ECLO :: E-Learner No 4

The E-Learner

Issue No. 4

1^st February 2000

Published by

Welcome to the fourth edition of The E-Learner, ECLO's electronic newsletter for members.

The E-Learner complements our existing hardcopy newsletter that will continue to carry articles and information of interest to ECLO members.

As always, we welcome contributions from members, as it is impossible to keep on top of the wealth of information on the World Wide Web on topics of interest to you all.

For your ongoing reference The E-Learner will be archived in the members' zone of our web site.

Editor: Mike Kelleher

Editorial

This is the first edition of The E-Learner since December 1999. I hope that you all had successful celebrations to see in the new era confronting us. Apart from enjoying ourselves, the core ECLO team has been busy developing new ideas and preparing for the successful implementation of our workplan for 2000. The edition of our e-zine offers you the usual mixture of ECLO news as well as some useful web-based resources for you ongoing use.

ECLO2000

Preparations for ECLO's 7^th Annual Conference are well under way. Thank you to all of you who have offered to present at the conference. The programme looks varied and interesting. We have a mixture of corporate presentations, research-based sessions and experiences and ideas from a variety of different sources. We are delighted to have arranged a number of keynote speakers including:

Ihno Schneevoigt, Allianz Versicherung-AG and Allianz Life Insurance Cy Board Member;

Göran Carstedt, former member of the Volvo Group Management Committee and President of IKEA North America and Head of IKEA Europe Retail.

Jean-Charles Lévy, IBM Belgium Board Member and former General Manager of IBM Product Support Services, Worldwide
HR Manager (name to be confirmed), Deutsche Telekom

The conference is in Munich on May 17-19 and the full programme will be published in The Learner at the end of this month. You can get more details and register on-line now via the web site.

The Learner

Our newsletter will continue to be published 3 time per year. It is undergoing its third transformation. It has enjoyed a relatively piecemeal set of transitions since its launch in the Spring of 1996. From a 4 page news- based outlet for ECLO activities, it gained a new design in late 1996 into a two- Product Support Services, Worldwide and current Board member of IBM Belgium; email: levyjc@attglobal.net

Cédric Limoges, Research Assistant, Coventry University, signed for a 3 year Gold membership; email: c.limoges@coventry.ac.uk

Bolette Christensen from Dansk Industri decided to join the Gold Membership; email: boc@di.dk

Welcome to all of them.

More details and photographs will be available in the next edition of the Learner, due out end of February.

Bookstore

We are pleased to announce that, in partnership with Amazon Bookstore, you can order your books on-line via the resources section of the ECLO web site. You will find all of its facilities available through the link on our site. What's more, by accessing Amazon via our site any orders you make will provide ECL0 with a small commission. So, if you use the ECLO site to buy your books, then you also help ECLO financially.

Learning in Learning Organisations

Mike Kelleher led a research workshop in Portugal at end November. The Forum for European Research into Vocational education and Training is a pan-European network of researchers seeking a European perspective on the future of vocational training. The most recent workshop was on the topic of learning in learning organisations. There were several interesting contributions, which are now available to download.

Useful resources

The always impressive TrainingZone web site has added a new dimension recently - an on-line shopping mall for learning and development professionals.

Interesting article

`From mechanistic to social systemic thinking' by Russell Ackoff is an on-line digest of a talk given by this respected author.

Conference Announcement

Systems Thinking in Action Conference announcement Managing Organisational Complexity

Pause for thought

As we strive continuously to create organisations that are worthy of our highest aspirations, why does this joke make me wince?

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer. When asked to define "great" he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"

He now works for Microsoft, writing error messages.

The E-Learner is published by the

European Consortium for the Learning Organisation