The Learning Circuit’s Blog Big Question for December is “What did you learn about learning in 2008?”   It’s good to reflect, and using the end of the calendar year is a traditional time.   Consequently, I trolled back through a year of blog posts.   Whew!

I saw several recurrent threads, but the strongest one is on learning to learn.   I think we’ve seen more focus on that this year, particularly with Tony Karrer & Michelle Martin’s Work Literacy effort, and a lot of the discussion at the Corporate Learning Trends conference (most recently). It’s a theme that appeared in Marcia Conner‘s presentation, in looking at what to do in tough times.   What impressed me is how much it’s been taken on in many places and in many forms, after Jay & I were pushing it several years ago (circa 2003-2004). I’m thrilled, of course.

It’s also a theme that characterizes the TogetherLearn thinking, where it’s about helping people help themselves, but not taking the self-directed and learn-together skills for granted.   Which segues nicely into my second learning, which was about social learning.   I knew about the importance (having been steeped in Vygotsky in grad school), but it hadn’t hit home quite as viscerally as this year, and I’ve become more than a convert, in fact an evangelist, about the opportunities, both formal and informal.

Interestingly, I’m also beginning to see the emergence of mobile social, and I see that mobile was another recurrent theme in what I talked about this year.   I see more opportunities, and convergences, particularly my revelation about mobile web. Twitter, for instance, is social, can be mobile, and can be a powerful learning experience.

So, my personal learning was getting more deeply into the whole elearning 2.0 area, and it’s impact back on strategy, mobile, and even games.   And the clear implications that we’ve got to focus on learning to learn skills.   There’re some new thoughts brewing, of course, and maybe that’ll play a role in my predictions for next year.   But that’s another month’s big question.

John Medina gave the closing keynote at DevLearn, based upon his book Brain Rules.   He covered two of his 12 rules, on memory, and on exercise.   He spoke fast, was enthusiastic, funny, and knowledgeable.   He talked about myths of learning, and said that he didn’t think there was a lot neuroscience had to say to learning design (thankfully, cf Willingham).

One of his points was that our brains evolved to provide ongoing performance guidance over hours of constant motion (evolutionarily).   This leads to implications that are contrary to most of our learning contexts!

His first rule was about memory, and he covered the basic model of cognitive models of memory, but then pointed out that it’s about 10 years from initial exposure to fixed memory, and requires extensive repetition.   During that period, distortion can occur. This explains the rule of thumb that you have to be doing something for 10 years before you can be considered an expert.   It probably takes 10 years of doing things before they’re solidified in useful experience to apply.

The second rule he covered was the relation between exercise and learning.   It was really exercise and thinking, and there’s a positive relationship.   The difference between sedentary and moderately active lifestyles is big in terms of mental acuity.   And reintroducing it for a reasonably short period (16 weeks) can reignite.   Memory improvements take longer, like 3 years.   It works for kids too, and if they stop, it drops off.

He made several observations how revising schools would work better, sadly too true.   So, repeat if you need it to stick (a great opportunity for mobile learning), and do get exercise for your own health, and maybe have an organizational incentive as well!   Here’s my concept map (it was hard as quick as he spoke, so didn’t get all the data):

Along the lines of the earlier post about social media tools, I thought it might be a ‘practice what your preach’ if I made my thinking explicit. We know that learning is facilitated when experts articulate not only their decisions, but the background rationale (ala Alan Schoenfeld, as I know it from Cognitive Apprenticeship).   To some extent I reckon I do this, amidst my tweets and blog posts.   However, I’m not sure if I show my underlying thinking enough, and I’m wondering if there is more I can do.

I try to show some of the thinking triggered by various projects I’m on, but of course on most of them I’m bound by confidentiality not to reveal the specifics, let alone the really neat new things we’re working on. I also capture some of my background principles in various papers/articles, like those available at the Quinnovation Resources page.   And I do try to capture my ongoing thinking though I wonder if I capture the contexts that generate the thoughts sufficiently.

It’s hard to be accurately self-reflective, and strike that balance between stating opinions, sharing personal reflections, and be reasonably concise.   I’d been thinking that I should, so now I reckon it’s time to ask: what would you like more of, less of, etc?   Here’s your chance to let me know what’s working, what’s not, what would make this more worthwhile for you.   Otherwise, I reckon I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing…

The other day, I wanted to read an article on the CLO site.   I went there, but I found the article too hard to read; there were bloody animated gifs everywhere!   Really, it’s only like 5 years since we realized that animated gifs make things hard to look at, and it’s based upon perceptual psychology way older than that.

Our eyes have cones at the center that pick up color and fine detail, and rods at the edge that kick in for low-light situations.   Those rods also detect motion, and we’re wired to move our attention to things that move in the periphery of our vision (survival, naturally :).   So, if we’re focused on reading something, and an ad is moving in the periphery, we can’t read it well. And CLO spread the article across four pages with moving ads all over the place.   I gave up, which I presume isn’t their intention.   Time to get a clue; you can’t process what you can’t attend to.

That’s a low level distraction, but we see this at multiple levels.   A higher-level one that’s going on around here is the kitchen demolition. It’s made it harder to blog, as I’ve had a hard time doing deep reflection when there’re continual interruptions (worse these next few days, I’ve got the kids while my wife is away visiting her mother; don’t expect there to be a lot of posts this week).   Interestingly, it hasn’t had a similar impact on my tweeting, which is an interesting outcome.   We intuitively know that tweeting is different than blogging (hence the sobriquet: micro-blogging), but it was brought home more vividly. It’s interesting to think about the cognitive differences we find, and their utility for learning.   As I previously mentioned, social networking could support virtual mentorships, and tweeting I think is more immediately tied to a person’s current state, while blogs are more closely tied to their longer-term thinking.   Both, of course, could/should be coupled together for a really rich picture.   How many of you are finding that watching a person’s tweets and blog posts together provide a rich picture?

There’s another level, of course, at the organizational level.   Doug Engelbart, one of our true visionaries, who’s guiding principle of augmenting human intelligence has led him to contributions in many places, has talked about a three-layer system for ongoing improvement.   He posits one layer reviewing our daily action for improvements, and his unique insight is a layer above, looking to improve our improvement processes, across organizations.   The ongoing review is sort of an institutionalized reflection, and the next layer is meta-learning at an societal level.

I still argue that one of the best investments that can be made is reflection, particularly for knowledge work and any individual or organization that needs to not just survive but thrive in the growing flow of information and chaos.   Systematize it, support it, promote it, reward it, and use it.

All morning, a crew has been systematically demolishing our kitchen (one learning: it’s hard to concentrate with regular sounds of destruction in close proximity).   This is as planned.   We’ve wanted a new kitchen since we had experience with the one that came with the house.   It was on our ‘todo’ list (heck, it was on my wife’s *can’t wait* list), but hadn’t risen to the top until the old refrigerator died.   The space in the cabinets for the old fridge wouldn’t fit any new model, so we were forced into kitchen renovation.   We got a new fridge standing elsewhere in the kitchen, and started planning the project.   By we, I mean my better half. She took this on with zeal, because she’s really wanted it.

One of the first things was finding a kitchen designer.   Now, when we were looking to buy our first house, we talked to lots of realtors.   They’d *listen*, and then show us something completely unlike what we had set as constraints.   It was aggravating!   When we moved back to the US and were looking for a new home, we were connected with a realtor who did listen, and were extremely grateful.   A match is everything. So she was thrilled when she found a designer who listened, looked, asked questions, and asked her/us to consider tradeoffs.   I’m learning that the match between customer and contractor is as important as the match between contractor and task.   Which applies to me and my business as well.

She did a lot of leg work (thankfully), but involved me in crucial decisions.     We’re both researchers, the type who subscribe to and read Consumer Reports, with complementary strengths in concept and detail.   She got the industrial-strength range she wanted by testing with paper cut-outs of her pans to find the smallest that would accommodate her cooking. I like to cook too, but not as elaborately (I’m a fan of ethnic one-pot meals, e.g. jambalaya), and would’ve been happier with less, but her work convinced me.   (I’m reminded of when Don Norman mocked up his new kitchen in cardboard and practiced workflow before settling on a design.)   I managed to secure a reddish wood stain and a dark green countertop, and a light tile that will complement both.   We spent quite a bit of time playing with dishwashers, range hoods, as well as ranges.

The planning is paying off, but there are always more details.   Last night we worked late (we worked all day, and she worked harder than me) clearing out our stuff from the kitchen, as it was more work than we’d expected.   We also were getting things organized for six weeks of eating microwaved meals on disposable tableware. It’s just too hard to figure out how to do dishes in bathroom sinks, bathtub, and toilet.   At least I got paper and not foam. There’s more, as we’re losing two rooms of the house (not only the kitchen, but another to accommodate appliances/cabinets as they wait for installation), so it’s relocating things (putting up new shelves, for instance), moving computers around, etc.   It doesn’t help that we’re both pack rats (every home needs one thrower-outer) and the house doesn’t have enough storage space.   My office is quite, er, cosy right now!

Still, we weren’t quite prepared for the interruption in our lives. It’s only day one, so this first heavy demolition is promised to pass, but there’ve been some adapation on both parts.   They’ve found out that my wife’s a wee bit protective of the front yard landscaping she’s spent weeks on installing, and shouldn’t leave torn out windows on plants, while I’ve discovered that you can put zippers on plastic sheeting!

It’ll be a learning experience for the whole family (the kids left this morning for school before things really got going), and will require some adaptation and flexibility.   We’re looking forward to cooking our first Thanksgiving (US, happy holidays to my Canadian compatriots!) in our new kitchen (fingers crossed).   However, it’s also fascinating, and hopefully we won’t come up with too many surprises (tho’ some are also expected).   It’s a catalyst for lots of changes (new sofa, entry way lighting will be precipitated as well).   I’ll try not to bore you with any but the important learnings, but it will be occupying a bit of my mindspace for the next six weeks or so.   With planning, flexibility, and teamwork, we expect to get through this.   Fingers crossed!