Category: Collaboration

A dilemma

30 August 2009 0

Keith Sawyer has an interesting post about collaboration and learning. He concludes with this statement: “So many of our most important learning experiences happen when we are in groups with others, and this is why understanding collaboration is central to the study of learning.” And therein lies the dilemma for those of us who work…

By Viv McWaters

On writing a manifesto

25 August 2009 0

Today Anne Pattillo and I wrote a manifesto about Facilitating With Confidence. It was a useful way to tease out our thinking and to surface the arguments that underpin what we do. It was also a great exercise in collaborative writing. Here’s how we did it. We started by capturing key thoughts – in any…

By Viv McWaters

Rebooting

13 August 2009 0

Last year, Anne Pattillo and I started up a new business together – Facilitating With Confidence. We’d tried our hands at facilitation training before and became frustrated when people learnt enough to ask us to come and do the tricky gigs, but didn’t have enough confidence to have a go themselves, even though we knew…

By Viv McWaters

Me too!

5 August 2009 2

Nancy White has a great post about how she uses social media. Here’s a summary with some of my favourite choconancy comments in italics. online community “Eminds” was where I learned that online relationships can be real, how they get real, and  how they break and fail. online learning together But regardless of the technology,…

By Viv McWaters

Best and worst conference experiences

22 July 2009 1

Every now and again – about once a decade in fact – I agree to become involved in designing and delivering a conference. Why so infrequently? I have some specific requirements before I’m willing to devote considerable time and energy to putting on a conference. I need to believe in the conference topic. I need…

By Viv McWaters

The joys of collaborating

21 July 2009 0

Collaborating has become a bit of a buzz word, and as such, over-used. And I think we often use the term ‘collaborate’ when we really mean co-ordinate or co-operate. I really like Shawn Callahan’s use of the Cynefin framework to explain the difference between each of these. Basically it’s like this: When you’re operating in…

By Viv McWaters