you can do to ensure your organisation develops a continuous learning culture is to help the development of self-directed learning skills. Help your workforce improve its meta-learning.”

76 - 7 compelling arguments for peer learning, Donald Clark, 16 October 2011

 ”We have to bounce teachers and learners out of that mindset that sees teaching as one to many and adopt the wisdom of the network”

77 - The fallacy of digital natives Dan Pontefract, trainingwreck, 17 October 2011

“I have a problem with both the term digital native and how it has been manufactured into one of society’s greatest myths. I also believe there is an improved way in which we should be articulating the use of technology in the learning continuum.”

78 - The 6 attitudes leaders take towards social media HBR Blog Network, 17 October 2011

“… their attitude matters, a lot. Social media is about people, not technology. Its business value does not come from social software or a snazzy website, even one with 800 million users. Its value stems from how business leaders, from senior executives to managers, use it to foster new collaborative behaviors that materially improve business performance. Leadership attitudes, and the organizational culture they spawn, are critical to social media success.”

79 - Why do we need social business, Harold Jarche, 19 October 2011

“User-generated content is is ubiquitous and much of it is very useful. Search engines give each worker more information and knowledge than any CEO had 10 years ago. Pervasive connectivity will change traditional power structures, though the full effects of this are not yet visible.”

80 - How to energize your career to keep growing, learning and improving,  Lifehacker, 19 October 2011

“You’ve got meetings to attend. Deadlines to meet. Errands to run. It’s hard to grow your career and expand your abilities in the midst of your daily grind, but if you don’t take the initiative, no one’s going to do it for you. Whether you feel like your career development is lagging or you’re chugging along nicely but want to give yourself that extra edge, here are a few steps you can take to make sure your career continues on the path to greatness.”

81 - Introducing the Digital Learning Quadrants  Dan Pontefract, trainingwreck, 20 October 2011

“The four classifications outlined above are connoted by a combination of one’s access level through digital means as well as their own personal level of participation. The higher degree of access to digital learning methods, coupled by the participatory level of the individual, equates to their position in the ‘Digital Learning Quadrants’

82 - Enterprise 2.0 = Learning 2.0, Frederic Domon, Social Learning blog, 27 October 2011

“Learning is not something that takes place outside of work. Learning and work are in fact part of a single stream; it’s a continuous process, a skill, an ability to act.

November 2011

83 - How social technologies are extending the enterprise, McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011

“Our fifth annual survey on the way organizations use social tools and technologies finds that they continue to seep into many organizations, transforming business processes and raising performance.”

84 - The competitive edge of the social business, Esko Kilpi, 20 November 2011

“Creative learning becomes the fundamental activity. It is not about consuming pre-determined content or passing tests. Learning is the foundation for creative action. Ability to better meet the needs of a situation can only partially take place outside of the situation. Learning cannot be a separate education domain outside of the practice of work. Neither can it be something with beginnings and ends.”

85 - The mobile world in 60 seconds, TechCrunch, November 2011

“To say that things move quickly in the mobile space is putting it rather mildly, but an infographic from mobile ad exchange Mobclix aims to highlight what goes down every 60 seconds. In case you were curious, in the time it took me to write out that first sentence, over 23,000 iOS apps were downloaded from Apple’s App Store.”

86 - Performance, strategies and social learning, Dianne Rees, Enterprise Collaborative

“Despite a lot of social learning evangelism these days, none of these efforts are easy or afford magical solutions. They require understanding the unique social dynamics in each company and a willingness to proceed with baby steps and continual process improvement.  But these are critical efforts so we should be thoughtfully optimistic about the power of social networks. They’re the glue that holds companies together. We just have to work at making them “stickier.”

87 - Why Is the Research on Learning Styles Still Being Dismissed by Some Learning Leaders and Practitioners? Guy Wallace, elearnmag, November 2011

“I have been battling the notion of “designing instruction for learning styles” in my own quixotic fashion for a couple of decades now. In my attempt to be a good steward of my clients’ shareholders’ equity I wished to help them avoid faddish instructional design practices that have been disproven by empirical research. I first learned back in the 1980s at NSPI (now ISPI) conferences that while self-reported learning style preferences do exist, that designing instruction to accommodate them has no basis.”

88 - Tips to create a culture of collaboration and innovation, frogloop, 25 November 2011

“Trust Your Staff. One of the best ways to create a more collaborative environment is to stop relying on consultants so much and start listening more to your own team. Nonprofits tend to rely on consultants to either come in and save the day or to validate what their own staff already knows. You hired your team because you thought they were capable to begin with, right? Now trust them. Still feel like you need to use consultants because you don’t have enough internal resources to implement great ideas? No problem, just make sure your own team gets first dibs on the pieces they want to work on.”

89 -To really drive Enterprise 2.0 forward we need a behavioural change, Dan Pontefract, 28 November 2011

“2011 has not seen the level of reciprocity as I had hoped. Enterprise 2.0 / Social Anything technologies continue to be the lead news story, with the more important tenet of collaborative behaviours shoved to the back page. As a result, there continues to be systemic challenges to increasing productivity, engagement and customer satisfaction. But, if we focus on those behaviours, if we seek out the right model for leaders and employees to share, consume and contribute that is more common sense than non-sensical, we’ll have both reciprocity and productivity in 2012.”

90 - From social intranets to collaboration ecosystems, Forbes, 30 November 2011

“the best social intranet is not the one providing the most social features, but the one which ties the most business processes and data to employee’s social behavior”

December 2011

91 - Why schools need to get social, local and mobile, Troy Williams, Mashable, 1 December 2011

While movements to incorporate ebooks and develop better Learning Management Systems (or LMS) are finally taking hold in higher education, more interesting (and potentially disruptive) are the emergent tech trends of Social, Local and Mobile – or what I like to call SoLoMo. We will begin to see innovations in these areas affecting the classroom and education in both dramatic and subtle ways.”

92 - Learned (learning) helplessness, Mark Britz, Learning Zealot, 2 December 2011

“If you’re like me you see the future of learning as being social in a connected world, and the mindset of “empowering” people and not one of “allowing” them should be the norm and the first thought. And yet others, you’re executives, peers and the workers you support, just don’t seem to see it …or maybe it’s that they can’t.”

93 - Going viral visualised, Mashable, 4 December 2011

“So if “going viral” is your goal, how can you optimize a campaign to transform into a Web meme goldmine? Smart money would select an environment where lots of group sharing is going on. Places such as Facebook and Twitter are no-brainers, but the value of Reddit as a veritable meme factory is on the rise. Combining the right design and tone with the proper platform is one of the trickiest parts of creating a successful viral campaign, but when it’s all aligned, success is more likely.”

94 - Inviting interaction, Jane Bozarth, 6 December 2011

“We know a great deal of workplace learning is informal; but without the tools to make it more evident, management may not be aware of informal learning in the workplace at all. But at the same time, this activity will require a quantum leap for many of us in L&D, used to developing and delivering and vetting and tracking content. What are some ways we can invite interaction and develop something more akin to a partnership with our learners?”

95 - More pedagogic change in 10 years than last 1000 years – all driven by 10 technology innovations, Donald Clark, 7 December 2011

“In our Universities, given the stubborn addiction to lectures, it has barely changed in 1000 years. So what’s the real source of pedagogic change? … Here’s my theory – the primary driver for pedagogic change is something that has changed the behaviours of learners. independently of teachers, teaching and education – the internet.” 

96 - Learning in Wonderland: the untapped potential of workplace learning, Charles Jennings, 14 December 2011

“I’ve taken Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ as a theme for the series.  Why ‘Alice’ you may ask? Well, the Alice story is all about growing up and developing and learning but at the same time seeing the world in very a different way. In Alice Carroll (Charles Dodgson in real life) also stretches imagination and gets the reader to think ‘out of the box’. The Alice story is also about seeing some standard practices as rather silly and arbitrary and understanding that there are always alternatives in whatever you do. Alice had to face the challenge of continual change and contradiction. The world was changing before her eyes at every turn and almost every encounter she had in Wonderland presented her with contradictions and contradictory characters. She could only navigate if she kept her wits about her at all times.”

97 –  Are learners idiots? Cathy Moore, 13 December 2011

“Be sure to read this paragraph. It tells you that in this post, you’ll learn how to manage stakeholders who want to treat learners like idiots. If you have trouble reading the paragraph, click the speaker icon located in the bottom right-hand corner of this screen and a professional narrator will read the text to you in a soothing voice that slides like oil over any functioning brain cells and gently smothers them. Now read the next paragraph.”

98 - Social business: it’s NOT about the next big thing, Pam Moore, Business2Community, 18 December 2011

“There is one thing that is the same for every business who sets a goal to become a social business. Things are guaranteed to change. Throw out your old thinking, rules and even some of the old processes. What use to work to measure success is not the same as what works today. You can’t control the message, who delivers it when and where. Social media is dynamic, fluid, evolving and filled with movement. Trying to put a finger on it to keep it constant is simply not possible.  Embrace it. Learn to love and grow with the change and you will then be able to evolve with the ecosystem versus being left behind.”

99 - Thriving as a HR professional in a social business era, 7Geese, 17 December 2011

“The upcoming era of social business is going to change the way businesses interact with their customers and their employees. When it comes to interacting with employees, the HR space has the most to gain or lose depending on how adaptive they are to the changing environment. The cuurent processes and software that HR uses to retain their people are outdated and archaic. Traditional HR processes and software are controlling, discontinuous, and too formal. … Since we are moving away from the command-and-control hierarchical organizations to more flattened organizations, where company culture and employee empowerment is important, traditional HR processes don’t work anymore. Some of these processes are over half a century old and the software used are too complex. Therefore, this space has the greatest potential for improvement and change.”

100 - Stop talking about “social”, Think Inside In, Paul Adams, Think Outside In, 18 December 2011

“Social is not a feature. Social is not an application. Social is a deep human motivation that drives our behaviour almost every second that we’re awake … The leading businesses are recognizing that the web is moving away from being centred around content, to being centred around people.That is the biggest social thunderstorm, and all of us are going to have to understand it to succeed. So stop talking about social as a distinct entity. Assume it in everything you do.”