CGI Informal Learning Case Study

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Jay Cross refers to the March Issue of CGI Technology Viewpoints, which covers this Canadian company’s experience in implementing informal learning practices. CGI is discussed in detail in Jay’s book.

This is a good reminder for the naysayers (it can’t be done here) to see what a large corporation can actuallly implement. Here is CGI’s “bottom line” on informal learning:

  1. When creating an environment that blends a rich mixture of available technologies to drive optimal collaboration, organizations don’t need to invent anything fundamentally new.
  2. Be creative, taking advantage of what’s already in place within the enterprise, and look at open source options as an inexpensive but viable way to build a robust collaboration infrastructure.
  3. Collaboration doesn’t require a large systems integration exercise when you leverage what’s already readily available and proven.

LCB Big Question for April

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The Learning Circuits Blog asks, what should Instructor-Led Training (ILT) and Off-the-Shelf Content Vendors do today in the face of more demanding customers, lower margins and more competition?

I’m not sure what vendors should do, but as their business model has been declining, some of us have been promoting open source technologies and business models as well as do-it-ourselves informal learning approaches. During my exploration of shareable digital content, through a Creative Commons search, I came across this photo:

failed-business-model.jpg

Here’s a post I made a couple of years ago on This New Business of Learning.

Jumping In

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Imagine walking into a cocktail party that has been going on for a few hours and jumping in to the conversation. Blogs are like that. They flow along and different people join in the conversation from time to time. I monitor about 150 blogs and even if I don’t read each post, I have a general idea of what’s flowing by, so that I can jump in when I feel like it.

Behind most blogs lies the story of the writer and the community.  Shawn, at Anecdote, has this to say about stories, “Stories only have meaning in the context of their telling. That is, you need to tell and listen to stories to transfer (not capture) tacitly held knowledge. It’s a social process. You need to be part of the conversation.”

To use blogs for learning effectively, you have to jump in and go with the flow for a while. Understanding what is behind the writing as well as the conversations around each post then gives the necessary context.  Learning with blogs isn’t just about finding a useful fact here or there, but more of engaging in multiple stories that flow by, sometimes mixing and other times diverging. Following these flows is an acquired skill. It’s a meta-learning skill for the internet age that just might be worth developing. Jumping in is the first step.

Entrepreneurship Resources

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I really enjoyed my time with the Grade 11 Entrepreneurship class at TRHS on Friday. As promised, here are some references for further exploration. I encourage any readers to add references that may be helpful for either students or teachers.

Online Markets … Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.

It’s a bit of a rant but there is much truth in The Cluetrain Manifesto. I would urge anyone who does any work online to read this book.

In just twenty years, between 2000 and 2020, some 75% of our lives will change dramatically. We know this because it happened once before. Between 1900 and 1920, life changed.

Nine Shift looks at work, life and education in the 21st century and includes a blog. Another blog that looks at similar issues is The Future of Work Weblog.

If entrepreneurship is your main interest, then read Jeff Cornwall’s blog on The Entrepreneurial Mind.

My online bookshelf has many business-related books, and I’ve added my own reviews to several of these.

Swivel, for data

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Swivel is an online data upload, comparison and sharing platform. You can upload spreadsheets, or import them from Google, and then create visually appealing graphs. I came across Swivel in the last copy of Fast Company, which shows that the company already had 585,816 graphs uploaded at the the end of its first year of operations.

Swivel has a lot of potential for business uses (it was originally developed to graphically interpret Google AdWords campaigns) but also for information campaigns, such as civilian deaths versus military deaths in Iraq or the use of Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr.

I can see all kinds of projects for students to delve into the world of data in a much more enjoyable way; kind of like YouTube for geeks. All you need is some publicly available data sets (lots on the web from government agencies and non-profits) and start comparing and creating. Finally, it seems that Swivel will remain free:

The rules will be simple:

  • If you upload data for the public, Swivel is free.
  • If you upload data and choose to keep it private and secure, there will be a fee.

It’s very easy to post a Swivel graph to your blog, like this one on world CO2 emissions:

2000 by Region/Country

Sailing through School

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One of the unschooling activities that we are looking at for next year is boat building, or at least boat repair. Graham Watt sent me this wonderful article on how you can learn most of life’s essential lessons by building your own boat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

We hear a lot these days of student debt, young people working for years in humdrum jobs to clear the heavy personal debt that a university education necessitates. I’ve heard of former students who’ve almost had to forgo buying iPod Nanos, plasma tvs and magnesium rims for their Civics just to make ends meet, some even forced to continue eating Kraft dinners. This is unacceptable, and for those young people leaving high school and considering university I offer an option I myself took several years ago. Your parents will have the proverbial bird when they hear it, but they did when you came home with the celtic tattoo and the lip ring too.

So here goes:

For the same amount of time and money you’ll spend in university, you can build yourself an incredibly beautiful sailing boat. And I guarantee you’ll learn more about life, yourself, and the nature of stuff. The bigger the boat, the easier it is to build . Little boats need precision. Big boats just need energy. Building a large sailing boat by yourself as your major learning experience, has several advantages over going to university. It’ll take you some serious construction time, about as much as you’d spend deconstructing things and being terminally bored in an undergraduate program. And there’s a very positive side to the boatbuilding option; you’re putting something beautiful together, rather than taking something ugly apart.

As well, you can live on the sailing boat after you finish it, and sail away in it, then after several adventures involving beautiful women or men or both, sell it for much more than you put in to it. Try doing that with a diploma, unless of course it’s in psychiatry or advanced plumbing.

So forget about the skill set. What you really need is a Skil saw. As far as actual learning about life, and becoming a serious thinker, I think the boat building experience is better here too. Everything you do physically in building a boat, must also be done mentally. One quickly learns to plan, reflect, and especially not to drill a 10mm hole in the hull unless you’re damn sure it’s in the right place.

Let’s look at some comparisons.

Importantly, the examinations are much tougher for the sailing boat than for the university work. The sea is a hard marker. A 10-metre wave tearing off your deckhouse is more devastating than a note from your prof saying you should rework the essay on Heretical Tendencies of Disparate Families Living Near Organized Places of Worship.

There’s an artistic side to boatbuilding. Some yacht designers are pure artists, with an ability to match functionality with grace under pressure. Remember, a Stradivarius, looking so fragile and vulnerable can be put through the rigours of Beethoven’storms with little damage. Boats are like songs, so build one you can stand to have in your mind a long, long time.

There are several free bonus courses you’ll receive when you opt for the boat building. You won’t find free courses at the university, I assure you. With the boatbuilding bonus courses you’ll hardly feel you’re learning, but I assure you that you will . With the sailing boat you get a relatively painless course in geography, and some nifty words like metacenter, and phrases like ballast/displacement ratio.

You’ll also receive, absolutely free, a slightly more painful course in how to use a screw driver while inverted in an area resembling a horizontal concert toilet. You’ll learn about exotherms and how the potential explosive effect of too much catalysed resin in the acetone bucket can quickly get you off the All-Bran and possibly off the boat. When you build a big boat, you actually get into it, you’re not just faking that you’re into it as you might when writing an essay on Cardinal Newman’s Apologia. And of course, after you’ve finished the boat the learning goes on and on. You’ll enjoy a free course in natural conflict resolution as a sailing boat lives on the interface of atmosphere and hydrosphere, boisterous personalities frequently at odds with each other and quite willing to tear you apart to prove a point.

So why go into debt for $50,000 learning things at university you’ll never use, like finding out why Hegel was such a dork or that Fidel Castro isn’t a hedge fund, when you can go into debt borrowing $50,000 to buy stuff in order to build a boat?

It’s a no-brainer, literally.

You’ll sail the boat for years, hopefully with a wonderful partner you’ll meet who thinks you’re absolutely terrific, partially for having such a fine boat, and maybe because you have callouses and perhaps a missing finger or two. Then you’ll sell the boat for at least $150,000.

Trust me, I did this myself, except for the missing fingers. 35 years ago I opted to build a sailing boat rather than going to university. I still think it was a good move. A university degree that’s 35 years old has very little power to impress. But the boat, which today is sitting pretty in tiny Luperon Harbour in the Dominican Republic with Dutch registry still turns heads. And while I don’t own it anymore, I’m still learning something from it. I’ve found that something you build yourself remains yours no matter where it goes.

The day we understand that the problem is proximity, and we turn around and let our asses thaw, is the day our productivity will begin to grow.

By Graham McTavish Watt, Sackville, NB

CanadaGoose
The Canada Goose — built by Graham Watt

World Economic Forum – Networked Readiness Index

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The WEF has released its Global Information Technology Report, which includes the Networked Readiness Index:

Since it was first launched in 2001, The Global Information Technology Report has become a valuable and unique benchmarking tool to determine national ICT strengths and weaknesses, and to evaluate progress. It also highlights the continuing importance of ICT application and development for economic growth.

The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:

– environment for ICT offered by a country or community
– readiness of the community’s key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
– usage of ICT among these stakeholders.

Here are the top ten (plus one) rankings:

  1. Denmark 5.71
  2. Sweden 5.66
  3. Singapore 5.60
  4. Finland 5.59
  5. Switzerland 5.58
  6. Netherlands 5.54
  7. United States 5.54
  8. Iceland 5.50
  9. United Kingdom 5.45
  10. Norway 5.42
  11. Canada 5.35

This is the first time that Denmark tops the list, while the US slipped from 1st to 7th place.

Self-sufficiency or Resilience?

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The NB Self-Sufficiency Task Force is making its recommendations, based on its stated realities of a “need to increase our population and our labour force”, “increase labour productivity by providing people with the right tools for he right jobs”, create “large-scale investments in infrastructure”, and “expand our existing corporate base”. All of this is premised on what appears to be the primary reality, that “Export growth must drive overall economic growth. This will create prosperity”.

The ways to achieve this are provided as 20 policy recommendations, including “Rebranding New Brunswick”, creating a “flexible incentives program to attract businesses” and conduct a “review of business tax policy”. The Task Force also recommends the establishment of several new organisations, including:

  • A Commission on the Future of Local Governments
  • An Aboriginal Employment Council
  • A $1-billion Self-Sufficiency Fund (of which $500 million would be raised from long-term bonds from the Liquor Corporation)
  • A not-for-profit corporation to raise funds necessary to develop an e-health system
  • A centre of excellence for service delivery

In addition, the Task Forces recommends the “creation of a lean manufacturing program by the Research and Productivity Council” and a targeted immigration strategy.

I’m not an economic development specialist but I have worked with several NB companies, government departments and non-profits. I try to see patterns and determine the underlying foundation of operating models, to see what makes them tick.

It appears that the foundation for self-sufficiency is that we need to export our stuff and we need to get bigger companies (corporations) to locate here so that they can sell our stuff. In return we get jobs, and employees will continue to take their cars and drive to these places that generate the paycheques, from which the government will deduct taxes or invest their beer money profits. This money will create some think-tanks and money-lending agencies to fuel this economy.

So what’s new? Corporations create jobs based on shipping stuff that belongs to the people, especially our grandchildren. We get jobs to pay taxes and attract some more people to come and pay taxes. Everything goes along just fine as long as there is demand for our products. The corporations get richer and the average citizen remains a wage-slave. This is self-sufficiency?

In reading the reports, I didn’t see much that was innovative at all. Yes, there’s an understanding that “We need to be prepared for sweeping changes of unprecedented magnitude”, but little that explains how we can be better prepared. For instance, the need for education is stated, but it is assumed that the same outdated industrial structure is adequate for our societal needs. It is assumed that work will continue to be a place to which we commute, increasing the demand for roads. Recommendations for agriculture are to continue the corporatist model, whereas there is real innovative thinking coming from people like Rob Paterson on Food:

This series will be all about how we can practically, and in a generation, shift from a model where farming now profits only a few large external companies, where it creates serfs of our farmers and where it is ruining our biosphere. Shift from this to a model where it is our farmers who make the money and where farming is the most powerful beneficial force that restores and sustains the key services that give us all life on PEI.

This report seems to be a recommendation for business as usual, but under a new brand. It supports the entrenched powers, particularly faceless corporations who are not rooted in the land.

Thomas Homer-Dixon has said that we really need to develop resilience in order to be prepared for an uncertain future. The best tools available for that task are open source collaborative problem-solving and the Internet. The grassroots, who really understand the land and our communities now have the means to assemble and collaborate. It seems that real leadership and vision for our future as a resilient region is up to us.