We, at Blackboard, pride ourselves on developing solutions that go beyond formal training to embrace “teachable moments” and informal learning. Every so often we discover a really cool tool that complements our solutions, and Jambok is one of them. Simply put, Jambok lets people in your organization create and share knowledge by recording webcam video using or capturing their desktop, then posting it, along with documents, podcasts, or other media.  Employees anywhere within the organization can find and access it when looking for that information.

Furthermore, the tool allows users to rate and tag the information, as well as comment on it.  This helps others find the best, most relevant knowledge, and includes a feature that lets trainers or managers promote the best or most important knowledge to ensure it shows in search results. It also tracks who has viewed what content and how they interacted with it, to inform trainers about the quality of information and how it can be improved.

There is an enormous amount of information available to workplace professionals online, and sometimes it can be a huge task just to get to it all. Thankfully, Human Capital League compiles some of the best bloggers on workplace issues into one easy-to-navigate website that can save you hours of searching when you need information on a specific topic.

The site aggregates postings from more than 50 bloggers, including some of our favorites like Janet Clarey, Jay Cross and Harold Jarche, and organizes them into useful communities such as “Leadership,” “Coaching & Mentoring” and “Training & Development.”

Last week Blackboard’s ProEd group sponsored a one-hour webinar on the effectiveness of leaders as coaches, led by Karie Willyerd, co-founder of Future Workplace. During the webinar, Ms. Willyerd provided evidence of the effectiveness of leaders as coaches and showcased successful implementations of this coaching model. She also offered strategies to maximize learning opportunities for leaders when teams are dispersed and time is limited.

As we recently mentioned in our October Calendar, we in the Professional Education division of Blackboard are incredibly excited to join fellow professional learning thought leaders at Elliott Masie’s Learning 2010 conference next week.  What can attendees look forward to from Blackboard?  A presentation by Patrick Devlin, VP of Sales & Market Development, on the value of establishing a continuous learning environment online (Monday at 2:45pm), demonstrations of Blackboard’s latest release – 9.1, and more!  But don’t just take my word for it…

So what does workplace learning look like today?  That’s a question that Brandon Hall Research CEO Richard Nantel and his collaborators address on their blog almost every day.   Focusing on the latest and greatest in training and development, performance support, job aids, learning technologies, talent management, organizational learning, and other aspects of adult learning, the blog is a must-read for those in or moving towards blended, social and other forms of online learning in the workplace.  Of course, as the role of technology grows in the corporate education world, so does the importance of tuning in to blogs like this.