Teamwork

        What is teamwork?  It is the process of working together with a group of people in order to accomplish a task or acheive a goal.  It is a crucial part of business or school work.  It is often necessary for us to work together as a team in most any environment we are in.  Teamwork is people trying to cooperate with each other cashing in on individual skills and knowledge.
     Teamwork is a tricky thing.  There is usually one or two that just like to come along for the ride and want credit while doing nothing.  I am sure we have all run into those people.  Doesn't make the project easy to do.  For me, especially while in school, I hated group projects.  I would want to change classes if I saw there were group projects.  Why?  Because I have had so many of those people who just want to come along for the ride.  I tend to be a perfectionist and I want things done well and not just on time, but early.
     And the thing that I hate more than anything when it comes to group projects and teamwork is, "I have so much going on in my life I just don't have time." My life is just as busy as the next and perhaps busier than some and when I hear the excuse they just don't have time to do their part, it makes my blood boil.  We all have the same amount of time in every day.  It's just that some people MAKE time to do what they are suppose to do.  I just want to look at those people and say, "walk in my shoes for awhile."  It seems that some of the younger ones say they work or they have kids, well so do most of the rest of us.  It is called priorities and yes, jobs and kids have to be priorities, but they should never be an excuse.
         When I was in college the first time around, I had six children at home and they were all involved in some kind of sports or music, and I worked 30 hours a week while carrying 18 credits, and had three church positions and a husband that was never around.  I never missed any of my childrens activities, books went with me everywhere I went and I would study as I could.  I spent many hours in the ski lodge studying while my family was out on the slopes.  I had gotten to the point that I figured I would sleep after graduation.
         Now I am not telling this for people to think I was a superwoman. I wasn't I was just an ordinary person with lots of things to do.  I was just a person that was organized and made time for each thing in my life that had to be done.  We even had group projects to do in a lot of my upper level classes and this was before the time of social media and the internet, so we had to meet face to face somewhere.  What I am trying to say is that too often people use kids, or work just to get out of doing any work in the project but expect to get the same grade as the ones doing most of the work and that isn't being a part of a team, or teamwork.
        This semester in one of my masters classes we had not only one but two group projects.  My heart sunk when I saw that.  My hands got cold and clammy and my stomach churned, flashbacks from undergraduate times.  I had no choice since it is a required class and bit my tongue and proceeded on with the class.  The class was totally online so I had never even met most of the people I was doing the project with so I really didn't know what kind of team player they would be.
        Time soon came to start the group projects and I braced myself for the worst.  Guess what?  After completing both of the group projects, I found my fear to be unfounded!  I was amazed and very pleased at how these projects went.  Sure there was a few who didn't dare do anything without the consent of the whole group.  I told myself this is where they will learn that they should just tell everyone what they were going to do and do it, no votes, no waiting for anyone else to say yay or nay.  And I did see that growth all through the first project and very little of that through the second project.  Both projects were very successful and were done completely electronically.  We never met face to face at any time.  Through the electronic messaging and google docs as well as others we were all able to work together and make it happen, when we could, as we could.
         I will say that is was a pleasure working with the group on those two projects and this experience has made me dread group projects much less and restored my faith in the real value of teamwork.

An artisit is an artist is an artist.

I just read an interesting article about Taylor Swift.  She recently had a big to do about Apple I-Tunes and their royalty plan.  She felt that what Apple was doing was unfair to the artists and she was withdrawing all of her music from I-Tunes.  I do agree with her that I-Tunes, who had been offering free downloads during a three month trial, was taking advantage of the artists because while Apple was not charging for the downloads, the artists were not getting paid.  Doesn't seem right does it?

Property of Consequence of Sound

However, Swift has been called our for being hypocritical about her stand on paying artists.  As a photographer myself I was surprised and disappointe at what I read about photo waivers.  It almost makes her appear that only musicians are artists.  When a photographer takes pictures at a concert for someone they are working for, the photographer gets paid for the picture. The photo waiver photographers are required to sign to take pictures stipulates that the image from the show can only be used once and only within the published story about that performance.  This means they can't sell it to other outlets nor can they sell prints of their own images in any way.

 But, the artist can use that picture whenever and whereever and how many times they want to use it without paying the photographer for their work.  They get them free and the photographer looses a lot of money because they don't get paid.  Some how this is not right and yet Taylor Swift has no problem with taking advantage of someone else.  She has millions and she doesn't want to give up any of her music free, which I completely understand, but it seems that she only wants to take and not to give.  She is willing to use another artist's work free without royalty even though she won't do that herself.  Kind of like the pot calling the kettle black if you ask me.  My opinion of her has truly plummeted.

Baby Boomers and Their Effect on the Workplace.

         The picture of an exuberant, out to save the world, shaggy headed rebellious young adult was the iconic image of the Baby Boom generation.

          While that portrayal wasn't completely accurate at that time it is totally out of date these days. This legendarly huge group of Americans finds itself in a somewhat of a funk as we approach old age. Many boomers are running businesses today and in our earlier years we believed we were going to change the world.  And in many senses we did just that.  Our huge presence in the workforce and the marketplace had made many changes.  We are the generation that pushed for tolerance and diversity in the 1960's, we started the fight on poverty and equality for everyone.  We were wired for work and not afraid to do it.
         The Baby Boomer generation accounts for 26% of the total U.S. population. By sheer force of numbers, we almost certainly will redefine old age in America, just like we've made our mark on teen culture, young adult life and middle age.  Redefining old age is just as important to us as changing the work.  When we were young our grandparents lived for retirement where they could drive around the country and sightsee, join a bridge club, or just sit and read a book.  We as boomers are not satisfied with that.  We look at retirement as a new era, a time to do things we never took the time to do.  We are looking at volunteer work, marathons, bungy jumping, skiing in the Alps or any number of adventerous things.
         We are also redefining "grandparenthood."  Media still portrays grandparents as silver headed folks reading books to their grandkids.  Come on..my grandkids go four wheeling with their grandma or cruise through West Yellowstone with the top down in the convertible.  We ride bikes with our grandkids, take road trips, go to concerts, we certainly are not the silver headed folks you see in the commercials.  I have 15 grandkids ranging from 4 years old to 18 years old and I will never be an "old gramma" with them.           

          In this YouTube video Dr. White discusses how changing demographics are affecting the workplace from different angles. For example, millennials are working to fill a talent void created by retiring baby-boomers, who must pass on their valuable workplace knowledge to the new generation. Clearly, employers need to plan for the successful transfer of responsibilities between generations.
        Are we still affecting the workforce, you bet we are.   Although the first wave of boomers were eligible for early retirement under Social Security about six years ago, the boomers still constitutes about one-third of the workforce, similar to the millennials and Generation X.   As the largest generation in U.S. history, our sheer numbers along with our reluctance to retire will likely mean that our influence will endure in the workplace for many years.  #techhrd

  

Social Media and Job Seekers

Social media, every time we turn around there is something going on with social media.  And so many!  However, social media has much more to offer than seeing what your friends are doing 24/7 or seeing the latest and greatest recipe, it can offer employment opportunities.  86% of job seekers have an account on at least one of the six online social networks included with this study; Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Social job seekers are younger, more highly educated and more likely to be employed full-time.

Here is some information on a few of the more popular social media sites:

Facebook-76% of social job seekers found their current position through Facebook.

LinkedIn-This is where there is the most job seeking activity.  34% shared a job opportunity and 32% made new professional connections. The college educated are also 4x more likely to update their LinkedIn with professional info than those who are high-school educated or less.   

Twitter-This seems to be the most popular social media site to ask others for help and advice.  28% shared job opportunities.

 While job seekers flock to Facebook, recruiters prefer LinkedIn when searching for candidates. Here is a list of the most popular social networks for

Job seekers:

Facebook 83%

Twitter 40%

Google+ 37%

LinkedIn 36%

Recruiters:

LinkedIn 94%

Facebook 65%

Twitter 55%

Google + 18%

While 94% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn, only 36% of job seekers are.  3% of recruiters are likely to look at a candidate’s social profile and 42% have reconsidered a candidate based on content viewed in a social profile, leading to both positive and negative re-assessments.  I myself have done just that.  When I have had people respond to job opportunities via Facebook I check out their Facebook page.  I don’t judge people by what I see on their pages because their profile doesn’t necessarily represent their professionalism but when I have someone want to talk about a job with a lot of responsibility and public exposure and I see almost nothing but selfies in their car, or in the bathroom and have naked people, I tend to move along.  Maybe when they have matured a few years they would have possibilities.  So be careful what you put on your Facebook or at least be careful with your privacy settings so the world doesn’t get to see every meal you have eaten and what you are doing every ½ hour.

Social media can be an amazing tool or it can be our downfall.  It is something we just need to take seriously and be safe.

LinkedIn

I have been a part of LinkedIn for many years now and have never fully utilized it,  I would check in once in awhile and saw it as a good networking tool but I never fully realized how good it is.  Since I have done it for this class and have spent more time on it I have learned a lot.  I am getting invatations to groups and to join people that I had never really heard from.  Most of them have been from organizations that I am very interested in so I am seeing that it really works.  Not sure still how they are finding me but they are and I like that.

At this point I am not looking for a job, but it is always good to see what is out there and what employers are looking for to give me a step up when I do start looking for a job in the field.  There is just so much more to LinkedIn than I had originally discovered and it looks like it is going to be a lot of fun.  My network has really broadened since I have focused on it for this class and its fun to see what is out there. #techhrd

Why Should We Participate in Social Learning?

We live in a world of busybodies and attention-seekers. In fact – we can go so far as to presume that each one of us presents these characteristics at some time or other. We like to watch and by watching we learn. Social learning is a term that is not new to psychology, and it is gaining drive in the world of learning in other areas besides psychology.  

In the 1960s, a psychologist called Albert Bandura established a theory called Social Learning Theory. He theorized that people learned from observing others.  Today, the term ‘social learning’ is used to describe learning that happens via social media. The social learning we know today quite subtly reverberates with Bandura’s Social Learning theory where learning happens by watching and learning from others on social media sites.

The popularity of social media sites validates the fact that we are busybodies and attention seekers and that we are interested in sharing sometimes too much knowledge from letting people know what we are eating on a particular day, to sharing the latest news or a million selfies.  We also collect information by reading Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, or Flickr.  Knowledge sharing has been happening at the grass root levels forever.  It was once thought that learning took place within the four walls of a training or classroom but real learning is what happens in the break room, or around the water cooler, anywhere like-minded people get together to share information.  Today social media sites are where real learning takes place.  

Social learning is happening all around us. Our personnel are learning even without our knowledge; let them go and learn without our intervention and they will learn successfully. Leave social learning alone and let it happen, and it will continue to surprise us.

The Next Big Thing in Social Media Marketing-Visual Micro-Sharing Platforms

               It started first with Twitter and now there are many other micro-sharing platforms out there.  Vine and Snapchat are becoming a more popular way to share things and communicate with friends and family.  Vine, who was acquired by Twitter and launched in 2013 allows us to create short videos and share them via an app like Instagram.  Snapchat uses photos and captions to communicate with others.  Snapchat users send over 50 million photos a day.  These micro sharing platforms are great for personal use but can businesses use them?

                Like all social networks these micro sharing networks don’t work for everyone.  Many startup companies were some of the first to use Vine to showcase their products and share their employee’s ideas.  Snapchat has been used by companies to share exclusive deals, giveaways and contests.

One main difference between Snapchat/Poke and Vine is that Vine was built with businesses in mind.  However as apps grow there is more opportunities for business presence and it seems Snap Chat will soon start showing ads. 

The downside of these micro-sharing apps is that they are mostly used on a user-to-user basis, and Vine only allows users to upload 6-second videos. These apps have also been in the news for because they have become a haven for sharing porn and other illicit videos and spam has yet to reach these micro-sharing platforms. Companies need to use these micro sharing platforms for community building and exclusive sharing of products and services.

Here is a list of public social networks and micro sharing platforms for you to check out.

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AlmostAt : Following people at real-world events in real-time. Hosted

Cirip : Micro-blogging platform (in Romanian). Hosted 

Facebook : A huge public social network with over 500 million members.  Private groups can be set up for different activities, and pages for businesses or other activities. Hosted 

Foursquare – Check in, find your friends, unlock your city. iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps available. Hosted.

Google+ : Social network Hosted

identi.ca : Public micro-blogging service. Hosted

Jaiku : Create your activity stream. Hosted

LinkedIn : Social network for professionals; groups can be set up. Hosted 

Plazes : Share your location and stay connected with your friends. Add people you trust and you want to be your contacts. See who’s crossing your path. Hosted

Orkut : An online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating. Hosted

Quenchmark : A new social networking tool for open surveys and questions and answers. Hosted

Quora : A question and answer community. Hosted

Twitter : A global community of friends and colleagues. Hosted

 Here are some 3rd party Twitter Apps.

Upperz : Social networking site for professionals. Hosted

What do you want from them?: A social learning community for managers.Hosted

Xing : Social network for professionals with more than 10 million members worldwide Hosted

Trends in Social Media for 2015

 If we had only a couple of big social networks out there, the jobs of social media managers would be much easier. But over the last one to two years the digital landscape has been separating. A recent study states that one quarter of the world’s population uses social media. This means that 1,730,000,000 people are posting, pinning, tweeting, vining and instagraming. And every 60 seconds 4.7 million posts are uploaded to Tumblr; 277,000 snaps are shared on Snapchat; and more than five million videos are viewed on YouTube.  That is a lot of time spent on social media.  More than ever organizations have to be on their toes keeping up to date with the latest and greatest developments.  

Here are some trends happening in 2015 and are worth taking a look at. The social advertising trend from 2014, where Snapchat’s had its first ad, video ads on Instagram, and auto-play video ads on Facebook will continue this year.  

THE REVOLUTION OF MOBILE

More effectively than any other network, mobile lets organizations create a journey through SMS, push notifications or in-app product recommendations. With technological progress organizations should put mobile apps at the core of their marketing activities reaching consumers with timely and highly contextual messages on a one-to-one basis. Seeing a worldwide mobile penetration of 93%, major social networks are continually improving their mobile presence. Social websites and apps being among the most used features on mobile, 2015 will see optimized web and social media sites becoming the norm.

SOCIAL VIDEO

Social video is up and coming holding two major benefits for organizations. First, audio-visual storytelling is emotionally compelling so share your story and to present training material. Secondly, blogs are a great way of getting your message in front of your audience. 

Hiring through social media

The use of social media impacts our lives in many ways. There are so many sites at there that sometimes it is hard to weed through them.  This also pertains to recruiting and hiring.  Even with what we learn with a degree in HRTD we need to branch out and use what is called social media outlets.  There are both advantages and disadvantages for using social media sites for hiring and recruiting.  With tools such as Google and popular social media sites an employer can gather a lot more information on a candidate that what a paper resume would ever tell. Thanks to social media it is easier for jobseekers to connect with opportunities that meet their specific abilities.  Seems that no one uses the newspaper anymore.  Employers can target specific candidates through social networking.  LinkedIn is a very popular one and this save companies’ time and money by not having to advertise and sort through hundreds of resumes.

Some of the disadvantages are that employers have to be careful about what information they are accessing through a candidates social media profile.  They also need to keep in mind that their social media profile does not always give the best overview of a potential employee and may miss out on a great employee by looking at the little picture.  We had something similar to this happen here in Pocatello last fall.  Someone saw a picture of a coach they didn't like.  They went to the school board and demanded she be let go.  It didn't matter that she was an awesome coach and was an amazing example to her team, someone saw something on Facebook and that was all it took to start legal action.  They didn't look at the big picture.

I want to share an experience I had this last week with social media and recruiting.  We have been trying to recruit for one last VISTA worker in our department.  My boss has been trying for a couple of months with no success.  We are on a deadline and last thursday he asked me to try to do some recruiting for this position.  He was stumped as to what to do.  I got on Facebook and went to a page where people are looking for employment and posting for employment opportunities.  I had four responses within an hour.  I started the interview process today and end tomorrow because of the deadline.  But I will say that in one day on social media, I found more qualified candidates than the boss did in traditional ways...networking, old databases and an ad in the paper...over a two month period.  

I did check out their Facebook pages and although I wasn't thrilled with what I saw, I didn't see anything that was really offensive.  I had to stop and realize that what is on their Facebook page doesn't necessarily reflect their buiness side.  I had to stop and wonder what a perspective employer would think if they went to my page.  My Facebook page is purely personal and although it does reflect my personality it show nothing about my professional side.  I had to keep that in mind and go into the interviews not thinking about what I saw on their pages.

This experience has truly reinforced with me the value and the power of social media.  There are so many people out there looking and these days, everyone relies on technology and social media.  Even the boss was amazed and how quickly I had good candidates.  I need to get him up to speed on social media.  It is the way of the future and a very efficient way.  Really excited to learn more on social media.  I can truly see the value in it and how it could make my job in the future much easier.  #techhrd

How do I find resources for my PLN?

 We have talked a little about what a PLN is now the next question is, “how do I find people and resources for my PLN?” As I looked into this I was pleasantly surprised at how many resources there are.  I am offering some examples and guides for these resources and have broken them into categories.  Hope this helps!

Social networking (personal contacts)

Facebook

Myspace

Microblogging (where professionals share best practices and resources in shorten version)

            Twitter

            My Guide to Twitter

Plurk-free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (plurks) through short messages or links.          

Professional Profiles (where you connect with other professionals and experts in your field)

LinkedIn-A professional network that allows you to be introduced to and collaborate with other professionals.

            Ecademy –A business network for creating contacts and sharing knowledge.

Fast Pitch – A business network where professionals can market their business and make connections.

Networking for Professionals – A business network that combines online business networking and real-life events

Ryze – A business networking community that allows users to organize themselves by interests, location, and current and past employers.

Blogs (great source of info.  Blogs monitor the heartbeat of new trends in education and a source for great ideas and relationships)

WordPress- free and open-source blogging tool and a content management system and includes a plugin architecture and a template system.

Blogger-blog-publishing service that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. The blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. A user can have up to 100 blogs per account.

Alltop-Collect headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic and then group the collections into individual web pages.  They are like a magazine rack of the web and augment your online reading by displaying stories from sources that you’re already visiting plus helping you discover sources that you didn’t know existed.

Technorati-Real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword. Also provides popularity indexes.

Nings (communities of people interested in similar topics with forums and messaging)

Classroom 2.0-Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network and a great place for beginners.  It is a social network for those interested in Web 2.0, Social Media, and Participative Technologies in the classroom.

Good morning.  In our class we are talking about PLN's.  Exactly what is a PLN I asked myself and why would I want one?  I started doing a little researach about PLN's and found out it is probably a good thing to have.

What is a PLN you ask?  Let me explain a little. It stands for Personal Learning Network.  This is our own personally developed network of resources in a field we are looking at.  With more and more opportunities to develop our skills beyond the traditional routes establishing our own PLN is an important step toward increasing our knowlege and skills. In the past, we were able to connect with teaching resources through journals, conferences, professional development, and other activities. These are still valuable ways to broaden our knowledge and skills base but they all require us to physically be there which is becoming more and more difficult these days.  

A PLN offers additional benefits that traditional personal development cannot. First, a PLN allows us to personalizeour learning because we can adapt our network to provide the information we need. We are not just absorbing information from others:we are sharing. We are not gaining what we need from some impersonal source: we are building relationships.  

How is a PLN developed?  A PLN is developed primarily through social media sources, such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Through this media we can read and post immediate responses to articles, research or discoveries.   We can connect ourselvesf to those resources across the world that will provide us with what we need to grow.

Let me introduce myself....

           I am Kathy Walker.  I have six children with 3 children-in-law, 15 grandchildren, 4 step children with one son-in-law and the first grandchild on the way from this family.  I love spending time with my family and most especiall my grandchildren.  Family is what makes this life worth it.  They are another reason I have chosen to change careers.
         I have a BS in psychology from Utah State University and worked in the field for many years working with the mentally ill and the developmentally delayed.  I love Special Olympics!!  (just had to throw that in).  I worked that for most of 13 years with a brief break as the District Director of the American Red Cross Disaster Services, during Katrina no less.  Exciting times and love helping people.  However after so many years of helping people burn-out set in.  In the fall of 2012 I went Idaho State University to start a new career.
         In May of 2014, I graduated from ISU with a degree in Technical/professional writing.  A far cry from what I had done in the past....no I am not a genius able to graduate in 2 years, I just had so many credits transferred from USU that is all it took.    I found that I love writing and I love the time I have to myself to do my work, but I still need interaction with people, just in smaller doses.
        After graduation, I joined AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and was assigned to the Student Success Center as the Service Learning coordinator at ISU.  I worked with the First Year Seminar students and found that was something I really loved.  I really enjoy teaching the college classes and I love to see these students grow and progress. I was transferred to a new assignment last week, not exactly what I was planning it wasn't suppose to happen until August so it will be very interesting starting a new job with all the learning curves there and two summer classes.  I am now working in the College of Technology as a technical writer for the ABE/START program.  I will be creating a procedures manual as well as a retention plan.
        I am currently enrolled in the Masters of Organizational and Learning program at Idaho State University.  I am very much enjoying this program and it fits my future plans so well.  It gives me the option to work with people and still gives me the space to work on my own in the development process.  So graduate school full time and working full time along with family obligations makes life quite interesting but my motto is...it may be difficult, but it will be worth it in the end.
         I am starting this blog to share some ideas and information that I have and hope to get new ideas, thoughts and suggestions from others.  I have always loved the idea of social learning and all the "new" social media happening is very exciting to me, especially as an upcoming trainer.  Social media and instructional technology has opened a whole new world for trainers allowing us to reach many people simultaneously.  It will save companies much time and money by having the training reach all of their offices at the same time and without the trainer having to travel.
         I hope to be able to create an exceptional Professional Learning Network from this program and the Instructional Tech class focusing on social media I am taking this semester.