- Blogs - Learning more about what Blogs are and how they are used is valuable in itself. What better way to do that than to create your own? And, just last week we discussed the value of including blogs in our search strategies when looking for certain types of information. We tested out using Google to specifically search Blogs.
- Flickr - I've just started to investigate this, but I've seen it used as an example of faceted classification in records management articles. The fact that photos are "tagged" is worth spending time learning about. This is the specific angle that I plan to investigate as I interact with the site. In fact, knowing about other technologies helps bring continuous improvements to our own (such as the DEQ gallery... i.e. what is our tagging schema?)
Friday, March 30, 2007
Relevance of Learning?
We all knew it would happen. Someone was bound to ask, "What does this learning thing you guys are doing have to do with your work at DEQ?" Well, it happened to me yesterday. I offered a very thin response of it helps us all become more familiar with technology in general, and you never know how you may be able to use a technology once you've learned it. I gave the Flickr example - which was batted down with "DEQ has its own photo gallery." Maybe so, but that really isn't the point. Learning in a supportive, collaborative environment is, to me, ALWAYS a positive thing. And so, I resolve to not only work harder on the lessons we undertake together, but to also think about how they relate to my world (in all my environments, play on DEQ tag line intended!). Because I really do believe that there are many areas where what we discover - planned and unplanned has value to my work life.
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3 comments:
Constant Life long Learning can never be a bad thing. I once heard some one say that what you will be doing in 5 years largely depends on what you learned during the past 5 years. Those who do not constantly keep learning will likely be in the same job...if they are lucky. Keep investing at least 15 minutes a day to learn and others will see how that pays off in the long run.
Now working full-time, having a house to maintain, caring for 2 dogs, etc., it's difficult to find the time to spend 15 minutes learning something new each day, outside of the office. This is a preferred learning environment for me, being at the office, with my colleagues. We’ve met about 3 times, and I’ve learned something new from them each time. I consider what we are doing work-related. We’re teambuilding. We’re becoming more tech-savvy and we’re sharing what we've learned with one another. I think blogging could be a useful tool to track work on a project or to track a new employee’s progress within their first weeks on the job.
Y'know, I don't know that I've ever seen "tagging" and "schema" in the same sentence before...though now that you mention it it makes a ton of sense. Hrm....
A lot of tools are starting to support tagging as another way to gather metadata - blog posts, to be sure, but increasingly wiki articles and even emails (viz. Google and GMail for this).
As I know you know, I think learning is ALWAYS a good thing - after all, people were disparaging email and IM 10 years ago as "stuff my teenagers do".
Here's an internal sales tip: Blogs can be used as a timely, easy, less formal way to keep folks updated on projects and status reports. Leave it as private or implement an enterprise-friendly solution, but instead of sending YAE (yet another email), post to the blog. Get people to subscribe to the feed (I like Google Reader for "river of news" and Wizz for individual subscriptions and OPML - yes, look it up. :D )
Cheers!
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