Computer Reality

Typists who could rattle out a notice on a Remington Portable knew nothing of word wrap. So-called word processors simulated part of the procedure of carriage return by using ‘Return’ keys, now replaced by ‘Enter’ keys on the QWERTY keyboard.





I worked in an office when bound, printed instruction manuals were in their heyday. I didn’t need to read a manual to find out that it was useless either. I could tell from its crisp pages and gleaming cover.

The contents of useful manuals fell at my feet when I took them from the shelf. Company experts on procedures were usually those who wrote, added to, or amended manuals like these.

Many things we now do in the workplace, and the way we go about them, have arisen through the inclusion of the computer. Much of those were modified and re-jigged, or even scrapped from practiced routines and procedures and reinvented, when the use of computer technology became a mandatory part of the processes.

Dissemination of procedural instructions

One of the artefacts that almost disappeared through all this was the printed process specification or business procedure manual. It was sometimes replaced by an online version – less convenient in some ways, more facile in others.

One argument in favour of this replacement was that updates to procedures could be conveyed instantly to a network of workers. In the past these changes were scribbled on the margins of printed manuals and referred to until new versions were published.

But if there is no rigorous and timely procedure for updating an online manual, the user can’t scribble notes in the margins when instructions drift out of date. That is unless they print their own version at some stage. Many do, for this and a number of other reasons. In doing this, however, they may lose touch with subsequent amendments that are only announced on the online version.

Sometimes the business procedure manual, if it existed at all, simply disappears altogether, to be recreated in notes and copies of those made by industrious workers who recognise the need for a manual of some sort. Announcements of new procedures or changes to existing ones sent round by email are filed in either digital or printed form by this diligence.

Evolving 'expertise'

Through this process there evolves a wealth of expertise of varying quality. Someone in need of information about a business procedure may skip around a workplace looking for advice from those workers well known for gathering and squirreling away procedural information.

And new ‘experts’ come into being.

This is all very well, until there is a real need for a unified approach to a specific and important procedure. It is a property of communities that exists in large workplaces, that they are recursively elaborate and capricious in how each separate part functions according to its situation.

So what's the solution to communicating unequivocal up-to-date procedural methods of practice to all parts of the workplace?

Experience and Qualification

I’ve been reflective in my thoughts on where teaching and learning, training and higher education have been leading us recently.

I find it curiously odd that there seems to be a cogent drift away from the value of qualification, in those who are actively engaged in creating educational and training resources. This, at a time when experience is already not held universally in high esteem.

By qualification, I mean a formal standard, diploma or degree, conferred by an authorised and antonymous education or training body.

By experience, I’m implying months or years actually practicing a discipline, in whatever role the position requires.

I have tremendous faith in the youth of today, so I’m not denying their worth and value. They have unbelievable potential and the future of the world as we know it lies undeniably in their hands.

But in the past decade or more, there has been a move away from recognising experience in the workplace. Fresh minds – and let’s not deny it, youth – and the promise of creativity coming from those, have been put above the true and proper value of experience.

And now, we might be misled into believing that qualification could also be discarded.

I put it to you, that by severing the effective combination of qualification, experience and innate ability of the potential appointee to a position in the workforce, we are not only doing a disservice to the workplace, we are putting the future of the world at risk.

What's In A Name?

Courtesy PD Photo.org


A rose by any other name would smell as sweet – William Shakespeare

Evening Standard columnist, Frank Furedi, believes that the educational crisis facing Britain today is in part due to the way objective academic standards are being defined and asserted in the classroom.

His claim is that society seems “to have given up on adult authority and the idea that the person who knows best in the classroom is the teacher.” He believes that “education requires the conscious and regular imposition of adult authority.”

I was reminded of Furedi’s opinion when learning recently of the debate over the move by principals and teachers in some New Zealand primary schools to have pupils call them by first name. Some teachers believe that learners bond better with their teacher when they call them by their first name.

Anthropologist James Urry claims that removing the age-based hierarchy empowers children before they have the social skill to cope with it.

Canterbury College of Education associate dean, Barry Brooker, was reported as saying that using formal titles develops a demarcation between teachers and students that gives teachers the authority to do their jobs properly.

Do teachers need authority to do their jobs properly?

At The Correspondence School of New Zealand (TCS), a distance education centre, learners always refer to teachers by first name.

When I first took up a teaching post at TCS, this idea was new to me. I’d taught in different secondary schools for many years before then.

In all the schools where I taught, in Scotland and New Zealand, students called their teachers by their surname: Mr Roberts, Mrs Gill, Miss James, etc.

When I graduated PhD, the principal of the Edinburgh High School
I was teaching in announced to the school that I was to be called
Dr Allan, from now on. I've been addressed as Dr Allan, or Sir, by students in every face-to-face school I’ve taught in since.

But I had no problem when my students called me Ken at TCS.
The policy of the school was that students always referred to teachers by first name.

Other distance education centres do the same. And you know, it seems to work. I find that learners relate to me with at least as much respect as I had earned while teaching in face-to-face schools.

Are face-to-face schools so different that students calling their teachers by first name can damage the potential for effective student–teacher relationships? What do you think?

Lead by Example

It could be that the purpose of your life is only
to serve as a warning to others – Ashleigh Brilliant.

This month, The Learning Circuits Blog has the theme:

‘Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning’.

Tony Karrer puts The Big Question:

How do I communicate the value of social
media as a learning tool to my organization?

The answer I have for him is, perhaps very slowly.


In the year 2000 I used Web1.0 technology in an attempt to emulate Web2.0. At that time I didn't know what Web2.0 was.

As senior teacher, I began designing web pages and developing elearning resources permitting learner interaction and feedback. I was labelled as a geek. This was despite the organisational approval, funding and planning time provided for me to engage in the development of elearning resources.

In 2002, as a full-time elearning teacher, this opinion of my role in using digital technology was confirmed by a newly appointed manager.

When she saw what I was doing using Web1.0/Web2.0 technology, she openly declared that she was not a geek. She affirmed that she could never embrace what I was practicing, for she did not want to be seen as a geek.

In 2007, a leading light on the staff created her blog especially, but not exclusively, for staff use and interaction. I was astonished that, from an organisation that supported hundreds of teaching staff, there were so few participants who entered into discussion on the blog.

In 2008, while working in the same organisation, I started a blog.

I discovered that many of my colleagues viewed this practice as a risky business. Some were still not sure what a blog was.

They had a vague idea that web pages, blogs and wikis, were all related in some way, but their exact function, usefulness and operational value were unclear to many and often viewed with suspicion. I have many colleagues who still find Web2.0 quite elusive.

In 2009, I'm pleased to share the blogosphere with several work colleagues ( 1 ), ( 2 ), ( 3 ), ( 4 ), ( 5 ), ( 6 ), ( 7 ) who actively maintain their blogs and post regularly.

Some have been blogging since early 2007. Whether anything I did had any influence on my colleagues to do likewise is purely a matter for conjecture. It’s been a long time.

But when it comes to communicating the value of social media as a learning tool, leading by example may be as good a way as any.

100 Essential Web 2.0 Tools For Teachers

The ever-increasing abundance of free downloadables available for educators continues to astonish me.They are as numerous as the sites that catalogue them by the hundreds.

Recently I was made aware of yet another index – this time specifically for teachers. I must admit I was sceptical – just another list, I thought. But closer inspection got me thinking that, perhaps, this one was worth a second look.

My last GPS Website Gold Rush site for this month is Online Degree, a resource for online degree program information. It has just posted an article on 100 Essential Web 2.0 Tools For Teachers. There are goodies listed there I've never seen before.

Check them out. To name a few, I recommend taking a look at:

Befuddlr (No. 93) – adds fun to pictures by making them into puzzles – easy-to-use, it offers choices of flickr picture groups to choose from

Fleck (No. 86) – puts sticky notes and annotations onto existing web pages and permits you to share them with others

Many Eyes (No. 94) – a take on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns – this tool has the potential to create great discussion and debate in the classroom.

As well, Online Degree presents a broad series of reviews of top rated online degree programs and offers an online degree search tool.

Could be a useful site to bookmark?

A Green Pen Society contribution

New Strategies? New Skills? A Big Question

Tony Karrer’s Big Question for July has a syntax that’s almost rhetorical: New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals?

Does he suggest that, perhaps, there is nothing new in that field?
Or is he genuinely asking for innovative ideas on what skills learning professionals should have?

I couldn’t help thinking how taken aback I was at Tony’s reaction to one of my last month’s posts. I’d rattled it off almost like an email reply. When he said he had to walk through it and take notes, he got me thinking about what I’d written. I went back and read it through to check that he was talking about the same post. The first bullet in the closing list on attaining proficiency read:

• identify the required base-knowledge/skills, foster strategies for these to be recognised as key, and provide avenues for their appropriate acquisition and practice

That’s all very simply put in a bullet. It’s the unpacking of what’s bulletised that I think Tony’s after when he asks his Big Question.
In thinking of the complexity of what is embraced in that bullet, a plethora of other lists, schemes and recent and not-so-recent ideas came to mind.

I often take a backward look at Bloom’s Taxonomy, for instance.


New skills?

If the above heirarchy of thinking skills is of any use to the young learner, it must surely be useful in some form to a professional who is still learning. Aren’t we all supposed to be lifelong learners? Isn’t that what our glorious learning journeys are all meant to be about?

Just because the so-called lower-order-thinking-skills are fundamental to the others in the list does not mean that they’re to be neglected once the higher skills are attained. You may as well forget about tyre maintenance and just see to the fine tuning of a car engine before setting off on a long drive. When it comes to traction and treads, there are always new developments in the marketplace. So it is with knowledge in the professional arena.

The fundamentals of learning, understanding and application of knowledge don’t mutate simply because someone has learnt a lot. Why relegate Bloom’s Taxonomy to the classroom? There’s a deal of wisdom there that can be applied to everyday learning in the workplace.

Timely reminders

Often the skilled and knowledgeable person needs to be reminded of some of the strategies that are at their disposal. Knowing what to do, and having the skills to be able to do it, are only part of what a professional needs in order to exercise initiative. The other and most important element is recognising where and when these knowledge and skills can be and should be applied. This takes practice and there’s seldom much time to do this in day-to-day routines.

How people think, and what that thinking is associated with, varies widely from person to person. It’s the context that’s often so important for specific thinking to occur if it's to happen at all. Innovators and naturally creative people rarely need tuition in the elements of how to be innovative or creative. Others new to these skills need relevant and appropriate contexts in order to flex their creativity and innovation.

Whether it is learning to touch-type, finding out how to embed a YouTube video in an announcements page of an LMS, or constructing a new strategy from peer feedback on a project, there needs to be a focus that includes:

• the learner,
  
  
• the relevant application of what’s to be learnt,
  
  
• the available resources for use by the learner, and
  
  
• the time allocated specifically for that up-skilling to happen.

Follow through is essential: that the learner has immediate, relevant and appropriate opportunity to practice what’s been learnt.


Relevant references:

Andrew Churches - Bloom’s (Digital) Taxonomy

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/bloom%27s+Digital+taxonomy+v3.01.pdf

UNESCO - Task Force on Education for the Twenty-first Century

http://www.unesco.org/delors/index.html
http://www.unesco.org/delors/fourpil.htm
http://www.unesco.org/delors/delors_e.pdf

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.”

Metalearning and Other Ghastly Sounding Words

courtesy Wordle

And I thought the word ‘metacognition’ was too heady and ghastly sounding for the blogosphere. I felt guilty about referring to this ugly term in my Middle-earth posts.

Now we have a full blown discussion about it half-way round the Globe! Tony Karrer spawned a debate on what he refers to as metalearning. As usual, he made me think, but not specifically about what he was posting about.

Matacognition

Wikipedia (I’m a great fan of this site) defines metacognition as:

cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing. It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and where to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving.

I had a strong hunch that metacognition was closely related to, if not the same as metalearning. I’ve since discovered that metalearning is a more specific term, though it has a range of meanings.

 
Metalearning in education

When it comes to educational aspects, Wikipedia quotes
Donald B. Maudsley, defining metalearning as,

the process by which learners become aware of and increasingly in control of habits of perception, inquiry, learning, and growth that they have internalized.

The above description explains the brand of metalearning I’ve become more familiar with.

Metalearning in teams

Wikipedia makes a distinction when metalearning is used in the context of performances of teams and relationships:

(T)he dynamic process whereby a system (relationship, or organization) manages to dissolve limiting dynamics such as point attractors and limit cycles that impede effective action and evolve liberating and creative dynamics represented by complex attractors whose trajectories in phase space, by never repeating themselves, can portray creative and innovative processes.

If you can make sense of that on first reading, you’re a genius!

Having spent half an hour at least, thinking and researching the meanings behind these words and phrases, I found they took me back to a topic I’ve revisited several times on this blog in the last year. Complexity seems to find its way into everything I look at to do with successful teams and sustainable communities.

After unpacking the seemingly garbled sentence, I found that it offered a lot to do with thinking and learning involving teams and relationships. It seems that metalearning is a well established study, applied to the way teams and organisations perform.

Losada

Formerly initiated by Marcial Losada, metalearning is the study of how groups of individuals in a team contribute to its performance. Metalearning does this in a way that enables a team's thinking to evolve uninhibited, so that new ideas can emerge.

By understanding and controlling the balance between the external and internal references to do with that thinking, the results can lead to high performance in business teams. I began to wonder if this is really what Tony Karrer had in mind when he wrote his post.

The Losada Zone

The various ratios of positivity and negativity involved in human interaction that can exist, lies within what’s called the Losada Zone. Negative feedback can act as a warning signal, whereas positive feedback encourages the status quo. Losada found that high performance teams have a so-called P/N (positivity/negativity) ratio that is high (5.6), medium performance teams have a lower ratio (1.9) and low performance teams come in with a still lower ratio (0.36).

Such a ratio is a measure of and is related to the connectivity potential within a team. The Losada Line (at 2.9) signifies the lower limit, separating people who have the potential to achieve a complex understanding of others from those who have a lesser ability to do this. Those who succeed are said to be above the Losada Line, and those who fall short lie below it. The terms ‘flourish’ and ‘languish’ are used to describe the two states.

Frequent innovation 
High performance teams possess creativity and are capable of recurrent innovation. They tend to work along the lines of complexors. Coined by Marcial Losada, the complexor describes the form of outcomes of successful teams in the recursively intricate way they emerge and evolve. Intimately mapped on to complexity theory, the characteristics of complexors resemble fractals, elaborately regenerating themselves.

Point attractors, though not the exact opposite of complexors, are outcomes that are akin to the fate of a wind-up toy. Effectively they refer to performances that decay, lead to inaction and go nowhere.

Where to from here?

It appears that metalearning applies to and can be applied to the performance behaviour of teams. Becoming aware of the need for openness and being receptive to new ideas in a way that permits these to be advantageously and constructively considered is something that, presumably, can be learnt by members of a team or community. 

Earlier in May, Jay Cross posted Become a Chief Metalearning Officer. Having thought more about all this, I have three questions:

• Is it possible that by managing and applying specific learning processes, a better performance can be reached in teams that are already partly on the way to attaining success?
• Does this special type of learning lie within the province of the individual's control?
• Can this sort of ‘management’ be controlled and executed by a manager?

If the answers to these questions are in the affirmative, perhaps we can use metalearning to help our world.

video

Choose the Conversation

Informal learning happens in many ways. Brent Schlenker’s post
Is There No Room For Informal Learning? highlights the variety and usefulness of avenues through conversation. Tony Karrer spoke of ‘conversation learning’ in an earlier post and developed this in his Conversation on Conversations.

A recent discussion with Zoë Westhof on the problems that authors encounter when writing their thoughts made me consider how people might go about voicing their ideas during a face-to-face conversation.

Ideas a priority

For the author of a twitter line or a blog comment, the same conflict of prioritisation of ideas can occur than if it’s a company report that’s being drafted. The author may have several ideas waiting in the mind when the first phrase is unfurled in writing. During this time, a shuffling of ideas in the mind of the author may occur; some of those may dissolve while new ones emerge.

These thoughts may not necessarily be ones that would make any sense to the reader if expressed consecutively. A good writer understands this conflict and goes about the editing process during thinking and on the written script at appropriate times throughout the writing process.

Arena for spoken ideas

But speaking in conversation can be different than all of this. While the author may have to wrestle with an array of thoughts when writing, the conversationalist has also to accommodate the intervening audible ideas of others. In particular, the spoken conversation has the additional and sometimes limiting factor of time and the mandatory aspect of personality.

Any spoken conversation is an arena for the participants' competing thoughts. The personality composition of any conversation is a major controller of the outcome of that exchange, whether it is between reunited friends in the corridor at a conference, a heated discussion between members in a board room, or an audio conference during a radio interview.

Clearly, the personality make-up of any group discussion is a significant outcome-determining factor for that event. The time honoured book I’m OK You’re OK describes ranges of possible personality controlled situations that may occur during conversation.

That capricious window of opportunity to voice an idea during a spoken conversation can often elude the conversationalist and leave the thought unsaid. An important idea may not be heard, let alone thought about by the other participants, and it remains for its owner to wait for another opportunity to put the idea. Similar circumstance may occur in a chat room environment but the window of opportunity is less capricious and is usually always there.

Down to earth digital

For the conversationalist who chooses to chat in a twitter exchange or on a wiki, or who opts for the more leisurely terrain of a blog post, less urgency exists to prioritise thoughts before voicing them. What may be lacking for some in that environment is the rush of adrenaline to push to be heard, to prioritise to a fine arrow-point the words and phrases that are to be voiced and to wait for the opportune moment to thrust the gist forward. The phrase, ‘making a point’ summarises this situation.

For those like me who can summon that urgency at keyboard or txt-pad, the time to do the saying and the personalities of participants do not necessarily present barriers. What’s lacking is the opportunity to speak directly and with style to the faces of chosen conversationalists.

( 3 ) << - related posts - >> ( 1 )

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!)

Love The Conversation

“Love the conversation” is Tony Karrer’s closing sentence in a recent discussion on his post, Reduce Searching Start Talking.

The poet in me reads his words as having latent yet brilliant dichotomy. I couldn’t help but be entertained by this, for the post and its associated discussion are precisely about the practical usefulness of information, brought about through conversation, rather than by a search on an information database.

Conversation can apply to discourse on a blog, chat-room, phone or face-to-face. I explore parts of that conversation here.

Tony reviews the opinion of Martine Haas. She maintains that following a knowledge sharing philosophy, using document databases within an organisation, will not necessarily bring about desired success. Key and pertinent points that Tony brings forward are:

using personal advice from experienced colleagues can improve work quality

appropriately matching the type of knowledge used to the requirements of the task at hand is critical to improved performance of projects

The question is how to apply these axioms effectively and efficiently.

Experienced colleagues

When it comes to using the experience of people within an organisation, there’s often a pecking order or hierarchy. The hierarchy does not necessarily relate to a gradation of useful experience, so a careful inspection is required to avoid selection according to invalid or wrong assumptions. All of this relates to people and how they communicate. I put forward a selection of questions relevant to this:

1. Who decides who within an organisation has the most useful experience when it comes to learning from that?
   
2. What criteria are used in this decision making?
   
3. How is personality, as a factor used by decision makers, considered against experience and worth of opinion when selecting experienced colleagues, presumably from within, rather than from outside, the organisation?
   
4. (a) How is useful advice that is collected from experienced colleagues translated into workable information?
   
   (b) What ensures that variation from original advice doesn’t occur through invalid interpretation or other infidelity?

Inherent in the questions 4 (a) and (b) in the above list is the need to ensure the relevance and significance of gathered information isn’t dulled or diffused by editing or judicious culling. This may be brought about through intensions unrelated to the intent behind the first gathering of information. The writing of a summary report from transcripts and the like, perhaps edited by a third party, is one area where such diffusion can occur unwittingly.

Often within organisations, either in association with government or where there is strong policy or procedural strategies in existence, there are political factors that are brought into play. Depending on how these are taken into consideration, such features can adversely influence an otherwise appropriate decision or choice. These situations are often encountered when authorities are involved, and policy is enacted, perhaps incongruously, without due thought given to implications relevant to the issue being examined.

Matching the knowledge transfer process

Helping people to learn to use the most effective means of knowledge transfer is the challenge that Maria put forward on Tony’s post. I agree that this must be where it’s at on all levels in an organisation.

The question here is where to start. It is likely too complex for a practical guiding taxonomy to be drawn up and be of any use. Drafting a program to teach adults to use the right means of knowledge transfer is probably at least as difficult as teaching children to be discerning about information accessible on the Internet. There are no hard and fast rules for this. Yet there is no doubt that discernment forms a large part of selecting efficient and effective means for knowledge transfer.

Not only is careful analysis of the type of knowledge required, but its reason for use and the possible methods for its eventual dissemination have all to be considered when making a selection.

I recall visiting a demonstration in the late 80s on the use of Phoenix, an authoring tool for creating computer assisted instruction. At the time, my interest was to use the technology for developing a course on how to use a database. The example given as a paradigm was instruction on how to dig ditches.

Conversation

Appropriate information gleaned from conversation, rather than sifting for the data in a document database, will yield results that are more likely to lead to success. In conversation Tony posed the question, when should the transition from written to conversation occur? In my response, I chose an example of when this decision making is done by a student:

Often the switch time should come earlier than it is made. A typical example of this is when a student phones me up about a difficulty. Usually they have been grappling with it for some time, maybe looked on the Internet, read the book etc, and then they resort to taking the initiative to phone.

BUT, in describing what the problem is over the phone, it's not unusual for the student to find their own solution. By verbalising what's problematic, it somehow enables the mind to see the solution. What the student should have done, of course, is to phone me earlier.

This is another aspect of conversation that's often overlooked - that of translating thought, so that the idea becomes more apparent and hence giving more opportunity for the talker to understand.

Formal discussion

If time is at a premium, meetings scheduled for discussion tend to be rushed. Contributors tend to do their thinking during the discussion rather than before. Personalities can dominate procedure and theme, and an unwritten agenda of consensus can preclude useful debate.

In challenged discussion of this type, important issues may be overlooked for there is often insufficient time for due consideration and real thinking to be done. The concern is to ensure contributors have done sufficient thinking on the salient issues before the meeting.

Digital discussion

At first look, a wiki or other such discussion forum over time could provide the opportunity for points to be raised for further thought. But it is well known that participation in discussion of this type tends to be limited to a small minority within a group. That’s not to say that others do not read, think and further consider the issues that are tabled, but there is no unequivocal way of checking this. I now understand Tony’s earlier pursuit of mandatory participation in digital discussion.

But given that such a system could operate, there are a number of important guidelines that should be followed by the person who calls the meeting. Since an understanding of what the key issues may be is paramount to the possible and eventual success of the process, it is clear this person also has to be one who has a major leadership role relevant to the process.

Type of discussion

At a recent meeting I attended, teachers were invited for their input on an introductory diagram to be drafted, designed and eventually used in teaching part of Curriculum Level 3 - 4 Science. It was specifically for learners new to the concept. Unfortunately much of what was brought along were ideas on many and related cycles interlinked with but not directly relevant to the proposed diagram that was to be designed.

The meeting became a free for all. Some teachers became exasperated at its diffuseness. Eventually, refinements had to be made to a draft diagram through a series of to and fro emails over a number of days.

A clear understanding of the purpose of a discussion should be owned by each invited participant. Discussion parameters should be made evident to all parties before it begins. This not only saves time, but also prevents digression from the original intent.

The type of discussion expected should also be known and understood by all participants. If it is to be a face-to-face brainstorm, for instance, the contributors should also be fully versed in format and expectation. This will mean defining guidelines before the meeting, such as:

no put down – anything goes – short sharp suggested ideas no discussion – all ideas are recorded – maximum time for meeting 30 minutes.

Ambiguity wastes time

So often the issue to be discussed is only vaguely outlined and perhaps hurriedly in an agenda. Ambiguity contributes to vagueness.

There is nothing more likely to waste valuable time than participants arriving at the venue with the wrong agenda in mind. If the meeting is called to decide on a particular direction or course of action from a number of possible options, relevant information should be circulated about all the options to all participants before the meeting.

But these ideas aren’t new and they're not rocket science. They’re simply good communication practice for calling meetings. While the conversation at a meeting may be criticised, its planning may well be at fault from the start.

Ownership

How well participants are committed to the cause within an issue brought forward in discussion is a moveable feast. All I can offer here is a message about ownership.

It’s not just a case of announcing the title of the topic at issue and distributing invitations. For participants to enter willingly and wholeheartedly into discussion on a topic, they must first have a sense of ownership. Their vested interest is fostered by offering opportunity to enter into cognitive discourse - they need time and occasion to think about it. That time well spent brings ownership to the participants of any conversation.

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