Online Collaboration

I started to realise a while ago that although I knew a lot about technology that enables you to collaborate, I hadn't used it a lot. 

I also realised that I wasn't alone and in fact the adoption of tools that enable us to collaborate more effectively with others when we can't physically be with them aren't in wide use. 

When people work from home typically this involves being able to e-mail colleagues or perhaps access work on a VPN connection to the office but the richness of collaboration is quite poor. Telephone conferencing (and to a lesser extent video conferencing has grown) but sharing and collaborating with documents in my experience is not common place.

I have since started to make an effort to use technology more to enhance my normal way of working and it has been valuable. 

To share some of this experience I have created a blog of my reflections on some of my collaborations and also I am developing a course for Digital 20/20 that is due to be released on June 5th and can be delivered freely under a creative commons license by anyone.

Collaboration Reflections:

http://onlinecollaborationconsultant.blogspot.com/

Online Collaboration Course:

http://onlinecollaborationcourse.blogspot.com/

Instructional Design

I took time out (An hour and three quarters) to watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYqm8ao1i2c

I thought it was great. The guy is provocative and a little flippant but it seems to make a lot of sense to me about the need to design

training that is as near to the real environment as possible.

He also stresses the important principle of being focused on the learner and rather than trying to transfer the trainers content into the learner

actually faciliating the learner as they develop new awareness and understanding.