Learn to Adapt

• Social Media Classroom - The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools. The Classroom also includes curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos.
• Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game | Zen Habits - Interesting post from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Despite the grating "Productivity 2.0" moniker, he raises some very good points about how technology empowers individual performance. Some of the ideas will be difficult inside incumbent organizations, but they do approach ideal performance. His "Just Start" echoes my long standing mantra of "Just Do It" (props to Nike) and I echo his "Don't multi-task" in my other mantra "Muli-tasking Kills". He also touches on the well established them of moving from hierarchy to wirearchy.

Sphere: Related Content  |  |  Trackback This Post

• Getting Down to the Business of Creativity — HBS Working Knowledge - "…if creativity is integral to business, and to entrepreneurship in particular, how exactly does it occur? Where does this unicorn-like creature come from, and what exotic conditions will help it thrive in captivity?"
• Study: Schools, businesses must adapt to ‘thumb generation’ - Now we are getting somewhere: "Classrooms need to adapt to serve students who are plugged in online as never before, and corporations will need to adjust to the 'thumb generation'…" Learning works differently now that just a few years ago.
• Why Traditional Advertising Formats Fail On The Web - Publishing 2.0 - This article is a very good exposition on why traditional advertising on the Web does not work. But I couldn't help thinking this is why traditional learning does not work on the Web either. Learning on the Web must be different to succeed.

Sphere: Related Content  |  |  Trackback This Post

These are my links for March 10th:

• Steve Hargadon: Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education - This is the first time I stumbled upon Steve's blog. Now this is where we need to get more of our K-12 educators. I hope to have time to comb through the post in an upcoming post of my own soon…
• Thomas Davenport and Blogging - He is Wrong! : eLearning Technology - Karrer on Davenport on blogging. The jury will be out for quite some time, but interesting points taken on both sides…

Sphere: Related Content  |  |  Trackback This Post

These are my links for March 4th:

• The FASTForward Blog » FASTforward 08 interviews with speakers, attendees, and bloggers: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary - A great site with archives of FASTforward 08 video interviews with speakers, attendees, and bloggers. Loads of interesting insight on Enterprise 2.0
• Ecolearning — Internet Time Blog - Jay Cross’s take on Ken Thompson’s Bioteams, “a guidebook to help companies move from vestiges of the industrial age to the rocket ride of the network era. This is Management 2.0: We are all leaders.” Gotta love books that use biology as their metaphor!
• Managing Enterprise 2.0 — Internet Time Blog - Jay Cross discusses how Gary Hamel has “issued a wake-up call to corporations that are floundering around with web 2.0 issues…” Touches on the important issue of moving management through change (i.e., the culture leg of the E2.0 stool).
• Business reasons to shift to enterprise 2.0 learning — Internet Time Blog - This brief post from Jay Cross states “business leaders… don’t believe their current approach to training prepares their workers to succeed…” Includes a PDF that lists more than fifty areas collaboration that Web 2.0 can improve.
• Web 2.0 Applications in Learning : eLearning Technology - A wonderfully exhaustive blog from Tony Karrer extending his presentation at the recent ASTD TechKnowledge conference. Includes the results of a small survey he applied at the session re: adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.
• Human Resource Executive Online - Story - Tom Starner has written an insightful article highlighting how incorporating Web 2.0 into your company can attract and retaining talent (i.e., millennials) as well as the usual increase in employee collaboration and engagement.

Sphere: Related Content  |  |  Trackback This Post

At dinner last night with friends, we discussed politics and many agreed that Barack Obama did not have enough leadership experience to prepare him for POTUS. So, I decided to do a quick scorecard of “leadership experience” of all the candidates. I decided after throwing it together to post it here.

First some disclaimers: This scorecard is entirely arbitrary, quick, and dirty. It is also really a scorecard of leadership/political/management experience instead of a true analysis of “leadership”. The list of qualities of “leadership” is lengthy and arguable, and I will leave that argument to the thousands of books already written on the topic. Finally, as shown below, the scorecard is simply a quickly-assembled list of 11 roles/experiences that might prepare a candidate to be successful as POTUS. The 11 are:

• VP
• State Governor
• Cabinet (heading any large federal government agency)
• US Senate
• US House of Representatives
• State elected official
• Local elected official
• Military officer
• CEO (or any managing executive role in a large company)
• MBA
• Political Science, Foreign Relations, or Public Admin degree

And then I checked Wikipedia to complete the scorecard for the three remaining candidates for POTUS (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain). For contrast, I included the previous four POTUSs (POTUSi?) as well. The results:

But, obviously, all these things are not equal. So I decided to weight the 11 categories like this: VP: 5, Governor: 4, Cabinet: 3, Senate and H of R: 2, every thing else gets a 1. I also spotted a few points for Hillary’s First Lady (3 points under VP) and gave Reagan a CEO point for his presidency of SAG. With that weighted scale, the leadership experience scorecard winners are:

So, if we are to judge how successful a candidate will be as POTUS based on their “leadership” experience, the best of the bunch would be both of the Bush boys. And the recent favorites from both parties (Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan) only score a 6 - half of the total for the clear winner, Bush the First. As for our current three candidates, it is a close race. The three points spotted to Hillary for for First Lady put’s her on top of McCain by one point.

Now, to wrap things up, I will spot one last set of (completely arbitrary) points. I start with the assumption that every day you are alive you gain wisdom that makes you a better leader. So, for every year in age, I will give each candidate one-tenth of a point. Hillary gets 6, Obama gets 4.5, and McCain gets 7.1. The final tally this increasingly arbitrary scorecard of leadership experience:

• John McCain: 12.1
• Hillary Clinton: 12.0
• Barack Obama: 8.5

So, when you do this (admittedly arbitrary) math, Obama is considerably less experienced for the job (30% less so than Hillary or McCain).

Now we just need to decide if leadership experience is what we need most in a POTUS now…

Sphere: Related Content  |  |  Trackback This Post