Pinwheels for Peace

The kids school participated in a program called Pinwheels for Peace. Each kids made and decorated a pinwheel and now they're all displayed outside the school.  

Keeping up

So as it appears I have not been keeping up. That would be the wrong thought as I have just not been keeping up here. I have started a new blog at work that I keep up with pretty regulary below is an example of some of my posts. I have manu other post that I will not be able to put up as they are company specific but here is a little something.

Note to leaders (at all levels)

I was looking back through a handbook that I created as part of my Organizational Management 411 class, for my undergrad project and found the following paragraph. I thought it would be nice to post as it should have some personal relevance to anyone that is viewed as a leader. After reading it I encourage you to share your thoughts. As the world changes so do we.

Stress and leadership

Interplay between the characteristics of the leader and the organization shape everyday leadership. Leaders have to be person and profession related. They also have to have good physical and psychological capabilities. However, unethical business practices or work overload can lead to stress. The modern day work environment has become so fast paced and exhausting. Consequently, no matter how stressful the work environment gets, a leader must be a leader full-time, all of the time. This is the kind of leadership that the followers learn to trust and respect. Overall, awareness about the causes and the methods to the stress will help overcome it.

If you are a leader how do you deal with the day to day expectations and the stress that comes from it?

5/21/2009

CAPM

So it has been awhile since I have blogged as I have been super busy like other in the company. This blog is a request for help. We have many folks in this company that are in the project manager realm, I would like to ask for help. Does anyone have access to any CAPM/PMP exam resources that they can share with me as I prep for my exam in August? If so please email me or provide a comment. I would like to thank anyone who can help upfront for their collaboration.

4/3/2009

What do I want to do when I grow up?

I met with a friend/mentor today and we had a great conversation about growth and future. Toward the end of the conversation the question was asked. Where do you see yourself in the future? For the first time I felt confused, the answer I gave was one that most people would give. I said I wanted to grow a little bit and use my education, I wanted to do more then I was doing now. Which is all true; but for the first time I really thought about what I want to be when I grow up. The reason I'm writing this post is to say that I'm not sure what I want to do. I have always had the impression that I was going to move to the next level and just climb the ladder, which is not a bad thing.
When I first started almost 5 years ago, I had a direction I wanted to go which was HR and I did what I could to make it there. I had some rungs to climb in the process but ultimately made it to where I am now. I have spent the last 2 years working on my Masters which is soon to be complete. Through my educational growth and career growth I have realized that I like people, change and innovation.
So my goal before the end of the year is to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. I have a milestone that needs to be complete in August, which is the degree that I spoke about. From there I plan on taking some indirect advice from my conversation today, look beyond your comfort zone. The thing that I love about is that anywhere and everywhere that I would want to explore is all right here.
Stay posted as I will keep you informed.

4/2/2009

Fuming, while dodging bullets

As I drove into work this morning I found it strange how just last week I was paying 1.70 a gallon to fill up, not today. I did not have to fill up but I contemplated it as I see the price rising to close to 2.00 dollars. So here is my rant this nasty economic crisis that we are in right now does not only have to do with banks, homes and such; but gas too. As you can tell we have many crooked business people in the oil industry as well, that played a big part. Just think about it would any of this stuff have been uncovered so soon if gas had not been close to 4.00 dollars a gallon in Colorado Springs and higher elsewhere. I drive a Saturn Outlook and yes it is a monster but it is the most fuel efficient monster out there that is not a hybrid. When I purchased the vehicle late 2007 I could fill up for a little fewer than 40 dollars, not bad but not good.
Then the crap hit the fan speculators as they called it kept driving the price of oil up and up and up; my 40 dollars fill up became 80-90 dollars in less than 3 months. 2008 was a hard year for out of pocket gas expense as I had to fill up at least twice per week. But a strange thing happened in 2008 for months and months there were news stories after news stories talking about high gas prices and people not being able to pay the bills or even make it into work. Then the presidential election came up, one that was up in the air at first but as Barrack the democratic nominee became more popular the cost of oil and gas went down. Do you think that many people would be in trouble if they were not so reliant on gas? Do you think AAA would have had to do as many layoffs if our expenses were not higher then what we were bringing in due to rate cuts and people not as driving much?
Unfortunately it was too late the economic down turn had started people had to choose earlier in the year whether to pay their bills or buy gas. Foreclosures where on the rise job loss became rampant and the oil companies somehow dodged the bullet. Yes we had a big problem in this country and still do for that matter for people who over spent and the snakes in the white collar shirts that got exposed. In some ways I'm glad that these issues got exposed but I'm upset that all the players are not held accountable. This country is already in a world of hurt and to see the gas starting to climb back up again when the cost per barrel is still low is an issue.

3/24/2009

What’s in Greg’s Egg

Well that seems kind of silly I do not have any eggs, I'm not the Easter bunny. If you have not figured it out yet Greg rhymes with egg and I decided to refer to my head as an egg. I mean why not I cracked it open more the once when I was little I have the stitches scars to prove it.
So to the question what is Greg's egg? To sum it up for you it is a place for me to share what's on my mind or in my egg. As you will read through you will be able to tell that I will never be an English teacher but the only way to improve your writing skills is to work on them. This blog allows me to get my thoughts and feelings out to the world or at least whether someone is listening or not.
If nothing I hope that you may read this blog and decided that you want to blog too. If that is the case drop me a line I would love to see what is on your mind. Through the use of idea generation and web 2.0 tools such as blogging will become a force to be reckoned with. Evolution can start with just one person and generate a groundswell of individual contributors like you could not believe.
Let's starts the groundswell!!

GJ_notes_ama_webinar

Setting ground rules

• There is no anonymity
• See slide 12 for best practices

Risk and Pitfalls

• Security
• Intellectual Property

Information leakage, big waste of time, aligned to the time, does my company have the resources, behavior of the employees, quality of information itself

Valid-Risk taking with companies, they tell us that the information risks are overblown. They are public environments your name and picture is attached making itself governed. People stake their own reputation when they post.

Sell benefits to executives- tie to business needs and strategic initiatives.

• Collaboration environments are tied to business objectives, encourage collaboration and getting things done
• Draw hard lines to separate community functions to how work gets done. Works similar to email it is just augmenting collaboration

Do you recommend consulting with legal departments?

Yes if there is some information that needs to be kept confidential, is there is some information that is use at your own risk. Be really careful to place those types of learning’s and use your hard and fast controls. Be careful only lock-down the areas that you have too, check with legal to find out what, be careful not to lock down too much.

What are some emerging tools?

World of War Craft and Second life-Collaborative tools

They are good for collaborative simulations. Today they are used to simulate emergencies and such some difficult environments that are hard to recreate in real life, response to terrorist attacks and such.

After the application is used then you go into a real format. Leadership scenarios are being simulated as experimental learning environments where leaders have to go through employee interactions.

Virtual world are not places for continued collaboration and are more focused toward simulation.

Where do you begin?

Use the free apps and experiment and try. Many of the employees are already doing it. Find out where collaboration is happening and augment that collaboration.

Adoption- alignment to the business, they will take hold if it is incentivized and help achieve strategic initiatives. If it is part of the job then it will be adopted no matter what.

**If everyone thinks it is a sideline initiative then it will be the first cut.

Content is king, if there is good content then people will come. Have the early adopters and evangelist from the business pound the ground and provide that good content.

This cannot be a special destination. It should not require logging in.

Start easy

• Some applications allow email participation (ease in)
• Show the advanced stuff later
• Do not make it out of the flow of work

Make it easy for the user to adopt

Furl

Furl see other social bookmarking sites. I feel that it would be wise for one of these bad boys to join up with some sort of social network and make a freaking powerful application.

Paint.net

Paint.net I did not download this software but from what I read it looks to be a good alternative or at least a good affordable option for those who do not have access to Photoshop.

Textthemob

Textthemob this is the second service I have seen like this and I think this is great for live feedback. Anyone who had run a webinar that allows polling questions has seen a similar feature. But now there is away to add that same undisclosed polling to live instruction on a large scale. I can see this being an awesome use in political debates and conferences.

NVU

NVU does not exist anymore according to godaddy.

Freepath

Freepath seems like a wonderful tool for presenters and instructors. I see one downfall with this being a download able application. I would like to see someone use this then critique it.

Animoto is the s@#&

I mean check it out
this is my family link

Howard Rheingold Social Media Extraordinaire

If you have read my blog before you may have seen my post on writing objectives. The only reason I bring it up is that BA the coworker that I spoke about actually pointed me in the direction of Howard Rheingold by providing me this link. After reading the blog listed before I became interested in Howard's Social media classroom as seen below and decided to do a bit more research.

There is not much that I can write about Howard that he or someone else has not already written. So instead here is a link to his profile where you will find loads of info about what he has done and the books he has written. If you watched the video above you will see some basic info about Social Media classroom. This is what hooked be because with all the WEB 2.0 tools around and the lack of consistency and no one place to view it all Howard is working to produce that solution.

If you have not been able to tell from his profile or his general involvements Howard is quite the busy individual. So through some conviniantly timed instant messages I was able to get a bit more detail about Howard and that transcript is below.

Greg: Hey Greg again you think you may have time to answer random questions for my school project via IM?

Howard: Sure.

Greg: cool

Howard: Now is good

Greg: Tell me about what you do?

Howard: I explore, understand, and communicate about the individual, social, political, economic meanings of communication technology revolutions.

Greg: How did you get to where you are at in your career?

Howard: I have been a freelance writer since I was 23. In the early 1980s, I sought information about computers because I had heard you could use them instead of typewriters. I found my way to Xerox PARC and wrote Tools for Thought, which is on my website. That was a 1985 look at where people and PCs would be in 2000. The entire book is online. You can look back at my prediction of the future from the future I predicted. In the process of writing that book, I got online.

That led to writing "Virtual Communities" for Whole Earth Review in 1987 -- the first use of that word. That book is online as well. Both at rheingold.com.

Greg: Great info

How do you keep up with trends and keep yourself on the cutting edge?

Why elearning and distance education?

Howard: That's such an interesting question that I made a series of videos about how I spend my time online. I haven't finished the series, but you can find the first of them in the archives at http://vlog.rheingold.com

Education because I believe the answer to "are digital media and networks good for individuals, communities, democracies," is "it depends on who knows what about how to use available media . So I'm teaching. I'm not so much interested in distance education -- although that is one of my interests -- as in the use of social media to teach social media theory.

Gotta get back to work now.

Greg: thanks I will email the last 2 questions and look up the rest

Continued on 9/29/2008

Greg: Howard I wanted to check again just to make sure that I have your permission to use our conversation in print? I also wanted to make sure you got the email that I would like to partipate in the COP?

Howard: Yes, you have my permission. I don't have access to the list, but if you emailed and asked to participate, I saved your email.

Greg: perfect thanks

So back to the title "Social Instruction Extraordinaire" back in 1993 Howard was credited with creating the term virtual community. To me he was way ahead of his time or at least had the ability to come to the realization how important socialization is to learning. Currently I have been working on a project at work to start to integrate WEB 2.0 tools into our instructional workflow. Due to this research I have tested many tools that have been great and many that our bad. It is my hope that when Social Media classroom launches it will be as revolutionary as some of the work that Howard has already produced.

Jing

Jing I hope it is as good as it looks. I use Snag it quite often and what I can tell you is it works pretty well. I have never been a fan of the camtasia product because they keep raising the price with no more value add. I hope this is a revolution for techsmith and they do not suck you in and jam you later.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere this is a pretty cool technologies and can definitely change the way we do things in and instructor lead forum. I can see the future for schools and corporations using this same type of technologies to engage and wake the sleepers.

As far as web conference though... I can do with out. Most web conference technologies have some sort of pulling built into them so that is not the right audience.

Overall a good product and I like the free price point (30 users).

Diigo

Diigo like Delicious are pretty lame. I do not feel that they serve a great purpose. Many ning's or social network pages have link list capabilities. I think this is more part of the growing trend of unorganized tools that allow more ads to get in your head. I axed nings before because you can accomplish the same things with out of the box social networks.

So here is the problem. We need more innovation with integration. I think I'm pretty tired of all the half baked solutions.

Blog Review

http://leisa-what-was-i-thinking.blogspot.com/
http://chadlynch.blogspot.com/
http://ideasonelearning.blogspot.com/
http://katnatlin.wordpress.com/
http://iltctaylor.wordpress.com/
http://bethslabodaidr.blogspot.com/
http://jessicastrendsinelearning.blogspot.com/
http://kerryescobado.blogspot.com/

Well I would have to say it is interesting looking at all these different blogs that are about the same things. Many of them I was able to start a post or add to a comment thread. I would say the most least effective part about reviewing all of these blogs is dialog. When I say dialog I mean contiuned dialog. Every blog has 3-4 new postings a week that it is hard to create deep discussion and remember where you started.

Blog Roll

Well I figured I should try a blog roll. If you are viewing the blog via RSS like the one I have at work you will not see. On the left side of this page under School Blog's you will see a list of all the class peeps. If I left you off please let me know. Maybe this will help in my review pursuit.

Writing Objectives

As part of my individual development plan (IDP) at work I tasked myself with learning how to write objectives. I worked with a colleague of mine (to protect the innocent) we will call him Utah, on a recent project and decided to use him as a resource to help me complete this portion of my IDP. I felt the best way to document the interview would be on this blog because not only is it funny but I learned a lot You must know that we started the conversation with how we write objectives at our company and then we transitioned to how he writes objectives to these guideline or constraints.

First of all we defined objectives as observable/measurable behaviors that can bridge the gap between desired performance and actual performance.

Examples that were used were based on his 6 year old son (here is where the humor comes in)

• Zipping up your pants
• tying your shoes
• peeing on the floor

The gap that we need to figure out is why are these behaviors being performed or not. We focused the rest of the conversation on peeing on the floor.

You need to ask what are things that can be done to bridge the gap and stop the behavior of peeing on the floor like:

• aming
• what are the the problems associated with peeing on the floor
• problem with mom slipping on the floor when it is wet

Back to the 2 types of objectives:

• Enabling = goal "peeing in the toilet"
• Terminal = actual objective "aim straight while peeing in the toilet"

When writing the above objectives first consider the behavior then look for resources such as subject matter experts (SME's) to help you establish what the objectives may be. Schedule a meeting and interview your SME's most of the time you will get lots of information that will help you successfully write your objectives. From the dialogue you will get many goal statements or enabling objectives you need to make sure to take the conversation a step further to determine who to meet your enabling objectives with your terminal ones. Once you have considered the information from the SME's move on to the actual objective writing. Utah provided me a resource that he created based on his knowledge of Bloom's taxonomy which with his permission I provided below:

Bloom's Taxonomy
Level 1: Knowledge
Competence	Information gathering Remembering The recall of specifics, processes
Skills	Recall of information Knowledge of dates, events, places Knowledge of major ideas
Verbs	Arrange, collect, describe, define, draw, duplicate, examine, identify, label, list, locate, memorize, name, order, quote, recognize, recall, recite, repeat, reproduce, select, show, state, tell, tabulate, who, when, where, write
Questions	Who? What? When? Where? How? Describe
Level 2: Comprehension
Competence	Understanding of information The "knows" the material and can use it. Yet they cannot relate it to other material or see its broader implications The lowest level of understanding
Skills	Understanding information Grasp meaning Translate knowledge into new context Interpret facts, compare, contrast Order, group, infer causes Predict consequences
Verbs	Associate, change, classify, compare, confirm, contrast, defend, describe, differentiate, discuss, distinguish, estimate, explain, express, extend, generalize, illustrate, indicate, infer, interpret, locate, match, paraphrase, predict, relate, report, restate, review, select, summarize, transform, translate
Questions	Retell
Level 3: Application
Competence	Making use of knowledge The use of abstractions (for example, principles, ideas, theories) in particular and concrete situations
Skills	Use information Use methods, concepts, theories in new situations Solve problems using required skills or knowledge
Verbs	Apply, calculate, change, choose, classify, collect, complete, demonstrate, discover, dramatize, draw, employ, examine, experiment, illustrate, interpret, make, model, modify, operate, paint, practice, prepare, produce, relate, report, schedule, show, sketch, solve, use, write
Questions	Why is it significant?
Level 4: Analysis
Competence	Separate knowledge The breakdown of a communication into its constituent elements such that the relations among the ideas are made explicit
Skills	Seeing patterns Organization of parts Recognition of hidden meanings Identification of components
Verbs	Analyze, appraise, arrange, calculate, categorize, classify, compare, connect, construct, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, divide, examine, experiment, explain, infer, investigate, order, point out, question, research, select, separate, sub-divide, survey, text, take a part
Questions	What are the parts or features? Classify according to x Outline/diagram How does x compare/contrast with y? What evidence can you list for x?
Level 5: Synthesis
Competence	Linking knowledge Working with parts and combining them in such a way as to constitute a structure
Skills	Use old ideas to create new ones Generalize from given facts Relate knowledge from several areas Predict, draw conclusions
Verbs	Add to, arrange, assemble, collect, combine, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, generalize, hypothesize, integrate, invent, manage, modify, organize, plan, prepare, produce, propose, rearrange, rewrite, role-play, set up, substitute, what if, write
Questions	What would you predict/infer from y? What ideas can you add to x? How would you create/design a new z? What might happen if you combined w? What solutions would you suggest for x?
Level 6: Evaluation
Competence	Judging the outcome Judgments about the value of material and methods for the given purposes
Skills	Compare and discriminate between ideas Assess value of theories, presentations Make choices based on reasoned argument Verify value of evidence Recognize subjectivity
Verbs	Appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose, compare, conclude, convince, core, criticize, critique, defend, decide, discriminate, estimate, evaluate, explain, grade, judge, predict, measure, rank, rate, recommend, relate, select, solve, summarize, support, test, value, weigh
Questions	Do you agree? What do you think about? What is the most important? Place the following in order of priority How would you decide about What criteria would you use to assess z?

He advised that he keeps an exact copy of the tool above at his desk and looks at it frequently when writing objectives. He did make it very clear to me that when writing your objectives it is important to keep your assessment in mind. If you cannot asses the objectives appropriately then you will need to write them in such away that you can. Thinking back to our situation with the 6 year old peeing on the floor we considered some of the following objectives at different levels in the taxonomy.

Level 1

Identify the importance of peeing in the toilet

List reasons why it is important to pee in the toilet

Level 3

Interpret mom's reaction when you pee on the floor

Level 5

Pretend you are mom and you pee on the floor. How would you react?

Level 6

Which is worse soda or pee on the floor.

From Utah's experience 90 percent of the objectives that he has seen in a corporate environment range from level's 1-3. When writing your objectives you need to make sure that you try to use some from each level but it is important to remember if your enabling objective is a needs a level 3 result then your terminal objectives need to be level 1 then 2. Utah also mentioned that it is important to make note of the level that you are using while writing your objectives so you can balance them out.

*Remember the higher level objectives are harder to asses whether it is for instructor lead or distance education.

Some additional words of advice when writing objectives is:

• look at other objectives before writing your own
• work with the SME's to develop them
• prepare for review once they are written (come with thick skin)

Overall this was a good conversation I was able to take many of the teachings that he provide during the interview into refection on past experiences. I hope you are able to get some valuable tips too.

Skrbl

Skrbl is to much hype for not alot of follow through. When I first went to the homepage I was not very impressed it was very messy and not very organized. I did not sign up for an account because they have the live applet code at the bottom of the page.  As stated by the page the live applet is just like the real deal. So I'm here to tell you it sucked. On the main page it states that it competes with the GE whiteboard app, the only advantage it has is the sharing feature, which is not all that great.

GE Whiteboard

One of the best tools I have reviewed in a long time GE Whiteboard. The only flaw this program has is the availability to live share. I think with how fast connection speeds are this can be accomplished.

Mogulus

Mogulus is pretty cool for those who need face time.  I like the concept I mean think about it the day has come that un censored news can come into action. I do not mean that we need nudity and vulgarity but we as humans need to be able to cut through the crap and have a non media influenced news channel. Imagine if some million/billionaire decided to fund reporters that truly reported on what is out there. Let the viewer determine if it is crap or not.

Twitter

Pretty cool concept but I think I'm busy enough and honestly I do not care if someone is eating, heading to a meeting or the bathroom for that matter. 

I checked out toanswer as well and I think I would rather take less steps and look it up on google on my own.