Interesting article in Innovate (free registration required) on “Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read.” It makes the excellent point that we now have something of a generational divide between those of us who grew up defining literacy as the ability to read and write text and those who have grown up in a world of multimedia and hypertext. The older generation, not surprisingly, is claiming that the younger folks are just not “literate,” because they don’t write linear prose. This article makes the point that we might be missing something here though as the ways that the Net Generation present information give us another rich area of literacy into which we can delve:

Many faculty members developed their writing skills in a print world where text took the conventional form of paragraphs on a page or was packaged as a book or an article, a story or a novel; its production was typically conceived of as a solitary act. Consequently, their previous experiences with and understanding of text are quite different from that of the N-Gen student, which may lead to profound misunderstandings. When instructors perceive linear, print-based texts as a benchmark, the N-Gen’s texts may, at first glance, fall quite short. However, these digital texts do not necessarily lack style, coherence, or organization; they simply present meaning in ways unfamiliar to the instructor. For example, a collection of images on Flickr with authorial comments and tags certainly does not resemble the traditional essay, but the time spent on such a project, the motivation for undertaking it, and its ability to communicate meaning can certainly be equal to the investment and motivation required by the traditional essay—and the photos may actually provide more meaningful communication for their intended audience.

I think that we’re all in agreement that the ability to present information to an audience in a way that conveys meaning and thought is a critical literacy skill. Where we may have a difference of opinion, though, is in what constitutes “literate” presentation of that information to an audience. This article suggests that the skills that the Millenials bring to the table are in fact a new form of literacy that has rich potential:

The striking differences between the linear, print-based texts of instructors and the interactive, fluctuating, hyperlinked texts of the N-Gen student may keep instructors from fully appreciating the thought processes behind these texts.

So true. I’ve come to believe that when it comes to the skills needed to effectively present information to an audience, we all have a lot to learn. Linear text-driven methods are not necessarily the best choice. There’s much more of a need to use storytelling techniques and visuals to help people make sense of complex issues.  I also find that I personally feel constricted when I have to present something in an off-line environment, such as a report. I’m not able to include the links and multimedia that could better explain things. Nor can it represent collaborative thinking and different opinions as well as social media tools can. Reading a blog post with meaningful commentary may do far more to illuminate an issue than simply writing a memo or report, which is often a solitary pursuit.

What do you think about the new presentation literacies? Do we need to be thinking differently about what it means to be literate in presenting to an audience? What does that look like now?

My 20 year-old daughter, Jess, is preparing for a 2-week cross-country trip during which she and three friends will be conducting a sort of Web 2.0 trip through Middle America to San Francisco and then back here to Philadelphia. They intend to blog and Twitter their way across the country, sharing their experiences via video, audio, photos and written reflections.

This got me thinking this morning about the right tech tools for this kind of trip, which, in turn, led me to think about how learning needs to get out of the office and into the field. So, a post to address both of these issues.

Learning on the Road

One of the issues we’ve been discussing over at Work Literacy is the need to make work processes more transparent and to teach them in context. For me, that implies that as learning professionals we need to get into the field where people are doing their work and start capturing what people are doing and how they are doing it to share with others. Some of the things we could be doing:

• Observing and recording how someone works with a customer and then uploading to a blog for questions, comments, etc.

• Recording desk-side podcasts on how workers handle specific circumstances or what they look for to solve a particular problem.

• Sending someone to a conference to record audio and video interviews, etc. for real-time uploading to a blog so that the rest of the team can “participate” through comments or Twitter.

• Documenting a work process in photos and then upload to Flickr and/or a blog.

There are a million other things we could do if we started thinking about capturing what happens at work and in other venues with social media to create and share various learning nuggets. We just have to start getting creative.

Five On-the-Road Technology Tools

To go mobile with learning, there are five tools that I think are perfect (I’m assuming that you already are working with a laptop and wireless access).

Posterous (Free)–I’ve talked about this tool before, but Posterous continues to be for me a really elegant option, both for novice bloggers as well as for mobile blogging. With it you can post via email, which is beautiful for all you Blackberry and iPhone users out there. What’s even better, though, is the fact that if you send photos as attachments, Posterous will automatically embed them into your post. You can also send videos and mp3 files for automatic embedding. And Posterous also allows you to simultaneously post to Flickr and Twitter, making for some very easy updating.

GCast (Free)–If you need a free and easy way to record and upload audio, GCast is a great choice, as it allows you to create podcasts using your cell phone. Christine Martell and I used it at a conference we attended last year and it worked great. I could definitely see using it to record desk-side chats or interviews with people in the field.

Flickr (Free)–A picture is worth a thousand words and Flickr is just the tool for sharing your work. It works seamlessly with Posterous, so you can simultaneously share your photos both through your Posterous blog as well as on Flickr.

Blip.TV (Free)–For video hosting, you could use YouTube, but I like Blip.TV better–it has a cleaner look and tends to be less problematic for many organizations that seem to be wary of allowing access to YouTube.

Flip Video–For between $130 and $180, the Flip video camera is an awesomely inexpensive way to begin capturing video. It has a built-in USB port, so when you’re ready to upload, you plug it directly into your computer with automatic uploads to YouTube, MySpace and AOL, as well as the ability to send private video emails and video greeting cards via the built-in editing program. You can also upload to other video sharing sites, like Blip TV and you can use your Flip camera to snap stills, so it can double as a digital camera.

So those are some of my thoughts on getting started with mobile learning this beautiful Monday morning. What do you think? Can you see some potential here? What tools would you recommend for capturing and sharing “on-the-road” learning experiences?

Photo via if you love me.

This has been a busy week and I’m trying to catch up with my posting and reading, especially on work literacy topics. One of the articles that’s been hanging out in my del.icio.us account is this one on how knowledge workers use the web (PDF). Even though it’s several years old (2002), there’s a lot of good information and fodder for thinking. A few things that caught my interest. . .

The authors interviewed 24 knowledge workers from a variety of disciplines to observe how they used the web. Through this process, they identified activities that fell into six categories, similar to Tony’s classifications. They were:

• Finding–Looking for something specific, such as an answer to a specific question.
• Information gathering–Less specific than finding, this is research that’s focused on a particular goal that’s broader-based than simply getting a specific piece of information.
• Browsing–Visiting personal or professional sites with no specific goal in mind other than to “stay up-to-date” or be entertained.
• Transacting–Using the web to execute a transaction, such as banking or shopping.
• Communicating–Participating in chat rooms or forums (remember–this was done in 2002, prior to Facebook and the explosive growth of blogs, etc.)
• Housekeeping–Using the web to check or maintain the accuracy and functionality of web-based resources, such as looking for dead links, cleaning up outdated information, etc.

They also looked at how frequently people participated in these activities. Not surprisingly, Information Gathering (35%), Browsing (27%) and Finding (24%) were engaged in most frequently. Communication was the least frequent activity at 4%.

Participants were also asked about the relative importance of these activities to their work. Interestingly, Housekeeping and Transacting topped the list, even though they engaged in these activities less frequently (only about 5% of the time). Browsing and Communicating were considered the least important.

There’s much more to dig into here, but these factoids make me wonder if things have changed since 2002 for many knowledge workers. At that time,  the Web was primarily a destination for conducting solitary research, rather than a platform for ongoing conversation, information sharing and dialogue. As Kimberley McCollum would describe it, the web helped these workers connect to documents via their research, but not to other people. Yet it’s the social aspect that has now become critical.

As the web has evolved, the importance of Communication as an activity has increased. Through social interactions online, we are able to accomplish the other key knowledge worker activities more efficiently and effectivley than before.  For example, Housekeeping and Transactional activities (regarded as the most important by these workers) are improved via recommendations from members of trusted social networks, as we can rely on them to guide us to the best, most credible and up-to-date resources. The social web also improves our capacity to gather and find information and provides us with recommendations for the best places to do our browsing, as well.  While Communication as an activity was, in 2002, considered the least important, I would argue that now, this is one of the most important aspects of using the web for knowledge work.

All of this takes me back to an issue that Tony raised earlier in the week–the need to develop these work literacies in not only an individual context, but also in a social one.  That is, knowledge workers need to figure out how to leverage the social aspects of the web to make their traditionally solitary online activities more effective and useful. As Tony points out, this will be a big challenge because people are not necessarily aware of the extent to which these social changes impact how they do their work. We first have to make them aware of this changed context and then help the develop the skills to be successful in this new world.

I personally think delicious is a great tool and I often describe it’s use in presentations and workshops. It recently went through an upgrade that improved the look and performance. However, it interestingly left out a lot of what I said was missing in my post - Yahoo MyWeb better than del.icio.us, rollyo, et.al. for Personal and Group Learning from March 16, 2006.

My claim back then was the Yahoo MyWeb has some features that made it better for a lot of corporate users, and while I hate to argue for its use, the fact that two years later after Yahoo acquired del.icio.us (delicious), they’ve not addressed these issues is a surprise.

What were the issues I cited back in 2006?

1. Searching within the contents of my bookmarked pages
2. Page caching (so I don’t lose the pages I’ve bookmarked)
3. Control on sharing of bookmarks (private, friends or public)
4. Categories of Friends (so I can have family, work, etc.)
5. Web Badge for Integration into my Blog

Okay, so they’ve addressed (a while ago) item #5. But that’s really the least of the items. When you think about what knowledge workers need relative to Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind, I’ve discussed in The New Skills that we want to be able to keep track of everything we’ve seen with minimum effort. If users can’t do a full-text search across their pages (or if they might lose them), then this violates this rule. Further, if they don’t feel comfortable making certain saved pages public, then this also will hinder adoption.

Yahoo has so many issues these days, you’d think when there are obvious, high value features, they would attack them.

Maybe in another two years, they will do something more than skin deep.

I just saw a post by Kimberly McCollum, The networked nature of information, where she raises an interesting question.

I’ve been following the work literacy blog trying to get an idea of what other people think are the required skills for professionals in today’s workplace.  My main research interest has been the process of developing and cultivating a personal learning network/environment and I’ve been pleased to see the work literacy blog devote some time to PLN/PLE.  However, the more I learn about PLN/PLE, the less “new” the skill seems.

I completely understand the question, and it is actually an important problem we face because the new parts somewhat get hidden in the parts that have not changed.

“New” depends heavily on what level you are looking.  I have run surveys where I ask people to rate their knowledge work skills.  The self-ratings are around skills that I describe in the initial knowledge work framework.  For example, I ask people to rate themselves around the skills associated with Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind.  “How well are you able to keep information that you feel will be important to access later?”  Etc.  Every knowledge worker recognizes this part of their work, and is able to rate themselves, and generally rates themselves fairly high on these skills.

However, when you drill down a bit and begin to look at specific methods and related tools, you begin to see that many knowledge workers have opportunities to build new skills.  In Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind, I tell people that at the highest level, the goal is to keep everything you’ve encountered in a way that makes it easily found at the time of need and also to be kept in a way that you can be reminded of it even if you don’t remember what it is.  For example, you might keep the soccer teams phone numbers to be able to pull up when needed, but you also need to have tagged them as the soccer team so that you have a list of them available, because you likely won’t remember everyone on the team.  Also, you don’t want to spend any extra time/effort on keeping / organizing that is minimally necessary to meet your future information needs.  There’s a bit more detail to this, but roughly that’s the goal.

Considering these goals and considering things like using Google History + search of history, tagging instead of hierarchical folders, social tagging, desktop search, mobile devices and mobile look-up - it’s easy to see that there are a host of new possible methods to apply to this part of knowledge work.  I would claim that there are some new knowledge and skills to be developed around the use of these things.  The way in which you operate is different given these new methods and tools.

When you begin to look at areas like Scan, Find, Network, Collaborate and Learn, the “new” skills are even more new because we are going from individual to social.  This causes a bigger shift for most people.  For example, most knowledge workers are quite comfortable with their ability to Find information.  That’s because they translate it to search.  However, there are types of find operations that are likely much better done via reaching out to people.  In Value from Social Media, I point to experience, boundary/existence, confirmation and other types as where you really should reach out to people.  Developing this ability is important.

So are these “new skills”?  I would claim that the basic structure of knowledge work and the top level categories haven’t really changed.  However, within these categories, there is quite a bit of change, there’s lack of awareness around these changes, and change is coming faster such that knowledge workers cannot wait to learn through ad hoc means.

This month on the Learning Circuits Blog - I asked some very leading questions

If we have responsibility for informal learning, social learning, eLearning 2.0, long tail learning, etc. then …

• Don’t we have to conclude that learning professionals must be literate in these things?
• If so, then what should learning professionals do to become literate?
• Should workplace learning professionals be leading the charge around these new work literacies?
• Shouldn’t they be starting with themselves and helping to develop it throughout the organizations?
• And then shouldn’t the learning organization become a driver for the organization?
• And like in the world of libraries don’t we need to market ourselves in this capacity?
  

If we really care about improving performance, then we need to recognize the scope of our Learning Responsibility and to broaden ourselves to go from Learning Objectives to Performance Objectives and Business Needs.

Kimberly McCollum in The networked nature of information fairly calls me out for asking such leading questions -

They are more like a rhetorical rallying cry to the already converted. “Yes! We should!”

However, in defense, I would point that there’s a disconnect between saying “Yes” and the level of understanding and adoption among people in the profession. Go to an ASTD conference and ask about this stuff. You won’t find many who even are aware of any of this. I’m personally out to change this, but we are a long way from being in a position to lead.

And let me back up the need with some thoughts from other bloggers on these questions…

The Learning Revolution: Where have all the leaders gone?

It’s not necessary to use all the new online tools that are out there but it is necessary to know about them and understand them if for no other reason than it gives you options, and may improve personal and organisational performance.

I don’t believe that a learning professional could call themselves as such without being aware of all the latest developments in learning methods /approaches.

Harold Jarche - Skills 2.0

Enabling learning is no longer about just disseminating good content, if it ever was. Enabling learning is about being a learner yourself, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm and then taking a back seat. In a flattened learning system there are fewer experts and more fellow learners on paths that may cross. With practice, one can become a guide who has already walked a path. As fields of practice and bodies of knowledge expand, a challenge for learning professionals will be to change their tool sets from prescriptive to supportive.

Gina Minks: Adventures in Corporate Education What Competencies do Knowledge Workers Need?

How can you design with these new tools if you don’t understand them? How can you apply them to your existing systematic learning system if you don’t know what the heck wiki even means? So, yes, learning professionals must learn and use these tools, and then apply the tools to their existing framework.

Clark Quinn - Learnlets: Lead the Charge?

The point being that to truly help an organization you have to move to a performance focus, moving people from novice, through practitioner, to expert, and giving them a coherent support environment. To do this, you need to know what’s available. And, consequently, the learning organization has to experiment with new technologies for it’s own internal workings to determine how and when to deploy them to organizational benefit.

Stephen Lahanas - Welcome to The Revolution

We are indeed at a cross-roads in our perception of what learning can or should be be. It is definitely a revolution, one that can be equally applied to both the personal and organizational level.

Those educators who truly believe that the learners come first and that learning is a continual process should not feel intimidated by whatever new technologies emerge that might be applied to education. This is not a threat - it is enhancement that enriches both learners and educators.

Shilpa Patwardhan: Would you trust a firefighter who did not know how to fight fire?

How in the world can we kid ourselves that not keeping up is okay? Would you trust a firefighter who did not know how to fight fire? Would you trust a lifeguard who did not know the latest life-saving techniques? Would you trust a surgeon who did know the latest surgical procedures? Then why should anyone trust learning professionals who wonder whether they need to be familiar with latest technology?

Catherine Lombardozzi - The short answer is yes

If a learning professional wants to be a thought leader in his or her organization around how to support learning in the workplace, he or she cannot be illiterate in these new technologies.

As learning professionals, not only do we have to come up to speed on the technologies, we have to develop a clearer understanding of how these 2.0 technologies can be used to support learning. Otherwise, our organizations will stumble, and we’ll wind up behind instead of ahead.

Kevin Shadix - There’s no “I” in “We.”

A big mistake made by way too many folks is to preach the good word without having gone through the transformation themselves. Web 2.0 represents a whole mind shift, not just a set of tools. It is the power of “we” not “I”. It is about people creating content together, not the lone, brave hero leading the pack. The only way to “get it” is to try it.

Deb Gallo - Lead the charge?

As L&D professionals it’s up to us to be innovative and introduce the business to tools and methods that will ultimately improve business performance.

We need to develop our competencies, skills and comfort levels with these new tools. Unless you try it you won’t really get your mind around the possibilities they bring or how you might use them in the workplace.

Taruna Goel - New Work Literacies - Leading the Way

I don’t want to be a learning professional who is sitting on the fence and talking about new tools and technologies and hasn’t used any!

Several people suggested that we should use caution when considering any leadership role …

Kevin Shadix - There’s no “I” in “We.”

2.0 has implications beyond the learning function, and we need to let other groups discover and figure out for themselves how they want to use them.

Clive Shepherd

The application of web 2.0 to organisations is not exclusively a learning issue - it permeates all aspects of the way in which people network and collaborate. First of all, the web 2.0 concept must be appropriate to the organisation, and this is open to question when you’re looking beyond knowledge workers. Assuming it is appropriate, champions can come from many quarters. If learning professionals have really bought into the idea and can demonstrate how they are applying it productively, then they are in a good position to lead the charge. If not, someone else from another business function will step in.

Jay Cross - No, no, no, no.

It’s presumptuous to assume learning professionals are going to be “leading the charge.” This is not some independent effort. Organizational stakeholders better be taking the lead. And we’d better be supporting their vision.

Of course we must use network technologies ourselves. Understanding how to apply social networks to improve organizational performance is a prerequisite for shaping learning and development from here on out. People who are illiterate in network technology need not apply.

Some good specific suggestions:

Kerry McGuire - Live and Learn: What’s the real question?

• Find two or three people with wide networks and help them solve a workplace issue using these tools.
• Recruit other people that are passionate to start sending out the same message.

Christy Tucker - Experiencing E-Learning: Leading by Example

If I had to focus on one single skill, it would be lifelong learning. Perhaps this isn’t a skill so much as an attitude.

Peter Isackson - Phoning it in

I would put my effort into making it work from the bottom up and demonstrate how it can achieve other things than self-promotion.

I had a nice six hour drive today with my wife, Margaret, who is an ex high school counselor and teacher along with all the normal credentials and masters degrees, etc. Part of our conversation was in my changing belief about the importance of learning a bunch of facts that someone can look up at a later time. Does a student really need to know all the state capitals? I argued that it was more important for my kids to know:

a. when they might care about a capital in their life (when they might want to know about a capital) and how to look up a capital (and possibly how to check the accuracy if they are just using google).

than it was for them to know

b. the 50 capitals, states and the locations of the states.

Granted, I am sometimes amazed that people have no clue where a state is and I’m certainly happy that my kids have done well on the capitals/states tests in their lives, but I’m still pretty adamant that we should be looking at aiming at creativity, synthesis, composition, etc. more than memorization. We need to create students who are knowledge-able rather than knowledgeable.

I also had to vent on my poor wife about a question asked by a history professor in college. The class cost me my 4.0 GPA (and I only had to take it because of a weird rule that I couldn’t count my AP US History Units against college world history so those AP Units did me no good … the horror of the situation). In any case, the question was two parts multiple choice. (1) “What was the population in England in 1800?” (2) “What percentage worked in agriculture?”. I actually knew the first part, because I believe that fully 10% of the population had moved to London which had grown to 1M people. (Now these facts could be completely wrong some 25 years later, but that’s besides the point.) I got part 1 correct. The second part I had to guess between 25% and 35% or some such thing and still don’t remember.

I could have told the professor about the move towards more urban and away from agriculture, but he didn’t ask that. He didn’t know if I knew the important concepts that he stressed in the class. No he had to ask a ridiculous memorization question. I vowed never to ask such a thing or at least to have all open book tests so that such questions were useless. And, I’m pretty sure I stuck to that pledge. But the rest of the world still asks these questions all the time.

And my wife certainly would. She feels it’s still important to teach memorization and I don’t disagree. You still need memory to be able to pull up how to look up the capitals and when it might apply. But my guess is that your brain would be organized significantly different if you were taught around concepts, and were taught when and how to look-up as opposed to all the little bits.

I get back from the trip and I see a post from Brent - There is no Brain2.0…so why Learning2.0? and I have to jump in and say that I’m not so sure that there’s not something along the lines of a Brain 2.0 emerging. I’m not claiming that the brain itself has changed, but instead what’s changing is:

• metacognition
• metamemory
• access to information
• access to other people
• access to smart systems

all of this changes what the brain needs to do. A look inside the processing of problems by the brain of someone born today when they reach 40 vs. the brain of someone who is 40 today, I would guess is going to be quite different.

Fast Company has a provocative article out yesterday under their “Big Idea” flag about “obliterating” business travel. Sounds like quite a headline, eh?

July 23, 2008
“Within five years, technology will obliterate the need for business travel.” - Inspired by new videoconferencing technologies and rising fuel costs

… Companies too are making an active effort to limit employees’ air travel for the duel-pronged benefits of cutting costs and being environmentally friendly. AT&T has reportedly reduced employee air miles by 15% through video conferencing and Web meetings, while Accenture plans to have 22 video conferencing rooms installed around the world by the end of this year.

OK, I am in firm agreement that we can cut out a lot of business travel, particularly when we are doing things like information dissemination. I cringe each time go to or hear of international gatherings where the structured interaction is all presentation. Thank goodness for meals and coffee breaks. But I think we should seriously rethink large conferences. See Jim Benson’s post on this… But what about the other things we get on airplanes and fly around the world to do, both explicitly and implicitly, with each other? (No, I’m NOT talking about mile-high clubs!)

We know we can do meaningful work and learning with each other at a distance, even without video conferencing. (In fact, please, I don’t want to have to get out of my yoga clothes for a vid!). Sales can happen via online technologies. But is there a “throw out the baby with the bathwater” element here? Will we obliterate business travel, or use is both more sparingly and strategically? I think it is the latter and here’s why.

Learning is not an instant… it is a path
I was chatting with Tony Karrer (lots of good stuff in his blog and at his new venture with Michele Martin, Work Literacy) earlier today about “training.” Oi, such a word. One of my friends says “training is for dogs, learning is for humans.” I’m not quite that rabid (or am I a dog?) but often feel like training is dumping information on people (see this clever slide show for an articulation of this.) We have expectations that training as an isolated act solves a skill or more general learning need.

In my experience, it ain’t that simple. Yes, there are certainly things we can learn and apply with a quick workshop - online or face to face (F2F). But taking learning and deepening it, applying it to work, innovating upon it - that takes time. And it sometimes takes poking at the issue from more than one direction. Working on it over time. Or perhaps with more than one stick. This is where blending online and F2F can sometimes be the thing that puts us over the current hurdle. I learn something online with you today. I go off and work on it. We help each other online. Then we get to meet, have a great meal and we start out talking about our projects, and then we go from there, discovering new learning from each other we never even imagined. Kismet, made possible by the space we create when we take time to meet F2F.

Why is there something important about this F2F stuff? Because so much of learning is nurtured by the social context and sometimes the online social context is not always sufficient for everyone. I find it very satisfying. My sister does not. Have we had some shared experiences to compare? You bet. So those of us who smugly say we can do it all online have not yet found a way to translate those rich experiences to others with different preferences and styles of learning and interacting. And, hey,  we still can’t sit down and make/share a meal fully online.

Going F2F creates a different and time bounded social context. We give each other full attention for a limited amount of time. Online, we may spread that attention out - even if we are using synchronous technologies. One of the most powerful gathering experiences for me is being able to work and stay at the same place with people - a research facility, the same hotel, or in a colleagues home. The mix of work and play, of social and intellectual, creates a different sort of stew that jumpstarts my learning differently than online. Being able to “sleep on” what we said today makes tomorrow’s conversation deeper. This F2F stuff is different, not better or worse.

We benefit from that difference. The translocation to another place jostles new ideas and opens us up. We get out of our cocoon and I think that can be very productive. And in my experience, it bolsters and deepens both the learning and the subsequent online interactions.

So lets reduce business travel - it saves time, money and the environment. But lets not obliterate it because there is value in the social learning context of face to face gatherings, particularly ones that open the space for us to create meaning and ideas together.  Skip the panel and the presentation.  Break out the good food, wine and tea. Let’s sit elbow to elbow, look over each others’ shoulders and let’s get to work. AND, let’s do great things together online.

Photo Credit (CC)

Uploaded on July 24, 2008
by law_keven

Just talked with Nancy White of Full Circle Associates and she pointed me at some great resources that align with where we would like to see Work Literacy go.

The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit has a page What is Your Context? that aligns pretty well with what we would call a framework.  Then they have methods (Master list of methods) and tools (Master list of tools) just as we have discussed here at Work Literacy.  The method pages like Fish Bowl are great descriptions.

Nancy has been helping to create this resource herself and with workshop participants which is a fabulous idea.  She pointed me to a blog that discusses participation in the workshop: KS Course.

Nancy also reminded me about: We Are Media which has content outline / curriculum for workshops aimed at Social Media for nonprofits.  And pointed me to: Social Source Commons a site that shows what tools different people are using.

Certainly, we will look to point people to these kinds of resources, and I think her model for having community create content for use by others as part of workshops is fantastic.