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Enhancing Collaborative Distance Learning through Wiki and Cognitiv...

Enhancing Collaborative Distance Learning through Wiki and Cognitiv...

Solving problems (vs. identifying them) Often, we're hesitant to identify a problem out of fear we can't solve it. Knowing that we have to live with something that we're unable to alter gives us a good reason to avoid verbalizing it--highlighting it just makes it worse. While this sort of denial might be okay for individuals (emphasis on might), it's a lousy approach for organizations of any size. That's because there are almost certainly resources available that can solve a problem if you decide it's truly worth solving. Put yourself and your people on a path to finding problems without regard for whether or not they are capable of solving them. Queue them up, prioritize them and then go find the help your organization needs to solve them. Just because you don't know what to do about it doesn't make it less of a problem.

Census: Fewer people do without indoor plumbing McMeans, 73, who lives about 40 miles southwest of the state capital Montgomery, is one of a shrinking number of people who still have no indoor plumbing, no hot and cold water, no bath or shower, according to Census 2000 data. Most are elderly, poor and living in rural areas. Nationwide, about 50,000 fewer households lacked complete plumbing in 2000 than in 1990, dropping from 721,693 homes (0.78%), to 670,986 homes (0.64%). Alaska led the nation in both counts, with 13,489 homes in 1990 without complete plumbing, or 7.1%, and 14,003 in 2000, or 6.3%. By region, the South had the highest rate without toilets and tubs. Alabama's Black Belt, the south-central region known for its dark soil and impoverished history, is slowly casting off its rustic inconveniences along with much of the rural South. McMeans said he wants to finish building an indoor bathroom and run the outside water lines through it. "They got some rattlesnakes back there," McMeans said.

4 Tools for Better Agency-Client Collaboration This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. The most effective consultant/client relationships tend to morph into partnerships, in which the consultant is truly an extension of the internal team. However, elevating a relationship from “vendor” status to a meaningful collaboration isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Thankfully, there are some handy tools available that can help you establish an effective team. 1. If you're using GChat, AOL or another instant-messaging service, it might be time to consider one of the “IM-ing for business” tools, such as Hipchat, Yammer or Chatter (part of Salesforce). These services are particularly helpful for teams in distributed locations and/or working on multiple projects. By “@mentioning” someone in a discussion, it’s easy to pull the right people into a conversation. 2. 3. 4. Collaboration Improves Efficiencies

Are You Wasting Your Time Reading About Personal Development? - by Dumb... - StumbleUpon Walk into any bookstore, and you’ll see shelves full of books about personal development. You’ll know the titles of some classics, even if you’ve never read them: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , Getting Things Done … and loads more. You’ve probably read some of these books, or at least come across major personal development ideas in magazines or online. You might even spend time every day reading personal development blogs and books, or listening to audio. But … are you wasting your time? Just Reading Won’t Get You FarWhen you want something to change in your life, it’s tempting to look for a quick fix. Can they really deliver? Yes – but only with a bit of work from you. The problem is, many of us find that simply reading about personal development gives us a little boost. Have you fallen into this trap? The problem is, you might never find it. That might seem like such a no-brainer. The thing is, whenever you change, you’re also giving something up. To help yourself take action:

Driving Collaboration in Firms I’m a pretty big sports fan as you probably can tell from some of my previous posts. In sports much like anything else, collaboration, cooperation, teamwork, are the cornerstones of project success. With this in mind, how can we foster this culture of collaboration inside departments, corporations? Some may think that successful collaboration is primarily about having the proper software. While having solid collaboration software does help, it is not the end all be all. I can’t even begin to recount the number of times I’ve worked with people who think that simply because they have the tools the end result will fall into place. Generally speaking, collaboration is something that occurs naturally and easily. I believe to successfully move towards a collaborative culture a “collaboration champion” is needed. Lastly you need to be patient. Your Turn Do you have any collaboration tips? Related

Debunk Myths About Innovation The following is an excerpt from Relentless Innovation: What Works, What Doesn’t--and What That Means for Your Business by Jeffrey Phillips. In the United States alone there are hundreds of large, successful firms with recognizable brand names that we encounter every day. We constantly hear innovation success stories about firms like Apple and Procter & Gamble, but we rarely hear about innovation in their direct competitors, Dell and Unilever, much less about innovation in any of the thousands of firms worldwide that compete in these markets. In every region and industry the same pattern is repeated: A small handful of firms are recognized as consistent innovators, used as case studies and examples, while we hear little or nothing about innovation in the vast majority of the other firms in those industries. Several possible factors spring to mind, including the executive management, the nature of the industry, or the capabilities of a firm’s research and development teams. W.

Cohuman - work more efficiently What makes Cohuman such a powerful productivity tool is its ease of use. We continually strive to push the usability envelope in hopes of making fellow Cohumans even more efficient in the way they work. So we’re happy to announce three great new features that will definitely help you be more productive. Drag and Drop Panels When we rolled out the drag and drop tasks into different project panels feature, we heard a ton of positive feedback from our fellow Cohumans on how that helped them save time and work more efficiently. Delete Tasks Button Previously, if you had accidentally created a task and wanted to delete it the only real option was to Archive the task which would move it out of your Active list, but it didn’t really delete it. Now you can completely delete a task from Cohuman. Email Notification – Tasks Due Today We’ve included a new email notification that will hopefully help you keep better track of what tasks are coming due. Related

Are Teams Really That Much Better? Teamwork. We’re all taught that teamwork can bring about greater results, more creativity, and an all-around better end product. Yet, despite having to work in teams from the time we’re in school through the vast majority of our lives, I have often thought to myself are teams really that much better? Yes, I believe that Teamwork can help you achieve superior results, but it’s not an innate outcome. Teamwork is a Learned Skill We assume because humans are inherently social beings that we should be able to work effectively as a team, this isn’t true. Who will end of doing the majority of the work? However, the more we collaborate and work in teams the more we either learn how to cope with these issues. Image Source: www.iStockphoto.com Related

Collaboration Trends in 2012 As you are all well aware this is the time for yearly wrap-ups and future predictions. Recently, I came across a post from Leigh Jasper of ComputerWorld, where he talks about the future trends of collaboration. So, just what will 2012 mean for collaboration? Below I’ve pulled out some top collaboration trends for 2012 Collaborating with large amounts of Data The amount of information we now can access and use in decision making continues to grow rapidly. I believe the ability to share large, complex data files will be increasingly important in 2012. The Arrival of Social and Mobile into the Enterprise The combination of Social networking and personal mobile devices has already increased the speed and amount of information sharing, but most of the discussion around this trend has been focused on the ability to search and analyze all this data. I believe that we’ve already seen the birth of software firms attempting to incorporate what Jasper calls the many-to-many feature. Related

Building the Collaborative Office It’s no secret that we’re all trying to do more with less. A survey conducted last May stated that “more than half of U.S. employees feel overworked”. So how do we cope with having to do more with less? The typical office – does this floor plan look strangely familiar to most of you? What we think of as the modern office was created in the 1960’s with the dawn of the cubicle. According to Wikipedia the modern office cubicle was created in 1968 by Robert Propst of Herman Miller as part of his Action Office System. ” ‘People were being rapidly deluged with information they didn’t know how to manage or purge…All kinds of interesting things came before their eyes momentarily, then got filed.’ By the 1960s the amount of information available to employees had increased dramatically and something was needed to help deal with the information overload. Fast-forward forty four years to today. The Collaboration Commons is just one of many ideas being kicked around as the next generation office.

The Social Business Paradox Yesterday I responded to Dennis Howlett’s post on how the impact of social media on business is over-stated. From a customer-facing standpoint, I disagree. Inside the enterprise, however, where social business should move initiatives, products, and plans forward, its impact is often less demonstrable. While Howlett looks specifically at the link between internal activities and outward initiatives, he brings up an interesting point for enterprises that are looking to get more from their social tools: “It’s a massive disconnect between what happens internally with social tools and the expectations of management attempting to foster social business to the outside world. Howlett wonders if social business is a paradox. Charlene Li of Altimeter recently released a report (“Making The Business Case For Enterprise Social Networking”) which looks at how these networks can create value for their organizations. Importantly, all of these need to thrive for a social business to show results. Related

6 tips for avoiding staff burnout With the landscape of healthcare changing, IT departments are finding themselves as busy as ever. And with the stress of mandates and new technologies also come the risk of staff burnout, dissatisfaction, and even the loss of human resources. “Everything that’s happening right now inside the healthcare arena -- it’s a tough area, not only inside of the payer and provider environment, but also in the service organizations,” said Guillermo Moreno, vice president of Experis Healthcare. Given the hectic state of the industry and the growing demands placed on IT staff, we asked Moreno to outline six tips for avoiding staff burnout. 1. 2. [See also: 8 trends for a changing healthcare workforce.] 3. Continued on the next page.

Which Type of Collaboration is Right for You? Yesterday, I touched on the question regarding which is better for fostering innovation and creativity: collaboration or solitude. In that post, I came to the conclusion that the question is not this all-or-nothing debate. Rather it should be a question of which method of collaboration will bring us the results we want. I’d like to tackle this question of finding the collaboration style that works best for your situation and aid you in your future collaborative efforts. As previously mentioned in my post, after twenty years of research Gary Pisano and Roberto Verganti have identified four main types of collaboration: Open, Closed, Hierarchical and Flat. Source: Which Kind of Collaboration is Right for You? Open – In totally open collaboration everyone is encouraged to participate (suppliers, customers, designers, research, institutions, students, hobbyists, possibly even competitors). Open collaboration is only effective under certain conditions. Image Source: www.iStockphoto.com Related

Eight Dangers of Collaboration | HBR by Nilofer Merchant | 8:16 AM December 1, 2011 Most of what is written about collaboration is positive. Even hip. Collaboration is championed enthusiastically by the Enterprise 2.0 experts, as well as leading thinkers like Don Tapscott, as the crucial approach for the 21st century. Collaboration creates once-elusive “buy-in or “empowerment,” improves problem solving, increases creativity, is key to innovation at companies like Lego, Pixar, and Intuit. So why is collaboration as rare as it is? The short answer is that collaboration is dangerous. Not knowing the answer. Collaborative work is not right for every organization, or in every case. According to recent research, collaboration has been proven to have a strong corollary to innovation; .81, according to research commissioned by Google.) In most cases, there are ways to manage each of these dangers with a specific “how” that will allow people to step into the unknown, create new solutions, and get to the other side of a problem.

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