Twitter to start your personal learning network

I'm working with a learning network in education using a sharepoint platform. It's hard to move from face-to-face meeting to online interaction (for a number of reasons and we're writing a whole paper about the challenges). We're experimenting with webconferences and I was suggesting to experiment with other tools like a weblog, ning, or a google group. Some are hesitant: if online interaction with one platform doesn't work well, will other tools not be even more confusing?

When I saw this video on the free technology for teachers blog with about the use of twitter for educators I was struck by the way they see twitter as THE only tool for educators. Watch the 15 minutes video if you're interested.

How is twitter used by the panel? They use twitter to connect with students, parents and other stakeholders, to share resources for teachers and to have tweetpolls and conversations. For instance, every tuesday there are discussions using hashtags. These discussions are with an international group of teachers, including teachers from Turkey etc. The one on the necessity of homework was particularly lively.

They stress that it is not twittering away about learning together. They don't call it twitter but rather a personal learning network. People become learners rather than workers and twitter helps them to continuously learn. It is a great support to teachers. One in three teachers leave because there is lack of support for them, and this can be the way to create support. They decided to start a ning to work as a repository.

Mmm, should we start a twitter experiment? I wonder whether twitter fits the teachers practice because it is so much to the point!

Twitter & Education - #140conf LA from RealPlayer SP on Vimeo.

Madeleine Taylor on network weaving

I'm writing an article about challenges in fostering learning networks in education- based on 8 interviews we did last year- the writing is a bit of a long process but we're getting there. What is striking in the interviews is that the role of the coordinator or facilitator is so new to people. Compared to other tasks and working according to a plan, they have to learn to let go and see what emerges. But there is some confusion too, that letting go means doing less or waiting passively till others take initiave. In my experiences it means working hard, but doing more on the background, talking to people, knowing their passions and interests and knowing what will trigger their participation or even lead taking.

On Beth's blog, this blogpost I found this small interview on network weaving. I've never liked the term weaver, it's so domestic somehow... but it does highlight the invisible work on relationships of a network coordinator or facilitator.



Madeleine explains that you have to see connections and the value the connections bring to people. And knowing what connections to promote, because not everyone needs to be connected to everyone. I'd add that you can also do that from a deep understanding of the domain and the cutting-edges of the domain.

the power of metaphors

Image by fataetoile/ Cinzia Rizzo via Flickr

I'm always amazed by the power of metaphors. Sometimes I try to 'cook' one myself and then it doesn't work so formulating or rather designing a good metaphor is not easy. In Ghana, people were generally strong in using metaphors, but unfortunately I didn't write them down. But if you like proverbs too, you can follow the twitter stream of African Proverbs.

Some strong metaphors I've come across: We all know the metaphor about marriage as a sailing trip. You step into the marriage boat and you will face rough weather, storm and the boat will rock. A little overused, but probably popular because it appeals to couples.

A very strong one that I still remember, even though I've come across it some years ago, is about the integration process by immigrants in the Netherlands. There is a lot of political debate about integration and integration problems and usually the immigrants are blamed for not speaking the language, not adapting etc. Then a person said: "it is like the highway; you can try to merge with the traffic on the highway, but you need to be given the space to pull your car over". This is such a good metaphor because it show that it is a two-way process.

And two weeks ago Irene Guijt gave a presentation about accountability at Partos Plaza. What I now recall from her presentation is the metaphor of the goose and the golden eggs. Talking about accountability she explained that you need to be aware of not only counting the golden eggs (the results) while killing the goose at the same time. Because you will not have any golden eggs in future. I think that's a strong metaphor to warn about for looking short-sightedly at (short-term) results without caring for the organisations and other actors that produce the results.

Do you have any metaphors that stick with you? What makes them so strong?

How to use social media for an event with people who are not used to social media?..

I've been to events where everyone is twittering, tagging and hopping around with their laptops. I've also been to events where nobody even knows what tagging is. In most events, you will find a mix of people.

I was asked by Partos, the branche association for development organisations in the Netherlands to think with them how social media can support their yearly event, Partos Plaza for roughly 100 participants. The event will take place next tuesday so we don't have any evaluation data yet, but I can share our design and some first observations about the process.

We thought very carefully about the aim of using social media. We didn't want to add a social media layer simply because you look old-fashioned if you don't (I think we can wait for the first event without any social media and it will be seen as a relief :). So our aim of using social media was:

• To support interaction between participants before and during the event and between the organisers and participants
• To experiment with social media and show participants some uses of social media
• To ensure continuity and follow-up- other years it was very invisible what happened with all the ideas and energy. Having online interaction afterwards can help taskteams or interest groups to continue online (if there is an interest to do so). This may lead to better collaboration initiatives

So what did we design? We chose to start with a ning platform as the central place. The advantage of ning compared to other solutions was that it is a social network, and can stimulate networking through personal pages. We asked people about their LinkedIn profile and whether they have a twitter account or site they want to share. So there are more opportunities to connect. Ning doesn't require a huge investment, so we can close it down after the event if there is no interest to continue online, gives quite some flexibility. And its events function could help with the organisations of the workshop and registration of attendance. Furthermore, we thought that we could use the platform to invite people to co-create the workshops and come up with ideas for the open space. We decided to make everything public so that people hesitant to register could also read along. We also experimented with a twitter account without investing too much time in it because we did not expect many participants to be on twitter. During the event we will focus on:

• A network wall with the printed profiles from the ning. We asked people in their profile about their interests and the knowledge that the person has they would like to meet. This will be displayed on the network wall and people will be invited to contact each other or suggest names of people to meet.
  
• A twitter screen and twitter corner. We would like people to answer the question: what idea, insight of new contact did you gain today? so that it becomes collectively visible what is happening in terms of networking and creation of new ideas. The large majority not on twitter will be invited to twitter from a central account in a specially set-up twitter corner.
  
• Last but not least, all workshopleaders will report something (small) back on the platform and investigate whether there is an interest to continue somehow working on their topic. This will allow people to read on what's happening in parallel workshop and ofcourse it will be easier for people who can not make it to peep into the content.
  

There will not be wireless access to the internet available. We did not stimulate people to bring laptops, and think it's OK to focus on the workshops and the conversation.

Our first experiences are mixed:
- There were not that many reactions to the statements and to the invitation to think along the programming. I guess it is due to not being that at ease with working through a social network because the people who did respond were all well versed with various social media. It is an repeated event, so I see that participants are quite passive and not that eager to co-create. It's fine if other organise it for them! (this is my interpretation by the way)
- The number of participants on the ning and the number of visitors were higher than expected. We are now at 90 people. We had expected a maximum of 60 on the social network because some might not be interested in it.
- Twitter has been an eye-opener! Without investing a lot, we have 31 followers in 4 weeks time. And from the participants, at least 30 are on twitter and/or have a corporate twitter account. Interesting to see that twitter has become such an easy entrance into social media.... about 7% of the traffic to the ning has come through twitter, even though it was not heavily used. And 20% is still through the website of Partos.
- There are some assumption in social networks that work against the hierarchy. Secretaries asking how they can register their bosses for workshops when the boss has registered on the ning... This is only possible to do it yourself or if the boss gives his/her log in data to the secretary.
- I have the impression it makes it easier for the not-so-obvious participants to join, like the private intiatives (as we call them) versus the professional organisations.

Will keep you posted after tuesday and definitely after we have some feedback from participants...

Fostering online networks in development (south-south learning processes)

I just finished preparing a presentation about the art of fostering online networks in development; with a focus on producer organisations in the south (for a session with progresonetwork). While preparing the presentation I thought again about the fact that the basics of online networks are still social networks. Nothing else. So that is what I stress in my presentation. Since I really believe in the power of peer learning, I am existed by the possibilities of web2.0 to make south-south learning possible.

I've always believed in south-south learning since you can learn a lot of people who face similar difficulties and practice- just slightly different. Not that everybody in the south can learn from everybody else, but for instance cocoa producer organisations in Ghana can learn a lot from cocoa producers in Ivory Coast- similar difficulties but different context which pushes you to think creatively. I'm refering in my presentation to a survey undertaken by the world bank with 137 respondents about south-south learning. 94% think it is important or extremely important for improving the impact of international development and poverty reduction. Partnerships and alliances score best as mechanisms for south-south learning, followed by networks and associations, exchanges/secondments and study tours.

I use the examples of km4dev (see interview Lucy Lamoureux) and the IFRTD networks (see evaluation) and the lessons here are definitely that you have to mix face-to-face and online communication creatively and that it really help to have a dedicated network leadership, consistent over time.

Suddenly thought it is sometimes discouraging to read these success stories (that are even hard to replicate too!) and included the lessons of two attempts to stimulate online learning networks which were less successful: one by Anne Hardon, virtual knowledge communities: lessons learned in making them work, the other by three authors titled Forming a community of practice to strengthen the capacities of learning and knowledge sharing centres in Latin America and the Caribbean: a Dgroup case study. Great that these experiences are also shared and they may be even more helpful and insightful than the success stories.

Fostering Online Networks

View more presentations from Joitske Hulsebosch.

Why working wikily is so hard (at least for me)

Cover via Amazon

Yesterday I blogged about the working wikily paper. It takes the stand that the tools are not so innovative, it's the networked way of working that's revolutionary.. and that's partly engendered by the tools.

My own blogpost made me think about the generational differences and the different mindsets about collaboration. I read and blogged the book Grown up digital. Though many people I meet recognise that different generations use the web differently, often they point to exception to the rule. And don't really know how to work with the differences. The depth of the difference may be underestimated. Trust in working online and trust in jumping into collaborative partnerships is an issue. It's almost a paradigm shift, but it sure is a deep shift.

An example from my own experience to show that working wikily is a profound change of mind. Though I try to learn many new tools (and not just technically, but also diving in socially) I have a mindset about collaboration that is not fully networked. It feels like it is partly changing- for instance I met a person in the train and may jump into a collaborative project with her because we have common interests. I'm organising a series of workshops with 3 colleagues by open admission. People send an email to one of us, the central coordinator for that workshop. Since each workshop had another coordinator, it caused difficulties when people changed workshop etc. My solution was to propose a central coordinator for all admission. Even though I know all the tools, wikis, google docs etc. it didn't occur to me. My colleague then proposed to co-coordinate, use all our email addresses and put all admissions in a google doc. It a networked way of working at small scale. But illustrative of a different way of working nevertheless.

I do wonder whether my daughters will have a mindset of working wikily (they sure learn it on the various social networks they are already part of) and whether that's a good thing. There are probably also downsides to it. What do you see as the downsides of working wikily with a networked mindset?

Working wikily 2.0 with grants

I found some inspiration in the paper

Image by Ross Mayfield via Flickr

Working wikily 2.0. It is the title of the second version of a paper by the monitorinstitute. I like their intro: it's not about the wiki, it's about how wikis and other tools engender a new networked mindset. However, I'm also guilty of talking about tools because you still have to know the tools and how to work with them. (it goes hand in hand- the tools and the culture).

The paper specifically talks about how web2.0 is changing philanthropy. I'm thinking a lot about the question how working wikily is changing developing cooperation (we are starting an online discussion in Dutch here). Don't confuse philanthropy and development cooperation by the way! Philanthropy is the act of donating money, goods, services, time and/or effort to support a socially beneficial cause, with a defined objective and with no financial or material reward to the donor. Development cooperation is slightly more complex has to do with empowerment, social change, economic development and is also a political process.

Nevertheless there is a great example in the paper from philanthropy that demonstrates a new way of working and thinking that may inspire because grants are part and parcel of the development industry. The Case Foundation, launched the "Make It Your Own' Awards People could submit ideas for improving their communities, be reviewers and then vote for the best ideas to fund. They did build in a sort of control system. An open group selected the top 100 ideas, but advisors selected the 20 grant recipients according to the foundations goals and criteria.

If the development budget of the Dutch ministry would partly be allocated by a similar process, you would get a very different dynamic than the bureaucratic process it is currently. I liked the mixed approach, because I also believe in expertise and don't think you can make every process a democratic decision-making process. But the development budget is tax money, so it would give citizens some influence on how that money is spent.

Nice experiment or dangerous?

Social media mean nothing without social capital

Another great talk by Clay Shirky available through Tedtalks. Watch it if you have 17 minutes break from work. Besides giving some examples of how social media are changing collaboration and cooperation in society, he makes a very important point: social media can have enormous impact because it can leverage existing social capital, existing networks between people. If you look at his example of the earthquake in China: social media made it possible that the first reports were online by citizens before the institutions could break the news. But it is through the social relationships with these citizens with other chinese people residing in other countries (and other nationalities too) that it could flow. So social media without the social capital is not really revolutionary... I think this is also a lesson for organisations- if you have never built a good constituency- don't think social media will build that for you. If you have already build it, social capital can make it more powerful..

What do you think? Or can social media also help to build networks from scratch?

Expertise and Ave Maria

Image via Wikipedia

I'm interested in expertise: what is it and how to build it? And how is expertise changing in this social media world with information easily accessible?

When I returned from working in Mali, Ethiopia and Ghana and started to work in the Netherlands I was at times surprised about work given to younger and junior employees. I guess I picked up some of the respect for the expertise and wisdom of older people in the countries I worked previously. As times, age is seen as a disadvantage rather than an asset. What I notice is that often younger people seem to be able to do a certain job quite well, but take more time.

On the cognitive daily, a blog with daily news about psychological research and news, there was a repost with the title 'why can't we all be divas?' that may shed some light on expertise.

You are invited to listen to the two Ave Marias and see whether you notice a difference:
Ave Maria 1
Ave Maria 2

I thought the second one was slightly lower than the first Ave Maria.. From the blogpost:

"The difference between the two clips, readily identified by experienced professional musicians, is that the melody is being played in a different key from its accompaniment. While this technique is sometimes deliberately employed in both Western and non-Western music (the musical term for the practice is "bitonality"), it's certainly never expected in a familiar work like Ave Maria.....The fact that nonmusicians can't detect bitonality is the surprising result of a simple little study by Rita Wolpert of Caldwell College ("Attention to Key in a Nondirected Music Listening Task: Musicians versus Nonmusicians," Music Perception, 2000)....She then played the "music" for 40 nonmusicians and 10 professional musicians. Only 5 of the "nonmusicians"—which actually included 7 people with over 6 years of musical training—could conclusively tell that two of the arrangements were sung in a different key from the accompaniment. Meanwhile, the musicians uniformly reacted with disgust, easily identifying the problem with the flawed arrangements... None of the nonmusicians indicated that the bitonal arrangements were at all unpleasant."

In the discussion through the comments on the blog, some musicians wonder whether they are 'taught' by their education that the bitonal arrangement is unpleasant. In any case, it is an example of the fact that building expertise gives you the ability to distinguish/hear/see things that goes unnoticed for people without that expertise. And that that expertise may be quite invisible to outsiders. On the other hand, you can distinguish the real musicians easily through this small test.

By the way, if you ever get to Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, there is a nice restaurant 'l'eau vive' run by the Catholic sisters. At the end of the evening, the sisters sing the Ave Maria.

Designing an online and face-to-face learning trajectory

I co-facilitated an online trajectory about dairy development with dairy practitioners (for Heifer in collaboration with Agri-ProFocus) before a face-to-face learning event in the Netherlands. As the facilitator team of 3 we took an hour to look back at the process and formulate our lessons. I blogged it on the icollaborate blog, but thought I can cross-blog it here too. We used a Ning platform (private network with public face) to convene the participants. A huge advantage of the online process is that we have a secured continuous attention and more networking opportunities for the dairy specialists. We are now investigating options to continue as a network. In terms of impact on learning together I think this is huge compared to simply organising a face-to-face event. So here's the account of what we tried to achieve, what we achieved and what we'd do the same or differently next time.

What we tried to achieve:
The organizing team of three felt starting online could help with the following 4 things:

1. Get to know each other so that a positive climate is created for learning together
2. Better content-wise preparation for the learning event with the participants by sharing and discussing case studies online before the event
3. Help to organize the logistics, in particular transport
4. Disseminate and validate the draft toolbox developed by Heifer

A team of three facilitators was formed with a variety of skills; one was a dairy specialist from Heifer (not familiar with online exchange), one process facilitator from Agri-ProFocus and one consultant online facilitation (external). As always, time for preparation was short and the team met only once for about 2 hours to get to know each other, plan and divide tasks – and actually started the next day!

The design
There was one month left before the learning event, so that was the maximum time that could be used online. A dairy and development Ning platform was put together and a group of roughly 100 registered people from all over the globe were invited to the platform. The team chose to start parallel discussions: (a) the cases, (b) a thread of introductions, (c) an online game (two truths and a lie), (d) to ask for learning expectations and (e) logistics. The team agreed to communicate via mails and skype instant messaging and try to react within 24 hours to each others questions. Every week a message was sent out to all registered participants on the platform, tips from the facilitators were put on the homepage and updated when necessary and we made sure to welcome all participants with a personal note.

What happened?
Roughly half of the invited people responded (50) and signed up for the platform. Immediately, they started to invited others working in dairy development, so we reached a total of 94 participants on the Ning. The cases and introductions were very active threads and all cases received comments from people who had read them carefully. We noticed that we had to invest to get a first reaction to a question, after which more people followed. Almost half of the ‘Ningers’ could not participate in the event in the Netherlands. That brought us to the idea to make short videos to post back for the others who were not present. Unfortunately this person fell ill and nobody could take over. Therefore summaries were made and posted back to the Ning. The online facilitation took each of us 12-20 hours of online facilitation over the course of 4 weeks.

In the evaluation 62% of the participants in the learning event indicated they logged onto the online platform. The comments were appreciative: “It got me involved in the subject”, “I contributed and learned a lot”, “Everybody has a chance” and “Good preparation, great introduction, up-to-date information”

What did we achieve?
The online participation and discussions far exceeded the expectations of the organizing team, given the fact that most invitees are busy and not familiar with this type of online exchange. The case presenters on the learning event noted that people went deeply into the cases and they were able to go beyond trying to understand the case to a real analysis. There was a open, safe atmosphere which allowed people to be provocative and give constructive criticisms without others feeling attacked.

It is hard to measure the effect on the networking on the Ning. The online exchange allowed some acquaintance and dairy people are already well networked. Both factors helped to create a good atmosphere. Many people recognized faces from the ning and it probably helped to reduce anxiety levels because people had a clearer idea of whom to expect.

Most people carpooled- but it is hard to say whether that was a result of the ning. Only one person offered the carpool through the ning. We didn’t get a clear picture of the transport needs online. The draft toolbox was disseminated during the last week. Unfortunately we don’t have data how often it was downloaded (and less how often it was read).

What would we do the same and what to do differently if we’d had to organize it again?
We’re quite content and enthusiastic about the results, so we’d basically do the same thing we did. Investing in welcoming people, making sure a first person reacts online to questions, tips from the facilitator on the homepage and weekly summaries for all seemed to work well for this group of people with little online exchange experience. The focus on cases worked very well for the dairy professionals because it allowed them to go straight to the heart of their profession. The combination of skills within the team worked out well, as did the weekly or so skype teleconferences within the team. And of course part of the success can be contributed to the cases that appealed to the participants. Things to improve:

• Plan enough time to make summaries of the ning discussions as an input for the face-to-face event. Since the reactions exceeded our expectations, making summaries was time consuming.
• The icebreaker is good because it is low threshold activity for some participants. However, the ‘two truths and a lie’ was too complex. An easier icebreaker might get more reactions. One participant recognized the exercise from a face-to-face event, so you might go for a familiar icebreaker and translate it online.
• Don’t combine two questions in one thread. One of the two questions might be ignored. Be very clear what your question is.
• Navigation remained difficult. The lesson is to give priority to a very clear structure. However, for people who are new to ning or other online platforms the experience may remain chaotic, it is a learning curve for the participants. So it might also be good to allow more time for learning to navigate the online space, both for participants and facilitators!. An idea for participants may be to organize an online scavenger hunt on the forum or a teleconference for those who feel lost?
• It might work better to focus attention of participant to plan case discussions one after the other rather than simultaneously. For instance, 2 cases per week. This helps to focus everybody’s attention. In our case, the period of 4 weeks was short for that because it takes more than a week to get a substantial amount of participants online.
• Install analytics (eg. Google analytics) or ensure downloads via other sites that monitor the number of downloads so that you can monitor those data. For instance, you can upload a document on scribd.com and link to it on the Ning.

Leading a dance movement

I found this great video here in a blogpost about leadership in blogging. It's moving when there is a turning point and people come running to join in the dancing. The first 10-15 people seem to play an important role.



So who are you? Are you the one starting something new? (I'm not!)

Gordon Ramsey as change facilitator

Image by jo-h via Flickr

Yesterday I watched Gordon Ramsey while he was trying to change a restaurant in Brighton that wasn't doing well. I'm not that much interested in cooking, but I like watching him as a change facilitator. He works very much as an external expert- he's not the type of relax and see what happens... I think this works in his case because he is a well-respected cook-advisor. (for many other advisors who are not that famous it may not work!).

He had a very strong intervention explaining the financial situation using a cake metaphor. He took all ingredients and called them the various costs- personnel costs etc. Then he backed two cakes: one with balanced ingredients and one with unbalanced ingredients. He actually backed both cakes and showed it to the restaurant owner. Saying that she needs to balance the costs like you have to balance the cake ingredients. Though a simple metaphor- it actually made her cry because it was so true.

Lesson on metaphors: they can be very strong if used well and recognised by the problemowner.

I read another nice metaphor that I often use for myself in my head about social media. I read it in the guest blog by Hilde Gottlieb on Beth's blog. I'm quoting it here:

Imagine this conversation.

"I am thinking about getting a phone. Who should I call? What should I say to them? How long before the phone will help us reach our goals?"

Sounds silly, of course - but that is really what we are asking when we ask, “What should I talk about on Twitter or Facebook or MySpace?”

Any strong metaphors you often use?

Overcoming objections to social media reblogged

I found a great post by called Using social media in your nonprofit: overcoming objections, written by Debra Askanase. She writes about the need to engage in social media as a nonprofit, because conversations are happening online anyway. Her angle is more an organisational identity building angle, whereas I investigate the potential of social media for professionalisation and learning. But the objections are very recognisable.

She lists 5 objections she heard while presenting about social media

1. It’s not safe! What about the BU Craigslist killer? (someone REALLY asked this question in the presentation)
2. What if our biggest rival pretends to be us online?
3. Social media means a lot of work and we don’t have the staff time to do that.
4. There is no place in our organization for social media
5. People will attack us online with negative critique.

For each objection, she gives some answers. I liked the practical example of two organisations that practise 'online listening' through social media:

Carie Lewis from the Humane Society of the US (she’s their Brand Ambassador) holds a 9-minute staff meeting every day to inform each and every one of the HSUS employees about “what’s going on that day - PR, what people are talking about on Twitter, etc.”

Wendy Harman, of the American Red Cross, writes that “We distribute a daily social media update email that contains a sampling of most relevant mentions.” Everyone must be involved. No more silos.

Other objections I often hear are fear for using software that is not within the organisation's firewall, fear for information overload (not seeing the trees through the forest). In development low bandwidth is also used as an excuse. Yet, taking into account how many people you work with are comfortable using social media is a necessary step. I think a lot of the objections boil down to fear for the unknown, something new.

One newspaper article was very sceptical about twitter in terms of social relations, fearing that the loose relationships are mistaken for real relationships. I think that is typically a view of a person who hasn't experienced twitter. If you do, you see it is a new communication means that people use, but it is complementary to all other means.

See also the 10 objections to social media I blogged earlier on.

Yes we can, but very slowly (and not always)

Image via Wikipedia

In a newspaper magazine I read about volunteers who go to work in Uganda in "alsof je de trein naar Zandvoort neemt". I agree with the conclusion drawn in the very realistic and recognisable article: see volunteering in countries like Uganda as an investment in yourself, and don't expect to change anything in 1,2 or even 6 months. There was a great example:

Two Dutch teachers: we were going to form couples with the Ugandan teachers to guide the children. However, we noted that these teachers were already a bit tired of volunteers because they try to change everything. Someone introduced a method from Dalton, with a traffic light system. Red means by quiet, Orange- you can ask questions and Green - you can talk freely. Whenever we entered, they would quickly put up the traffic light, but they would never use it.

This sounds like a very real situation. What can we learn from it in terms of change management?

1. You need to have a constructive helper relationship before you can facilitate change. People need to trust you and your interventions. There is imported trust (or mistrust) too. The Ugandan teachers were already tired of the volunteers. So for any volunteer it would be harder to build a relationship with the teachers in which they trust their interventions.

2. Change within a short time period will only work if it fits within the main system and respects the change rhythm of the people involved. The Dutch teachers frame of mind is too different from the Ugandan situation. Only small changes (single loop) changes are possible. Deeper change processes affecting the way we work take much more time.

Are your community's lurkers healthy lurkers?

I facilitated a teleconference with Mirjam Neelen for CPsquare. Mirjam is doing a thesis on this topic and shared her literature research with us. It struck me how much more you dive into a topic if you have to facilitate it, you suddenly feel more responsible and really invest in the topic. I've blogged about lurking before, investigating whether lurking in online forums is a sort of legitimate peripheral participation that leads to people learning about the practices of a community of practice. This time we tried to analyze whether lurking in online forums is a problem or a bliss for companies. The definition of lurking is as people who NEVER post, hence they don't share their questions, ideas or suggestions online.

What did I learn about lurking? First, most of all recognized that lurking can be very positive. Lurking into an online forum because you feel you are a novice can make you more expert. Or scanning a wide variety of online forum to know what's happening in other fields (helps boundary crossing). Something that really struck me in Mirjam's paper was the observation by Stegbauer that if participants remained inactive for the first four months, the likelihood for them to become active was minimized. I recognized this from my own behaviour. That means there is a crucial period to try and get participants active, to stimulate active participation. Mirjam outlined a wide variety of barriers that may lead to lurking behaviour and withold members from posting:

• Interpersonal barriers- loss of face
• Procedural barriers- people don't buy into the recommended ways of sharing (could be called preferential barriers?)
  
• Technological barriers - lack of technological aptitude
• Cultural barriers- crosscultural differences

'Healthy' lurking processes are probably situation where people are novices and learn by lurking or interdisciplinary lurking. It becomes unhealthy when important information and knowledge is missed out because of the above mentioned barriers. Suppose an online community is missing out all major experts because they continue to change offline, then some bridging needs to be done to ensure the online community doesn't become marginalized and mediocre. I guess an analyisis of inbound trajectories whereby people move from lurking to being active or core members are key to seeing whether lurking is healthy. What are the community's practice to stimulate sharing of ideas and perspectives?

What did I learn about online facilitation? I made it into a sort of exercise in online facilitation for myself, designing and online-teleconference-online sequence. The idea was to collect lurker stories online, discuss the research focussing on lurking behaviour in online corporate community forums, and go back online to brainstorm about research questions. The first part worked well, but there was no energy to go back online to discuss the research questions. I think I should have changed the initial plan into a topic that might have attracted more energy for the participants of the teleconference, like research methodologies. What really paid off was to prepare it all together beforehand in a skype session. That's an investment that really pays off in terms of quality.

See me typing life..

This week I'm not too busy- great to read and write! Wrapping up a project. Feels like I have more room to think of new things to undertake. One of the really unnecessary things I discovered in livetyping. It shows exactly how you typed something, including the typos :).


LiveTyping.com (through Willem Karssenberg). I'm lucky I'm not working for a company- they'd probably think I'm wasting my time though it's really clearing my head and refreshing me.

Might be something I will never really use, but it's nice to know this is possible. Another nice thing to play with is 1001 fonts. I really like the handwriting fonts.

Follow the instructions or think for yourself?

I found this cartoon on the blog of Marnix Catteeuw. If you can't read the text, you can go to his blog. It was originally posted on the xkcd blog.

I fell into the same trap when I was trying to locate a physiotherapist with google maps. I thought it was handy that you can locate them on the map immediately. I discovered later that the good old fat yellow pages had many more referrals than google maps..

Great reminder that good professionals think for themselves and don't routinely follow the instructions..

Schein's ten step culture deciphering process for enterprise2.0

I've reread Schein's Organizational Culture and Leadership. I read it in 2001 with the organisational change processes of Ghanaian organisations in mind. Now I'm reading it with social media introduction glasses. It's been a joy to read it, such good understanding and so practically applicable.

About a learning culture in organisations Schein writes that we don't know tomorrow's world,but we know it will be different, more complex, more fast-paced and more culturally diverse. Hence the need for organisations and their leaders to become perpetual learners. So there is a need to speed up our learning processes and mechanisms. I think social media can contribute to that. But there is a paradox with culture in organisations, culture being a stabilizer, a way to make things predictable. Strong cultures are stable and hard to change. So does it mean that we need more flexibility to change assumptions? A rapidly learning organisation will change its assumptions too.

How and when to assess cultural dimensions? Schein is very strongly saying that it is not useful to assess culture as part of a desire to change the culture. Rather, there should be a clear goal, an organisational problem to be worked on. If that problem has cultural dimensions, it would be good to assess culture and how the shared assumptions support or get in the way of solving the problem of the organisation.

If that is the case, you can use a ten-step culture assessment process to decipher the assumptions at work within the organisation. The steps role from obtaining leadership commitment, via group interviews to identifying artifacts and espoused values. From there you go to the shared tacit assumptions and identify cultural aids and hindrances in relation to the stated problem.

How does this relate to social media introduction in organisations? I think it is very relevant because social media is not introduced out of the blue, but linked to a certain objective. (see the POST model from the Groundswell). If you take the additional step of doing a culture assessment, it would help to decipher assumptions at play which help or hinder the use of social media. Though you may generalize by stating that you need a 'open' or 'knowledge sharing' culture this is so general that it's not helpful. The culture deciphering process could help you to find cultural or subcultural elements that need to shift. And elements that are already in place that match the use of social media for a certain objective. It will definitely increase the chances for success I strongly believe.

I would be very interested in trying this process out in an organization!

Be aware of the fourth time assignment

I read somewhere about Sweden's 1967's shift in left-hand driving to right-hand driving. On the Monday following the shift, there were less traffic accidents, 125 reported traffic accidents, compared with a range of 130 to 198 for previous Mondays. Most had anticipated more traffic accidents. It is likely that the higher attention by drivers contributed to the lower number of accidents.

When my daughter learned how to cycle at the age of 4, I was very careful. When we cycled I cycled real close to her and held her neck near traffic. So she learned to cycle steadily. After roughly 6 months, I slowly started to pay less attention to her and got more confidence in her skills. Then, once when we were very near home she rode her bike behind me (normally in front of me), and a man came from the side and ran into her. It wasn't too bad, but she had some wounds because she fell with her face on the steer of the cycle.

I think knowledge workers may be at their best when they do a similar job for roughly for the third time. The first two times they gain experience. The third time is the best, small mistakes from the first times can be corrected. The fourth time assignment there is a risk that you loose attention and make unnecessary mistakes. Of course there may be individual difference and task differences. And you can argue that for knowledge workers, every assignment is unique, so it's hard to have a really similar job.

I started thinking about this when I thought about learning from mistakes. Somehow I don't believe in learning from mistakes. Most of the times, we know the mistakes but there are other reasons for underperformance like lack of attention.

What do you think? Do you recognise this? Or do real masters never loose their attention?

Joint decision-making about tool use in teams

Nancy White has a blogpost called Technology Stewardship and Unexpected Uses that resonates with what I'm working on. I'm consulting various people in organisations about the choice for online tools and how to introduce them for use by teams, groups or networks. What I noticed is that quite a lot of them would like to choose a tool, get up to speed with it themselves and then train others. However, in this networked world, it is my belief that we can be more participatory than that, with more chances of success.

Together with Sibrenne Wagenaar I wrote a Dutch article called "So you wanna be a virtual team?" - have to admit here that the Dutch are a little bit crazy giving an English title but the rest is really in Dutch- . In the article we try to explicitize our own way of working. We state that, amongst other things, it is good to:

• Start with an exchange of experiences with tools for collaboration; start with familiarity
  
• Choose a starting toolset together with the team
• Stimulate an experimental culture within the team
• You can introduce new tools but don't overdo it
  
• Monitor individual feelings of ease and unease

It's hard to find the balance though between deciding for a group and trying to facilitate a participatory decision making process because for some tools may be new. It's a bit of an art to know when to lead and when to use knowledge and experiences within the group.

Nancy White has some useful additions on how to introduce technology:

It is about a dynamic evolution of practices and applications of the technology, not about the installation or the simple availability of the tool. So here are some practice hints.

• Role model your experience and practices with tools, but don’t present them as the only options.
• Watch for experimentation and amplify new, useful practices. Better yet, encourage community members to talk about and share their practices.
• When members ask for tool adjustments based on their experimentation, work hard to accommodate rather than block innovation. This may mean going to bat with “higher-ups” to gain permission, or to allow the experimentation to fly “under the radar” until you can make a case for the value of the changes.
• Encourage the fringies - the people who push the limits of a tool. Make them allies rather than enemies. Their pushing of your buttons may also create the innovation that you need to foster wider adoption.

In short develop shared leadership with regards to all these decisions. Though it may seem you know the best use of a tool, it's worthwhile to foster joint decision-making and let the routines within the team evolve organically within the team.

I'm curently reading Schein's organisational culture and leadership again, hope to draw some lessons from his insights too.

Any tool can do, culture matters

I'm writing blogging tips for a book we're writing and one of the tips is to create a rhythm of posting. I had a good blogging rhythm but now I seem to loose it! So I need tips how to keep your rhythm. All the holidays in the Netherlands starting from queen's day on 30 april are definitely fun, but don't help me to keep into any rhythm. But let's try to stick to a weekly rhythm and blogging about a past experience still lingering in my head.

In a teleconference Davee Evans, active participant in wikipedia organised by CPsquare I was very much struck by the complete unimportance of selecting the right tool for online interaction. What's really important is creating a culture of exchange. Since my consultancies started to include online methods for learning and collaboration a lot of the initial questions I get are about help to select the right tool. Or sometimes people have selected a tool and want to know how to tweek it. Though engagement in an intake conversation, all the other questions about introduction, designing the change process, the facilitation of the online interaction surface rapidly. Nevertheless, most of the time I also do some tool advice because I have the feeling that's part of the expertise asked of me. So both clients and myself seem to be drawn to tool selection.

What was the example? Davee talked about a voting process taking place in wikipedia about combatting vandalism. From the teleconference minutes:

The "flagged revisions project" is an attempt to deal with the enduring problem of vandalism. It's a very slow community process held in a very peculiar local style of discussion. Voting, with the pro's and con's about voting, happens in a free text space that is unique.

You can see the polling process in the picture displayed or by clicking on this link. What's interesting is that the tools used are in my opinion not the most appropriate for the job. The poll is done in the form of an online discussion in a wiki. I'd say you need an online survey tool to conduct a poll. And if you want to discuss an issue, you need a discussion thread function. What the wikipedians do, is use the wiki they are so familiar to and write in a threaded fashion in the wiki page that seems to work for them.

A strong example of the fact that when culture of working together online is very strong, the tool doesn't really matter. (it definitely put my idea about the best tools upside down!).

Interactive maps

I got a question from someone about maps. I thought I could list a few mapping services I came across. I have to admit that I don't do a lot with maps myself so far, I tried a google map for Ghana, but failed because the bandwidth did not allow us to map everyone. But for places with good internet connectivity, it can be great to try and map for instance participants. Regularly, I have a lot at the map of visitors to this map with sitemeter, it's great to see the worldwide readership (see picture here).

There are a few interactive- web2.0 mapping services that are easy to use to create a map. Of course with interactive maps the data depend on the number of participants willing to add their information to the maps. It is a great way of starting an international online workshop.

• A famous one is frappr.
• You can make your own customized map with wayfaring, for instance a map of your life (if you haven't lived in the same street your whole life that is...). I could do that because people have said that my CV reads like a travel guide :).
• You can make your own google map (click on my maps) and with mymapsplus, you can embed that map (=show) it in your site or blog if you want.
• With clustrmaps you can map the visitors of a site, this is similar to the map that sitemeter offers when you have it installed for your blog.
• Trippermap allows you to show your flickr photos via a map. Of course you need to add locations to your photos on flickr to be able to create such a map.

An example of a map used for activism is the Access Denied map about online censorship. Twittermap.nl is an attempt to map all Dutch twitterers. War on Gaza mapped incidents. And milieukontakt is using Google earth in combination with a wiki to map environmental issues.

Every community of practice should be able to articulate their value

Yesterday I saw an interview with Ron Fouchier, a professor in molecular virology about the search for vaccines for the swine pest (you can still watch the interview with Ron Fouchier in Dutch here). He works for the Erasmus University, one of the centres that will get the virus to start cooking up a vaccin.

What's interesting is how he phrased the collaboration with other centres. In the case of SARS, they were one of the 6-7 centres of excellence working to find a vaccine. He calls it a 'fair competition' between the centres whereby the Erasmus had won some 'small competitions'. I can imagine the centres are in close contact, but try to be smarter than the others. You could see them as a community of practice, exchanging information and ideas and trying to innovate. Or you could see it as a project team with a clear aim- finding the vaccin.

What strikes me is that he could so clearly articulate the resulting benefit of the process. In the end, they will contribute to public health by finding a vaccine that will help control the swine flu. Nobody will contest the fact that they need to collaborate and exchange.

In a lot of communities of practice though, participants find it hard to articulate the benefits. As a result, exchange in the communities is sometimes seen by managers and sponsors as unnecessary waste of the practitioners time. In this case, it is amazingly clear, and it would be weird if anybody would object to exchange of information. Not in all communities it might be possible to stress the added value so clearly, and to have such a compelling goal. Nevertheless, I think it is important to try and make a similar case. Which vaccine are you hoping to develop with your community of practice? What will this bring to your organisations and sponsors?

Dutch workshops 'webwerken' and 'online faciliteren'

This is only interesting for Dutch speaking people. With 3 other consultants (one of whom I've known online) we've developed three different workshops in Utrecht in the Netherlands

• Basic workshop 'webwerken' (29th May and October 15th)
• (evening) Crash course 'webwerken' (September 8th)
• Online facilitation (a week online, a day in Utrecht 9-16 June, 29 oct-5 nov)

I think what makes our workshop special compared to others is that we are facilitators with years of experience experimenting, engaging, working with social media. Trainers and facilitators who have good face-to-face facilitation skills and want to learn more about translating these skills online can get a kick-start using our experience. Participants in the workshops are usually asked to give marks and the ratings for the last workshop were between 8 and 10 on a scale between 0-10. (I'm not boosting, these are just facts :).

If you are interested, or know people who might be interested in joining us; you can download the brochure from scribd by clicking on the link 'Folder webwerken' below and then clicking on download. You can also read the latest newsletter from IAF from page 11 onwards.

Facilitation of online learning: an art and a profession
Facilitating online requires different skills than face-to-face facilitation. E-facilitation expert Simon Koolwijk tells us about a unique course that teaches about communicating and facilitating in an online environment.

Folder Webwerken

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Brochures & Catalogs web2.0 online faciliteren

Every question can be misinterpreted (communication is hard!)

"Would you rather have lived in Leidschendam?" that sounds like a pretty straightforward question to someone who knows that Leidschendam is a town in the Netherlands, isn't it? (and when you see the picture here of the center of this town the answer would Yes!) But even to this question there are two interpretations!

I'm doing a series of interviews with neighbours in our (young) area. This was one of my questions. I always think I have been trained on the job by living in Mali, Ghana and Ethiopia to formulate my questions as clear and unambiguous as possible, so I was surprised that this question was interpreted in a way that escaped my observations. I thought the interviewee answered it the way I intended it: whether she would rather live in the town called Leidschendam than in the Hague. I didn't realize that this part of the Hague where we live used to be part of Leidschendam. So she interpreted it as 'Would you have liked this area to be called Leidschendam rather than the Hague"? Fortunately we were two doing the interviews and the other person knowing the history better than I understood this different interpretation. Confusion, confusion...

This is even a small confusion compared to the misunderstandings we have around concepts related to knowledge management for our paper on impact assessment of knowledge management strategies. It shows communication between people from different backgrounds, frames of mind or mindsets can easily be distorted. It shows the importance of a common framework for easy communication. After all, old couples really only need half a sentence.. But where that framework is absent, we have to be careful.

So how to work with this? If you are aware of this distortion, you can try and work in tandem with people who know more about the background (in this case, the co-interviewer). It really calls for teaming up, because working in two's makes this easier. And you can build in sufficient checks. When a common understanding is crucial, you write it down, or paraphrase it in a conversation. That allows you to see the misunderstanding. When you have a skype conversation, you can type your understanding at the same time while you talk, that also help for clarification.

Nancy Dixon has a good blogpost on perspective taking and how you can learn something new by opening your perspective to other people's perspectives. She argues that this already starts by using inviting language.

Can you shift your organisational culture by introducing social media?

image through ericmackonline.com

This post may be a little chaotic as I'm using it to get a grip on some of my ideas about social media for organisations. Tomorrow I'm going to write with Sibrenne Wagenaar; we are writing a booklet on social media for learning and collaboration. We start with social media for professionals (individuals), then teams, then organisations. It's the organisational chapter that needs much more thinking. I once asked on twitter whether the exchange on twitter is not similar to the chats with your co-located workers. Someone replied that is it not, that on twitter people are far more open to sharing and helping each other. This started me thinking about the fact that introducing an internal twitter system would NOT make people share. The term enterprise2.0 is often used. But is that an open, creative organisation or is it an organisation with web2.0 tools? In my opinion, an organisation with less web2.0 tools could be more 'enterprise2.0' in terms of culture than an organisation that has a lot of web2.0 tools but lacks the culture.

One confusion is brought by the fact that organisations can embrace social media from so many different angles. I see a higher emphasis on social media from a marketing perspectives than from a learning perspective. If you jump on it for marketing purposes, you will have a different focus and process than when you want to explore how social media can stimulate learning and knowledge sharing processes. But probably in both cases, it has to match your organisational culture too.


Tools and culture: is your organisational culture ready for social media or do you want to shift the culture by introducing social media?. I'm re-reading Schein: organisational culture and leadership. Schein explains very well how cultures are created and reproduced. And that it's possible to influence cultures in organisations. At times I hear that an organisation is using wikis. Or uses Sharepoint internally with the blog function. An organisation seems enterprise2.0 enough because it has tools like blogs, wikis and social bookmarking. However, the juice of social media is far more in the culture of openly sharing knowledge, collaboration, and engaging in co-creation. Having the tools does not mean you have improved the collaboration between your professionals. So what is the actual change that you are envisioning? Can social media play a role in this? But what are the other interventions that are needed to help change the organisational culture? I see a lot of potential for change management professionals to help organisations with this process. On the other hand, there may be organisations that are already having an open culture in which social media fit neatly. But probably these organisations do not need any accompanying change process or at least a different process? So you'd have to start with assessing the culture of the organisation and see whether there is a match or a mismatch with social media cultures.


Another dilemma is how to balance individual preferences and creativity versus uniformity in tools. Back to the original question: what organisational processes do you feel can really be supported by social media? What is the organisational change that you envisage? I don't think there is any organisation that is completely enterprise1.0. I'm sure there are employees engaging in social media individually and that most do use wikipedia for instance. But a real enterprise2.0 is an open, collaborative, creative organisation that leverages the tools to the advantage of the functioning of the organisation. In this organisation: do professionals choose their own tools and are proficient in using them or do they work with the preferential toolset of the organisation?

By the way a nice guide of where to start with social media can be found here on the technotheory blog. However, this is also written from the assumption that you use social media to promote your organisation or products, not to stimulate internal learning processes.

Twitter is randomly bragging about your un-exceptional life

For two week I didn't have time to blog- a combination of busy with work and nice wheather calling for going outside and cycling.. I'm waiting for some time to really reflect about two trainings we did last week, both related to social media and online interaction. Not today though!

Here's a nice video I found through the blog of Willem Karssenberg: Twouble with Twitters that relates to my experience in the training. It's a great illustration of how the twitter-sphere (and sometimes other social media spheres) comes across to people who are not twittering. A quote from the short movie "Twitter is randomly bragging about your un-exceptional life". Since a few months I enjoy twitter (after using it for almost a year without really understanding the fuss). I think the difference is finding some sort of network that you relate to. And building this network takes time! Enjoy the video, it's really funny. You can find the original through Current.com

Tips for facilitators in Ning

I've been exploring Ning a little further than I did and compared it to other forums like socialgo, collectivex and grou.ps. Gro.ups is open source, has a lot of similar functionalities to ning (and more- you can upload files easily) and is also without advertisements (for free!). The advantage of ning is that it is slightly more attractive in look and feel. Besides it is getting very popular. If people already worked with ning before, it might reduce the learning curve in learning your way around. I'm a member of 15 ning forums, and was surprised how reluctant I was to dive into grou.ps, being used to ning.

A few tips for ning administrators:

1. Public or private? If you hesitate between a public ning (attracts new members online) or a private ning (makes it easier for members to share information that they don't want to be public) you have the option to choose for a public homepage and a private rest of the site. When people who are not a member click on other tabs they are asked to become a member or log in. You can change this lateron too through 'manage'.

2. Integration of external pages You can use external pages and make them a tab in your ning. A ning for libarians (betabiep) decided to create a netvibes page about the darwin year. They added this page as library page in their ning site. Since ning does not offer a wiki or document sharing functionality, you could add an external wiki page with lists of documents or links.

3. Language You can select the language of your preference for all navigation. If you go to manage click on languages, you can already choose from 25 languages, or you can work on translations and add a new language.

4. Hosting on your own domain. If you pay 4.95 US $ per month, you can host it on your own domain.

5. Email subscriptions. Not everyone may use RSS feeds. At the Forum bottom of the page there is a possibility to warn you by mail when new discussions are started. Depending on the topic, you can then decide for which discussion you would like to receive a notification in the mail of new contributions. This system works very well (for email based workers like me!). You can use feedblitz (or similar service perhaps too) to offer an email subscription to updates too. See in the left corner of the africanpath ning (picture).

6. Chat option. Though I ticked the chat function, I don't really see it working. What you can do is integrate an external chat function like meebo and embed it in the ning site. This is something I first saw in the ning about Worldwide story work but now I don't see it there? Update: (thanks to Demetri) if you tick the chat function at the bottom of the page you can see how many people are online. If you click on it, you get a chat functionality. Apparently the chat function may slow down your pages.

Do you have more tips to customize a ning site to your needs?

Grown up digital

I read the book 'Grown up digital' by Don Tapscott. I was curious to understand more about the generational differences. I've definitely not grown up digital; I almost missed the introduction of digital technologies because I was living in a village in Mali that did not even have telephone or electricity...

Often when I mention generational differences, people start whiping the issue under the carpet by refering to their grandma who is 86 and skypes with her daughter in Australia. I have a mother who can't really learn how to handle her phone, let alone her email and a daughter of 7 who has profiles on various sites like webpet and hyves (and has won a price with a blogpost about a book :) and I'm somewhere in between. So I do think there are differences. What are the real generational differences and how will they influence collaboration at the workplace?

The book is based upon a research program which involved interviews with close to 10,000 people in 12 countries. Despite that good basis, I grew a little tired of the examples of the children of Tapscott, though they are great illustrations. The Tapscott kids are not examplary for a whole generation. I have the feeling there are more differences between the use of internet within the 'netgeneration' that could have been explained in more detail. The book is one big attempt to prove the point that the netgeneration is really different from other generations (like my own). OK, I agree, but how about differences within the netgeneration?

Nevertheless I enjoyed reading it and I gained some very useful insights from the book where it links to my own observations:

1. The social media technology is a given for the netgeneration.
A great phrase is "technology is technology only for people who are born before it was invented". and "Learning a new way of communicating is hard work.. established patterns of thinkng must change to accomodate the new technology". For the netgeneration (born between 1977-1997) new technologies are like air. They can't understand others are so obsessed with it. This is really funny and true. All the writing about the enormous shift in communication patterns are from the people who are not did not grow up with the new social media; they are still amazed at what's possible (including me!). Skyping with a webcam: I still think it's exciting. For a netgener it's normal. Like a washing machine is normal to me and I don't talk about it (till I went to Kenya and did my own hand washing...). That brings along a huge difference in perception. For netgeneration respondents email is a more formal method of communication. So we all know how to send mails, but use and perceive it differently. It's hard to be fully comfortable with a technology if you haven't grown up with it- it takes a personal change process. See the story about my grandma on the phone. I can learn to twitter, but may use it differently than netgeners- so there is a difference.

2. Brains get wired differently.
'listening to an audio book leaves a different set of memories than reading does'. It is hence clear that the netgeneration (and our?) brains get wired differently. More research is needed, but IQ scores are on the rise. Tapscott is convinced that you need similar skills as before the web, but you need more skills. A book guides you from beginning to the end, but on the internet, you have to click and make your own decisions. Online reading is hence more complex than offline reading. It's an area that needs research.

3. The netgeneration may shake up hierarchies.
Or is it social media that already shakes hierarchies? On page 158 the example of Chris Rasmussen is introduced, 33 years old. Through blogging, he got noticed and invited to panels where others are appointed by majors or governors. He gained a reputation on merit, not on age or rank or a preset careerflow. Social media is hence shaking up hierarchies. The netgeners themselves will do some shaking too. At home and at school, the netgeneration may have some knowledge (about the technology) that parents and teachers don't have. Changing power relations. My mother was taught to use her mobile by some secondary school students (after I had given up :). Parents and teachers don't automatically earn respect because they know everything the youngsters don't know.

4. And this leads to some netgenophobia.
Netgenophobia is the irrational and morbid fear of youth, especially with regards to their use of the internet. Part of the fear is because of the unknown, part is because of the shaking of hierarchies mentioned under point 3 I believe. During the period of read the book, I met so many people of my age that confirmed the fact that there is some phobia, I notice a lot of fear (cyberbullying, everything is open, everything is so fast, online pedophiles). Take the example of the schooldoctor telling my daughter not to add any new people to her online network that she may not know. (and what do I do??). I have the impression I think differently about participation online because I engage in it myself (unlike the majority of my age). Though I do understand that there are dangers, the dangers also exist in real life and I fully agree with Tapscott's advice that we'd help children more in dealing with these, rather than block or limit access to certain technologies. Though cyberbullying happens, we may help cultivate a positive behaviour. It may only worsen the situation when certain use of the internet is blocked- there are plenty of other ways to bully. But for this type coaching about online behaviour, we need to understand more about online interaction as parents and teachers first.

5. It's the first global generation and less prejudiced
An enormously optimistic last difference: this generation is very global and more tolerant about differences between people. Both as a result of technology and globalisation/immigration, they might be the most tolerant and least prejudiced generation. (Geert Wilders is probably not of the netgeneration :). The tolerance is supported by some figures. 91% of the netgen respondents agree that interracial dating is acceptable, compared to 50% of the GI generation that reached adulthood during world war II (pretty tolerant for that time by the way).

10 online icebreakers

For the third time I was going through all my resources- files and bookmarks to find online icebreakers. I thought I'd do myself (and you) a favour by listing the most interesting ones. 10 online icebreakers (the picture relates to number 10!):

1. Two Lies and A Truth. Ask participants to list three interesting things about themselves. (I own two iguanas; I once shook hands with Tom Cruise; and I love to waterski.) Two must be lies and one must be true. Other participants must vote to determine which interesting thing is the truth. The participant with the most incorrect votes wins. Alternatively participants could be put into small groups and find out through teamwork what the truths and lies are. An other alternative game is three truths and a lie.

Source: Using online icebreakers to promote student/teacher interaction

2. Childhood Dream. Ask the participants to share their childhood dream (what they wanted to be or do when they grew up) and then ask them to reflect on how this correlates with their current aspirations.

Source: Using online icebreakers to promote student/teacher interaction

3. Miscomm-puter-unication. Ask the participants to share their most embarrassing mishap using a computer. Share your own experience, for example, replying to the wrong person in an email. This will loosen them up and cause a few to chuckle before embarking on a whole new way of thinking…using technology instead of paper and pen

Source: Using online icebreakers to promote student/teacher interaction

4. Three words. Ask participants to write a story together. The rule is that everyone is only allowed to put up three words. They are allowed to post again if at least one other participant has put up three words. At the end of the exercise you can summarize the whole story of even read it and post it as an audio file or a video.

Source: Nancy White’s online facilitation course.

5. Six degrees of separation. Ask each participant to find out how he/she is linked to another participant through 5 others because they have some kind of connection. The solutions needs to be posted and should look like this: me > Jeffrey > Donna > Patricia > Hans > Sherry with an explanation of the connections. In finding the answers, participants have to interact and ask a lot of questions to each other. It may easily take a week. A shorter variation of this exercise may be to ask participants to find one other person they have some kind of connection with. (a participant they did not know before).

Source: CPsquare’s foundations of communities of practice online course.

6. Personal Cards. Ask participants to make a card representing themselves using trading cards: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php. After making a card they can post it online. You can ask them to prepare a card about a specific aspect of their lives or their own style. For instance, their own communication or learning style.

Source: Trading cards

7. What’s on your reading list? Ask participants to make a picture o f some of the books they have recently read or are currently reading. By sharing the books you are reading you tell something about yourself.

Source: Dorine Ruter, ecollaboration list.

8. Would you rather? Ask participants some 'Would you rather' questions and let them answer them. After this participants can make up their own would you rather questions. Come up with a list of Would you Rather Questions or use some of these:
• Would you rather always win pie-eating contests or always win wheelbarrow races?
• Would you rather be a deep sea diver or an astronaut?
• Would you rather be able to hear any conversation or take back anything you say?
• Would you rather be invisible or be able to read minds?
• Would you rather be the most popular or the smartest person you know?
• Would you rather be the sand castle or the wave?
• Would you rather give up your computer or your pet?
• Would you rather never use the internet again or never watch TV again?
• Would you rather not be able to use your phone or your e-mail?

Source: Teampedia icebreakers for online teams

9. Same and different Put the participants in groups - and ask participants to find something that the group has in common (eg 'everyone has been to France' and something that is unique to each person in the group (eg 'plays waterpolo', 'speaks Greek', 'was born in Leeds').

Source: Comment on Kirsten Thompson’s blogpost

10. Video messages. You can ask participants to make a video message for each other using Bubblejoy (www.bubblejoy.com). It is easy to do, but it does require a webcam and some experience in using a webcam. After recording a message, you can send it via email. It is possible to ask participants to copy the link and post it online for the other participants.

Source: comment on the ">Bamboo project blog