Sarah Prevette closed the Learning Solutions conference with a rapid fire overview of Design Thinking and a passionate case for making the success skills of the future to be entrepreneurship. Starting with her experiences, she laid out success factors, and suggested that these skills were learnable and should be the curriculum.
In a thoughtful presentation, Sarah Lewis kicked off the second day of the Learning Solutions conference. She used compelling stories of innovations to paint a picture of mastery, failure, and grit, the elements of success.
Baratunde Thurston opened this year’s Learning Solutions conference with a funny and interesting keynote talking about storytelling. Hard to capture humor in a mindmap, but his takehome was a valuable concept.
Danielle Feinberg of Pixar shared her story of using computer science to create the visual art and storytelling for Pixar movies. She illustrated the process of being creative under constraints by being ‘scrappy and clever’. She also illustrated the process with representations of intermediate stages and the stunning results from the movies. Inspiring, as hard to capture in a mindmap.
David Eagleman gave a humorous and insightful keynote at the Training 19 conference. He helped us see how the unconscious relates to conscious behavior, and how to break out and tap into creativity. Here’s my mindmap:
At the LearnTec conference, Jane Hart opened up the Modern Workplace Learning track with a thoughtful presentation about the rationale for MWL. She started by pointing out the changes that are driving the need. Jane identified what people are actually doing in their own learning to motivate the need for L&D change. She then characterized important elements that L&D should consider.
Jessica Kriegel closed DevLearn with a witty and wise presentation taking apart the ‘generations’ and ‘millennial’ myths. In short, it’s basically age discrimination. Don’t do it!
At AECT18, I dropped in on a session summarizing research on emerging technologies for online learning. There were experts in each area, so names like Vanessa Dennan on social media, Curt Bonk in MOOCs, Florence Martin on synchronous Learning, and David Wiley on Open Education Research. And I apparently missed the nuances in the description, it was more meta-research, e.g. research on the research! There were some interesting insights, but I cheekily pulled more (they were offering chocolates for questions anyway).
So, in addition to all the research on research, David Wiley presented some outcome findings for OERs. Specifically, OERs are at least as good as traditional copyrighted materials. Later he gave a more complex explanation why (e.g. everyone has no reason not to have access), but this is a worthwhile finding.
I pushed further on both social media and synchronous learning for some take-homes (Curt didn’t take the bait ;).
Vanessa had talked about how the different social media platforms people use (most have more than one) create conflicts when being impacted by the learning ones. She recommended being sensitive to this, and don’t assume any specifics. She also recommended only using social media for learner-centered reasons (I’d amend: for learning-centered reasons).
Florence shared that synchronous tools shouldn’t be required in asynchronous learning environments, and only to use for optional activities. Such activities would include Q/A sessions and office hours. She, in conjunction with her student, also talked about the value of doing group work this way.
It was valuable, and I was grateful to them for organizing this session.
Marcus Buckingham, in a passionate and witty presentation, skewered many beliefs from a valuable perspective. He exhorted us to look at the positive, and emphasize what we do well, and value your uniqueness.
The official opening event to kickoff ATD’s International Conference, was our 44th President, Barack Obama. Prompted by questions from Tony Bingham, he eloquently addressed education, values, and more. Thoughtful, witty, and ultimately wise, an inspiring session.
