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By Erica, January 22, 2010 10:55 am

I live in Virginia. It’s been a crazy week in the news. I haven’t done a Fridays post in weeks and somehow this song is running around in my head this week. Now it can run around in yours too. Beautiful voices.

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By Erica, January 5, 2010 1:36 pm

I talked to my supervisor today about applying to an Ed.S. program at another university. Ours doesn’t have a program so I had to look elsewhere. I was a little apprehensive about talking to her about it, but I’m not sure why. She was supportive and said she’d write a letter of recommendation for me.

She’s not given to touchy-feely proclamations but she said that she’d sure hate to have to replace me. I take that as a compliment and not as a statement of what a pain the hiring process is for her. She and I have had many discussions on what we each want to do with our professional lives. She has one last child at home and next year the youngest will take off to another city. My supervisor is thinking of taking at least one class but is really leaning to resuming her formal education to pursue a PhD.

I hope we’re able to remain supportive of each other no matter what path opens for each of us. I know I won’t be at my place of employment forever, but I do appreciate how many opportunities I’ve had and do have working there.

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By Erica, December 31, 2009 9:12 am

From the English major in me:

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By Erica, December 17, 2009 9:43 am

This band has a connection to my hometown and this video was shot somewhere in Germany at a Christkindlmarkt. I’ve been to these in a couple of German cities. They are best at night when the whole square is lit up and people are feeling generous and content as they shop. Even though it is cold in Germany in December the gluhwein served in real cups (not that paper throw-away stuff we have here) will help you stay cozy.

There’s one bit of adult language in the video so cranking it up at work may not be the best idea.

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By Erica, December 9, 2009 9:05 am

It’s probably no surprise that I’m interested in the idea of using social networking to bring learning out of the classroom and into the everyday work environment.

I recently read an article from the bozarthzone on specific tools that can be used to do just that. I think it is wonderful that this round-up of tools is now searchable in one place. I think for folks who are thinking about using Web 2.0 the idea of searching hither and yon may be daunting and this is a step towards solving that issue.

I mentioned several weeks (or is it months?) ago I mailed a SME an article about a company that decided to use social networking to take learning back to the desks of their employees. I haven’t heard if the SME is considering this idea or not, but I still believe it would be a great tool for these new positions that are being created across the state. Folks need to talk to each other; they need sounding boards.

I think what I’d like to find next is a way to “sell” the idea of social networking to a group of people who consider blogs and other tools to be the milieu of slack-jawed yokels typing “First” or worse on YouTube sites.

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By Erica, November 20, 2009 9:36 am

I figured it was time to break out the bluegrass. I can remember watching Hee Haw as a kid and my northern-born father would make us all sit still and watch Buck Owens and Roy Clark play.

Here’s Adam Steffey and friends:

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By Erica, November 6, 2009 9:29 am

The other day I sent my SME an article from T&D on using social networks to continue learning. The article is in the October “Best Of” edition of the magazine and discusses how Humana used Twitter to expand on learning. I sent it to my SME because she’s in charge of a new way of doing business and one of the initiatives is to have facilitators all across the state. Wouldn’t it be great if they had a virtual place to share ideas?

In the spirit of connection, I occasionally check out Michael Wesch’s digital ethnography site to see what the next generation thinks about the digital world. I found the video below and I think it’s so well done and really points to how we can collaborate and connect with people we may not know, but we share something in common.

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By Erica, October 30, 2009 8:01 am

The explainer guys are at it again (actually this is from 2007, but it never hurts to be prepared):

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By Erica, October 28, 2009 3:34 pm

I observed a training session yesterday. It was a little odd coming into the room as I was only observing one day of a five day training and I’d missed the first day. I’d also read the curriculum and adopted some of it to create an introductory course. It also didn’t help that some of my colleagues had participated in an earlier session of the course and were less than impressed. I had also participated in a one day session with this trainer on a slightly different subject and nearly fell asleep in the classroom. So it wasn’t your typical observation.

Most often when I observe a course, I’m observing a pilot or an existing course and my role as observer is to make notes on what works well or what should be tweaked. Yesterday’s observation was only to hear content. Observing in this way is especially hard for me because I have to sit for 6 hours and make the occasional note about what I may be able to use, but since this content isn’t really something I can use in my intro course, it was a lot of sitting and listening. It made for a very passive work day.

And, yet, I was pleasantly surprised and pleased at what I saw. Even though the specific subject matter for this course isn’t what I needed to augment my introductory course, I was glad to be able to see what I’d read in the original curriculum come to life. The trainer was “on” yesterday and so my original opinion of him as not being interesting was put aside. The participants were engaged and had evidently had a good first day as they referred back to some of the earlier concepts and teased the trainer about some personal information he had shared.

I probably took more notes on who was in the room and the instructional strategies the trainer used than I did on content. Both of those pieces of information are quite valuable. It may sound weird that I made notes on who was in the room, but this information will be quite handy as my organization pilots other courses in this series and now we know who has had this outside training. They may be able to answer questions about what they’ve been able to apply to their work sites (new SMEs).

I’m always on the look-out for instructional strategies and so it was nice to see the ways the trainer made the content flow. I didn’t see anything totally new but some of the ways he tweaked the usual options (small groups, ranking items on a handout, etc.) were interesting. Ranking the same information twice but under different circumstances was a new one for me and seeing that some of the tried and true strategies still hold up well, no matter the audience, helped me feel like I’m still up-to-date on techniques. It was also nice to see the trainer act as both a trainer and a facilitator depending on the subject. He has skill at both–I really think at some point he was ready to blurt out some ideas from “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!”, but then I realized that was probably just me projecting Weisbord into the room.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but sometimes I really miss being the trainer/facilitator.

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By Erica, October 26, 2009 6:25 pm

This video is great because the lyrics quote Dune by Frank Herbert and Christopher Walken dances: