Longtime blogger Jim Groom, an Instructional Technology Specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington, wrote about giving credit where credit is due (in traditional academic journals) when it comes to using ideas authored in “unconventional academic media,” i.e. blogging, etc.

The catalyst for Groom’s post is an article in the EDUCAUSE Quarterly about the post-LMS Era, a topic he has written about extensively. (There’s actually a lot more to his post – and the comments – than “credit” and well worth a read.)

I came upon Groom’s post at first via a Skype conversation with my colleague Gary Woodill who was pointing me to a George Siemens re-post from 2006, A Review of Learning Management System Reviews, which George wrote while at the University of Manitoba. (He re-posted it to maybe “give it a bit more of an existence.”)

Many of you may not have read Jim Groom’s 4+ year-old blog bavatuesdays before because it doesn’t focus on corporate learning & development however, many of the issues he dives into are the same issues we face in L&D and it’s been valuable reading to me – it’s like an ongoing free education. George Siemens too although, he does write (blogs and journals) about corporate learning – in addition to academic topics – and is always involved in setting up the annual LearnTrends – The Corporate Learning Trends & Innovation Conference. Hybrid George.

Lest you think I’m only talking about bloggers writing about their favorite topic – blogging – this background info provides the type of “implied credit” that exists among a network of bloggers working through contemporary issues.

L&D has a blogger network where generally a first name is all you need to  recognize someone – Tony, Mark, Brent, Karyn, Jane, the other Jane, Harold, Gina, Marcia, Cammy, Dave, Stephen, George, and many others. Those names mean little  to many in L&D and I’m going to guess are not even recognizable for most. Among corporate L&D types, I think reading blogs is still new.

To tell the truth, when I was working in the corporate environment – and even when I first started blogging 3+ years ago – I thought it was like this secret world of narcissistic people who just linked to each other and theorized. I didn’t have much use for it when I was up to my eyeballs in creating Captivate recordings to demonstrate how to use an antiquated mainframe system that still permeate the corporate world due to their tentacle-like properties. Shame on me.

I digress.

The entire ‘credit where credit due’ issue made me think about corporate learning periodicals. I read them less often than I used to but did this morning while my PC was going through some sort of Windows upgrade that allowed me the time to make a freakin’ omelet.

Of course, those that write in L & D periodicals do not have the same issues as the academic/ journal “game” where tenure and 16 pages of citations are the rules. What is a game but rules right?

However, in L&D periodicals, I do think there’s the same “marginalization of blogging” (Groom writes about) and the failure to give credit where credit is due. There’s (still) a certain respect associated with corporate learning periodicals (and many are very, very good and include those that blog) but I often get the feeling that when something is written on a blog (vs. within an article) it’s not taken seriously.

It’s everywhere.  Just the other night I was watching House and the actress Laura Prepon, forever known to me as Donna Pinciotti on That 70s Show, was playing a patient who was a professional blogger. (She looks nothing like Jim Groom : ) I thought they made a joke of her blogging on  the show even though she had a pretty good explanation (the psychological issue of not seeing people aside) of the feeling one gets when writing in an online public space. In my opinion, blogs are frequently viewed as a joke because of the author’s attachment to them and the whole idea that one cannot have a true social connection with online “friends” (quotations are theirs).

I digress again. (This post is long enough be a chapter in a book or an article in a training periodical ; )

Anyway…back to Groom who said, in part, of blogs…

“…we all know that these ideas [like the post- LMS era] have been vehemently discussed and hashed out on the blogosphere, where credit is often and necessarily inconsistent and erratic, but somehow implied–and given we are all working for bigger idea…”

I won’t call anyone out publicly or name the periodical but there’s an article by someone who (best I can tell) does not participate in the “work for bigger ideas.”

Within the article there’s a reference to “subject matter networks” with no attribution. I choked on my omelet and immediately thought of Mark Oehlert’s Subject-matter Experts: The Origin Post. (This same author later speaks about Twitter and I’ve yet to find them on Twitter.)

While the ’subject-matter networks’ term can be found in  articles that pre-date this (primarily articles about professional development and teachers, see Google Scholar) in the  context of the L&D article, it should have been attributed to the person (Mark) that spent “almost three days of non-stop talking about social media and how it can impact learning” framing it.

What to make of all this? It’s a helluva lot easier to write a static article that outlines the ideas of others than to actually have (and to write about) the ideas. If you think everything on blogs is crap and that content should be cited and vetted like a professional journalist, you’re marginalizing the author’s work being done for the greater good of the industry. And shame on those trying to attain L&D celebrity status at the expense of bloggers.

Ever had a stranger ask you about something you wrote about on your blog? At first I’m a bit ‘huh?’ but then I remember that um, hello…anyone can read this. My Mom. My next door neighbor. My boss. My former co-workers. My dog if he had thumbs (or if someone scrolled for him).

Sometimes I worry that the personal information I share here will tick someone off. The worry is usually an afterthought (too bad for some) and something I get over soon enough.

Don’t YOU worry though, I’m not losing sleep over it and inevitably, I just say screw it and write on.

I don’t seem to have a problem writing about anything that comes to mind – my kids, my husband, my own embarrassing moments, past jobs, friends, school, my extended family, moving house….you get the point. (In a f2f situation, I’d need you to buy me at least one beer to get this type of information).

However, I do try to limit my observations to the theme of this site – learning and the work I do at Brandon Hall Research. I don’t always succeed but I think mostly I do. Brandon Hall Research is a cool place to work. I probably couldn’t write like this at many other jobs. Which is good because I LEARN A TON.

I don’t think individuals set out to write a particular type of blog. It just happens based on their voice. So I got thinking about this ‘worry’ factor and it seems to me that it exists mostly for those that write the personal journal-type blogs.

There are several types of blogs I read in the e-learning space. Although people generally can cross categories in their style, here are some examples based on my own interpretation of the content and style but you may classify them differently:

filter blog – commentary of selected links by author/editor (Example: OLDaily, Stephen Downes).

short-form journal blog – personal record of thoughts, observations, events. (Example: Karyn’s erratic learning journey, Karyn Romeis) Mine is in this category too.

distributed conversation – a post is starting point for an ongoing series of posts, comments, reciprocal links. (Example: eLearning Technology, Tony Karrer)

educational – maintained by a teacher or for a teacher for use as part of a course or class. (Example: The Cool Cat Teacher Blog, Vickie Davis)

notebook – a mix between the filter and journal blog which is more reflective with less sharing personal information but not always a filter for other content. (Example: elearnspace, George Siemens)

corporate/marketing – serves a business purpose. (Example: Brandon Hall Research News)

My voice falls into the category of short-form journal. The “mom blogs” and “dad blogs” are overwhelmingly short-form journal-type too.

Heather Armstrong at dooce (dooced=fired for blogging), a hugely popular [ 4 million hits a month] Mom-Blogger-of-all-Mom-blogs wrote a futuristic-type post to her daughter about well, writing about her. Armstrong historically gets crap for writing about her kid…words like endangerment, violation of privacy, egotistical, and exploitation are used. But Armstrong doesn’t take that crap. She was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal recently (thanks for the link Tom) about how she deals with it.

Really, this too much information (TMI) dilemma is primarily limited to the journal-type blog. Dooce, et al makes me worry less. Armstrong, although talking about Mom bloggers, advances this movement, this community of people writing tirelessly about their experiences. I think everyone is richer for it and, like she thinks her daughter will, it makes me want to pump my fist in the air.

So journal bloggers, Cheers!

Reference/additional links:

Motive Glossary
rebecca’s pocket
dooce

Richard Nantel wrote about Gever Tulley’s Tinkering School. Tulley outlines 6 dangerous things you should let your kids do (and why).

I have let my own kids do most of these things (no spear throwing in the house please!) and some other things that some would consider ‘dangerous’ like walking to school alone, sleeping outside without a tent, sticking an M&M up their nose (what will happen? I don’t know, why don’t you find out.), and swimming across a lake. (WTF is happening to us as a society?)

Sometimes, I don’t think we do the dangerous things that help us become more creative, daring, and resilient.

So, here’s 6 dangerous things you can do:

• Blog. Naked….not literally of course. That would just be wrong. But write. Like you’re naked. Nothing like putting yourself out there to develop professionally in your chosen field.
• Take your own courses. Yup, you know the ones.
• Sit in your learners cube for a day. Observe. Take notes. Go home. Drink wine. Return to work and make the experience productive. (I always thought of this as not being part of the problem.)
• Make a list of everything you wish you could try (or want to try) at work and post it so you have to look at it every day.
• Do something from your list and explain it later.
• Network because your next job comes from here.

Today is my first blogoversary. I took my blog out for a nice dinner at Applebee’s last night and let the staff sing to it like this (I wonder it they get training for that?). [I'm totally kidding].

Since my first post a year ago, my blog has become an important tool much like my minivan, my new bistro pots & pans (shiny, shiny BTW), and my binoculars. Like my van, my blog gets me from point A to point B with a little fuel in the form of commenters. Like my pots and pans its content nourishes me. Like my binoculars, it hangs around my neck and zooms in on things that I want to take a closer look at. It’s also a big time-sucking pain in the ass at times (like my kids ; ) except it behaves nicely at Applebee’s. I wish I had actually taken my blog out. You can get your own blogoversary widget here. Dinner optional.

This could be a post about Canadian bloggers, or Australian bloggers, or male bloggers, or under-30 bloggers or bloggers with webbed feet…whatever. But it’s not. It’s a post about women bloggers (mostly in the education space), a topic I wrote about several times last year. So hear me roar already (or is that al-’reddy’).

When I first started blogging early in ‘07 I felt there weren’t that many female bloggers. I thought it was just like the conference thing. In case you haven’t noticed, womens’ voices at industry conferences are disproportionately small, especially as conference keynoters, with the exception of Blogher of course. I don’t really have a take on this that won’t sound soap boxy and don’t really want to go down diversity lane if ya’ know what I mean… (if you’re struggling to find women speakers for your conference, go here or select from the fine list below : ) Return from digression…

I think my perception that there weren’t a lot of women blogging about education was because we don’t link up that well. Maybe we don’t do the blogroll thing as much. Or maybe we don’t name our blogs with our own name that often. Maybe I’m just full of crap.

Anyway, I was thrilled to have found some great reads from fellow women throughout the year. Here’s a wrap-up of those blogs featured in 2007 and some new ones…enjoy.

New (to me) reads:

Jessica Hagy
Indexed
Life on index cards. Not an edublogger (Jessica’s site says she’s in advertising) but good example of illustrating concepts simply and with humor.

Cathy Nelson
Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts
Helpful hints, tips, and tricks for teachers who are integrating technology in an authentic manner. Cathy’s content is driven by questions she is asked or by her own current technology interests.

Christine Martell
VisualsSpeak Blog
Not strictly an edublogger, Christine focuses on visualization.

Anne Fox
Anne Fox: Blog
TEFL teacher and project developer in the areas of e-learning, EU projects, teacher training, mentoring, inter-cultural competence, language learning, m-learning, Nordic languages, online meeting moderation

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
21st Century Collaborative
Doctoral student, adjunct instructor of educational technology at the College of William and Mary, educational consultant, and frequent speaker/presenter.

Barbara Ganley
bgblogging
Reflections on teaching-with-technology journey and evolution as a user of New Media in the writing classroom.

Linda Naiman
Creativity at Work
A new blogger (2007), the purpose of Linda’s blog is to “create, with your help, a learning community for people who live or work at the intersections of art, business, science and design.”

Helen Keegan
Helen Keegan: Blog
Researcher/learning technologist/part-time lecturer.

Ellyssa Kroski
iLibrarian
Author and Reference Librarian at Columbia University’s Butler Library. She also works as an Information Consultant providing services in Web strategy, project management, information architecture, social marketing, content development, and production in both the library and corporate sectors. She has been appointed adjunct faculty at her alma mater Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library Science where she teaches LIS students about Web 2.0 technologies.

Glenda Morgan
Accidental Pedagogy
Research and practice in academic technology in higher education.

Jane McGonigal
Avant Game
Game designer, a games researcher, and a future forecaster. Teacher and lecturer.

Liz Davis
The Power of Educational Technology
Instructional Technology Specialist in a Massachusetts High School

Featured here in 2007:

Alja
iAlja
Writes about virtual communities, and is an avid twitterer

Wendy Wickham
In the Middle of the Curve
Real stuff from a real practitioner- one of my favorites.

Michelle Martin
The Bamboo Project blog
Blog about ‘new technologies to learn and work more productively, running organizations more effectively in a new economy, and taking charge of your own professional development through personal learning and effective career management skills.”

Jane Hart
Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day
An e-learning application or tool highlighted EVERYDAY (do you know how hard that must be?)

Anne Bartlett-Bragg
Learning Technologies
Anne describes her area of interest as, “digital dialogues or communication and the social aspects of learning with technologies and how this can be used to enhance learning.” Always a good read.

Nancy White
Full Circle
Weblog and business site and the place to start if you want great information on online community and collaboration.

Angela Thomas
Angela A Thomas
English Education teacher who teaches in Second Life as Anya Ixchel and conducts auto-ethnographic research.

Danah Boyd
apophenia
Expert on social networks specifically on how youth engage within them.

Cathy Moore
Making Change
I love this blog! If you are an instructional designer and/or write content for online courses, you MUST read this blog. Very real, applicable resources and advice.

Sue Waters
Mobile Technology in TAFE is from Perth, Australia and is the person behind Mobile Technology in TAFE web sites. TAFE is the acronym for Technical and Further Education. Sue is an aquaculture lecturer, cool huh?

Emma King
Emma King is a Brandon Hall Research blogger. YAY!!! That’s all I have to say…of course you should read all Brandon Hall Research blogs : )

Kate Britt
What’s New in PinkFlamingo’s Resource Lists?
A teacher from Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Pam Hook (a/k/a/ Artichoke)
Artichoke
If the deep web had a subset called deep blogs, this would be on it. Thoughtful, well-articulated, challenging posts. Love this blog!

Beth Ritter-Guth
Beth’s Second Life
A blog about teaching English and Women’s Studies using Second Life.

Kathy Sierra
Creating Passionate Users
Kathy Sierra dropped off the grid because of threats by trolls. If you hate the whole woman thing (if you did you probably wouldn’t have read this far…) read I am not a woman blogger. To which I say touch while enjoying the irony of a black lace bra photo that probably led to more hits (as mine did). Hmmm…

Josie Fraser
Josie blogs at SocialTech and heads up the Eddies! a/k/a the Edublog Awards. She’s a UK-based educational technologist.

Karyn Romeis
Karyn’s erratic learning journey
Karyn’s blog is one I read even when I get behind on my reading. There are times when I get behind and have 2000 posts in my reader and before I hit “mark all read” I’ll read Karyn’s blog and several others. Outspoken, straight shooter, with thoughtful posts that make you see things (at least me) in new ways. I learn there!

Sarah ‘Intellagirl’ Robbins
Ubernoggin
UberNoggin is about “social networking, new media marketing, web 2.0 (whatever that really means nowadays) and participatory media.”

Vicki Davis
Cool Cat Teacher Blog
Teaching content with new tools, enthusiasm, and the belief that teaching is a noble calling. Co-founder of Women of the Web 2.0

Cammy Bean
Learning Visions
As described on her site…”Musings on e-Learning, instructional design, rapid e-Learning, templates, the brain and other learning tidbits. As seen from the vendor side of the e-Learning aisle….” I’ve had a lot of great conversations with Cammy this year. One of my favorite bloggers.

Silke Fleischer
Adobe Corporate Blog- Silke Fleischer .
Silke is responsible for product management and marketing for Adobe Captivate. Lots of great tips.

Judy O’Connell
HeyJude
Reflections, learning and social networking through the eyes of an educator and information professional. Judy’s blog says she’s taking up a new challenge as Head of Library and Information Services at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in 2008 where her role will be to reshape virtual and physical learning services for the school. Congrats!

Susan Smith Nash
E-Learning Queen
The E-Learning Queen explores all manner of online and distributed training and education, from instructional design to the construction and implementation of entire e-learning solutions. She finds real-world e-learning issues and applications particularly intriguing; in higher education, military, K-12, and corporate and humanitarian / not-for-profit realms.

Marcia Conner
Live Laugh Learn Lead is Marcia’s new home after merging the Ageless Learner blog. Now encompassing many aspects of life including learning.

Kristin Hokanson
The Connected Classroom
Thoughts of an emerging edu-blogger committed to creating constructivist learning experiences for students.

Lisa Reichelt
Disambiguity
Contextual research and user centred design.

Lynn Wernham
Learning
Lynn blogs to develop a social network for mutual reflection & learning. I’ve had several great conversations with Lynn this year.

Tracy Hamilton
Discovery through elearning
Another practitioner who blogs about daily challenges and blogs for professional development.

Lynn V. Marentette
Interactive Multimedia Technology
Lynn is a School Psychologist, Computer/Technology Student, Consultant who blogs about interactive touch screen applications, ubiquitous computing, human-computer interaction, universal usability and accessibility, Universal Design for Learning, serious games, and technology innovations.

Christy Tucker
Experiencing E-Learning
One of my favorites. Be sure to check out the Technology Skills for Instructional Designers series!

Cynthia Russell
Technology Escapades
Current projects and interests center around the proper use of technology in enhancing teaching and learning in the health sciences.

Joan Vinall-Cox
Joan Vinall-Cox: Blog
Joan writes about her fascination with the Web as it affects learning. Joan is one of the few bloggers I have met face-to-face. Joan and I connected through blogging and arranged to get together in Toronto where I was leading a workshop. Great conversation. Make me think about how nice it would be to get together with other bloggers.

Speaking of getting together…we will be announcing our 2008 conference details shortly. I’d be interested to hear from fellow women bloggers interested in meeting up face-to-face or participating virtually in a women-in-education blogger’s panel.

I’m also happy to set up the webbed feet blogger’s panel…

Here’s a jibberish generator (called the bloog…originally created for mashing up blogs) that could shouldn’t be used by e-learners to create their own educational game called…”you figure it out.” I’m kidding of course…but, it did make me think about taking text and putting it in a tag cloud to visualize large amounts of text.

Below, I’ve taken notes from a PowerPoint presentation on generational differences and put them in a tag cloud (which may not be viewable in a reader). Is it just me or can you see tag clouds being used to illustrate course “objectives”visually? Just me then, oh well. Via Boing Boing.

accepted appreciate authority boomers change civil classroom comfortable conscious develop discussion don downsizing esp etc flexibility form generation grew group hard interested job learning level life optimism options parents people person practice program reference remember share since skills social soft suburbs technology themselves traditional training value view ways woodstock work

created at TagCrowd.com

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it.
-Mark Twain

Employment is very quid pro quo. This work for that cash. Blackmail some might say. You hope to find or create a paying gig that involves more ‘play’ than ‘work’. Something you love and are passionate about.

I suspect play is not a word many organizations would use to describe the ‘work’ their employees do and, not a word many employees would use to describe what they do for pay. When we work, we are moving toward something – finishing it, moving it along to the next step. When we play we use our imaginations and aren’t concerned with outcome. But we hear, say, think…

• Stop playing around and get back to work!
• I’ve got to stop playing with this software and get back to work…
• Or one of the worst cultural rock climbs…what are you doing…playing a game? (why we call it “serious” gaming?)
• Maybe even…I’ve got to stop blogging and get some work done.

When it comes to educational/developmental blogging inside an organization, I suspect it’s viewed mostly as play. It’s not ‘real work.’ How many corporate employees (who are not writers or professional bloggers or corporate bloggers) get paid to consistently write and reflect at work? Consultants foot the bill but use their blog to build business. Some bloggers monetize to gain a source of income. Who pays you to read this? How many employers wouldn’t want employees who can reason critically and think deeply? Wouldn’t they pay for that?

The collaborative nature of blogging leads to critical reasoning and deep thinking – skills that may be in short supply with answers always at your fingertips via Google or Wikipedia. Think of some of the innovative ideas you’ve been exposed to by reading/writing blog posts or how reading something may have caused you the think, reflect, gain knowledge, and perhaps even change your mind. Emerging theories like connectivism, new ways to connect through social networks, educating in virtual worlds, etc. are all the stuff of blogs.

How do we incorporate blogging in the workplace? How do we get at the deeper thinking-type skills? For starters, let’s try not to call it blogging. Let’s look at usage.

The matrix below by Scott Leslie was referenced by Stephen Downes in a older article on E-Learning 2.0. Perhaps to get at the critical reasoning, deep thinking, and collaborative ‘play’ we need, we say instead that we need an easy way to keep project teams collaborating, to share knowlege about the department, to share expertise. Instead of saying we need to be able to blog we say we need this for whatever we’re actually using it for.

(Click image to make larger)

If you’re trying to think of ways to illustrate and sell the whole 2.0 thing at your 1.0 organization, this “Meet Charlotte” slideshow from The Shed might do the trick. It’s downloadable from SlideShare. And, it looks like the nice folks at The Shed will let you customize it so long as you link back to the original. Nice.

[added after original post because I was blind enough to not attribute to the original creator : ( ]
The original inspiration for this style of presentation was “Meet Henry” from Ethos3 which officially reached cult status.

The popular” Meet Charlie” slide presentation by Scott Gavin, using the Ethos3 model is also excellent.

I’ve created one (below) for learning 2.0 reusing content from The Shed . You are welcome to use it/improve it but please attribute it to me, The Shed, and don’t forget the original creators at Ethos2.

| View | Upload your own

I stumbled across two articles that really resonated with me. Here and here. The latter of those two articles, from GIBS review, has a great quote about art and business that, I think, can be applied to educational blogging.

“The arts discipline is emerging as a role model for business.
Writing, reflecting, collaborating,…it’s an art and it can lead to great innovations.”

As I talk to those in corporate training I sense that educational blogging – writing (and expressing ideas in other forms), reflecting, and collaborating – is not taken too seriously. It’s a hard sell – both to employers and employees. Generally employers don’t pay people to write and reflect and employees can’t envision writing and reflecting about their work. ‘What should I write? they’ll ask.

I can probably track down  many companies that are having great success with educational blogging – this art of writing, reflecting, and collaborating – but it’s not mainstream by a long shot. Why? Maybe this….

Skills that utilise intuition, inspiration and active imagination haven’t found a home within the corporate world. “Many employees have equally separated their love of creativity and the arts, and a chasm exists between their right and left brains.

Aah…this stirs up that oft cited concept that children are more imaginative, more artistic, than adults. True? An older position paper, “The Child’s Right to Creative Thought and Expression,” for the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) by Mary Renck Jalongo, says:

To be imaginative means that a person formulates rich and varied mental images, sees beyond the obvious, and draws upon experience in inventive and effective ways.

Adults may have the advantage when it comes to storing and retrieving information, drawing upon experience, and making judgments about what is appropriate and effective. Fishkin (1998) uses the term “germinal creativity” as a preferred descriptor for budding creativity in children. While germinal creativity produces unique ideas, the child may not yet have the ability to execute them well or communicate them clearly to others.

Why pursue writing, reflection, and collaborative learning in the workplace? In a word: innovation. An article in the GIBS review, The Art of Work is a great read that helps answer that question.

Art clearly stimulates and preserves business. It therefore makes sense for business to stimulate and preserve art. Art embodies diverse interpretations of how we see the world. It opens our minds, tempts creativity and inspires new ideas.

It’s the collaboration/innovation link that resonates most with me. I would not write here in this space if not for the collaborative nature of the conversation, the creative and diverse opinions of the community, and the support.

In the past, in the present, and in the future, our most enlightened visions of education will be connected by the common thread of imagination, creative thought, and enhanced opportunities for creative expression. As we look ahead, it will no doubt be possible to trace society’s greatest innovations and achievements back to an abiding respect for creative thought processes during childhood. For when we value creative thinking and creative expression in society, it becomes part of our social consciousness and social capital. Society then protects its reserves of creativity by fashioning networks of support that are capable of instilling confidence, promoting resilience, and multiplying ways of being intelligent in every person, commencing in childhood and continuing throughout the lifespan.

In the GIBS article, Linda Naiman believes “with an increased focus on the arts, corporations can overcome many major obstacles, including diversity, cross-group collaboration, and work/life balance.” She also says:

A shared art experience in an environment of trust and freedom enhances our sense of belonging and creates a crucible for deep conversation from which caring, camaraderie and genius-level thinking emerge.

I like Naiman’s description of the process mining group gold.I certainly have witnessed some genius-level thinking in the little group some of us refer to as the edublogosphere. And I’m grateful.

The calendar year is winding down and I’m reflecting on a great year – a year of many good firsts for me.

• First year working for Brandon Hall Research full-time (after working a year and a half part-time)
• First year of working at home full-time (after a year of working at home one day a week)
• First year blogging
• First time I met several of my co-workers face-to-face

Firsts bring change. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad. Firsts are what learning is all about. Firsts are experiences that change the way we do, feel, view…

Working at Brandon Hall Research has changed the way I live, working at home has changed the way I parent, blogging has made me more reflective, meeting my co-workers has given me a greater feeling of connection. Suh-weet! How about you?

Some random firsts -

• first can-opener (1858), 30 years after the can (eventually used to open a can of spam?)
• first edible spam (1937)
• first email (1965), first email spam (1971)
• first Monty Python SPAM sketch (1970)
• first time I packed a can of spam while moving and wondered why I had spam in the cupboard (2007)

What were the firsts in our field? The Wikipedia entry on instructional technology notes that its first use cannot be attributed to a specific person or time. When did you first use instructional technology?

My first use of instructional technology (that I can remember) was the See-and-Say (the farmer says) (1965).  Does anyone remember that? The cow says Mooo…