Evolution of learning... Moving towards informal

One of the conversations I had at #DevLearn's DemoFest last week was indicative of the evolution we are starting to see in #eLearning towards more informal learning... but first let me try to describe DemoFest to set the scene.

Picture a ballroom with about 80 small tables with 4 chairs around each one. At each table a presenter has a +/- 6 min. presentation to share with whomever stops by to listen. The ideas were incredible, so was the noise level! LOL!

One of the presenters discussed his attempts to use more social media and collaboration in the trainings he conducts for his organization. He was talking about a recent incident where a colleague came to his desk and he videotaped her explaining how she had used a learned skill and then taken it further. He wanted to encourage more such sharing and said "but then I will be out of a job" meaning they won't need a training department anymore. I replied, "No you won't be out of a job, but your job will evolve. Your job will be in each of the departments rather than being a separate training department."

This was an idea I heard many times at DevLearn. We need to evolve training and make it more job-embedded, more collaborative, more just-in-time. The piece which may still be holding that back from happening is the fear expressed in the statement, "but then I will be out of a job."

How do we help people understand there will always be a need for training/trainers/educators as we move towards more informal learning? What does this evolution look like?

There was another piece to my discussion with that same presenter. He wanted to encourage more sharing and collaboration so I asked how he validated people who did share. I pointed out that he validated the person when he videotaped her and shared her idea. One of points made in Lisa Chamberlin's (AKA @chambo_online) presentation about the MarshU blogger development program "If you build it will they blog" was how much adults in the workplace still want to be recognized. At MarshU badges for completion of the program were highly prized. I was thinking of these badges when I asked the DemoFest presenter how he validated people in his organization. Such a simple idea but people want to be recognized!

I am also thinking about how informal learning relates to eLearning in general whether it is K-12, higher ed, or enterprise. I have no huge Aha answers to share, just lots of questions! These are not the last musings on this topic by this still ignorant author!

Shhh An Academic Went to #DevLearn

Don't tell any of the attendees at #DevLearn2011 but there was an academic in their midst this week! In fact, I was warned in advance not to "act like an academic." Since I profess right from the title of this blog to be ignorant, I decided that this was yet another area of my ignorance.

Truth be told though I wasn't the only academic at #DevLearn! We were however a minority population and we shouldn't be. This is one of my big takeaways from a wonderful conference! I have a whole series of takeaways and Aha's to share.

For those who are not aware #DevLearn is one of a series of conferences put on by @eLearningGuild #DevLearn has the well-deserved reputation of being the foremost, and the edgiest, conference on eLearning.

The underground definition of eLearning is corporate eLearning, aka The Training Department. One of the major buzzes throughout the conference was how to make training more informal, social, just-in-time, experiential, collaborative...

Hmm! Wait a minute, I hear a lot of these terms when talking about how to make K-12 and higher education better. I am sure though there is some big difference between the corporate and the academic versions of eLearning.

So I kept my mouth pretty much shut and continued to listen. In one of my first conversations a gentleman was talking about the conversion of his face-to-face (f2f) two day 8 hours/day training into an online format.

Those who know me well know that the term conversion is a hot button. I firmly believe eLearning cannot be "converted" from f2f. Courses, training, whatever you call the learning events, must be engineered completely differently than f2f trainings if they are going to be effective.

This gentleman went on to say that converting the trainings into 8 hour online sessions wasn't effective for the facilitators or the learners. He was looking to chunk the content more, stretch out the training, give people time to absorb the information and practice the skills.

Sounds a lot like teaching best practices in general. In fact his f2f sessions would probably be a candidate for chunking the content and giving folks time to practice the skills. But once again, I was thinking like an academic. I nodded in agreement but didn't once mention pedagogy or learning theory or brain research but he sure could have used some of that knowledge about how people learn.

There were many such times throughout the conference experience. I left Las Vegas yesterday thinking...

1. K-12 and higher education are doing a LOT of eLearning. They should be at this table in eLearning Guild, and at #DevLearn talking about and thinking about how people best learn online.
   
2. Corporate eLearning and instructional designers could learn a lot from "academics" and academics can learn a lot from corporate folks. We should be encouraging this conversation, not discouraging it.
   
3. eLearning whether it is corporate or academic is still, despite all the talk about informal learning, organized around training events. Call them courses which are a semester long, or an 8 hour 2 day training (both are training events), there is very little true informal learning happening.

And shhhh I am told that a certain Russian educational theorist... by name Vygotsky, was mentioned in a Friday morning presentation. I saw it on the Tweet stream! I guess I am not the only one who needs to not "act like an academic!" Vygotsky... Vygotsky! Still laughing!

This ignorant academic has more insights about #DevLearn, informal learning, how people learn. Stay tuned!

Begging for communication

Can I just say... I hate to beg. Does anyone really like to beg someone for communications? Probably not, but it is becoming a real pet peeve with me.

Several business people I have been dealing with... Well let's just say I believe if they want my business they will provide some service and will communicate with me. I shouldn't have to keep asking and begging for the information I want/need to move forward with a business arrangement. Grrr

And as an online instructor I shouldn't have to beg students to communicate with me. A couple of recent instances have me really perplexed. I wasn't sure one student was getting my messages. In my emails I said, please let me know if you are getting my messages. Can I be more clear than that? I expect you to reply. I shouldn't have to tell you to reply, as a matter of courtesy a student should say "Thank you I got your message about blah and I understand/will do the following..." I am very prompt at returning student emails... they should promptly let me know they got my message.

In another case a student let me know after a multi-week disappearance from an online class that they had a medical issue. Unless you are in a coma, please ask someone to open your email and send a quick message to the instructor letting them know there is a medical emergency. In this case the medical issue wasn't an emergency at all and the student could have advised me about the need for an extension of due dates. However since the student did not contact me in advance or at any time during the several weeks of absence nor were there replies to my messages asking if there was a problem, I had no choice but to apply the late policy.

Communication is a two-way street. Students have a responsibility to communicate with instructors. And instructors have a responsibility to reply in a prompt, informative manner. Making me beg repeatedly to find out if the student is getting my messages offering technical assistance so I know if the help worked just ticks me off. And I end up writing a blog posting! In this case I guess the ignorance lies with the online student population. Hopefully the following plainly stated message helps dispel that ignorance: Students... you have a responsibility to communicate with the online instructor!

You have now heard of sexting - talk to your teen

Thanks to Congressman Weiner many adults are now less ignorant about the phenomenon known as "sexting." Your teenager, likely snickering in the background at your reaction to the recent nhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifews, has known about sexting for quite a while. And now is the time to talk to your teenager.

Start with a discussion but don't lead the discussion. Tell them you are just becoming aware of this and want to know what sexting experiences they might have "observed." If your child believes you are about to attack them you won't learn anything and the point is to first and foremost learn what your teenager has experienced to date. So ask what they have observed then listen. Dispassionately! If you react and start lecturing you won't learn anything. Just listen!

After they tell you the sexting involving their "friends" ask if they have had any such experiences. If you have been quietly listening and taking it all in, this might be when you really hear some revelations. Keep listening! Even if you are shocked, or upset, keep listening!

Ask your teenager what they think about the current news - an adult man contacting young women having racy conversations and sharing inappropriate pictures. Keep listening. Now is when you will learn something about the underlying moral values you have already instilled in your child. You will also learn how their point of view about sharing things online may be different from yours. Later you will have a conversation about these things but right now you are still eliminating your own ignorance and gathering information.

Ask your teenager if there is anything on their computer or their phone which they wouldn't want a family member to see. Their facial expression will relate volumes and may not match the answer they give. Your goal is to have this be open communication so if you jump into discipline mode now this conversation wilhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifl be over. And you will have ruined the chance to have conversations about deep and important topics later.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

End the conversation now. Period! You need time to process what your child has told you and they need to see this was a safe conversation. You will have opened the door to further talks if you end the conversation without reacting. Thank them for helping you understand this phenomenon and invite further conversation.

At a later time, if discipline and parental oversight are needed, move into that role. When you do here are a few resources. I will share further resources as I find them, and I will share parental oversight suggestions and tips in a future posting. Today's message was to start a conversation and then LISTEN!

Connect Safely: Tips to Prevent Sexting
Talking about Sexting

Teaching and learning come first

Just a quick post... I have had a lot of big projects on my to-do list and #CCK11 took a big time backseat. I have some thoughts on why my first MOOC experience turned out this way and will share them in a day or two but first, a fun visual.

I do a lot of work with the fine folks at ISTE as a project reviewer. Of late I have been steeped in the refreshed NETS-T (National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers). I also have been rewriting my teaching with technology course for the University of San Diego. I decided I need to show the power of visualization to the teachers who will take my course and I copy/pasted the language of the NETS-T into Wordle. Here is the result



Frankly it is not a surprise to me that learning is the main term in the standards. As I said in the book I co-authored with Lisa Chamberlin "Teaching comes before technology, even in the dictionary." And learning comes from good teaching! That's all for now! Just a quick post of my visual with explanation!

Familiar ground

Put someone in a stressful work environment and they will retreat to the things they know well and things which worked in the past. We know student teachers often turn to "stand and deliver" teaching methods after a few weeks of student teaching because they are overwhelmed, anxious, becoming exhausted etc. If Vygotsky were observing them he would likely say they were beyond their zone of proximal development. Others might say they returned to their security blanket. I'll call it... familiar ground.

I only mention the V-man because I have been beyond my zone of proximal development (ZPD) in CCK11 so far. ZPD is a fancy way of describing the area between being too comfortable (and bored) and being pushed too far (and therefore too stressed to learn). Inside the zone between bored and stressed is the edge of chaos (or educhaos as my friend Lisa Chamberlin calls it) where we learn. I believe in this because I have a) experienced, b) seen it, and c) utilized this knowledge to adjust the learning environment for bored/stressed students.

Image by Greg Westfall

Trying to understand connectivism sent me outside my ZPD and down the rabbit hole. To climb back out I returned to familiar ground, searching for resources. Work and life continually have me looking for information, research, people, etc. who can help me. I see now that I make connections to get answers and further my understandings. And I can only do this inside my ZPD.

Today's searching brought me to the blog role for CCK11 where I selected about 10 new blogs to follow. My choices included people new to blogging and connectivism, those who seem to 'get it', people outside the USA and people in fields related to but different from my higher education role. Again, these are connections, or potential connections, to grow my understanding.

I also returned to two videos which make me laugh and make me think -- two of my favorite things!! Both are TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson. With my newfound interest in connectivism I heard his messages just a little differently this time. I made different connections with his themes. Schools kill creativity video --> The follow-up Bring on the Learning Revolution video

My ignorance and confusion about connectivism are still in abundance but returning to familiar ground has allowed me to learn a little, just a little, more today.

Down the rabbit hole... CCK11 Day 3

#CCK11 - Day 3

Lewis Carroll's Alice and I seem to be having a shared experience. What was up is down, what was in is out... Or as she would say, "Curiouser and curiouser..." Connectivism and my ignorant brain are not yet... wellllll... connecting! Having joined today's Elluminate live session and hearing Stephen and George both explaining this theory using various metaphors was appreciated, but so far it didn't help.

What did help a little was their instruction to 'expect to be confused.' Hurrah! Check that off the list! I have confusion to spare. The back channel discussion showed I am not the only one checking off 'expect to be confused' from the to-do list.

At times I get the idea of connectedness between people growing the knowledge. Then I try to put technology as a connector not as a conduit and I falter again. Where I am really struggling though is picturing this as a learning theory which guides our intent as teachers planning lessons and courses.

Connecting learners is not new to me. In fact it is a signpost in every course I teach. How to give students the openness to go forth and connect and still learn what some accrediting body says my course is supposed to teach is where I join Alice in her fall down the rabbit hole. Picturing the non-structure of the current MOOC experience as a way to teach my course objectives... well I can't picture it. Not in 2-D, 3-D, jigsaw...

Perhaps part of the connectivist philosophy is that traditional courses, educational institutions etc. have failed so poorly (and they really have and I am part of this system) that we junk the whole thing and just connect to whatever we want to learn, from whomever we want to learn it? Is my confusion coming from trying to overlay connectivism on the existing structure?

Oh my! Which way did that white rabbit go? Alice... Oh Alice... wait up, I would like to connect with you!

Thinking in Twitter bytes and connectivism

Lately I have been finding myself thinking in Twitter bytes (bites?). My thoughts are coming composed in +/- 140 characters. Sometimes this concerns me, is this an aging brain faltering into fractured thoughts?

This morning I awoke with a CCK11 based realization that this is a connection between myself and the tools I use (Facebook for personal uses and Twitter for professional purposes). On both tools I must edit myself into small bites of information or insight. The part of the connectivism theory where I was stuck yesterday was the concept of learning as connections with technology, and within technology. The AM epiphany was the connection between myself and the tools. Aha this is an example of a connection with technology.

But is it?

Is it really a connection between myself and the tech, or myself and the creators of the Twitter interface? People created Twitter. People set the program to reject messages of <140 characters. On Twitter I am not connecting with the tool, I am using the tool to connect (or try to connect) with other people.

So which is it... my morning Aha! was that the Twitter bytes being composed in my head were a connection with technology but I keep coming back to people. People created the software being used, people use the software to connect with each other. My connectivism ignorance is still the idea of connections with technology, and technology connecting with itself.

Hmmm More coffee please!

Chunking the timeline

We hear a lot about chunking the content in instructional design. Chunking, for the uninitiated, means to offer content to learners in sections. The idea is that learners can only absorb so much at a time, therefore only put 'so much' in front of that at a time so they have the best chance to fully absorb all the important concepts.

Chunking the Content in eLearning

My area of specialty is online learning in particular, online learning for adults. Chunking is particularly important for these students for a couple of reasons. One reason is because they often can access the course for short spans of time, or they get interrupted while learning online. Chunked content lets them use short time spans effectively. Untimely interruptions don't have as large a detrimental effect on retention of the concepts when information is chunked.

Another reason for chunking content in online learning is we know people will only scroll so far on a webpage. Putting no more than 1 or, at most, two screens of information in front of them means the designer has a better shot at getting the learner to read everything. If the learning management system is cumbersome and creating separate pages for each chunk is not reasonable then adding headings and white space in between chunks can offer similar results for readability.

Chunking in Middle School

All of the above has been common knowledge to me for quite some time. In fact, when still teaching 8th grade I knew I could only give them so much at a time because their minds could only stay focused on the course materials for so long before they were off thinking about something else. At that time, I didn't know I was chunking the content... but that is what I was doing.

Chunking the Timeline

My new thought for the day is something a little different. I realize now we also need to chunk the timeline of activities in eLearning. Let me give you two examples happening over the last few days which helped me arrive at this new epiphany.

In one activity students were to find a partner, share their work for the week with one another, edit it, send it back to the author, and then the author would revise and post their assignment. (5 steps)

In another activity students were to post questions they wanted to pose to a guest expert, then the instructor was to create a poll or survey of the questions, and students were to vote on their top 6 question. (3 steps)

One-Nighters

Each of the activities required multi-steps to occur and they both required actions by a second party, either a fellow student or the instructor. However, much as we would like to believe all our adult learners are devoted to the course and they log onto the course site and their email daily... this just isn't the case. Many adult students are very busy people. Some of them are one-nighters.

One-nighters are folks who sit down at their computer and try to do all the readings, complete all the assignments and activities, do all the discussions, and any other required course elements in one long sitting. While this isn't best practice, for some of them this is the best they can do. In fact, this is why some of them are not in traditional courses. They need this flexibility to 'do it all' in one sitting.

Face-to-face Chunking the Timeline

In face-to-face classes the instructional designer and instructor chunk the timeline for the students. "You have 2 min. to find a partner who shares your interest, you then have 10 min. to discuss this..." Steps are sequential and the timing is a part of the course session. As noted above, this is not how online learning works, esp. not for our one-nighter population.

Chunking the Timeline Theory into Practice

I do not advocate writing eLearning courses as if every student is a one-nighter. We do know that it is not best practice for students to do one-nighters. However, there are ways to take into account that the population includes one-nighters.

Separate the steps into different modules. In the case of the partner activity, finding a partner should occur prior to the assignment being given. In the case of the survey or poll the posting of questions should happen in one module, then the survey should occur in the next.

Offer workspaces. Whenever students are expected to work together in online learning, whenever possible, offer them a group workspace. This helps eliminate the issue of student-to-student emails ending up in Junk Mail etc. Most LMS now offer some way to create group workspaces. If not, use Web2.0 tools, or ask the students to do so. There are tons of ways to work collaboratively online. (Working collaboratively online needs to be a separate blog posting. Look for that one in the future.)

Yours in ignorance

While I do know about chunking the timeline, I still have my moments of ignorance when I think all the learners will be logging in daily, checking email, working throughout the entire module. This is ignorant thinking on my part.

Not trying is not an option

The other day a teacher in one of my classes, was clearly overwhelmed with trying to learn how to integrate technology effectively. After perusing a couple of the course readings she realized many of the ways she had been using technology were at best limited in scope, and at worst, a waste of time.
She posted a message something to the effect that there was just too much to learn, too much to know, we should just stop trying to integrate technology at all and let students learn it in a few dedicated courses in HS.
Whoa! This is certainly not what we are learning in the course, which is how to effectively integrate technology. My reaction was from the gut and it follows.

I disagree that we should avoid tech until HS. Students need to have tech woven into the curriculum as just one of many tools used to teach the content. The fully integrated use of the tools will allow the skills to be absorbed without a lot of teaching of tech skills, instead they will come along naturally while the content is being learned. You don't have to teach skills to this generation, set them in front of tech and tell them what you want them to do and learn. They will figure it the tech parts. Trust me!

Avoiding tech because you might do it wrong is as bad as a student saying they are not doing math because they might do it wrong. We all learn from mistakes and hitting the pitfalls. We learn and move on to a higher level of success with each and every mistake. Not trying is not an option for our students, why would it be an option for us?

I pointed her to my previous blog column called, Living on the Edge vs. Living by the book.

---

How do we help teachers who have little to no technology in their classrooms, very little training in effective integration, and minimal knowledge or personal uses of technology in their lives get past this hurdle? I understand being overwhelmed. The more I try to find the cutting edge the more I realize the level of my own ignorance. I have been trained in, have used, and am an advocate for technology in education, yet I feel overwhelmed. Imagine what millions of teachers must feel like when we are discussing Twitter, blogs, cloud computing and they are still trying to figure out the address book in their email software? I look forward to suggestions, concrete baby step suggestions, to help out our teaching corps!

Yours in ignorance!

Instructor interference with learning

So many blog topics... so little time... I have more to say about the circles I keep finding in my travels around the Internet and so much more to say about paper constipation however... today's topic stems from an idea I included in a posting on my friend Lisa Chamberlin's OpenPhD blog.

Lisa is pursuing an unaccredited but very real doctorate using only Open Courses. This is a new way of thinking about online education which is opening eyes in many locations, and is causing me to rethink what I believe about online education. Those topics are explored in a guest posting made today on #OpenPhd.

One thought I mentioned in my guest posting was how an online instructor could actually interfere with student learning. While this can also occur in a f2f setting I think the danger for this happening in online education is higher because the student is not directly in front of the instructor saying, "Hey, wait...I have a question"

In the online realm if the course is poorly designed students are often stymied and frustrated. Their issues may include not:

• understanding course navigation
• being able do course readings because of broken links or unavailable textbooks
  
• understanding instructor expectations

These are just a few of the course design issues which may need clarification. Instructors who believe they do not need to read or answer discussion postings/emails/phone calls cause students to become even more frustrated. Would a face-to-face instructor refuse to clarify expectations or answer questions about locating readings?

Instructors can also interfere with student learning which should stem from instructor-learner interaction. There are three key sets of interactions which should occur in any course:

• learner-content (student internal/mental interaction with the materials and concepts)
  
• learner-learner (student communication with colleagues in the course about the concepts)
  
• learner-instructor (student learning about the content from the content expert and having their understandings expanded, clarified, and corrected)
  

Probably 90% of the complaints I hear about online education have to do with instructors who refuse to communicate with their students. These students report to me their instructors do not answer emails, do not participate in discussions, and do not respond to questions asked of them. Student learning has to include communication with the content expert, that is THE JOB of the instructor.

The other job of the instructor is to clarify student understandings, correct misconceptions, and expand on student learning by adding new ideas or asking deep thinking questions. This can occur through discussion or it can occur as feedback on assignments. Formative assessment we call this... assessment which helps the learner's understanding grow and develop during the course.

To be useful to students formative assessment must be prompt, informative, and accurate. Responding to Assignment 1 weeks after it was submitted is of little use to students who have now submitted Assignments 2, 3, 4, 5... without any guidance or input. As one student told me,

"Oh he is real picky, real picky about things but I only know this because I had a class from him already. All my colleagues in this class have no idea what he expects because he hasn't told us what he expects and he hasn't returned any assignments. He won't hand anything back until the course is over and then it will be too late."

This instructor returns all student work in a flurry at the end of the course. If students were failing to meet his expectations how would they have known what aspects of their work to fix as the course progressed? The answer is, they don't. And some fail or get poor grades. That does a lot for student morale! The failure is the instructors but the instructor still got paid for doing his job, even though he DID NOT do his job.

And this is today's point of ignorance... How does such an instructor look themselves in the mirror with a clear conscience? How do they cash their paycheck and not cringe just a little? How is it this person is still employed, still teaching, still perpetuating this farce called online instruction? I don't get it! Yours in ignorance!

Circles

I feel like the world runs in circles of late, or perhaps it is just my online world. Someone posts a link, I retweet it on Twitter, then suddenly someone new is following me. I posted a message about a web design class I am auditing and suddenly a web designer group was following me. Goodness, it was just one post, and if you read it, I am just taking a class. I am certainly not a web designer.

The other day I created a podcast with an audio version of a course announcement. Nothing exciting and it was clearly labeled Precourse Welcome (wow, sounds fascinating!) yet within a few hours someone had found it and wanted to be my 'friend' on the podcast site. How does someone find a podcast called Precourse Welcome and decide it is so appealing they want to be a friend... Sorry "Uncle Sid" but I didn't think this was a close enough tie to form a relationship with you!

When I do find something worthy of sharing then I go through my own little set of circles to share with all. A few family and many of my co-workers are on Twitter so I tweet the find. Then if it is a good one, I share on Facebook where more family and friends will see it. Of course there are some family and friends who... *gasp* are not on Twitter or Facebook... So I email it or text it to those folks or make a phone call... good grief!

Sometimes the communication circle feels a bit more like a noose than a group hug! Remember in the old days, you wrote a letter, put it in the mailbox. It took days, maybe weeks to update people and share news. Now, if I am without my phone for an hour and don't answer a text immediately I get messages like,

• Are you all right?
  
• Do I need to come check on you?
  
• Where have you been?
  
• Are you getting a massage?
  
• Are you mad at me?
  
• Where ARE you!?"

Outside my circle of well-meaning/caring friends and family with whom I am connected on a minute-by-minute basis, today's communication methods are even more dizzying. Today's finds were Cloudworks and Google Wave (which isn't even available yet but I am signed up for it.) I have more ways to communicate with people than I can keep track of, and everyday there are more to try out. I have been trying to keep my Delicious account up-to-date. My rationale is I can send students to it to look for resources, but the honest-to-goodness truth is, I need it to keep track of all these sites for myself!

I had set up my new Acer purchased in July so it would keep track of all my login information in Firefox. However, the Acer had serious issues and had to be returned to Costco... who handed me over $600 in cash no questions asked BTW! Once again I had to go through all the circular motions of setting up a machine. Updating Windows... restart... more updates... restart... download AVG anti-virus... download new updates... restart. ARGH! And then I had to start saving my logins all over again. I don't even pretend to remember them all now, I can't! This is just another area where I have become ignorant, I knew the logins at one time... but I can't keep them all in my head any longer.

My head just keeps spinning and I continue to be ignorant! Till later!

P.S. Stay tuned, I have more to say about paper constipation. That idea garnered some interesting examples to share with others!

Living on the edge versus living by the book

In a previous posting I mentioned the senior citizen computer basics course I taught. In my ignorance I said yes to this venture without fully realizing how basic a computer basics course could be. What I learned was invaluable, and the experience also validated what I have observed about the current youth generation's use of technology - we'll call this living on the edge; and older generations use of technology - living by the book... except there isn't a book.

I realized how basic the computer class needed to be in the very first few minutes. These were, keep in mind, brave senior citizens who were willing to drive to a community college campus where they were surrounded by young people and who were willing to try to understand the mystifying world of computers and the Internet. I expected to help them learn basic skills such as right-clicking and click-drag but I realized very soon even that was much too advanced when one member of the class picked up the mouse and pointed it at the computer screen like a TV remote control. Later I realized this was about as technological as any of them got in their day-to-day life and it was a pretty understandable way of trying out the mouse.

Here is what is interesting to me about this - I once helped out a kindergarten teacher with her first-ever visit to the computer lab. Many of her students came to school from the farm labor camp so we assumed students may not be very familiar with computer technology. We anticipated having to help them A LOT! We were, in fact, quite shocked to see all the students knew the basics, could work the mouse and could follow our visual and verbal instructions to open a simple drawing program and start drawing.

Having had that experience with 5 year-olds who came from some of the poorest environments in our county, I somehow had gotten the impression there was a baseline of knowledge about computers that everyone had. I was wrong, the senior citizens helped me see this over and over again. This was a group who was starting very much at ground zero. I had trouble defining for myself as an instructor how low the skills needed to be. Many times I realized I had made a leap beyond their knowledge level. In fact, I wish I had been blogging then because I could have chronicled all the faux pas I made in my ignorance.

I learned very quickly they wanted step-by-step instructions in writing. They wanted to learn only one way to do things, in fact, they did not understand why there were several ways to accomplish the same tasks. For example, why would you need to have Ctrl+C as a command for Copy when there was a pull down menu where you could find the command for Copy.

I ended up creating very simple, very clear, directions for every single task, beginning with how to login to the community college system. Many of them had to refer to these written step-by-step directions every single class in order to be able to login. In essence I created a book for them, one handout at a time, which carefully explained every step, showed every menu, and guided them through the tasks.

Eventually this realization dawned on me... This was a generation who expected a user manual with every appliance and every program. They lived by the book. They didn't turn on the new clock-radio until they had read the manual which came with the clock-radio. When I relayed the message that programs did not come with a book, they looked at me as if I had grown a second head. How would you learn to use the programs, they asked, if there was no book?

The current generation however would not open a manual/book for a new program or video game. This would not even enter their thinking. Watch any child with a new game to see how they learn to operate new programs. They open it, they try something, the game ends, they try something new the next time, get a little farther, the game ends... and so on. They collaborate with buddies to find new tactics and strategies but mostly they just keep trying. They live on the edge, willing to see Game End, as they learn and get better with every try. This is a method of learning and an attitude we don't encourage nearly enough in the K-12 schools of today. (Look for a future blog post on this topic.)

By the end of the class most senior citizens had become more comfortable trying new things. They learned they weren't really going to 'break' the computer if they tried a menu item which was unfamiliar. Slowly they had learned to live a little more on the edge and a little less by the book. In the world in which they had grown up every new machine came with a user manual. There is a reason why they believed in working 'by the book.'

I have to admit sometimes I wish there were a few more books to help me work through my areas of ignorance. However learning is about the journey, not the destination, right?!
Yours in ignorance!

When is an onion not an onion

I come from Walla Walla, WA where we grow sweet onions. In fact, our Walla Walla sweet onions are so sweet you can eat them like an apple. Seriously!
Yesterday I was thinking about this and I realized even though you CAN eat them like an apple, I never use them in recipes which call for apples. I only use them in recipes as onions. Why is that?
We see things in categories and an onion, however sweet it may be, is an onion. This is the category in which it belongs. To truly be creative and wise, we have to think outside of the box, or in this case, the category.
We tend to think of software and technologies the same way, each in a well-defined category. For example, word processors are for typing and creating 'to be printed' documents. Spreadsheets are for organizing data and creating graphs. Yet most (good) pieces of software can be used in a wide variety of ways.
My students and I used Excel, a spreadsheet program, to make maps of Ancient Egypt. We used PowerPoint to make interactive stories and animate architecture. How do we learn to see the new possibilities for tools? Here are a few ways I have learned to battle my own ignorance and see outside the category!

1. Watch young people use technology. Today's youth have grown up with technology and they more fully explore the possibilities of all tools. They collaborate with one another sharing ideas and findings. They are not afraid to open menus, push buttons etc.
2. Open menus and push buttons. Try out the tool, right click/hover to see what the menu choices are in various areas of a window, push buttons to see what happens.
   
3. Use the Help menu. The Help menu may be the most underutilized tool in most programs. Using Help is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of intelligence. Help is where the ignorant, like myself, look for wisdom and enlightenment.
   
4. Ask others. Discussing any tool with others opens the door to learning more, especially if the category 'others' is not limited to those in the immediate vicinity. Using Internet sites to reach out to others and ask questions is a great way to battle ignorance. Here are a couple of the major teacher discussion sites, there are lots of others. AtoZTeacherForums and Teachernet.com Discussion Lists.
   
5. Use Explanation sites. One of my all-time favorites is How Stuff Works. Their technology section is fantastic but don't limit a stop at How Stuff Works just looking for computer info, their site explains how everything works! Love it! Another favorite is Common Craft. Plain simple English explanations using paper!
6. Use Tutorial sites. Tutorials are different from explanations. Tutorials show a procedure, they don't explain how the technology works, they explain how to do something. There are tons of tutorial sites, many specific to teachers and education such as: Education World Techtutorials, Actden Internet4Classrooms and Teach-Nology Tutorials.
   
7. Use the Manufacturer or Publisher. Most technologies and software have robust sites offering help, tutorials, templates etc. Many, even those products which are not specific to education, have large education sections. For example, Microsoft has a robust collection of teacher tutorials, tips, templates and more.

This is not a comprehensive list of ways to further explore the possibilities of software and technology, but it is a starting point. The only way to become wiser is to admit what you do not know and move forward from there! Yours in ignorance!

Knowing how little I know

This blog is called Transparent Ignorance because the more I learn, the more I realize I am quite ignorant. I intend to make my ignorance transparent for all to share in this blog. After all, if I am still learning, you must be as well! We all are!
Wisdom is not the domain of the old, or the brilliant. Wisdom resides in those who are willing to look forward, admit they know nothing (or very little) and continue moving forward into the unknown. I don't claim to have such wisdom, but I am willing to seek it!
One of my areas of ignorance is the tool Twitter. FTULM (for the uninitiated like me) Twitter is essentially text messaging to a group of people. I have been text messaging, avidly, for years but Twitter was not in my repertoire despite the best efforts of friends. Frankly, I couldn't see how my personal text messages to individuals would be of interest to a group of people.
Nonetheless, I admitted my ignorance and dove into Twitter this week. One of my intended uses is group messages/announcements in my online courses. I don't know if this will work, I invited a current group of students to 'follow' me on Twitter. FTULM you sign up to get the messages sent by someone on Twitter, these messages are known as tweets. None of my current students has signed up to receive my tweets as of yet. Ah well, it is an experiment, and as all scientists and researchers know, most experiments fail. But we learn from failure, and become less ignorant in the process.