Traveling with Jay Cross and Ellen Wagner in Berlin last December, we hit a great museum where they had artifacts from aa major period of German dominance. It was easy to use those concrete representations of life at the times, and the annotations (as well as Jay & Ellen’s learned commentary) as a foundation to think about the historic changes.

Thinking about the way we ,as a family, like to travel – studying up beforehand, choosing places that most concisely represent and communicate the local history and culture (and dining in ways to understand the best the culture has to offer :), and reading as we go along – it seems a great way to ground learning via experience. And experiential learning is powerful learning, connecting personal experience as context to conceptual models.  

I personally like to understand the ebb and flow of civilizations. My late friend Joe Cotter was a PhD in history, and taught me a little bit about how to think like a historian (not just to know history), thinking about causal forces. I try to apply that, as well as admittedly geeking out on weapons and castles.  

I’ve always felt that the old cliche is true, that travel broadens you. If you go with your eyes open, you can see the world from a different perspective, and even look at your own country differently. I really value the time I spent living in Australia, not only because of the fabulous friends and great experiences, but the ability to look back at the US and get a valuable extension on my understanding.  

It’s one thing to read about it, but to immerse yourself in the cuture and the artifacts with an overarching narrative really helps connect the broader context to the specifics. I hope you have the chance to have a similar experience.

Travel is a great learning opportunity.  First, of course, is learning the history, geography, and culture of a place.  The cuisine of a new place is a particular personal interest. Of course, you can also learn about politics, economics, and more as well.  

A second level is looking at how these are portrayed within their own milieu; what are the stories they tell themselves and others about who and what they are.

And, of course, regardless of planning, travel ends up throwing you little challenges: changes in schedules, closures, delays, and more.  These become opportunities for meta-learning: both attitudinal (patience, tolerance, persistence, friendliness) and strategic (problem-solving, communication, etc.).

Moreso if you make a conscious effort to not just replicate the same experience everywhere you go (e.g. the generic international resort experience regardless of location), but instead work to learn what makes this particular destination unique. It’s like making content interesting; you have to find what makes the folks who live there proud. Another meta-lesson.

I was fortunate that my parents were great travelers, and instilled the love of new cultures in me, and I’m trying to do the same with my kids. I find the most interesting people are those who are interested in others. But even if you haven’t had the skills and attitude modeled, you can develop it yourself. Start small, get some wins, and expand (like all good plans :). Bon voyage!

I’ve just completed Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training (except a final live drill in a nearby neighborhood), and I’ve been impressed with the thought that’s gone into the task.  The situation is that in a major emergency natural or man-made: tsunami, terror attack, tornado, hurricane, explosion, or in our case, earthquakes, the capabilities of first-responders (police, paramedics, fire) will be overwhelmed.

The plan is that volunteer teams trained to take initial action as a mechanism to save lives.  The situation would be grim.  If it’s needed, there will be life-threatening injuries, death, damage, and more. And even trained responders will be under considerable stress.

Consequently, the design is very focused, making sure the volunteer responders are safe, not going beyond their training, and first identifying and categorizing the help needed, before actually taking any action.  It’s hard to think about having to barely help someone (particularly, say, a child) and moving on, but that’s what will achieve the best result overall, as they repeatedly tell us.

To facilitate, they’ve done an impressive job of providing resources to optimize the chances for success. They’re focused on communication and task support as really the two key things. In addition to the training, they’ve provided resources and very specific performance support tools.

If and when such an event happens, everyone knows where they’re supposed to report, and how to get going. The first thing found is a folder that as soon as you open it, it starts telling you exactly what to do. If you follow the directions, you’ll be led to create a team, check in, and head off on the first area needing to be searched.

There are guidance forms for everything, and even simple things like blank paper behind a template with cutouts to store info, then share via radio. Then you rip out the sheet, and another blank one is behind.

It’s hard to remember everything you’re supposed to do (only 2 people do the physical search, one scribes, one leads; call out to see if anyone’s there first; assess structural safety; mark what’s found and move on, the list goes on).  But there are tools and job aids for everything, so it’s hard to go wrong.  And that’s important, because this will likely be a situation where cool and calm are out the window.

It’s reassuring to see the thought that’s gone into the tools we have to use. I hope I never have to, but I feel better knowing that if I do, there’s a lot of well-designed support.  I recommend both that you consider getting CERT training, and also look at how they’ve taken a very tough task and broken it down into a command situation.

I think supporting performance is important, and that we don’t do enough with models in formal learning.  To me, another interesting opportunity that’s being missed is the intersection of the two.

Gloria Gery’s original vision of electronic performance support systems was that not only would they help you perform but they’d also develop your understanding so you’d need them less and less.  I’ve never seen that in practice, sad to say.

Now it might get in the way of absolute optimal performance, but I believe we can, and should, develop learner understanding about the performance.  If the performance support is just providing rote information so that the learner doesn’t have to look it up, that’s ok. But if, instead, the performance support is interactive decision support, the system could, and should, provide the model that’s guiding the decisions as well as the recommendations.

This needn’t be much, just a thin veneer over the system, so instead of, after asking X and Y, recommending Z, saying “because of A and B, we’ve eliminated C and recommend Z” or somesuch.

It could also be making the underlying model visible through the system.  Show the influence of the answers to the questions to competing alternatives, for instance.

All in all, I believe it’s better that performers understand what’s behind recommendations, because then they can internalize those models both to reduce the need for the system and to be able to infer when to go beyond the system.

Helping people understand and use models is a powerful form of meta-learning, to me, and a 21st century skill folks will be needing. Why are we missing the opportunity to help develop those skills?

The ubiquity of powerful mobile devices able to download applications that enable unique capabilities, has led David Pogue to coin them “app phones“.  Similarly, the expression “there’s an app for that” has been part of widespread marketing campaign.  However, it turns out that apps are more than just on phones.  Facebook has apps, as I just heard about BranchOut as a job hosting extension of the popular social network (I’m preparing for my talk at the Australasian Talent Conference).  Of course, there are other apps I don’t get involved in, such as all the quizzes, because I’m worried about the data they share, but there’s a meta-point here.

Increasingly, organizations and providers are creating APIs to their environments, which allow other organizations to add value in ways that expand their ecosystem.   This is of benefit to both parties and the users of the environment, with appropriate caveats about how the information is used.  From the user point of view, there are extensions to environments and tools you use that can give you unique capabilities.  And, from the personal efficacy department, being able to find and use these extensions is a new skill.  In the Personal Knowledge Management  framework of my colleague Harold Jarche, it’s be a new component of improving personal productivity.

First, as an overarching component, you need to understand that platforms can, if properly developed, allow others to add new capabilities.  Then, you need to be aware of the ways in which you’d like to augment your capabilities (accessorize your brain), know which platforms you’re on, choose the most plausible platform and channel (while there’s a Facebook app available for your app phone, it may  not support the app you need, and it may need to be desktop or mobile web), be able to search for the app you need (which may require tapping into other PKM skills like leveraging your network), and be able to hook into it, use it, and keep it handy.

Personal efficacy seems to me to be a growing differentiator.  Jay Cross cites how the exceptional Google engineer is estimated to be 200 times more valuable than the average engineer.  While some of this will come from skills, I suspect that a lot, and a growing component, of success will come from continual improvement both organizationally and individually.  Watts Humphrey makes a compelling case for the benefits of self-improvement process in software engineering, and it’s clear the process generalizes to other tasks.  Jay and I have previously argued (PDF) that improving the ability to learn might be the best investment you could make, and this is a component of being effective: knowing when to augment your capabilities and how.

New capabilities are emerging rapidly.  Understanding them conceptually and clarifying their unique capabilities gives you a handle on generating the skills you need to take advantage of them in a generalizable way.  I reckon apps meet the criteria.