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Off the grid

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High SierrasIt’s time to get away from electronic diversions, and spend some time in nature, once again. Off to the high Sierras, up near timberline, lakes, rocks, trees, and wild critters.  There’s no phone connection, so no internet, email, etc.  And with nought but a twitch and a shudder, I shall endure :).

On a side note about mobile, I’ve got two invitations to talk mobile at the beginning of next year.  A sign that we’re finally hitting our stride?

Back at the end of the week. Hope you too are finding time to recharge your batteries.

Ain’t it Tweet?

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OK, so my colleague/mentor/friend Sky finally got me on Twitter.  If you don’t know twitter, it’s a microblog, where you post the equivalent of a SMS (text message), maximum 160 characters.  People I respect are into it, but I’d wondered the advantages.  Sky told me he was using TwitterFox which lets you put it in your Firefox browser.  So I installed it, and managed to get it running (tho’ I may still be mucking a few things up).  And finding out that people will ‘follow’ you in the hopes you’ll visit and see their ads, e.g. weightloss; there’s spam everywhere; something I’m doing wrong?

So far, I’ve been on it a few days (@Quinnovator), and find it easy to update what I’m doing, harder to use it as a reflective tool.  I’m also only following a couple of folks I know, as I haven’t found an easy way to find folks I know who might be tweeting.  So far, some interesting things are coming through and I’ve answered a couple of questions.

One of the few folks I am following, however, pointed me to this site, recommendations of how to use Twitter as a college student.  I like where someone looks to a technology and finds the learning affordances (what I try to do myself).  I’ve not the experience with Twitter, let alone the additional apps people are building (e.g. retweetme, a twitter reminder system), as yet, so it’s nice to see someone else doing it.

I’m not going to be SMSing my tweets (I’ve a limit on SMS messages, and like that I never come near the limit), but I will be giving it a spin through the browser interface.  Any recommendations?

Mathematics or mathematician, reconsidered

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“Don’t teach kids mathematics, teach them to be mathematicians.” (I believe it was Seymour Papert)

It was in the scoping phase of a new project where this came to mind, and I realized that, depending on your definition of ‘mathematician’, I don’t want them to be mathematicians either, but I want them to be mathematical problem solvers.  That is, I don’t necessarily want them to be able to create mathematical theories any more than I want them to be able to recite math formulas; I want them to be able to solve problems with mathematics.  And, as Jonassen tells us, the problems we give kids to solve in schools bear little resemblance to those they need to face in the real world.

My thoughts wandered further, however.  I wondered if we could create rubrics around what a good math problem-solver looks like, and have students evaluate each other and assist one another in becoming good problem-solvers.  Like Brown and Palincsar’s Reciprocal Teaching, they could take turns solving problems and looking at how they do it.

Of course, I want to generalize it, and find rubrics that define meaningful skills like searching, design, research, problem-solving, etc, even for adults (ala work literacy) that individual can use for self-evaluation, but also peer or guide evaluation (360; level 3, etc) and mentoring. Particularly for digital literacy.

What do you think; would you like a set of such metrics and a social support infrastructure to self-develop in the use of new technologies and skills for accomplishing your goals?

Lead the Charge?

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This month’s Learning Circuit’s Big Question of the Month is whether learning organizations should be leading the way in the use of Web 2.0 technologies. Or, to be more exact:

  • Should workplace learning professionals be leading the charge around these new work literacies?
  • Shouldn’t they be starting with themselves and helping to develop it throughout the organizations?
  • And then shouldn’t the learning organization become a driver for the organization?
  • And like in the world of libraries don’t we need to market ourselves in this capacity?

The short answer is yes, we (I’m assuming most of you are learning professionals) should be leading the way. It may seem like an odd locus for technology awareness, but it’s really about technology affordances for organizational effectiveness, not just new technology. That’s why it shouldn’t be IT, or operations, or engineering, because they’re focused on a task, not the meta-level look at how the task is being accomplished, can be improved, etc. And that’s the unique perspective that makes the learning organization the right instigator.

Learning folks have the perspective of looking at the performance needs of the organization, and are charged with helping people meet those needs, but that also gives the learning organization the opportunity to improve them. When it’s the product or servce, it’s the user experience group (that, ideally, gets in early in the design process), but internally, it’s the learning group.

Which means the learning organization can’t be just a training group, but that’s part of the strategic picture I’ve talked about elsewhere. The point being that to truly help an organization you have to move to a performance focus, moving people from novice, through practitioner, to expert, and giving them a coherent support environment. To do this, you need to know what’s available. And, consequently, the learning organization has to experiment with new technologies for it’s own internal workings to determine how and when to deploy them to organizational benefit.

To put it another way, if not the learning organization, then who? Of course, there’s the political perspective as well, demonstrating currency, but I’m more concerned about adding real value. Learning professionals need to know it, bring it to bear when it’s valuable (and skewer it when it’s not), and in general be seen not only knowing what’s what but also what’s hype.

Marketing is smart in general, but it’s not hype, it’s helping transition the perspective from a training group being an expendable cost-center to a learning capability that’s central to organizational effectiveness and performance. Which is where a learning organization should be, right?

Learning out loud

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In an article I was reading, they mentioned how Patagonia was tracking the environmental footprint of some of their products. The point they made, however, was that doing this was part of their ongoing experimentation/research that they were publicizing to get others to join in towards making this a more sustainable world (my inference). The phrase they used that intrigued me was the quote that they were “learning out loud”.

One of the reasons it intrigued me was that I realized that what I’m doing with Learnlets is indeed ‘learning out loud’. But I hadn’t really reflected on what that could mean, and I think there are some really interesting opportunities here. First, by learning explicitly, we can reflect on our own learning processes, looking at how we learn, essentially initiating double-loop learning.

Second, others can watch us learn, and learn with us. They can also learn to learn. Learning together, we can learn more effectively. I think this is a critical component of the Work Literacy movement looking at how to improve at work; they’re making their thinking explicit and asking for participation.

One of the Big Questions was Should All Learning Professionals Blog, and I replied. My answer then was that all should reflect, and I’ll add now that doing it publicly (blog or otherwise) is an opportunity to have others participate and even add value. Yes, there’s a risk involved, but I’ll suggest you throw ego to the wind, and take a chance on greater learning.

So I’ll keep on learning out loud, and hope to hear you, too. Let’s learn together; better, and have more fun doing it.

It’s hard to reflect…

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…when you’re up to your, er, backside in projects (paraphrasing the old alligators/swamp draining story).  It’s been a whirlwind week or so, and this is an apology of sorts for the lack of blogging. Several projects are getting busy at the same time, and we also took a trip south to see family. It’s hard to be reflective when you’re just trying to keep the wheels on.

The trip itself was a whirlwind; we had to be flexible (“willows, blowing in the wind” as my wife kept saying) to accommodate other folks plans and the extreme heat. We were making hotel reservations on the fly, night by night pretty much, and shuffling folks around trying to get people together. However, the kids got to play with their cousins, and we managed to make all the important connections (with the caveat that we missed my brother and one of his kids, as they were overseas at the time we had to come down). Saturday was ‘water play’ day; even though we’ve got water restrictions here in California, it was also too hot to go anywhere, so we got a slip-n-slide and some water guns. Note: it’s never too late to have a happy childhood, as I’ve how had the slip-n-slide experience I never got to try when I was young!

Work’s also blazing along. I had a couple of conference calls while we were on the road (not the easiest), and didn’t make much progress on projects ranging from online learning to corporate elearning strategy. Now it’s catch up time. The good thing is that together with my various partners on the projects, I think we’re adding real value to the organizations we are assisting.

Still, while various thoughts have crossed my mind, nothing’s coalesced sufficiently that I’ve been able to post, and it’s hard to justify the time away from pressing needs. Which is the case everyone faces, I know, but it’s important to take time to reflect. And I have, but it’s been about specific projects and taking a larger picture on them, which typically is not appropriate here (too specific, and of course confidential).

Still, lots of thoughts are percolating, and you can expect more soon. Hope your summer is fun and productive!

Work Literacy

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Tony Karrer, one of our top bloggers/thinkers on elearning, pointed me to WorkLiteracy a few weeks ago, and I’m really excited about the idea, though have yet to have time to really dig in (was in Boston two weeks ago, NJ and LA last week, and several big projects right now; my apologies for the lack of posting). It’s about identifying and developing the skills of the knowledge worker, tapping into the social network.

Naturally I’m quite excited by all this, as it taps into two of my key memes: meta-learning (or learning to learn), and 21st Century Skills. It’s all about helping people learn to be more effective (meta-learning), and focusing on the skill-set for the future (21st Century Skills).

I’m thrilled to see this emerging here, as well as the movements I’m seeing in other places as the recognition grows that the skills of the past aren’t going to carry us into the coming years. We’re seeing it come from corporate groups thinking about the skill sets they need, futurists looking at trends, and now people at the coal face coping with their own roles and thinking about the longer term implications and broader concerns for society (a wise perspective, to be sure).

So, I fully intend to participate, but there’re already a good group of folks, and it’s too important not to get you started. Check it out!

Anxiety, ergonomics, and performance

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I’m a little under the weather today. Not sick, but I’ve had a procedure done (minor, really), and have been a naughty boy on my keyboard. They’ve combined to jump on me this week, and there are some interesting side effects.

First, a number of years ago I was teaching in a department of Computer Science (I taught interface design). Here were faculty members who used computers for their research, their teaching, everything. And, of course, started suffering the side effects of too much keyboard use. In teaching HCI/interface design I talked about ergonomics, and still was as guilty as the rest. Fortunately, the administration recognized the problem, and hired some guidance and was willing to invest in products to remedy the problems including chairs, keyboards, etc.

I rightly noted that just telling folks about how to do it ‘right’ and giving equipment wasn’t sufficient, and that they’d need support in making the change to new ways. Which didn’t happen, so I don’t know how well the lesson stuck for others, but I did put in place support for myself, specifically a piece of software that threw me off every 30 minutes for 5 minutes. It worked after I got rid of the unix terminal on my desk so I couldn’t switch to the other machine in those 5 minutes…

I’ve got a good chair now, and have adjusted the ergonomics to match recommended guidelines.

OSHA seating guidelinesWhat I didn’t do was use the mouse properly. I had a wrist rest that I used while mousing, not just in-between. I’ve got pain in my right wrist now. I thought I might’ve broken it snowboarding or skateboarding, but it was x-rayed and that wasn’t the issue. Referred to a physical therapist, it appears to just be overuse again (maybe a WoW side effect?). And a big deliverable.

I’ve moved the mouse to the left side for the time being (as I did before) to get some rest, and am working to get better habits going (tho’ I just noticed I was typing with my wrists on the wristrest for the keyboard!). I usually am jumping up for something, so I typically don’t spend too much time at the keyboard in one go, but there are times when I’ve got to be more careful.  I’ll get better and switch back (it’s tough at first, and while you get used to it, I’ll be happy to switch back).

Before I draw on the learnings from this, I’ll confess to one other issue. I just had a minor procedure done, that involved some cutting. It was a followup to a previous one. The first one wasn’t a problem, but for some reason this one had induced more anxiety than I expected. I was trying to type a message while waiting for the anesthetic to kick in (local), and my fingers were shaky! I’m fine, but the effects of anxiety were brought home to me in a big way.

So, what are the take-homes here? First, be careful out there! Watch out for your own computing, and keep yourself practicing safe keyboarding (as well as safe surfing). As the therapist said, she’s surprised by how many folks say they’re too busy, but don’t realize that they’re more effective overall if they take the necessary breaks.

Second, how important it is in behavior change to get support. If you don’t provide support, it’s too easy to backslide into bad habits. And by the time symptoms manifest, you’re already damaged.

Finally, don’t forget to make a safe learning environment. There’s an (upside-down) u-shaped curve for performance, where as anxiety/pressure increases, there’s improved performance to a point, but then it falls back down fairly quickly. That high point in relation to pressure shifts a lot depending on the learner. Be careful to ensure that any anxiety is reduced sufficiently to allow learning to be effective (and now so low as to similarly interfere with learning).

Here’s to safe and effective keyboarding and learning.

Work at learning; learning at work

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I agreed to be part of the third edition (this coming Monday) of Dave Ferguson’s Work/Learning Blog Carnival, and I start from a contrarian perspective, because I think “learning can, and should, be hard fun“. That is, properly done, learning is a positive experience, where you’ve balanced the challenge, set up the initial meaningfulness, have the learner playing an interesting role, providing the appropriate support and feedback, etc. I suppose the point is that the ‘hard’ part of the fun is work, but it isn’t toil or tedium. So, the distinction between the two is suspect. However, my principles about engaged learning are typically when we design the experience for another, but the topic here is, to me, self-learning.

And I do believe passionately in self-learning; if I’m not learning, I may as well be dead. Play is learning, and I intend to keep playing.. :) So I blog, and talk to colleagues, and continually challenge myself with new tasks (like accepting this opportunity). But I do it mindfully, deliberately pacing the challenge, searching for personal meaningfulness, and finding the fun in it all. I take responsibility for making it hard fun. I think the most successful people are those who can find not a balance, but an integration between work and learning.

Let me take it to the next step, now, talking about organizational learning. In addition to the obvious implications of how we design learning experiences, I think the less obvious implication, but perhaps the more important one, is helping people to become not only toiling self-learners, but joyful self-learners.

To me, the increasing rate of change means that fixed competencies – the notion that an organization can anticipate, design, and deliver the needed learning – is going to go away. The true competitive advantage will not be in just hiring the needed skills, but in developing folks who can continue to self-learn. Too many are still tied into the “we can hire the talent”, but the folks who’ve done well in school have succeeded in a system that doesn’t match the way the world outside of school works. And there’ll be increasing competition for the folks who demonstrably can succeed in a dynamic environment. Trusting that you can acquire sufficient talent seems like a riskier bet than instilling that capability in the organization.

Imagine really unleashing your organization. Yes, it’s Senge’s Learning Organization, and more. We know what this entails, but I’m still searching for organizations who really want to execute against it.

Evaluating Serious Games (er, ILS)

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I’ve been working with a group creating the rubrics for evaluating submissions in a 2nd Life serious game competition. It’s an interesting issue, as there’re broad variances in what folks are thinking. As a reaction to a draft consensus of opinion, I rewrote the criteria to be evaluated as:

Learning
Comprehensiveness of alternatives to right answer
Match of game decisions to learning objectives
Appropriateness of feedback

Usability
Appropriate interface match to action
Interface navigation

Game
Naturalness of feedback mechanism
Continuity of experience
Seamlessness in embedding decisions into game world
Appropriateness of world to audience
Relevant to irrelevant action ratio
Appropriate challenge balancing
Level of replay (linear, branching, engine-driven)

I know this can be done better.   Your thoughts?

It’s an effort to combine my aligned elements from both education and engagement (the theoretical basis for my book on learning game design): clear goals, balanced challenge, thematic context, meaningfulness of action to story, meaningfulness of story to player, active choice, direct manipulation, integrated feedback, and novelty (see below), with the more standard elements necessary to make a successful online experience.

Alignment of Engagement and Game Elements

I find it useful to revisit principles from another angle, as it gives me a fresh chance to put a reality-check on my thinking. I think my older model holds up (and has continued to over the years), and the extras are not unique to learning games. Some elements cross boundaries, such as feedback having to components: one being the relation to the learning, and the other to the action.

The principles state that, done properly, the best practice (next to mentored real performance) ought to be games. Or, as I like to say: “Learning can, and should, be hard fun!”