Why Blog?

I am taking a 5 week course with East Carolina University and the course funded by my employer for my particular career field, CP 32, Training, Capability, and Doctrine Warfighting Developers.  I am never one to turn down learning opportunities particularly if they have value added to my career field and my cost is more in my time than currency. I consider my time extremely valuable and learning something new everyday is great, but every now and then you need to be the formal documented student.

For subscribers to the blog, you are aware of my extremely painful decision to put my doctoral studies on hold for the sake of family issues. If this is the first time visiting the blog based on the class assignment, "Welcome!".

For the final assignment, one option is to blog. The blog can be on any topic and must contain at least three entries. This has been a class full of web based experiments and writing. We hit the ground running and will not stop until July 26.

So one of the three posts required for the assignment is this one. If you have not seen my blog posts come through the stream lately it is because the days and hours are filled with work, school, and family.

So whether you are new to blogging, given up on blogging, or a seasoned blogger, like those in the blog list on the right that I subscribe to..."Why blog?" For those that know me, the better question is "Why not blog?"

Here are a few links from my knowledge sharing passionistas that I connect with by reading their blogs, following them on Twitter, Google+, or Linkedin, or maybe all of them. Thanks to my personal and professional learning network (PLN) there is not one day that I do not learn something from, because, or in spite of you. It is not possible to list and describe every blog that impacts my digital footprint. In no particular order:

Principal Eric Sheninger's blog, A Principal's Reflections (2012), Why Blog?
Steven Downes, Half an Hour (2009), Blogging in Education
Will Richardson, Weblogg-ed (2004), The Blogging in Schools Question
OEDb, Top 100 Education Blogs (n.d.)
Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher
Richard Byrne, Free Technology For Teachers
US Army Combined Arms Center

I could probably write a blog post once a week on how blogging (individual and collaborative) has impacted my life, fulfilled my autodidactism needs, improved my writing, reading, comprehension, connected me with people and information that I would not have a chance to in the F2F environment, share good and bad news, provide an outlet for those who do not have another method to "just get it out", provide a personal audit trail of information, share lessons learned...and many more reasons. Hmmm...maybe an idea for the next homework blog post.

Thanks again to those people supporting my web experiments during this short, fun, and productive class.
Comments, recommendations, reaction box checks, and +1s are appreciated.

Where else do you tinker?

I have been using milSuite, which is touted as social media behind the Department of Defense firewall. Great place to connect with other professionals while feeling the parallelisms in public and the military education systems.

*To access milSuite, one needs a CAC or AKO/DKO credentials. The milSuite team has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

As I transitioned back to Georgia I have not been lounging around like stagnated swamp water. I have a fantastic opportunity to work with some terrific officers in the U.S. Army as a Course Manager in one level of an officer's professional military education (PME), in addition to my own educational pursuits, and giving scholarship and Google product workshops at the local library.

One of the pilots I am working on is to implement electives. I facilitate the Social Media elective. Many people assume that the military only does training, when in fact we have some well known colleges such as U.S. Military Academy aka West Point, Naval War College, Army War College, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Air War College...which make up one part of Professional Military Education (PME). I do not participate in the education versus training argument as I leave that to the great debaters because I move forward with people who are focused on the learning.

When you Google PME or Professional Miltary Education the results are varied. The U.S. Code: Title 10 contains the links to the chapters on Armed Forces, the U.S. Naval War College has a page with a description and resources about Joint Professional Military Education, Cornell University Law School has links with descriptions for the U.S. Code, which includes Title 10 Subtitle A > Part III > Chapter 107 Professional Military Education, and Wikipedia has an article on Joint Professional Military Education.

There are a few of us who are active on milBook who still blog publicly, just not necessarily about information that may violate the Department of Defense and service specific social media policies. Working with the military has its own set of unique challenges just as the local public school system (RCSS) does, but the parallelisms exist. You are reminded that we are all human beings and the power of sharing knowledge, skills, and abilities goes beyond any walled learning environment, or whether your career field involves a two way rifle range or crossing busy streets.

We are also in the process of implementing a milWiki portal to encourage and empower learners to share information whether they are attending the residential course, future students, or alumni. Little by little we are making a difference, whether through milBook, milTube, milWiki, or milBlog. As we embark on round two of the electives option, I look forward to sharing concrete experiences, lessons learned, and connecting with people who are knowledge sharers, lurk and learners, virtual mentors, and/or the next best thing since sliced bread. 

So where have you been tinkering?

Comments, recommendations, and/or check the block of the Reaction boxes are always welcome.

How do you measure your intangibles? Justify your ROI?

After reading The Value of Learning: How Organizations Capture Value and ROI and Translate Them into Support, Improvement, and Funds by Patricia Pulliam Phillips, Jack J. Phillips another factor was entered the components for consideration as I formulate ideas and themes for my concept paper.


For those who run on the ADDIE gerbil wheel, develop daily, weekly, or monthly status reports on productivity, create performance evaluations, or other types of status reports...how do you measure what people bring to the table? How do you document the intangibles? How do you justify your ROI? How do you document what you learn, create, develop or ____________ (enter the words that apply to what you do)


The book addresses some common intangibles such as reputation/image, leadership, social responsibility, intellectual capital, team effectiveness, networking, communication, learning, innovation, creativity, and others. I am sure you have unique intangibles that you bring to the table when you assess strengths and weaknesses in your personal and professional life. How do you measure and document intangibles in your quarterly or annual performance evaluations?


While the book addresses ROI calculation, analyzing Benefit/Cost Ratio, Payback Period, Net Program Benefits, Program Costs, when you apply this to what you with whether you are techno-n00b, techno-phobe, or techno extreme how do you document what you do and justify your productivity?


Technology integration varies from organization to individuals, justifying your ROI, providing measureable connections to missions, and identifying intangibles which support the mission, vision, and organization may allow employees to see their role in the overall picture as technology becomes an expected skill.

So how do you identify and measure intangibles? Calculate your ROI? Calculate the value you bring to the product/program/objective/mission?

References

Phillips, Patricia P. and Phillips, Jack J. (2007). The Value of Learning: How Organizations Capture Value and ROI and Translate Them into Support, Improvement, and Funds, Chapter 9 Measuring the Hard to Measure and the Hard to Value—Intangible Benefits 

Full access through Books24x7: http://skillport.books24x7.com/book/id_22813/viewer.asp?bookid=22813&chunkid=0364327553

Partial Preview in Google Books:  http://books.google.com/books?id=77f0iN8tyeoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Phillips, P. (2010) Calculating the Return-on-Investment. Chapter 16 ASTD Handbook of Measuring and Evaluating Training. ASTD. © 2010.  Retrieved from Books24x7. http://common.books24x7.com/book/id_35563/book.asp