Michael Sampson on Collaboration

Flipped Classrooms - Use Classroom Time for Collaborative Interaction #collaboration #education

2012-02-18T11:00:00+13:00

One principle of an effective meeting at work is to use face-to-face time for discussion, negotiation, and clarification - not for passing on the information. Meeting attendees are supposed to come to the meeting already prepared - they've read the briefing papers, they've studied the options, they've formulated their view. Someone even wrote a book last year about this, but I can't recall the name of the author nor the book title (it was something like "don't call a meeting").

Anyway, a similar idea is taking hold in some educational settings. Classroom time is used for interaction, not instruction:

"The PI technique relies on the power of the “flipped classroom.” Information transfer (a teacher transferring knowledge to students) takes place in advance, typically through online lectures. In short, students study before rather than after class.

As a result, the classroom becomes a place for active learning, questions, and discussion. Instructors spend their time addressing students’ difficulties rather than lecturing. While originally developed for Mazur’s introductory physics courses, PI is now used across multiple disciplines, from the sciences to the humanities."

Mac OS X 10.8 - Mountain Lion

2012-02-18T08:00:00+13:00

Apple released early information about the next edition of Mac OS X:

"Well, don’t look now, but Mountain Lion brings even more of the iPhone/iPad features to the Mac. The juiciest payoff here is the suite of Mac apps that now mimic what’s on the iPhone/iPad, like Reminders, Notes, Messages and Game Center. Through your free iCloud account, all of these apps are synced instantly and smoothly across all your Apple gadgets. On the Mac, you type a reminder to yourself; it appears simultaneously on your iPhone.

Notes is cool: you can add photos to your notes, or change the font styles and sizes. (The font and size changes sync over to your iPhone/iPad, but not photos.) You can also pin a note to your desktop to make sure it grabs your attention.

Messages is particularly awesome. Now you can type little messages — or shoot photos or videos — to anyone else with an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Mountain Lion Mac, right from your computer. These may feel like text messages, but they’re free and don’t involve the cellphone company. And because everything is synced up, you see the same conversation thread on all your gadgets. If you started a chat with your boss on the phone, you can get home from work, sit down at your Mac and see the whole transcript so far.

This new Messages app replaces the venerable iChat. Or, actually, adds onto it; all the old iChat features are still there. And you can download an early version of this app from Apple’s Web site."

G-Shock Watch with Phone Integration #gshock #iphone

2012-02-17T20:00:00+13:00

Casio announced (but hasn't yet released) a new watch that integrates with a phone via Bluetooth:

"Your watch can vibrate when you get a call, text or e-mail and show the person’s name, even if your phone is in your purse or briefcase. The G-Shock can help you find a phone lost in your sofa by making it chirp loudly. It can also beep at you if you leave the phone behind in, say, a restaurant.

This arrangement makes a huge amount of sense. How many times have you complained that you missed a call because you didn’t feel the phone’s feeble vibrating in your pocket? Now you won’t be able to miss it; the vibration takes place right on your wrist. (You tap twice on the watch’s face to send the call to voice mail.)

You know how cellphones set themselves automatically as you travel from time zone to time zone, courtesy of the cellular network? Well, now your watch can set itself, too, since it’s talking wirelessly with your phone."

Note that (a) it's not available yet, and (b) phones that support the forthcoming watch are ... thin on the ground. Eg., the iPhone 4S supports it in theory, but not yet in practice.

User Adoption Survey - Winner 5

2012-02-17T17:00:00+13:00

I have been running a survey on approaches to user adoption for the past couple of months. The survey will be closed next week, so you still have a few more days to take part, but the fifth and final winner of a book is:
- Michael from the United States, with a copy of Collaboration Roadmap (2011).

Thanks to Michael for taking the survey, as well as to everyone else who has invested some of their time into my research. Thank you - I truly appreciate it.

If you haven't taken the survey and are involved in user adoption, please take the survey now.

Beware Fake-Work Projects

2012-02-17T14:00:00+13:00

Carla warns about the dangers of fake-work projects, and what to do to avoid the same:

"When I first started working from home, I established basic productivity ground rules: no extended personal calls during office hours, no watching daytime TV and very limited time for personal tasks. Imagine my surprise when I realized that even though I stuck to the ground rules, I had put in a long day with very little billable time.

What went wrong? My suddenly-tidy desk told the story. It reminded me of how I decided that in order to be more productive I needed to get organized…right now! What I failed to acknowledge in my enthusiasm to gain more productive time was that I was also avoiding a particularly nasty project for a client I wasn’t enjoying working with.

I had created my very own (and rather convincing) fake-work project to avoid doing what I didn’t want to do. I was stuck between not really wanting to do the project and dreading firing that particular client, so I bailed on making a choice and found myself a convenient distraction."

She suggests five strategies:
- set daily focus goals
- manage your day by calendar
- know your fake-work favorites
- understand the temptation
- handle less important tasks efficiently

Mobile Access to the Intranet - Survey

2012-02-17T11:00:00+13:00

I've been a long term believer in mobile access to collaborative systems, and as the Intranet becomes a habitat for many people, mobile access is important. Sabel Online and Frankwatching in the Netherlands are currently running a survey on mobile access to the Intranet:

"This research is about the use, needs and developments of intranet.

Sabel Online and Frankwatching perform this research to learn more about the status of the mobile intranet in and outside the Netherlands.

Common terms used in this survey are 'mobile intranet' and 'mobile devices'.
'Mobile intranet is intranet developed and shaped for a smartphone
(a mobile phone with expanded computer possibilities) or tablet
(a handheld computer, for example an iPad). In this survey these devices
are addressed as 'mobile devices'. "

If this is of interest to you and your organization, please take the survey.

Cloud Service for Health Care

2012-02-17T08:00:00+13:00

Optum introduced a cloud service for health care, to increase the effectiveness of patient care:

"The health care cloud environment from Optum simplifies the lives of caregivers, innovators and health IT managers – those whose work has the greatest impact on patient care and on the performance of the health system. The health care cloud from Optum helps these health professionals communicate and access essential health intelligence more efficiently, create and deploy health applications quickly and manage technology in their offices or across networks with ease.

The health care cloud from Optum features secure text and video chat capabilities to help health professionals connect, communicate and collaborate with other health professionals and with patients. These capabilities are necessary for full participation in Accountable Care Organizations and other emerging care models that require more effective collaboration. It also includes productivity tools that easily integrate with a range of health IT systems to help doctors, nurses and other clinicians, and health administrators organize their information and resources in one, simple interface, accessible securely from any Internet-connected device."

Don't Answer Your Phone! - on The Smarter Office

2012-02-16T20:00:00+13:00

Over on The Smarter Office blog, I talk about not answering your phone when you're already in a meeting:

"Perhaps I’ve had it too good, but the most annoying words to hear when getting someone on the phone are “I can’t talk. I’m in a meeting.” Usually I don’t have to wait that long to figure it out though. Something about how they answer the phone—their tone, the slight hesitancy, the distracted quality in their voice—give it away before they even speak the dreaded words. I can usually beat them to the punch line now too—”You’re in a meeting, aren’t you?” In the back of my head, I’m adding – “If you can’t talk to me, why did you answer the phone in the first place?”

Why does this happen?

The very idea of a meeting is that two or more people agree to be present for the other, for some purpose. For an update. For sharing of ideas. For getting information out into the open for the benefit of all in attendance. For all the wrath they attract, a meeting is one of the purest forms of collaborative activity available to mankind. In my opinion, the wrath is not about meetings per se, but about meetings that are poorly planned, badly run, and that require inappropriate attendance and participation. I believe in the power of well-run meetings for collaboration.

And then the phone rings."

FileTrek for File Sharing and Tracking

2012-02-16T17:00:00+13:00

FileTrek announced the release of its new file sharing and tracking service, to support collaboration between people while honoring security and compliance needs:

"FileTrek announced today the only combined cloud-based file sharing and tracking solution on the market. FileTrek is designed to allow secure file sharing, project collaboration, and the ability for managers to track content and data with enhanced compliance-friendly audit reporting. The solution is easy to use, transparent to users and can scale across thousands of desktops and mobile devices to maximize individual and workgroup productivity.

FileTrek provides audit trail reporting that gives management and IT visibility of all sharing, syncing and versioning activities of a file or its contents. Automatic audit trails showing file genealogy can be generated to obtain a comprehensive view of actions related to critical data. This is crucial for regulated industries with compliance requirements as well as any enterprise or small business that creates and/or manages controlled content and wants to ensure the security of its company IP."

Available immediately.

The company also announced $10 million of new funding.

NewsGator Webinar - Nalco and Social

2012-02-16T14:13:51+13:00

NewsGator is hosting a webinar in late February about how Nalco brought social approaches and technologies into their business operations:

"As many of you know, implementing a social layer within a global company comes with both challenges and rewards. Join us for this one-hour webinar on Tuesday, February 28th at 2pm ET with Dan Flynn, Nalco’s Manager of Knowledge Management, as he explores the journey Nalco took to weave communities and a social layer into the fabric of their business.

From pilot to production their voyage is fraught with barriers, potholes, and a thousand decision points that ultimately effect deployment, governance, and acceptance. This live webinar explores Nalco’s journey from start to present day that ultimately resulted in governance principals and a best practice approach for community deployment and growth. "

Registration Required