Category: Learning

Knowledge work is increasingly about learning to think and act on your feet. The notion of scripted responses is an outmoded response appropriate to industrial settings that no longer exist. Improv teaches that you can prepare for the unexpected in more useful ways that standing around with your mouth agape. “Yes, and” is one of those fundamental tricks of the improv trade. Scripts may be obsolete but rehearsal still can help. Tom provides a nice summary of improv and pointers to some useful improv resources.

“Yes, And” and Uplift Improvs. I was at a retreat last week at which the leader spoke of a “Yes, And” dialog model. A group… [Tom Munnecke]

Something to think about. No surprise, I’m sure, but I view the continued capacity to learn as the important factor here. Which generally depends on the capacity to not know and the capacity to be comfortable with not knowing.

I was lucky enough to go to schools that did not systematically crush and destroy that capacity. I guess that means I am still a kid. Fine by me.

One curious thing about being willing to not know. If you do succeed in getting conventional credentials that suggest that you have learned a lot, people assume that your claims of ignorance and not knowing are a strategy, not a simple claim of fact. They’re not.

[Seb’s Open Research]

Isn’t this the truth. And a truth that I, too, need to learn over and over again. Now, I have a handy reminder.

You can’t rush readiness.

Homeschooling parent, Sarah, reminds of a very important point when it comes to parenting:

You can t play games with readiness. That s been my one of my Most Important Parenting Lessons (and one which I, apparently, need to learn over and over again). Kids are, or are not, ready.

…

Readiness simply comes of its own accord. You can lay the foundation, but no game, no trick, no bribe can make an unready child ready. Those things are approaches or motivators; they don t flip the switch inside their brain, or body, or heart. They ll be ready when they re ready. And because we re impatient, or we believe we know better, or that we re more powerful/ influential than we are, we struggle to learn this lesson. But go ahead and learn it. You re ready.

[urlgreyhot blogs]

This is a nice collection of tips and strategies for designing large scale training events.

The Problems With Training (and What to Do About It). As the author asserts, “Mirroring the 7th grade classroom and the freshman college 101 lecture hall will serve only to copy their mediocrity.” Too true. But what to do about it? This essay contains a number of good suggestions, ranging from the ever popular 99-second talks to the importance of food, round tables, and varied activities. When I plan a conference (and I will plan a conference some time over the next couple of years) it is my intention to employ a number of these tactics to draw on some of the lessons on learning that we all know but never seem to apply for ourselves. Like, for example, having the conference participants themselves design the conference online before the actual event. Whoever heard of such a thing? Via elearningpost. By Scott Berkun with Vanessa Longacre, UIWeb, February, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily]

What he said. There are some things worth staying idealistic about.

A People, Once Liberated….

A People, Once Liberated…: “And in my mind, technological change often enables, and is accompanied by, social change. In my view, the provision of an accessible and affordable education to the majority of the world’s population is a form of enfranchisement, of emancipation. And though this new form of universal suffrage is not a technological revolution, but rather a social movement, it is also not possible without technology.”
Comment: This paragraph sums up much of my interest in elearning/knowledge sharing/technology, etc. The higher goal is the provision of education for people so that they have the opportunity to make better lives for themselves. Technology makes this financially possible (an ebook can be read by millions with the only additional expense being bandwidth costs…a regular textbook has additional expenses associated with each copy). Still, as Stephen indicates, the greater challenge will be social…education seen as an event, dispensed by an institution, needs to give way to education as a process, largely controlled by the learner, drawing from various sources (formal and informal), the elimination of high cost as a barrier. Previously, education was expensive due to physical limitations…the Internet has shown that it no longer needs to be.

[elearnspace]

I certainly agree with David that this is a default categorization of approaches to knowledge management and to information technology use in the organization. At the same time that binary categorization is at the root of most problems with effective use of technology.

We need bridges between these two cultures. The question is what can we do to build them? Time and maturity may be an element of the answer.

I started my career as a techno-fetishist. After a decade of building information and reporting systems that all too often created little in the way of change, I went back to school to try to understand why. In the process I developed into a fluffy-bunny who kept up his membership in the ACM.

As a techno-fetishist, I operated with some pretty na ve notions of human behavior (rational economic man) and of organization. That was reflected in the systems I designed. What struck me most as I developed my fluffy-bunny dimension was the proactive ignorance of most organizational theorists about what was and was not possible with technology. Although they had the advantage of thinking in terms of designed solutions to organizational problems, their design toolkits reflected little sense of the state of the possible with technology making their designs equally suspect, albeit in different ways.

The starting point has to be convincing key players on both sides of the divide to decide they need and wish to work together. Then, each has to begin investing in learning about the opportunities and contraints of the other and in teaching their counterparts across the divide about what are the key dimensions of tradeoff and opportunity.

Techno-fetishist or Fluffy-bunny?.

Attended David Gurteen’s Knowledge Caf last night. The theme for the night was: Techno-fetishist or fluffy bunny which are you?

If that sounds a little weird it may help to know that these are Dave Snowdens archetypes for those who, on the one hand, believe that knowledge management is a purely technical problem and, on the other, believe it’s all about the people.

What made tonights event a little different from normal was the number of new people there. I think for the first time over half of the people were attending their first caf . David decided to start with 15 minutes of speed networking (Find someone you don’t know, then you each have 60 seconds to tell the other person about yourself). I have to say I groaned inwardly (It had been a long day and this sounded like hard work) at the thought. Nevertheless it turned out to be quite good fun although my voice didn’t hold up too well.

There followed 40 minutes of good discussion about the role of technology in KM. Some good observations from around the room, I can’t remember most of them but a few that struck me:

• You can have an organisation without technology, but you can’t have an organisation without people. People are the key and technology is an enabler.
• How you see yourself (techie vs. fluffy) is only one aspect of, as it is also important how others see you. Someone made the observation that a number of his team of KM workers were seen around the organisation as techies even though (mostly being from a journalistic background) they were the fluffiest people you could wish to meet.
• Design is important in building knowledge systems. Consider how good a job companies like Amazon and Ebay have been.
• Technology is a good way of holding information and allowing it to be sifted and, in due course, preserved when it meets the criteria of being Hallmark Knowledge.
• You can make people use a new finance system. You can’t make people use a KM system. Incentive systems often provoke the wrong behaviour (what happens when the incentive stops). You need to involve people from early stages and get buy in. I would ask the question: What’s in it for me?
• Do people see what they have as knowledge? They won’t share what they feel is not valuable. This has to be addressed.

I think there was definitely a fluffy bunny conscensus in the room at the end of the day. So there is hope for us yet!

We all excused ourselves to the pub to finish the evening.

Thanks to Alison Leahy of Universities UK for providing a great venue, coffee and directions to the pub!

[Curiouser and curiouser!]