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A new literacy? There’s an app for that

25 April 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

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.

Pedagogical Cycle

30 March 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

In a recent post, I was trying to communicate the benefits of social learning: the additional processing that occurs while negotiating a shared understanding. Interestingly, the diagram I designed to accompany the post and communicate the concept was not well received. C’est la vie. As this was to be the representation on a slide talking about social learning, I was forced to come up with another way to communicate the concept. Instead of focusing on exactly the same concept, I decided to take another tack. The idea I’m communicating is how our model of learning has changed.

The first organized learning was really accomplished through apprenticeship: an individual would come to a task developing some artifact or performing some task, and would perform some minimal component in the context of the overall work. As we developed more abstract concepts, we moved to a dialog, where individuals would express their understanding, and others would engage in a conversation until agreement (even to disagree) was reached. Then, for efficiency reasons, we moved to a classroom model, where one individual would propose knowledge and the others would recite it.

The latter model has some problems, not least that the little learning would dissipate quickly, as it was typically knowledge focused and only applied in abstract ways. Such learning situations can be well-done, but only to the extent that there are meaningful tasks and learners are supported in accomplishing those tasks.

In other words, we move back to the apprenticeship model. Learning research has largely converged on a model that say we learn best when we are motivated and applying our knowledge to solve problems we realize are important, and are supported both with information resources and scaffolding, and reflection is guided around that performance. My favorite model is Collins & Brown’s Cognitive Apprenticeship, influenced by anthropological work and abstracting across several great pieces of work to create an integrated approach that still seems relevant.

In short, we’re looking backwards to how we learned naturally and bypassing a learning approach that is driven more by industrial and agricultural constraints than cognitive and social ones. We can certainly use technology to augment this approach, and we’re more aware of the nuances, but in taking a step back we’re taking a major step forward. How about that!

Learning Technologies UK wrap-up

31 January 2011 by Clark 4 Comments

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Learning Technologies ’11 conference, talking on the topic of games. I’ve already covered Roger Schank‘s keynote, but I want to pick up on a couple of other things. Overall, however, the conference was a success: good thinking (more below), good people, and well organized.

The conference was held on the 3rd floor of the conference hall, while floors 1 and ground hosted the exposition: the ground floor hosted the learning and skills (think: training) exhibits while the 1st floor held learning technology (read: elearning) vendors. I have to admit I was surprised (not unpleasantly) that things like the reception weren’t held in the exhibit halls. The conference was also split between learning technologies (Day 1) and learning and skills (day 2), so I have to admit being somewhat surprised that there weren’t receptions on the respective floors, to support the vendors, tho’ having a chance to chat easily with colleagues in a more concise environment was also nice.

I’m not the only one who commented on the difference between the floors: Steve Wheeler wrote a whole post about it, noting that the future was above, and the past showing below. At a post-conference review session, everyone commented on how the level of discussion was more advanced than expected (and gave me some ideas of what I’d love to cover if I got the chance again). I’d heard that Donald Taylor runs a nice conference, and was pleased to see that it more than lived up to the billing. There was also a very interesting crowd of people I was glad to meet or see again.

In addition to Roger’s great talk on what makes learning work, there were other stellar sessions. The afore-mentioned Steve did a advanced presentation on the future of technologies that kept me engaged despite a severe bout of jetlag, talking about things you’ve also heard here: semantics, social, and more. He has a web x.0 model that I want to hear more about, because I wasn’t sure I bought the premise, but I like his thinking very much. There was also a nice session on mobile, with some principles presented and then an interesting case study using iPads under somewhat severe(military) constraints on security.

It was hard to see everything I wanted to, with four tracks. To see Steve, I had to pass up Cathy Moore, who’s work I’ve admired, though it was a pleasure to meet her for sure. I got to see Jane Bozarth, but at the expense of missing my colleague Charles Jennings. I got to support our associate Paul Simbeck-Hampson, but at the cost of missing David Mallon talk on learning culture, and so on.

A great selection of talks to hear is better than not. There was also a very interesting crowd of people I was glad to meet or see again. A great experience, overall, and I can happily recommend the conference.

Roger Schank keynote mindmap

26 January 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

Today, Roger Schank keynoted the Learning Technologies UK conference, talking about cognitive science and learning. Obviously, I was in large agreement. And, as usual, I mid mapped it:

Thought trails

19 January 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

I’ve riffed before about virtual mentorship, and it resonated again today. We were getting a tour of one of the social platforms, organized as many are around tasks, questions, and dialog. While implicitly it could support tracking a group’s progress, separate thoughts as recorded through blogs and tweets aren’t a natural feature. Yes, there’s integration with wikis and blogging tools, but it’s not quite the same. And seeing these meme tracks or thought trails can be a valuable way to understand how someone thinks in context, which can develop others’ thinking.

Don’t get me wrong, task oriented discussions are the real new opportunity for business, but I’m looking at a separate level that’s also valuable. The 70/20/10 model that Charles Jennings so effectively promotes (on the job, mentor/coaching, formal, respectively), suggests that mentorship is a valuable component of overall development. What if we could make it lower overhead for higher impact?

The notion is that learners ‘follow’ potential leaders. They can do for external thought leaders by reading their blog and following their tweets. But there are more immediate people also worth being mentored by. What if employees could follow their bosses and executives within the organization? Transparency is valuable, and if these leaders can be convinced to share their thoughts, more folks can take advantage of them without needing specific meetings (and, of course, making those meetings more valuable). Naturally, other representations could also be valuable: if they record thoughts while driving, podcasts could be ok too, or recorded video messages (tho’ perhaps harder to edit). Even recording meetings where leaders speak could be a low-overhead mechanism.

The tough part, really, is getting the leaders to share their thoughts. Making it a recommendation, and making it easy is important. Sharing the value of reflecting is also important (people who take time to reflect outperform those who don’t, despite corporate mythology to the contrary). You also have to make it ‘safe’, so that mistakes can be shared and learned from.

The goal is to make thinking visible; leading out loud. It might seem onerous, but the outcomes of better communication and developing potential new leaders are big. What do you think are the potential benefits of more people knowing what is important? What if more people could start thinking strategically? These are on the table, and potentially on tap. Are you missing this opportunity?

Learning Experiments

15 January 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

I have a habit of taking on challenges, things that I decide to do that invoke a bit of anxiety, but I will be happy if I accomplish. Many times those are work-related assignments that stretch me, helping me learning things I’m interested in, or require developing skills that I am interested in.

Then, sometimes, I choose to stretch in other ways. This past year I took on two such that provide a bit of an opportunity for reflection.

Obstacles

The first one was something I heard about on Twitter. I shared it, and at least one colleague and one friend was interested. The colleague is not local, so he did it near him, and my friend and I did it with some of his friends. The event was Warrior Dash, which is a 3.5 mile course with 12 obstacles along the way. At the end, you get a funny hat with horns, and a free beer. It’s silly, but also a physical challenge, and it sounded fun. While I know I’m not particularly athletic in any one thing, I like to think (delude myself) that I’m fairly balanced across activities.

The obstacles ended up including climbing over cars, climbing under several things including a tunnel and a wire maze, climbing up a rope wall, jumping over hurdles, sliding down a watered down hillside, and running up a hill, across tires, up and down a haybale. The final two obstacles were jumping over fire, and then navigating a mud filled puddle. They really hype the last one, encouraging you to do a dive into it. Silly. Fun.

My goals were simple. At my age, and level of fitness, I was going to be happy just running the whole thing. I was not aiming to win, even my age group. I was nervous a bit (my usual plod around my mostly vertical neighborhood is 2.2. miles, which I alternate with a couple of torture devices that reside in my office, or in the summer in the pool a bit), but fairly confident I could do it. I didn’t do any specific training, either, relying on my overall level of fitness with perhaps a bit of extra effort on my usual routine.

Starting slow, not fighting to be the first in the wave of runners at my elected time but starting quite a ways back and pacing myself, was a wise move. About 1/3 of the way through I felt ok and picked up my pace slightly. At about 2/3 of the way through I felt the toll a bit, but pushed on. I passed some of the early starters (many folks seemed to have no problem walking at times, and there were a very wide variety of levels of fitness), but by no means did I make any great statement. I did ‘take on’ the obstacles, as they are the fun part for me. This worked mostly, but I confess that I cracked each of my knees as I hurdled the hurdles, and while I was successful getting over them, I could feel it. The mud part was surprising, as it seemed like you would just swim through it, but it really pulled back. It was a good workout and I was feeling the overall event for several days afterward, but not too badly.

Not sure I have to do it again, but no regrets.

Conflict

The second event was fantasy football. There was a #lrnchat team the year before, which sounded fun but I hadn’t heard about it. I’d never done it, but as I played football in high school (long story, but briefly, with 900 in my graduating class we had not only a varsity a JV, but also a B team, which I could qualify for :), I follow pro football as a guilty pleasure. So it sounded like something to try.

Again, I didn’t expect to do well; I know my limitations; I have a college friend who’s a real sports fiend, and he has the type of knowledge to do real well. So my only goal was to do ok for my first year.

There were some hiccups getting started. The process starts with a ‘draft’ where teams (I named mine the Quinnstitute Inmates) take turns picking players. I didn’t like the default order, but the process to change the default looked ridiculously complex. A bad interface, with an insufficient lack of information, and I didn’t know who to ask. So I went with the default draft rankings. Consequently, while lucky in some respects, I also had some players that I shortly had to dump.

That was the second hiccup; the process of claiming players and releasing yours was opaque. It appeared that if you picked them, you had to give up a player (you don’t get them immediately, there’s a time when everyone can pick anyone available they want, but then who gets who is determined by a preference model). It was only after selecting the player to give up that you found out that you wouldn’t give them up unless you got the player you requested. Again a bad interface and resources.

This time, however, I was bold enough to ask in our league’s forums, and found great help. Apparently there’s also ‘smack boards’ where you can talk trash to the other teams, but it was quiescent this year (it certainly didn’t appeal to me). The dialog with the other players (teams) in the league was minimal, but good natured and helpful.

Overall, I achieved the modest success I was hoping for. I also found out that there’s a phenomenal amount of luck involved, even if you have good players. I suppose if you were even more into it, you would be better able to detect when a normally successful and called upon player would have a bad week, but I certainly wasn’t at that level. It was fun, and no regrets. Whether I’ll do it again (if I even have the opportunity) is an open question, but the decision is more about time and opportunity than any negative experience.

Lessons

I did learn some lessons here. I found that if I set appropriate goals, I didn’t have too many problems living with the outcomes. I also let myself have the space to experiment and have fun, and it was. Learning is fun, even on seemingly trivial things.

I also found out that the ‘interface’ helps. The obstacle event was very well handled, with lots of guidance; there was little confusion about where to go and what to do. The web-interface to the fantasy game, however, needed a lot more ‘user-experience’ design. Perhaps there were more comprehensive information resources available, but I didn’t easily find them. And, fortunately, I can take Donald Norman to heart and say that if I can’t use it, it’s badly designed (it’s not me :).

I found I can be competitive. On the course, I did see a couple of people who were moving at roughly my pace, and I did try to beat them at the end (I had just enough left, and wanted to ‘leave it all on the field’). In the fantasy football, I did try to change my roster around to do the best I could when my seemingly decent team had some serious flaws (I’m not sure if I ended up with more than 1 player I started with), and I actively traded and juggled the lineup.

Learning is important, challenging yourself is important, and learning should be fun. Reflecting on it is important as well. It was worthwhile, and I will continue to find ways in my work and in my play that stretch me. I hope you do so too.

My path to ITA

22 December 2010 by Clark Leave a Comment

As my colleagues Harold and Jane have done, I thought I’d capture my learning journey that led me to the Internet Time Alliance. I started out seeing the connection between computers and learning as an undergraduate, and designed my own degree. My first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games, which led me back to graduate school and a Ph.D. in applied cognitive science to find out how to design learning solutions better.

That has been a recurrent theme across academic endeavors, some government-sponsored initiatives, and an internet startup: designing solutions that are innovative and yet pragmatic. It was really brought home to me when we were recently discussing a new initiative, and while my colleagues were looking at the business opportunities, my mind was racing off figuring out how to design it.

This continued in my consulting, where I moved from designing the individual solutions to designing the processes and structures to reliably deliver quality learning experience design, what I’ve called learning experience design strategy. However, as I’ve worked with organizations looking to move to the ‘next level’, as happened with and through some of my clients, I regularly found a recurrent pattern, that integrated formal learning with performance support and eCommunity (and some other steps).

So I was focusing on trying to help organizations look at the bigger picture. And what I recognized is that most organizations were neglecting eCommunity the most, yet as I learned more about this from my colleague Jay Cross, the social and informal learning were the big and missed opportunity. When Jay started talked about grouping together to address this part of the space, it made perfect sense to me. The opportunities to have large impacts with challenging but not costly investments is a natural. So here I am. Based upon my previous work on games and now mobile, there are some design strategy opportunities that fall to Quinnovation, but I’m eager to help organizations through ITA as well. Hope to talk to you in the new year about whatever is relevant for you from here.

Pidgin Learning

12 December 2010 by Clark 2 Comments

The other day, my colleague Jane Hart wrote an interesting post comparing getting comfortable with learning in the real world to the experience of learning a new language. In my recent experience visiting my aunt in MÃ¼nchen and then family friends in a small village outside Bayreuth, I had a chance to experience the intermediate stages of transitioning from one language, really one culture, to another.

As I sit on a train watching the landscape change from snowy villages to rainy towns, one of my learnings was that the â€˜camaraderie‘ of the people trying to communicate means a lot. While my German is pretty bad, and my aunt‘s and the friends English is better but unpracticed, we could communicate. This was because there were good intentions all around. We were not looking for ways to misinterpret, or to avoid on the grounds that we could not comprehend. We instead were looking for ways to understand.

It‘s clear that we were speaking a â€˜pidgin‘ language, a simplified hybrid of the two, and actually both the German and the English were butchered as a result. We would mix words from both languages when our vocabulary failed us, and find creative ways to express our thoughts. And express our thoughts we did. Between getting directions to the post office to mail the package of goodies my aunt had expected me to bring back in my streamlined luggage, running her errands, and getting my glasses fixed, all went well.

Similarly with less-familiar folks; the wonderfully warm people who hosted me in the small village were family friends, but hadn‘t seen me for 20 years, even though they know my mother. Regardless, it was easy to help her buy a computer, and for them to take me through a dark and snow-covered village in a small valley to the once a year weekend Christmas Market, where I met their friends and we drank glÃ¼hwein, sang some Xmas songs, translated questionable jokes into English, and had a truly magical time.

The implications are clear: when people are committed to the process, they can be incredibly productive despite challenges. Conversely, when they‘re not, even insignificant obstacles can become complete barriers.

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