Learning

Learning

People, Events and Ideas

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“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

I don’t completely agree with this statement but it puts into perspective where our greatest effort should be. The discussion of ideas and finding ways to take action on those ideas is the great work that has fallen on the laps (laptops?) of the billions of people who now make up the “middle class”, a term with its own baggage, according to John Robb:

It’s hard to imagine a more derogatory and less descriptive label than “middle class consumers” for the group of people that created most of the world’s massive wealth, rich technologies, and societal complexity.

The comments to John’s post have some name suggestions for the group of people who have the education and the communications tools to change society. Social media provide a way for this new “Yeoman” class to act individually and collectively for change and self-determination. An example in my network is Rob Paterson with his work in mobilizing communities on PEI and in public broadcasting. There are many other free thinkers working at the local level with a mind to the global situation. Using Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, I think that events and people are important in helping us come up with new ideas but they are merely grist for our cognitive mills.

The ideas of others, events that we watch or are involved with, and the people we meet and interact with; all provide the context for our own ideas. I believe that Ms. Roosevelt’s point was that we cannot narrow our focus to only people and events and that the true work for our minds is to develop our own ideas. Social media give us the opportunity to put forth ideas in progress and to evaluate and challenge ideas. Now that we finally have these tools, it is our duty as global citizens to use them wisely.

The feeds at the top of this diagram are mostly inputs, with varying levels of interactivity. At the bottom are outputs of knowledge work. This diagram is an evolution of my web tools for critical thinking post.

Innovation and Learning

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In Innovating in the Great Disruption, Scott Anthony suggests three disciplines necessary to foster innovation in difficult economic times – placing a premium on progress; mastering paradox; and learning to love the low end. He also discusses the importance of learning;

Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas forward. Fortunately, they can tap into a plethora of powerful tools to facilitate rapid learning.

Rapid learning is not PowerPoint slides turned into online courses but rather increasing the ways to connect ideas and people. This is the future of training and e-learning, or what I call ABC (anything but courses). Anthony’s third point, love the low end, also speaks to the use of inexpensive tools such as web services or open source software. If learning professionals can be seen as catalysts for innovation, then even in difficult times will their future look bright.

On-job support is critical

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I don’t usually get information about training and performance improvement in the Wall Street Journal but this article clearly spells out the benefits of linking training directly to the workplace. In Lessons Learned, Harry Martin describes two cases and provides several links for further reading. Basically, formal training is more effective if followed up with specific objectives for change in the workplace. I think most of us know this, but many organisations don’t practice it. What I found most interesting was the effectiveness of engaging peer support in the workplace, as shown in this figure:

This reinforces the influence of peers, which parents of teenagers already know, and shows the potential for informal structures that encourage peer interaction at work. If you’re looking for better ROI for your training initiatives, the best place to put your effort may be AFTER the training.

Need for collaboration continues to grow

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We’re starting to see some interest in our TogetherLearn initiative and one of the main drivers seems to be cost-reduction. I came across this future-looking ZDNet article via Bertrand Duperrin and it sums up the situation nicely:

However, for business-driven internal enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration projects, I see growth. Why?  Because the business will find their collaboration needs to grow in 2009, while they see IT providing them with fewer services. Collaboration needs grow as a result of layoffs, mergers, and deepening external partnerships (requiring new infrastructure to collaborate outside the firewall with trusted, external partners).  And this happens while IT’s services shrink as a result of layoffs, a focus on streamlining operational costs, while not taking on new projects.

The need for online collaboration is growing as organisations make cost-cutting decisions in travel and training. The recession is just the catalyst that shows the redundancies of industrial, command and control systems in the hyperlinked economy. The need for online collaboration and the integration of work and learning will continue as long as we have the Internet.

Our value proposition for TogetherLearn is fairly simple. We set up a collaborative space outside the firewall and work with clients in their particular business context. We provide support, coaching and access to a network of resources. Clients pay for what they need and no more. The aim is to help online community managers learn and practice their role. We use open source technologies so clients can decide how and where they grow their communities, with no strings attached. Everything is transparent and senior consultants are involved in every step of the process.

Last year at this time I noticed that Big Consulting Firms are Jumping on Bandwagon 2.0. “As I’ve said before, Free-agents and natural enterprises are better. The upstart independents and small consultancies have Clayton Christensen’s disruptive Sword & Shield which the incumbents (large consultants) don’t have. With early motivation to enter this emerging field (Shield) and now with with years of experience and skills (Sword), we the “upstarts” should be able to hold our own.”

The current economic situation has just made the business case for a nimble, low overhead, web-enabled consultancy that much easier.

Learning Fluidity

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Mark Pesce’s post on Fluid Learning has been picked up several people and I like his four recommended processes for networked education:

  1. Capture everything [especially since digital storage is so cheap]
  2. Share everything [e.g. public feed readers, social bookmarks, blogs, photos, videos]
  3. Open everything [no walled gardens a.k.a. LMS]
  4. Only connect [less control allows for more connections]

What Mark calls fluid I’ve referred to before as flow.

Stories are an excellent example of learning flow. For millennia, we’ve learned through stories. Today, content capture and creation tools on the Web let us tell our own stories. Weaving our stories with those of others enables serendipitous learning and becomes a powerful way to reinforce our learning. This is how gamers and hackers, the digital pioneers, learn:

They share their stories.

They know that there is no user manual.

They embrace the flow.

Short, medium and long-term views about the Internet

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Is the Internet a new technology that we have to integrate into our ways of working and learning or is it a transformational way of communicating that will change our society forever? The approach from existing software vendors and established organisations is that Internet technologies can help you become more effective and efficient in your current business model through systems for collaborative work (e.g. Sharepoint) or online education (e.g. Blackboard).

Another view is that we are going through a transformation similar to what happened 100 years ago and that the Internet is like the industrial system and will significantly change how we spend our discretionary time (9 hours each day). Here are the predicted shifts from NineShift:

  1. People work from home.
  2. Intranets replace offices.
  3. Networks replace pyramids
  4. Trains replace cars
  5. Dense neighborhoods replace suburbs
  6. New social infrastructures evolve.
  7. Cheating becomes collaboration.
  8. Half of all learning is online.
  9. Education becomes web-based.

These are major changes and it’s hard to argue with most of these predictions, as in the last two years they’re pretty well all coming about. But is the Internet going to have an even greater impact on society? Mark Federman thinks so.

Federman sees the Internet and related electric media as the biggest change since the 16th century and describes it as epochal. According to his research, we are 150 years into a 300 year change into the electric age and the Internet is the point of acceleration of our shift from print-based communications to electric ones. The launch of the Netscape IPO occurred during the “break-boundary” between epochs.

All three perspectives have validity and can be useful. Yes, we can get efficiencies from these new technologies but they are having an impact on how we work and live that will be obvious in the next decade. We should also keep in perspective that life will be significantly different for our children and grand children, which is difficult for many of us to imagine. How could scribes imagine an age of literacy or an oral society watch as the written word extended power and control?

Combining the short, medium and long views may give us a better picture and a framework to help with the decisions we have to make today.

Photo by SMigol

Get thee to a theatre

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Our son, an actor who plans on majoring in drama at university, sent me this article on How Do Actors memorize their Lines? Anyone interested in how our brains and bodies function together should read this article. Michael Boyd and Oliver Sacks discuss some very interesting case studies about memory:

[Oliver Sacks] “What strikes me is the thousands and thousands of lines on the one hand, and roles on the other. These lines would have no coherence, would make no sense, would not hold together without a role, and especially a role in relation to other roles. The ability to enter a role can again outlast the hippocampi. It can outlast all sorts of mental abilities.”

The type of mental/physical coordination and development that acting enables makes me think that performance arts should have a more prominent role in our education system. We are missing opportunities for integration of drama and the opportunity for students to get a better understanding of themselves. Why is theatre an elective while English writing is compulsory? Can’t you learn English through acting?

Another form of acting is improvisation, where each actor must listen to the others and play off their actions. What a great way to teach listening and empathy! Improv is also a life skill and a good business skill as Brand Autopsy writes in Learning through Improv. Here are some lessons from improv:

  • Failure is an Option
  • Practice Passionate Followership
  • Don’t Act, React
  • Go with your Gut
  • Don’t be a Blockhead
  • Trust Others
  • Make Others Look Good


I never did much acting in school, but I am really seeing the value of it as I watch our son juggling three plays plus his school work.

T&D Learning in 2020

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ASTD interviewed several people in our field and asked what things will look like in 10 years. In Learning in 2020, trends in Tools, Technology, Workforce, Talent Management and Future Leaders are discussed. There’s lots here, some you may agree with and some you may not. Given what has happened to the economy in the last 6 months, many of these predictions may be a bit mild.

Here’s my 2 cents worth:

An educated and informed citizenry

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Rob Paterson thinks that Canada and its government are moving beyond the nation-state and that coalitions may become the main model for future governments.

Meanwhile, the Internet, airwaves and coffee-shops across the nation are engaging in a sort of dialogue. Unfortunately it is not always an informed dialogue and this is a sad state of affairs. How can the electorate engage in the political process when too many do not understand it? In New Brunswick public education there are no classes on civics or government. Our sons learn about politics at the dinner table; thankfully. For instance, there is a lack of understanding about the duty of the Official Opposition, as they’re not just the party that came in second place:

The duty of the Official Opposition and other opposition parties is to “challenge” government policies and suggest improvements, and present an alternative to the current Government’s policy agenda.

There have also been many comments based on the “fact” that the current PM was elected as such. Our Prime Ministers are not elected, only Members of Parliament are elected, and the government’s right to govern is based on the confidence of those members:

The Prime Minister and the Cabinet are responsible to, or must answer for, their actions to the House of Commons as a body and must enjoy the support and the confidence of a majority of the Members of that Chamber to remain in office. This is commonly referred to as the confidence convention.

If the Government is defeated in the House on a key (“confidence”) question, then the Government is expected to resign or seek the dissolution of Parliament in order for a general election to be held. It is not always clear what constitutes a question of confidence. Motions which clearly state that the House has lost confidence in the Government, motions concerning the Government’s budgetary policy, and motions which the Government clearly identifies as questions of confidence, are usually recognized as such.

There is no doubt that a democracy depends on an educated and informed citizenry. We now have easy access to information, but we need to continue with the education.

Federman – No educator left behind

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I’ve been following Mark Federman’s work since he published McLuhan for Managers with Derick deKerckhove. Mark recently gave a presentation for TVO (video download) on No Educator Left Behind that ties together much of his work over the past few years. These include papers like Why Johnny and Janey Can’t Read and Why Mr. and Ms. Smith Can’t Teach (PDF) and the notion of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity (UCaPP). Other ideas sewn into this presentation include epochal changes; break-boundaries and the shift from the 3 R’s of education to the 4 C’s :

  1. Connections
  2. Contexts
  3. Complexity
  4. Connotation

The recent Facebook study group incident in Ontario is used as an example of Mark’s thesis. His presentation also questions the entire system of content-based validation and test scores as a remnant of the 17th Century that should be discarded. There is much in this presentation that should at least be considered by educators and those setting educational policies.