Rachel Burnham writes: I was clearing out some shelves in my office the other day and I came across a notebook with my notes (& pictures!) from when I was first learning to facilitate live online sessions – though back then I called them webinars and was just learning to distinguish webinars and virtual classrooms. It was 2208/9.
I started learning
about them and how to facilitate online out of sheer curiosity, rather than a
need or specific demand from a client. As
a result I was able to suggest to a client that we started to make use of live
online sessions as part of a blended approach to the redesign of a programme
that I went onto to develop.
When the pandemic
began I had 10 years’ experience of designing and facilitating live online
sessions. And I was so glad of this! And the client had developed its provision by
then to offer options for all courses that were either blended or totally
online. It was comparatively easy for
them to move over their offerings to a totally live online programme.
Somewhere in between
these times, a fellow volunteer for CIPD Manchester, Mike Collins, introduced
me to using some new-fangled online meeting tool called ‘Zoom’. As we found it useful for holding planning
meetings in the evenings to bring together our small but dispersed team of
volunteers for CIPD Manchester’s L&D work we adopted the practice of using
it. It saved us all having to struggle into the centre of Manchester for a
short meeting and made it much easier to find mutually convenient meeting
times. Back in 2017, it never occurred
to me that I would be using Zoom for hosting most of my professional work,
chairing CIPD Manchester committee meetings, painting socials, #LnDCoWork
Manchester Christmas Curry and even family Christmas parties.
I started using
drawing in my work in about 2015 and found myself developing skills in
Sketchnoting, before I had even heard of the term! Now the majority of my work is drawing and
Sketchnoting related and I have even illustrated Gary Cookson’s ‘HR for HybridWorking’ book. My art teachers from
school would be flabbergasted.
Last week in the
#LDInsight chat 13/1/23, we were discussing how we could explore the use of AI
in our work. And that made me think back
to that notebook I had found earlier in the week.
Sometimes, you just
don’t know what will be useful and in what way, until it is essential to have that
skill and experience. Message to myself - keep exploring, keep learning, keep
experimenting.
Rachel Burnham
17 January 2023
I
help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more
effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.
