Where Has Education Gone?

The Skill Mastery Hyperdome - SLENZ Project - Foundation Studies Build, Kowhai

Authentic learning is a solution to some of the problems

that arise in schools, workplaces and in society today.

Isn’t it funny that at a time when training is being heaved out of the workplace by a change of organisational thinking, it must find in-roads to secondary schools where, purportedly, it is desperately needed?

Last week, I attended the Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu All-School Forum 2010. This was an international occasion for Te Kura.

Three Keynote speakers - Viv White from Australia, Elliot Washor from the United States and Stuart Middleton from New Zealand - gave their perspectives on ‘authentic learning’ in schools.

Stuart could not attend the Forum. He gave a recorded presentation outlining how he saw the history of what has happened globally to education in the past 50 or so years, and how those changes are impacting on what is happening to the youth in society today.

ROSLA

Clearly, the raising of the school leaving age, by several years, has brought about changes in how education is delivered. It has also altered how society looks on school-leavers who go about looking for jobs.

A number of associated changes have accompanied all this.
The origins and reasons for the changes are complex. But the situations for prospective employment of school-leavers are implicit.

Over 40 years ago it was acceptable for kids to leave school without having any formal qualification. There were plenty of jobs for them. They were trained and educated on-the-job, and stories of their successes in life are numerous. Education through ‘the university of life’ was not an uncommon occurrence. As well, night classes became very popular. These provided a useful adjunct to the education of that group of learners.

But the gradual societal changes, brought about through the raising of the school-leaving age and the programs introduced to schools to cope with these, meant that jobs for inexperienced and unqualified youths became less and less plentiful. What’s more, the general calibre of those jobs is now of a lowly nature and night classes are disappearing.

Hands on

Today there is a desperate need for kids who are likely to leave school early to be introduced to vocational possibilities during their remaining school years. It’s being recognised that preparation for the workplace in a hands-on manner and while kids are still attending school, is an effective way to accomplish this.

It so happens that the standards-based qualifications system adopted in New Zealand early this century was adapted from the trades schemes. Argue as you may, there is more training taking place in schools today than was delivered there 40 years ago.

It’s now recognised that the vocational access routes available for learners in schools are still not enough, a situation which is driving ‘authentic learning’ schemes into schools. I agree that more of this is now needed. I just wonder at what society is doing to education.

Knowing what to do

Education is supposed to be preparation for life. It has been said by many educators that “education is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do”. When schools become geared to providing training for kids so that they can step into a job as soon as they leave school, isn’t there a possibility that ‘preparation for life’ will have to be diminished and/or postponed? When does that start if it has been displaced by the need for more immediate training in schools?

Listen to Elliot Washor speak on Big Picture Learning with Kathryn Ryan.

Elearning in Second Life

Teleport Star at the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives

In September last year, I ventured into Second Life (SL) to explore.

My purpose was similar to that of most educators whom I have welcomed in the short time I have been a SL ISTE docent. I wanted to find out what SL could offer as an elearning environment.

I now have a clearer idea of its worth and potential.

University of West England - SL

The near-reality of much of the 3D simulation offered by SL is a valuable element – it is a key quality of this elearning platform. However, its aesthetic charm may dull even an educator’s appreciation of the true value of what SL can hold for a learner.

I enjoy the fantasy aspect which is so often present when I’m in SL. The huge variety of costume, and the opportunity available for disguise, make it splendid for roleplay. This aspect of SL has great potential to extend the imagination of the participant.

There are a number of features that identify SL's genuineness as an authentic elearning environment:

The people

Second Life is an environment that embraces people. This quality alone brings authenticity.

There is a wide range of ways of recognising the presence of people, wherever the participant happens to be in SL. Channels to engage in communication between those who are online are easy to use. They can be facilitated in many different ways and at different levels. They are certainly not limited to simple txt or voice chat.

Even body language can play its part in exchanges between people.

ISTE HQ, ISTE Island - SL

The sharing culture

There is a culture of sharing that is clearly evident among people in SL. This has possibly arisen through recognition of the need for assistance, sharing and collaborating when people first come into SL.

The cultural practice of sharing tends to be passed on. And it is accomplished at different levels, from a brief offer of situational help between two strangers at meeting, to organised sessions where experienced trainers can volunteer skills to others who are less competent.

The music

SL presents music to its participants through various pathways, either live, pre-recorded or streamed directly from international radio stations. YouTube plays its part in all this, bringing music, new and old, as well as videos on many other themes to the eyes and ears of participants who have full control over audio levels within a full range of different sound channels.





The medium

Within the first few weeks as a visitor, I was able to engage in the construction of the digital stuff that is the fabric of SL. I don’t think there is another elearning environment where participants can so freely make use of the componentry and structure that comprise the environment they are in.

Many of its cultural environments provide support for this engagement, through classes provided voluntarily by experienced exponents of the craft.

Two main techniques that contribute to this are building and scripting. They go hand in hand, employed in the construction of the simplest thing such as an item of jewellery, to the most complicated assemblage of the foundation of the environment itself.

The Particle Laboratory, Teal

For the motivated learner, there is a copious amount of well-laid-out tutorial material to be found in centres throughout the environment. Splendid examples of these are the Particle Laboratory Learning Centre and the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives, where a learner can acquire knowledge and skills on the fundamentals of building and scripting.

The Particle Laboratory, Teal

It is at centres like these that both beginner and experienced developer can visit and gather pearls of 21^st century wisdom on the construction of the digital fabric of Second Life.

Common Sense

In his book, Where Have All The Leaders Gone, Lee Iaccoca claims common sense as one of the Nine Cs of Leadership.

The Ninth International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, Commonsense 2009, took place this year to explore one of the long-term goals of Artificial Intelligence, that of providing computers with common sense.

Stephen Downes claims common sense is what’s needed to avoid or prevent some Internet fraud.

In 1776 Thomas Paine published anonymously a best seller 48 page pamphlet, Common Sense, challenging the authority of British rule in America.

Have you ever thought about what makes up common sense?
Have you ever tried to explain what common sense is?

Seemingly, it’s an awareness, like the ability to judge temperature, recognise directions close to the vertical, or the talent for dress sense.

Difficult to measure

We hear a lot about common sense today. It’s something that every school teacher admires. Possessing common sense seems to be one of the key attributes for achieving success – in any walk of life.

Each of us has a quantity of it – some of us have more than others.
Yet it is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to measure, let alone define. We are more often made aware of common sense as an entity by its absence than through its occurrence.

Intelligence & noticing the obvious

The brightest and most knowledgeable among us can succumb to a lapse of common sense. Even trainee doctors can suffer a lack of it. When it comes to recognising simple clues, it’s clear that what’s required is more than just expert knowledge or even skill.

One of the most celebrated American scientists, Linus Pauling, undoubtedly possessed a fair amount of common sense in his day.
His researches and passion for what is right earned him Nobel prizes in two disciplines.

Common sense drove him to pursue research into vitamin C and the common cold in directions that have since been proven unequivocally fallacious. This is not a criticism of Pauling. I have a huge respect for all that he did in his life. But his efforts show the illusive nature of common sense and how it can direct or mislead decision making.

Is it instinctive?

If common sense is innate, does this mean that it cannot be acquired by someone who begins life with a less-than-average amount? This idea suggests that it’s like the gene for eye-colour – you are stuck with whatever calibre of common sense you had at birth.

There’s a lot to suggest that common sense is instinctive. In action it tends to be intuitive rather than contrived. Generally the common sense decision is not brought about through a process or processes involving logical thinking strategies, though the use of these cannot be discounted when common sense is brought into play.

Can it be learnt?

If it isn’t an inborn trait, how can a person ensure that a useful amount of common sense is acquired?

I’m only too aware of the rhetorical nature of these questions,
but I’m going to ask them anyway:

• Is it possible to teach/learn common sense?
  
  
• Can common sense be assessed?
  If so, how can it be measured?
  
  
• Should common sense be included as an essential part of the school curriculum, like literacy and numeracy?

Clutter

My colleagues and I have been writing learner reports this week. We follow convoluted procedures to ensure no parts are missed. The process is to provide effective feedback.

I reminded myself of the complexity of it all by sneaking a look at instructions that were circulating the office. The directions were clear, linear and easy to follow.

But I had a busy confusion going on in my head as I read them.
I was looking at a block of text that filled a page.

Balance of objectives

In the days when printed instruction was it, squeezing as much text and other information as possible onto a page met some objectives. There is merit in only one page of instruction. Selecting a smaller font-size was a trick I’d seen for ‘getting it all onto one page’.

But at that time, the Science and Art of developing easy-to-follow learner instruction was well known by experienced educators. They knew that ease-of-reading and learner-interest didn’t necessarily follow when information was packed so tightly into a page that you couldn’t put your finger down on bit of white space.

Extremists

White space became a prerequisite for a ‘good looking’ page of instruction. Born out of the look and colour of a blank sheet of plain A4, the ‘white space’ practice was carried, almost to extremes, by some writers and designers who actually shunned text – minimalists who’d trim even a brief, well written instruction.

Margins were widened, headers and footers were deepened.
Text quantity was limited per page.

Tricks and impressions

One trick often used, when no more text culling could be performed on an important block of text, was to emulate the impression of white space by selecting a very pale font colour.

In this way, otherwise unwanted text could be merged into the background. Of course, it defeated the purpose of providing instruction, for it was almost impossible to read.

No, I’m not knocking white space. It works well when used properly.
It lends itself to good web design and elearning resource design. The look and form of a blog post page can even be improved by applying it.

Techniques I’ve found that reduce the busy look of a page of text are:

• short paragraphs – most readers find spaces between small blocks of text easier on the eye
  
  
• double space around blocked text or images – an image can be aesthetically framed by a border of text-free space; the effect is more pleasing and restful on the eye
  
  
• brief subheadings – these create chunks of text-free space by default.

You may have other techniques for improving the look of a page.

Why not share some of them here?

Proficiency and Deliberative Practice

I find it intriguing how blogging brings opportunities to think and learn but not always in an expected way. There is a collegiality that impinges on my thinking, how I learn and what I do.

While a lot of it is to do with blogging, it certainly isn’t limited to that practice. I was reminded of this diversity on receipt of a reply to an email, from my blogger colleague and friend, Tony Karrer, who aptly moved from the peripheral to the relevant in saying:

"On a different note - any thoughts on how deliberative practice relates to becoming something less than an expert. It seems like it should be applicable to all levels of achievement, but everything I'm reading is the study of becoming an expert. Is that just aspirational, or is deliberative practice also studied for quick attainment of proficiency?"

I assume that by ‘something less than an expert’, Tony means the level of competency that is needed by someone to perform a particular task properly – he uses the word ‘proficiency’.

While I tend to agree with Tony that the emphasis in many studies to do with learning / training / attaining proficiency seems to be prescriptive towards becoming an expert, I wonder if it is the true intent of these studies.

I suspect that the widespread and imprecise use of the word ‘expert’ has caused some erosion of its original meaning. Being highly proficient in tasks that are effected in doing a job properly does not mean being an expert. Nor does it necessarily have to lead to attaining that level of expertise. It’s all according to where the benchmarks lie for ‘proficient’ and for ‘expert’.

Expertise is harder to achieve

With the advancement of technology and associated practices, it is becoming increasingly more difficult for expertise to reach expert level. The matter of change, which can arrive every 6 months to a year, or even more frequently in technology, will limit the efficiency of any aspiring expert in reaching true expert level.

Changes in technology bring changes in business procedures. So the ‘expert’ is more likely to become someone who keeps pace with the latest updates rather than someone who, as in the past, truly reaches an expert level with knowledge of, application of and proficiency in the associated skills to do with these tasks. My impression is that there are fewer true experts in the workplace today than there were even 10 years ago.

Collateral damage

Printed manuals, or online help, designed to provide knowledge and give pointers on procedural skills cannot keep pace with these changes, so it becomes even more difficult for the aspiring ‘expert’ to reach a desired level of achievement. What come as a result of this are beliefs associated with the cheapened worth of any textual instruction, any information held in text in fact, be it printed or digitally accessible on a screen – part of the collateral damage that accompanies change.

Confidence and assertiveness, when together, are sometimes mistaken for competence and even higher levels of expertise. Experienced classroom teachers are familiar with the vagaries of confidence and assertiveness of young learners when it comes to acquiring expertise. The same unfortunate combination can often lead to lesser 'experts' among those who should have reached higher levels of achievement.

Expert cover up

But what is even more unfortunate is that confidence and assertiveness are often developed as a cover for lack of expertise. It’s when the so-called expert has more confidence and assertiveness than expertise that incompetence tends to persist, and may even be fostered in the workplace.

However, quick attainment of proficiency is not fictitious. There are a number of strategies that can be used to permit this to happen. They're not new and they’re not rocket science:

• identify the required base-knowledge/skills, foster strategies for these to be recognised as key, and provide avenues for their appropriate acquisition and practice
  
  
• cull redundant and/or recursive procedures or procedural loops in workplace routines
  
  
• provide incentive for revisiting and refining/updating key knowledge/skills/procedures (used to be called ‘training’) to clarify current understanding
  
  
• foster a culture where its acceptable to ask questions to do with key knowledge/skills/procedures - in other words, it's OK not to be an expert.

How Do You Build A Team?

The belief that working in teams makes us more creative and productive is so widespread that when faced with a challenging new task, leaders are quick to assume that teams are the best way to get the job done . . .

. . . Contrary to conventional wisdom, teams may be your worst option for tackling a challenging task. Problems with coordination, motivation, and competition can badly damage team performance. Even the best leaders can’t make a team deliver great results. But you can increase the likelihood of success—by setting the right conditions. – Harvard Business Review May 2009.

I stumbled across the article Why Teams Don't Work by Daine Courtu. Having been a coach, team-teacher, team-leader and also team member in many successful (and some unsuccessful) teams,
I immediately pounced on the pages and scanned the content.

Courtu interviews J. Richard Hackman, Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at Harvard University, and author of the book, Leading Teams.

Hackman, a notable expert on teams with a lifetime of experience in studying and working with teams, has an authoritative opinion that makes a lot of sense to me. He comes over as a straight thinker who cuts to the chase when it comes to matters about the worth of teams.

Hackman’s stance is that teams can generate magic (didn’t we always believe that?) though we shouldn’t always count on every spell working the way we’d like. In his book Leading Teams, Hackman rationalises five critical conditions governing the balance between success and failure:

1. "Teams must be real. People have to know who is on the team and who is not. It’s the leader’s job to make that clear.
   
   
2. Teams need a compelling direction. Members need to know, and agree on, what they’re supposed to be doing together. Unless a leader articulates a clear direction, there is a real risk that different members will pursue different agendas.
   
   
3. Teams need enabling structures. Teams that have poorly designed tasks, the wrong number or mix of members, or fuzzy or unenforced norms of conduct invariably get into trouble.
   
   
4. Teams need a supportive organisation. The organisational context – including the reward system, the human resource system, and the information system – must facilitate teamwork.
   
   
5. Teams need expert coaching. Most executive coaches focus on individual performance, which does not significantly improve teamwork. Teams need coaching as a group in team processes – especially at the beginning, midpoint and end of a team project.”

Technology Competency & 21st Century Learners

Aaaaaaah! I’ve just deleted the Recycle Bin from my Desktop!

My PC runs Vista. Unlike other versions of Windows, Vista has a pull-down list on the Recycle Bin with a Delete option as well as the Empty Recycle Bin option. If Delete is chosen, the Recycle Bin isn’t emptied – it is removed from the Desktop!


Fortunately, the Recycle Bin is not actually deleted, but the path to restoring it, although easy to follow, is not easy to find.

The first time I deleted it was traumatic but I found a tip on Google. There are millions on
the Vista Recycle Bin!


It was only when it happened again that I realised that I hadn’t followed the advice I give to my students and colleagues on learning and practice. So the second time I had to do the Google search I made a careful mental note of the steps needed, and also to come back and check I could still remember them before I logged off.

I was reminded of this helpful idea when I read Tracy Hamilton’s recent post, Laughing at my own memory lost - Use it or Lose it. I also recalled the related comment I left on Tony Karrer's Tool Set 2009.

See > Note > Act > Practice (SNAP)

Teachers today require a high level of ICT competency, in addition to their understanding of subject knowledge, pedagogy and teaching practice. But the 21^st Century teacher doesn’t need much more in the way of basic ICT skills than a late 20^th Century teacher did. Certainly keeping up with the latest ICT developments and updates is a part, but then, isn’t that always the case in ICT?

The need is for a clear pathway for the learner to apply the learning once delivered, by whatever means – conversation, professional development program, whether on-the-job or in a formal training class.

Cognitive apprenticeship

It is embraced in the so-called cognitive apprentice theory that experts in a skill often don’t consider hidden processes involved in carrying out complex skills when they are teaching/instructing newcomers.

Situated professional development programs can be used to make this happen, instead of defining a prescription for particular technology competencies that learners must have and be able to use.

Often, learners have difficulty learning raw content. They may not be able to see exactly how raw know-how can be applied as it may have no relevance to them at the time and so they don't learn and remember.

Situated learning that grounds learning experiences in the learner’s own practice may well be more successful and a situated professional development technology program can serve the needs of the learners’ specific technology within their own learning environment.

But learners can do a lot of this for themselves.

Practice and metacognition

Whatever skill/knowledge/concept the learner has first learnt should be practiced soon as - the same day. This means that any training that is given should take into account the opportunity the learner may have to practice the same day and try out their newly acquired skill.

Mini projects that can be used by the learner after learning sessions always helps with this. This also applies to an on-the-job conversation where the learner picks up a tip or piece of advice that may well be useful to them in the future.

Learning to write little reminders when first shown something and then to practice it immediately afterwards is paramount to putting what's learnt into use and maintaining it. It is in the category of what’s called metacognition.

The mantra is learn and practice soon as.

As well, last thing on a Friday is a no-no for training/learning simply because of this whole principle of practice soon as. You can say ta-ta to what you're shown last thing on a Friday by the time Monday arrives. You rarely consolidate what you’ve learnt over the weekend!

When a helpful IT technician comes to show me how to do something on my PC on a Friday, I always say, “Can you show me on Monday? I’ll send you an email - I'll come round and you can show me then.”
Then I send the email AND cc it to myself.

I recall some years ago getting computer training on the last days of the year! Forget it! I may as well have!

Three tiers of technology competency

Acquiring technology competency has at least three components to it. They are to do with concept (c), training (t) and practice (p). Take knowing where to find the ‘attach and email’ function for instance.


The know-how to use the ‘attach and email’ function in Word 2007 comes with a bit of t & p and the end result is swifter and less cumbersome than other methods. But the ‘concept’ that a newly created Word document can be attached immediately to an email, and that the email application is invoked automatically while this process is being brought into effect is more than mere t & p.

The learner who has never met this idea is very unlikely to think of looking for the function on any new version of a computer application in order to use it. Thankfully in most instances the c comes with t & p but not always.

It’s not all just learning how to. My feeling is that there are at least 3 tiers of competency in any set of related skills:

1. concept - such as Send to Mail Recipient as Attachment (just get your head round the c idea)
   
   
2. knowledge that a function exists on the application/program used (t but also needs c),
   
   
3. knowing how to use it on a specific app/program (c and t & p).

You'll notice that practice always comes last but is no less important.

Remember the mantra? Learn and practice soon as (SNAP!)

Workplace Learning in 10 Years

Tony Karrer asks the BIG question,

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see?

In answering this, I’m going to be brief and pragmatic.

Ten years is a long time to project when making such a prediction. We have to forget about the current global economic crisis that’s putting everything, including workplace learning, into a tight spin. I’m assuming that we will have well recovered from this trauma by 2019.

We also have to shut our minds to the time warps that technology and its uses seem to have experienced in the past 10 years. Technology will experience its own ‘crash’ that we will have to contend with. This is already starting to happen with technowhelm, and I estimate that such a trough is not far off. My prediction is that the crazy technological frenzy that appears to be peaking at the moment will tend to moderate tolerably.

Drawing from the past:

Ten years ago, we might have been forgiven for thinking that the future of workplace learning in 2009 lay in computer assisted learning. Advancing a further five years and we could have been excused for believing that training databases were going to be action packed with animated instruction kits and video assisted training tools.

None of these predictions became general features of workplace learning and for a number of differing reasons. A few components of these found their way into specialist programs, limited in their extent by budgetary factors.

Learning must be accessible:

Accessibility of any information is the main limitation on its effective application. With the sheer volume of digital data that is likely to be associated with any organisation, access will become a major feature of any support system providing useful learning. It’s my best guess of the most efficient way for it to be brought about. The likelihood is that accessibility will become a major issue well before the year 2019 and will have to be dealt with or bust.

Over the past few years resourcefulness and conservation have been features of many societal practices. This cultural trait will find its way into the processes to do with how knowledge is stored, and disseminated.

Knowledge management will have swept a wide orbit and will return along a familiar but digitally oriented groove. Filtering and replenishing will be based on practice and resultant success, rather than theoretical principles governing what’s deemed to be useful.

Data retrieval will have become a fine art, almost an algorithmic feature of the technology of an organisation, rather than a problematic process within it. Already we have successful examples of data being managed on the Internet in Wikipedia and examples like this will serve as practicing models for the design of accessible data systems.

The networks:

Digital networking may well have found a niche by 2019. The study of how online groups behave and operate, tackled from the standpoint of best optimised rather than random mixes, will develop some of its own fundamental principles.

Sharing skills and knowledge, and working collaboratively in doing this, using refined technologies and their developments and appropriate techniques, will be lean and more efficient. Partnerships within and between organisations will be mutual organisational strengths, rather than organisational threats in a competitive environment.

Taxonomies for learning:

Training and learning in the workplace will become principled studies. Practical taxonomies will evolve. Technologies and associated learning techniques are selected for particular learning needs.

For this learning need, use this learning practice, is a pithy summary of how it will work out for most workplace learning needs in 2019.

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The Collective Effect

Why should our principles, beliefs, creeds, raison d'être as trainers and educators, be dislocated because of a global financial crisis? It seems illogical that just because things have got tough financially, even on a global scale, our fundamental ideologies as educators should have to be reviewed and turned around.

Is it logic?

We do not rush to review our theories of Mathematics, or of Science, or of Computer Logic Theory, just because we can’t afford to buy the software. So why should pedagogy and training theory be any different? Yet this is the sort of so-called logic that I’m reading about and listening to, that’s being touted on the Net - right now.

It seems that, because of our global financial situation, we should rethink all that we've done in the past about teaching, training and learning. It beggars logic.

A possible genetic throwback:

I begin to think that, perhaps, this is a genetic throwback. Maybe, way back in time, when crisis struck our primitive ancestors, some of them began to behave erratically, even stupidly. For some chance reason, the genetic strain that was shared by those demented individuals survived, and was passed on to some of us who are here today. Could this be what happened?

I muse over so-called mass-hysteria – a strange and insanely illogical behaviour of people in large groups, who experience unusual, synchronous, emotional events. I wonder how much of what we are witnessing is as a result of the so-called bandwagon effect.

If we can have collective intelligence,

why can’t we have collective stupidity?

Pie In The Sky?

I read blog posts and articles that tell where education and learning are supposed to be heading with the economic downturn. I wonder how much this evident crisis is being used by many would-be educators to assist them to push their own barrows.

It might be my age, but I feel that the rush-rush-rush of postmodernity is no excuse for continuing campaigns for further change just for the sake of it. Especially in training and education.

We have watched a foray of theorising - on digital natives/digital immigrants - on the spurious benefits of multi-tasking and how this is supposedly the way to work and learn - on how hype-new communication technologies have just got to be the way to go - on how we should chuck the book and the text-book with no real thought given as to how these will be effectively replaced.

New age

The present digitalogical age is nearly new. Some of us are still playing with the packaging from much of its technology. And we learn that we must get rid of everything else we’ve been using up till now to make way for what’s yet to be unpacked. It’s strange how, in times of financial crisis, we seem to perpetuate this practice, with no time given to total what assets we have and what may be of use.

While some are still extolling the virtues of pedagogy, others want to get rid of it, often with no real evidential basis for the extinction. And so, training is getting the heave - yet again. If we’re looking for something new to heave, forget training. It’s been heaved so many times before. Nothing new in that. Most often when it happens though, it’s heaved without regard to what’s thrown.

Training Cookery

In times of financial crisis, getting rid of training is familiar recipe to me. In 1992 I was made redundant from a corporation through the use of this same formula, only to be offered my job back. I was a computer trainer. Needless to say, I refused the offer. I felt indignation at the trauma I’d been put through.

Fortunately, another company offered me a job. Since then I’ve continued to witness the ebb and flow of training with the financial tide. There were phases when training was in abundant supply - price no object. But when finances were tight, training became a touchy topic.

I wondered about this seesaw change in attitude. I began to take note of how training was viewed by and within organisations in these varying economic climes.

Two metaphorical, attitudinal states for training came clear. In one, I was at home as a teacher/trainer in the workplace. In the other, I felt quite insecure and vulnerable.

Pie topping

I clearly felt insecure when training was treated as topping on the pie. These were times when training was offered as a confection - an incentive, rather than a nutritious necessity.

Often the training and accompanying resources were expensive. On these occasions, contractors might be brought in, at great expense, to provide training that, ultimately, was seldom put to good use. It was like flocculent cream topping, full of air, no real substance, and no nutritive value. But ooh! soo expensive! And we had to be grateful for what we received. When funds were tight, topping was off the menu.

The environment that this sort of training cultivated was one quick to change. It fostered resentment in its recipients, indigestion in the organisation, making further courses of similar fare almost unpalatable and certainly of little provisional use.

Pie base

The most secure state was not necessarily when money for training was at its most plentiful. In that state, it was the attitude of the organisation, within the hierarchy of management, right to the CEO, that provided a vigorous climate for both teaching and learning.

If funds were tight, innovative and smart approaches were sought and used if found. If funding was plentiful, it was for needed resources and strategies to best implement their use.

In terms of the ‘training pie’, this is the pastry-base state. It provides a firm foundation on which to build a healthy recipe for learning. The funding of this base was flexible, within limits, permitting a variety of quality ingredients to be at the disposal of the training. If times were tight, the ingredients for the base could easily be plain-pack without substantial loss of quality overall.

These two states are all about attitude to training – whatever form the training may take – held by the management hierarchy within an organisation.

In lean times, what recipe would you rather have - a pie with no topping, or a pie with no base?

Suck It And See

When Catriona was very little, she found comfort in a little bag of sweets.
She rarely ate them, but would find pleasure in knowing they were there.
She'd pick one from the bag, suck on it for a few seconds, then replace it, in the knowledge that she liked that sweet and could return to it for a suck later on. She did that with all her sweets, discarding the ones she didn’t like.

One of Tony Karrer’s 100 conversation topics is Ways that my children are learning that is significantly different from how I learn. This posts is about Tony’s topic number 25.

Have you ever been confronted with a technology and didn’t know how to use it? Y’know, the situation where you need to use the darned equipment but never had the opportunity to learn how to, and there’s no one around to show you. Now! When you’re desperate to use it!

It'll go bang!

I find this happens to me a lot. I have to jolt myself into action to do some exploring, maybe push a button here or click a link there – tap the keyboard to see if anything changes. I have to push aside my fear that the screen might explode, or that smoke may come gushing out of the computer. I fidget and look around to see if anyone’s watching.

This is a fear that I’ve always had when trying out new things. I realise that it’s my fear of computers that drove me to want to find out more about them. They are fascinating things, computers. Too fascinating to leave alone, and yet too mysterious not to excite my fear that I might get pounced on if I play with them.

Perhaps it’s something to do with my upbringing in an age when technology was rich in contraptions. The Billy Connolly line, “You’ll poke your eye out with that!” doesn’t seem inappropriate.

“Leave it alone! You don’t know what you’re doing! You’ll break it!” These are all demon voices that shout from the past at me, when I venture to explore somewhere I’ve never been before at the computer. “You’ll go blind!”

Habits die hard:

I recall when I was teaching young typists to use what we called word processors, way back in the late 80s. These women were fascinatingly slick at typing - on typewriters. Yet they could not get their heads round the idea that the Enter key (labelled Return key then, funny enough) didn’t have to be tapped when you got to the end of the line, or that typos didn’t need correcting as you typed them.

I had a great time unteaching these young minds about all their habits. It was a lot of fun. It taught me that humans are creatures of routine. We follow practices and cultures, unquestionably. We become so committed to them that we’ll argue the point when someone suggests we shouldn't follow habit.

I introduced the typists to what I called the suck-it-and-see approach to finding things out on the computer and was met with looks of horror. "We would never do that," came the affirmation.

Across the barriers:

Young minds always catch me out with their direct thinking. And I’m not alone in this. Last year at the NetSafe Conference 2008, I listened to a presenter tell her story of a survey that had been constructed to fathom the practice and thinking of teenagers.

She told of a 14 year old girl who was asked the survey question, “Would you swap a blow-job for a mobile phone?” The girl immediately replied, “What sort of a mobile phone?” The thinking transcends the barriers – obviously!

I just found it!

I watch my kids with a new remote or computer game. It mesmerises me to observe the way they work. How is it, for instance, that with all the years of tuition, enquiry and practice I’ve had using PhotoShop, that my teenage daughter will find things on the application, within minutes, that I’ve never seen before?

I’d ask her, “Who showed you how to do that?” She would reply, almost insolently, “No one - I just found it.” She would have found it using the suck-it-and-see approach. But she would have had no inhibitions about ‘sucking’ to find out.

Suck it and see:

Here's an exercise. The next time you are using a new application, or one that you're not too familiar with, lay aside half an hour to check out the menus. Most apps, like Word 2007 for instance, are quite extensive, but half an hour spent checking out the menus on a blank file can pay dividend.

If nothing else, it can help you learn the layout of the menus. With any luck, you'll pick up a thing or two about how to do things that otherwise would lie hidden, never to be found, till a teenage child - son, daughter or student - stumbles across it in minutes while fiddling around.

I don’t honestly think that this approach is anything new. In fact, I’d say that it is a natural fun way of finding out and learning. My feeling is that the baby-boomer learners, like myself, may carry baggage unwittingly, that inhibits them from using the suck-it-and-see approach as a first measure in learning.

Where Do The Boundaries Lie?

Where do the boundaries lie in training and education? For many teachers, drawing the distinction between these disciplines is seemingly very difficult. It poses the same illogicality as does the chicken and egg paradox.

I left a comment on Michele Martin’s recent post where she spoke of the corporate trainer as distinct from the teacher. In doing so I attempted to define the distinction between education, being preparation for life in its many facets, and training, being preparation for routine: a prearranged detailed course of action performed recurrently, as in a standard procedure.

Training is explicit

Back in last century, while training as a teacher I was also completing my education at university. I had signed up to do post-graduate research immediately following the completion of my honours degree and was still writing my PhD thesis when I did teacher training. The distinction between the two institutions, university and teacher training college, was explicit for me.

Routines and practices

University was not unlike senior secondary school in terms of the learning that had to be done. Even in my post-grad years I was acutely aware of the brainwork involved while I grappled with ideas, concepts that were new to me. But teacher training? That was refreshingly different. We learnt routines and practices. We spoke of pedagogies, read about the works of the theorists. It all seemed reasonably straightforward and it was almost effortless for me to see where a lot of what I was trained in could be applied.

What is more, I had no problem with accepting that what I was experiencing was training. There was something light and less cerebral about it, compared to the heavy theory and traction of degree course and research learning. I’m aware that this may just be my perception, but it defined some distinctions that I could later identify when I became a teacher.

Where is the boundary

So what’s the guts? How does one tell the difference between training and education?

In the 70’s, throughout the globe, we were still teaching logarithms to year 11 students in mathematics classes. That meant using log tables, as opposed to manipulating exponents or ‘powers’. In New Zealand, students had to be able to find the logarithm of a number by reading it from a set of tables. They also had to be able to convert back from a logarithm to get a number by using antilogarithm tables. I recall only too vividly the lessons I gave where fifth formers learnt (or didn’t learn) how to use these sets of tables. This was training.

It was a manipulative skill where data was read and transcribed from one paper resource to another, usually with a pencil. The “how to” could be taught to some students in a few minutes and to others over a variably longer period of time. Nearly all my students could learn how to ‘read’ log tables within a few days.

Tricks of the trade

There were certain techniques that I taught, in spirit not unlike the tricks a coach might impart to a tennis player. Simple ones like using a ruler to read across the lines of numbers so that the eye didn’t accidentally jump up or down to the wrong line.

Examination candidates were supplied with sets of mathematical and statistical tables in a booklet where all the pages looked more or less the same. So it was important for a student to be able to read the labels that lay along the headings on the pages so they could check that they were reading from the correct table. This required a certain base education. If students could not identify which table to use, and this was coached in training practice, they had slim hope of performing what was otherwise a relatively simple task.

Falling off a log

When log tables were replaced with calculators, as happened globally toward the end of last century, I had to train students to use quite different routines. Instead of learning to use tables and rulers and all the techniques that went with those, students had to be shown which buttons to press on their calculators. They had to learn what all the little button-symbols meant. Essentially the same degree of training was required with calculators as with log tables though the manual skills required to perform the tasks were quite different. There is no fundamental distinction between their correct numerical outcomes.

pH is powerful

I teach chemistry in the senior school. Year 13 students are required to perform calculations in solution pH. This requires not only the ability to find the logarithm of a number, but also the ability to understand what is meant by a logarithm in terms of it being an index or power. Hydrogen ion concentration is expressed in powers of ten (10) and calculating the pH involves finding the logarithm of this concentration. A chemistry student who has never been introduced to the idea of a logarithm or power is at a distinct and severe disadvantage.

First, they have to learn to be able to find the logarithm of a number using a calculator. They then have to understand and come to grips with the concept of an exponent or power. It is often all too obvious that students find it easier to determine the logarithm of a number than to understand what to do with it once it's obtained.

Education not training

Understanding about powers of ten is not something a student can gain through training. If they are not familiar with the concept, they need educating, not training. The ideas associated with thinking about powers and exponents in relation to logarithms or indices to the base ten have to be understood before a student can perform a sensible calculation with any given data to do with pH.

So concepts imparted to novices tend to fall into the category of education. Most secondary teachers assume (or hope) that their fresher students will have been educated to a level where they can read and write. For most students these skills and knowledge will have taken development years to acquire. During that time the students would have assimilated the associative skills to do with understanding symbols leading to literacy and numeracy, all of which would have been acquired by a deal of conceptual learning, otherwise known as education, most of which is simply taken for granted.

Anyone for tennis?