Map to the Internet Time Ecosystem

Time after time in my recent workshops on web-enabled informal learning, I found myself using my own sites as examples of learning technologies. For example, we’d walk through the Informal Learning blog to look at an RSS feed, an internal search engine, scanning the 100 most recent posts, a Creative Commons license, and so on.

I began showing things like my research tools page, which has always been public but was hidden in plain sight. Previously hard-to-find articles on my wiki have morphed into leave-behind reference material, for example, Learning in Business or Seminal Documents.

The focus of my workshops is shifting, too. Two years ago, the focus was on how to apply social software for learning. That’s still an issue, but what’s front and center now is helping participants sell the concepts they’ve learned when they return to their organizations. When you’re getting ready to sell your boss on a new approach, you can use all the ammunition in the arsenal, and that means I need to make things easier to find. Thus, I’ve been darting around my blogs, wikis, and other online oddments adding labels and links.

This is a tough exercise. There’s a decade of writing, news, pointers, cases, jokes, and suggestions floating around out there. And of course, I am accustomed to using my own hacks for finding what I’m looking for. I don’t notice when a sign is missing.

Help me out here: when you end up in a blind alley or bump into something counter-intuitive here, drop me a note so I can fix it. Every major page has a button you can use for that: CONTACT

Here’s a good starting point.