Collection of Sketchnotes from World of Learning Summit 30 & 31 January 2024

Rachel Burnham writes: I spent a very interesting two days at this year’s World of Learning Summit, which was held in January 2024, at Olympia, London. I was fortunate to be able to attend the conference to Sketchnote a wide range of sessions, but of course also enjoyed meeting and speaking with people in between sessions, over lunch and whilst wandering around the exhibition. 

The sessions I participated in were on a real mix of topics – AI and its importance for L&D, skills-based organisations, learning in the flow of work, neurodiversity, reverse mentoring, the advantages of curiosity and developing our digital skills as L&D professionals. 

The sessions that were most effective from my perspective dug deeper – for example Kerry Richardson from Thames Water presented an excellent case study (see Sketchnote later in post), which was about ‘Learning in the flow of work’ as advertised. But she also set out clearly how to run an effective pilot, including focusing the intervention clearly on a business need – in this case reducing complaints with clear success criteria and showed how to cost the results generated from the pilot. There was so much useful stuff in this session – not necessarily new, but practices that are important and often don’t get done. 

Some of the less effective sessions attempted to cover far too much material and so skimmed over the surface. I think it is easier to get more depth if sessions involve just a single presenter or case study or if sessions are slightly longer and I would encourage conference organisers to take this on board. 

 Here are all 8 of the Sketchnotes that I created live over the two days. 

The Opening Address on AI 

Not surprisingly, the first two inputs at this year's conference were on AI and how L&D can be making use of this. My favourite bit was the Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly stages that Trish Uhl outlined that we need to go through in our learning about how to get the most out of AI.

The Skills-Based Organisation 

This is from a session by Asi De Gani and Dani Saadu, who each talked about their organisations' approach to taking a skills based approach to Learning & Development. People I talked to about this session had very mixed responses - some feeling that this was bread and butter L&D and wondering how it was different from a competence based approach, whereas others found it incredibly helpful for the journey that their own organisation was in the midst of. 

Have a look and see what you think. 

A practical look at learning in the flow of work 

Great session from Kerry Richardson, Thames Water detailing how they ran a pilot to add a learning in the flow of work element to the mix using 'Clever Nelly' to pose questions. So many super things about this approach - it taps into both 'retrieval practice' and 'spaced repetition', they focused on addressing a key business needs - reducing complaints - and identified success criteria ie what success would look like, they carried out a pilot and compared with a control group, and costed the results sharing their workings out. Kudos to Kerry and her colleagues for such a rich case study. 

Navigating the spectrum in a neurodiverse world 

I am so excited to be able to share my Sketchnote with you from the session led by Leena Haque and Sean Gilroy from the BBC, titled 'Navigating the spectrum in a neurodiverse world'. Leena described her experiences of autism and of the challenges of school and finding her way into the world of work - she used pictures and video clips to vividly communicate her story. Of course as a Sketchnoter, my favourite bit was when she told us about how she drew pictures at school to process her learning! This is something we can all do and benefit from. 

Sean also explained about the initiatives the network they co-lead had taken at the BBC to address the needs neurodiverse people had identified - training to increase awareness, changes to the built environment and to technology to make it more accessible and to build community. 

I know a lot of people in the session were very moved by this presentation. 

L&D skills for the digital world 

Here's my Sketchnote from Jo Cook 's session 'L&D Skills for the Digital Word' which was getting us thinking a bout the Digital skills we need now and how to future proof are skill sets. 

The curious advantage 

Great conversation about curiosity and how it benefits organisations and how to nurture it. So good to hear Peter Ashcroft, Garrick Jones and Tim Munden discussing this. 

The evolution of reverse mentoring 

This session was co-delivered by Emily Cosgreve from 'The Conversation Space' and Mark Taylor from RSM UK. They shared their experience of using reverse mentoring to stimulate intergenerational conversations at work and they included lots of helpful detail about the way they did this. 

I hope you have found it useful to see summaries of the sessions in Sketchnote format. I am always interested to hear what people think of them. 

If you are interested in learning to Sketchnote yourself or have colleagues who would find this of interest do get in touch – my next open workshop is online from 1pm on 29th February. Or get in touch if you would like to commission me to create a Sketchnote for your organisation. 

Rachel Burnham 

2 February 2024

 

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

Learning Technologies: What Managers Really Think

Rachel Burnham: Yesterday GoodPractice launched the third in its annual pieces of research into how managers actually approach learning to address the challenges they face in their work.   This year’s report focused on the perceptions of managers in relation to learning and technology.  This is distinct from how effective the learning solution actually is.  As the report says ‘Perception is part of the context we work within: how managers feel about their workplace learning technologies will inevitably have an impact on their use.’

The research was conducted in association with ComRes and involved an online survey of a sample of 521 managers working in businesses with more than 500 people, carried out in the summer of 2017. 

The research focused on two overall questions:

• ·       What do managers think about the typical learning technologies that might be provided by their organisations?
• ·       How do they the learning technology provided by the organisations compares with technology they access in their personal life?

Here is my Sketchnote recorded live at the launch event on 16 November 2017:

Rachel Burnham

17 November 2017

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.  

'And' Thinking - Thoughts from Learning Live 2017

Rachel Burnham writes: I had the opportunity to participate in last week’s Learning Live event, held in London and organised by the Learning and Peformance Institute (LPI).   

This two day conference brought together Heads of Learning from very many different organisations, predominantly in the UK, but with individuals from other countries participating too.   The programme included a wide range of sessions, an opening Question Time session with a panel and a keynote speech from Jeanne Meister, co-author of ‘The Future Workplace Experience’.  A feature of this event are the many breaks, which provide great opportunities to extend the conversations begun in sessions and I really enjoyed the conversations I had with participants and exhibitors.

It is always challenging to pick out themes from conferences of this sort – everyone will have their own take on the event, will have participated in a different mix of sessions, had different conversations and have applied their own filters to the event – but here is my take on this year’s Learning Live.

When I stand back from the event and review my Sketchnotes and memories, what stands out for me were all the ‘And’ pairings throughout the event.  What I mean by that was the emphasis on pairings such as ‘Learning and Peformance’, ‘Creation and Curation’, and ‘Formal and Informal’,

I like ‘And’ thinking. I like the possibilities in it. The opportunity to value different approaches.  To appreciate what works when and why and in what situation.  I quite like the stretch in it, of holding sometimes seeming opposing views. I much prefer it to ‘Or’ thinking – where often one right way is promoted and the other critiqued or even rubbished.  I find ‘And’ thinking more realistic, more challenging, more fruitful as a broad approach.  (Though I do realise that in writing this, I am setting up ‘And’ thinking in contrast to ‘Or’ thinking, which means I am indulging in some ‘Or’ thinking myself!)

The ‘And’ thinking began early on in the event, when digital transformation was discussed in the Question Time session and one of the panel members talked about how digital learning can now bring both ‘rich’ experiences and also ‘reach’ a wide number of people.  

Many sessions discussed ‘content creation & curation’ – in her keynote, Jeanne Meister shared the example of GE’s digital curated platform ‘BrilliantYOU’ – a learning marketplace including all sorts of different kinds of learning support – micro-learning, courses, and also user generated materials ie created materials.  It was interesting to hear that GE offer help to employees on how to contribute your knowledge and create resources to share that knowledge eg how to write for other people. Kelly Palmer, also discussed curating content in her session ‘Learning Disrupted’.  She identified three different approaches to curating content: a) to jobs/roles/projects; b) using AI to aid curation and enable personalisation; and c) by letting Subject Matter Experts curate content.

In the session, ‘The Social Aspects of Learning’ Lucy Standing, from The Association of Business Psychology, began by warning us that she had nothing new to say, as social learning is the oldest kind of learning, though she gave us plenty to think about.  She explored some of the key ways that social learning occurs through observing others and through talking together.   She closed her session by sharing a range of research findings exploring the value of social learning as part of formal learning experiences – social learning – time to question, discuss and explore can add depth of learning.  It was interesting to see her referring to Julian Stodd’s Scaffolded Social Learning Model which brings out the value of combining formal learning with social learning opportunities. Definitely ‘And’ thinking.

In ‘Finding the Right Blend’ from Paul Cooper and Rebecca White, the emphasis was definitely on ‘And’ thinking.   The session explored how Rebecca’s organisation had begun to make use of blended learning, from a position of L&D being very face to face.  This has involved far more than simply introducing elearning. They found that digital enhances face to face, rather than replacing it, but also that there is no one right blend, what works will depend on staff, customers and the broader context.

In Julian Stodd’s own session exploring ‘Social Communities in the Workplace’, he spoke about how communities can filter and help to make sense of the huge amount of information individuals are experiencing, but the value of this will depend upon the diversity of that community.  He talked about the ‘dynamic tension’ that occurs between formal structures and social structures, each bringing value, scaling differently, but both being needed.  ‘And’ thinking.

But the biggest area of ‘And’ thinking for me was around the area of ‘learning and performance’.  Not surprisingly, it being the LPI’s event there was quite an emphasis on the importance of ‘performance’.   Charles Jennings in the opening ‘Question Time’ session said ‘Be passionate about performance’ and went on to share ‘The only metrics that count are business metrics’.   But no one was arguing that this means learning is unimportant, simply that both learning and performance need to be integrated into everything in the organisation.  For Joseph Richardson, from Lego Group, one element of doing this is to move from topic thinking to identifying what behaviours we want to trigger at different points in the process and designing learning to enable this.  Both Jeanne Meister and Kelly Palmer focused on integrating learning into the everyday.   Jeanne Meister quoted Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft about encouraging ‘Learn-it-alls rather than know-it-alls’ and Palmer spoke about how learning every day is needed and about creating a learning culture in our organisations, where for example it is OK for someone to be watching YouTube at work for learning.  Charles Jennings spoke of the relationship between learning and performance, when he shared a colleague’s take on this ‘Learning is the intelligent by-product of continous improvement in an organisation with a learning culture’.  This turns on its head our usual thought that learning leads to improved performance and recognises that sometimes it is reflecting on improved performance that helps us to see what we have learned.

I have come away from the event, with much to think about and much to action.   Which is just as it should be.

If you were part of Learning Live, I would love to hear about your takeways from the event and what you do as a result. Do share – we need these practical stories and experiences to develop our learning further.

Rachel Burnham

11/9/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the use of digital skills for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.  

Rachel & Niall's VR Odyssey - Part 1

VR Research - Why Did We?

Stimulated by a LPI Webinar on 13 Dec 2016 “Go Virtual!” with Ron Edwards from Serious Games International, both Rachel (@BurnhamLandD) and I realised independently that Virtual Reality (and Augmented Reality – more on that later) was a subject area and practice about which we knew very little but wanted to understand more. For myself, my reasoning was that, as an independent L&D & Learning Technologies Consultant, VR was an area which was gaining more and more attention and interest both within the L&D world, but more importantly, outwith L&D, in the real world! And I needed to be able to experience it, play with it, understand its capabilities and limitations, so that I could, as a minimum, discuss intelligently and with confidence both within my L&D/HR and OD network, but much more importantly, in conversation with potential and existing clients who may have expressed interest in its potential to support their learning programmes.

We had a brief discussion after the webinar and decided that we would collaborate on some research on VR for Learning, to increase our own knowledge & understanding, but with the added benefit of being able, perhaps, to share that learning for others’ benefit later.

As has become the norm with so much these days, the consumer/domestic uptake of easily accessible and easily grasped technologies has the potential to leave L&D out in the cold without the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to understand, discuss and/or apply them appropriately. Often, what people do and use in the private lives becomes their norm and their expectation elsewhere, especially in the workplace.

Now, it’s not just down to L&D to be responsible for the adoption and integration of relevant technology into the workplace. Often, corporate policy and/or cultural practice mitigates against rapid inquiry, experimentation, refinement and adoption of such tools. But Rachel and I feel that L&D has an opportunity to show some leadership here, to be seen as a bridge-builder and a trusted partner to business and its people by offering advice about and practical experience of using such tools in the support of performance improvement.

What follows is our individual and collective journey in Virtual Reality discovery to date, some personal insights, a curation of further analysis, thinking and resources, and an invitation/call to action to others to engage and share their virtual journeys with us.

Niall Gavin

@niallgavinuk

Feb/Mar 2017

What is VR?

VR or Virtual Reality is a technology that is widely used in gaming to create a 360 degree/3 dimensional experience that immerses participants.  The degree of immersion can vary from simply being able to looking around you 360 degrees, at either an image or video of the real world or some kind of simulation, through to being able to interact with this ‘world’ by picking up and working with objects.  Increasingly, people in L&D are working out how to use this technology to enable effective learning for individuals and organisations.

A closely related, though different technology is AR or Augmented Reality.  This is where technology, utilizing a smartphone or tablet, is used to project additional information or images into the real world, as an overlay.  One of the big hits of the summer of 2016 was the game ‘Pokemon GO’ which used AR technology, through mainly mobile phones, to enable people to see and collect ‘cartoon-like’ creatures whilst out and about.  AR technology for use in L&D is not as advanced, at the time of writing (February 2017) as for VR, but some authors believe that there is even more potential to use AR in the workplace eg as part of performance support.

VR is often thought synonymous with the use of expensive headsets, but there are different ways of accessing VR to suit a range of budgets.  At the cheap and cheerful end, you can purchase a ‘Google Cardboard’ headset for under a tenner and use this to view VR apps through a mobile phone.  The quality is not as good as with the more expensive sets, particularly if you already wear glasses and they can only be used for VR apps which involve no interaction. With this equipment some sound is possible, either broadcast through the mobile phone or via the earphones for your mobile phone, though the quality may not be great. It is worth searching online for access to free apps to use with this type of equipment and this is an easy way to get a flavour of what is possible with VR.   

At the next level of expense are a range of headsets which not only include glasses, but also more substantial earphones.  These also use mobile phones to play the software, but the addition of the earphones means that they can incorporate sound much more effectively alongside the visual images.  They also can incorporate some options for interaction within the VR programme, so that the participant can make limited choices between options for action eg to see some tips or to jump straight in or to choose between answers.  This makes the whole experience much more engaging for the learner.   Some programmes will also build in feedback for the learner on their performance in the activity and this also enhances the experience.

With this middle range equipment, you can continue to use the free apps, but there are also a good range of developers offering off-the-shelf VR experiences that could be used.  However, for many learning and performance needs you may find that you need to commission a bespoke VR solution.  Whilst it is possible to create VR solutions in-house, it is much harder to produce interactive solutions without external specialist support at this stage in the development of the technology. 

At the top end of the market a much fuller immersive and participatory experience can be gained using a combination of headsets, with earphones plus handheld devices which allow you to interact with the environment.   This means that you can pick up objects, turn handles or levers, open doors and manipulate objects in other ways – leading to a much fuller experience and vital for VR software that is about becoming familiar with servicing equipment for example.   It also means that it is possible to have a much more interactive experience in VR, which of course can contribute to more effective learning. These sets are much more likely to be used with bespoke designs for the VR environment, created to meet the specific needs of an organisation and a specialist provider will be needed to support this.

For details of equipment please take a look at the accompanying curated resources list, which will appear at the end of this series.

Rachel Burnham

March 2017

5 Pointers for Getting Your Head Around the New E-Learning

Rachel Burnham writes: I have had an amazing time over the last year participating in the Curatr based MOOC ‘E-learning: Beyond the NextButton’.  This was a 12 month based free online course to explore new ideas and approaches to e-learning – each month new material was released and an international group of participants explored a whole range of e-learning related topics.  I have learnt so much.

I was already aware that e-learning is a much broader field, than the traditional e-learning course, which is often used to deliver compliance training and involves those endless ‘Next’ buttons to take you onto the next page (hence the title of the MOOC).   I have previously used the CIPD definition of e-learning

‘learning that is delivered, enabled or mediated using electronic technology for the explicit purpose of training, learning or development in organisations.’

(Egan, 2012)

And this recognises that e-learning can include: webinars/virtual classrooms/live online learning; podcasts; use of video; discussion forums; digital resources such as blogs/infographics/e-books; and the use of social media and enterprise social networks.

What this MOOC introduced me to was e-learning as also encompassing the use of AI (artificial intelligence), VR (virtual reality), AR (augumented reality), Wearables, Proximity Beacons and Bots, plus how these links to some of the research into effective learning, such as spaced learning.  So it has widened my understanding of how technology can be used to support and enable learning hugely.

This is a rapidly expanding and developing field.  It was great to hear about the possibilities of AI to enable much more personalised learning experiences and to experience the use of AI in language learning through programmes such as Duolingo. It is fascinating to hear how rapidly messaging is growing and along with this chat bots that are being used to answer customer queries. These can be used in learning both to provider learner support and also to aid with learning practice.

‘Wearables’ is another rapidly developing field – probably most of us have heard of tools such as Google Glass and fitness bracelets, which opens up the possibility of using wearables to host performance support tools. Proximity Beacons came as something entirely new to me, but are beginning to be used in museums and galleries to provide additional information directly to visitors’ phones where they have the relevant app installed and again I can see the huge potential in these for performance support, particularly in equipment rich environments.  

Augmented Reality or AR hit the public awareness over the last summer with the Pokemon Go craze, but as the technology develops there are lots of possibilities to use AR for performance support and as a new kind of resource for learning.   Virtual Reality or VR is already being explored by very many organisations to provide opportunity for people to have immersive experiences with lots of potential for impacting on behaviours and attitudes as well as to orientate people to new roles and locations.

With so many different kinds of e-learning and with the speed of developments in this field it is easy to feel overwhelmed by all of this.   In L&D we urgently need to steer a course between being an ostrich with our head in the sand and being a magpie picking up every new and shiny thing that comes along.

Instead, I have 5 pointers to help you get your head around these developments.

1)  I recommend deploying your Personal Learning Network (PLN) to help you keep up to date with developments in these fields.  By PLN I mean your network of colleagues, contacts and acquaintances that you interact with both in person and virtually.  Make sure that within your PLN you include people who are already working with these kinds of technologies  - follow them on social media, read their posts & blogs and engage with them.  They will act as translators & conductors for developments in these fields helping you to stay in touch.  Plus, this will give you some ‘go-to’ people as starting points if you want to find out more about any particular technology.

2)  Develop a broad awareness of each of these technologies in terms of their particular characteristics and how they can be best used to aid learning - what are their strengths and weaknesses.  This is just the same as understanding when and how best to use a game or video or other more traditional learning tool.  Not every tool is useful in every situation.

3)  Link this awareness to a deep understanding of what is needed in your own organisation to help people and teams perform to their very best ability.  Consider carefully which tools will help to make learning more effective. Some tools will have potential for use in your organisation and some won’t.  Avoid magpie tendencies to get excited about something that isn’t relevant to your own organisation.

4)  Don’t fall into the trap of just limiting these tools to creating more effective learning.  Keep focussed on performance.  Some of the tools may do away or reduce the need for learning at all, by substituting the need for learning with improved performance support.

5)  Experiment – once you have identified which tools have potential within your organisation, try them out.  Experiment with small trials and learn from this.

So these are my 5 pointers to help you navigate through this changing technology and steer a course clear of both ostriches and magpies!

Rachel Burnham

23/1/17

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals update and refresh their skills.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

Get Started in Developing Your Digital Skills

Rachel Burnham writes:  This Sketchnote summarises the session I delivered in the Technology for Learning arena at the CIPD L&D Show on 12^th May 2016 on behalf of MOL Learn.

If you are interested in finding out more about how digital tools and technology can be used to enhance learning in the workplace, why not also read my review of this year's OU Learning Trends Report.

Rachel Burnham

16/5/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

'Embracing Change' CIPD Leaders in Learning Sketchnote

Rachel Burnham writes: Marnie Threapleton, from the benchmarking organisation, Towards Maturity, spoke at the CIPD Leaders in Learning session in Manchester on Thursday 10 March 2016.  She spoke about their benchmarking report ‘Embracing Change’ and the importance of working with business leaders, the self-directed learner and equipping the L&D team (see my previous blog on this topic ‘Hurdling Tips for the Cobbler’sChildren’.   Here is my Sketchnote of her session.

 

Rachel Burnham

13/3/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

Contrasting Curation Tools

Rachel Burnham writes: I am currently participating in the Curatr year-long MOOC ‘ELearning Beyond the Next Button’ and as part of our ‘homework’ we were set the challenge of exploring a digital tool we hadn’t used before and sharing our thoughts on it. I decided to try out Flipboard and used it to create some support materials for some work with a client.  As I have used a number of other curation tools before, I thought it would be useful to contrast Flipboard with them.

The four tools I am comparing are Scoop.It!, Listly, Pinterest and Flipboard – I have decided to compare them using some common headings.  All of them can be used to create digital collections of materials – articles, blogs, video clips, images. So here is my homework – in time honoured fashion a little late!

Scoop.It!

1. Ease of use – this was the first of the tools I used and I have found it to be incredibly straight-forward and intuitive to use. 
2. Appearance – As the name of the tool suggests, the pages produced look like newspaper pages.  Allows you to create online magazine pages on different topics.  Can also be used to create newsletters – though this isn’t a feature I have explored yet.
3. Features – You can include articles, blogs, video clips, etc and they appear with a visual.  It is easy to add your commentary explaining why you have included each item and this helps your readers to make sense of the material you have included.  You can find items to add to your Scoop.It! pages through a search feature included in the tool or add your own finds.  My experience is that in-built search tool brings back a very wide range of items in some way linked to the theme of your page, but that you can waste a lot of time searching through this, so I have on the whole not used this feature.  A downside, is that the materials you include on the page appear in the order to include them, so that your latest additions are at the top and most visible – which may not be the order you would prefer.
4. Cost – You can now create only one Scoop.It! for  free but beyond this you have to pay a monthly subscription.  This has gradually become more restrictive – when I started using it you could have five free pages.
5. Examples – I have used this to create collections of additional support materials for programmes that I deliver eg ‘GettingStarted in L&D’ and also have used it as an alternative to a face to face session eg ‘Social Media – Using Twitter for Professional Development’.
6. Overall – If you are not very confident in using digital technology and need to put something together quickly, Scoop.It! is a great tool to start with.  The main downside is that after one Scoop.It!s you need to start paying.

Listly

1. Ease of use – I found Listly relatively easy to use and was able to create my ‘list’ quite quickly.  I haven’t used this tool as much as the others, mainly because I don’t like ranking material hierarchically, which is kind of the point with this tool!  But it was easy to use.
2. Appearance – The key characteristic of Listly is that it allows you to create a ranked list of materials and you then have several options of how to display this list.   It is very easy to change how you want to display the list – however, it is always in the form of a numbered list.
3. Features – One of the many plus points about Listly is that it is easy to reorder the materials included. You can also add your own commentary.
4. Cost – Free plus premium options.
5. Examples – I have used Listly to produce a resources list in answer to a question from an individual about facilitation skills.
6. Overall – Writing this review, makes me realise that I really must explore Listly some more, as it has some great features eg being able to reorder the materials easily and I need to get over my prejudice about lists!

Pinterest

1. Ease of use – I think Pinterest is very easy to use to display collections of images – after all that is what it is designed to do!  It is also really great for curating video clips – I use it personally to curate music from YouTube and have a great selection of jazz music tracks as a result.  It is also possible to use Pinterest to great effect to curate articles, but this can sometimes be a little tricky, if they don’t have an image included.
2. Appearance – Pinterest allows you to curate a series of digital pinboards.  Each pinboard has a ‘title’ visual and then when opened a series of images, along with commentary.  If you click on the image you can access the video or article.
3. Features – One of the advantages of Pinterest is that it is familiar to many people – however, one of its disadvantages is that it is well known as a place for wedding planning, home decoration tips and such like, so that it can be difficult to persuade people that it can be used for other types of topics too.  Each item needs to have a visual, so one of the downsides of using Pinterest is when an article doesn’t have a related image – however, I have discovered that you can still pin it, providing you find another image to pair it with – it’s a bit fiddly, but perfectly doable.  You can ‘pin’ items either using a ‘Pin it’ app or directly using the url address – which is very flexible. A useful feature is that you can set up private or public boards and this means that you can work on a board in private and only make it public when you are ready.  However, you can’t take a public board and make it private, which is a shame.  You can also co-create boards with other people by inviting them to ‘pin with you’ and this can be done in private, so that you could have a closed board for a group of people.
4. Cost – It is free and there are no limits on the number of boards you can have.
5. Examples – I have used Pinterest in many different ways.  Here is an example of a board I created for use in an activity to express feelings for an online group.  I also curate a board on the topic of Productivity in the UK, which I regularly share via social media  – which is about as far away from wedding planning as you can get!
6. Overall – Pinterest took me ages to learn how to use, but it was worth persisting with and is now one of my favourite tools. 

Flipboard

1. Ease of Use – Whilst I didn’t find Flipboard as easy to use as Scoop.It!, it is pretty straightforward.  The key for me was understanding that the first thing you see once you have started using Flipboard is a collection of articles, from whatever magazines you have opted to follow (it is a bit like the timeline in Twitter) – this is known as ‘Cover Stories’, but you can then also set up individual  ‘magazines’ on different topics.
2. Appearance – One of the aspects I like best about Flipboard is that it has a lovely clean modern design for the magazines – it presents the visuals from the articles and video clips beautifully.
3. Features – You can curate items from the Cover Stories into your magazines or select items directly from other sources using a ‘Flip it’ app.   I had a little difficultly using this app with my Edge browser, so that I have gone back to using Internet Explorer to add pieces to my magazines.  Again there is a private or public option, which you can reverse and options to co-curate with other people.  It is possible to do some re-ordering of the pieces within a magazine, but it seems to be limited to moving a piece to the front of the magazine.
4. Cost – Free, with no limits on the number of magazines.
5. Example – Here is the collection of resources I produced to support a wider programme around performance management.
6. Overall – I quite like Flipboard and definitely plan to explore using it further.

So, that is my review of four curation tools.  Along the way I have learnt a key lesson, which is not to add too many pieces to any one piece of curation, otherwise you lose the benefits and ‘readers’ won’t be able to see the wood for the trees.  It pays to be picky and only select for inclusion the most relevant items for the topic and the needs of your intended audience.

Rachel Burnham

21/2/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD