Off Course-On Target

Technology Can and DOES Change our Relationships; for the BETTER!

I like the concluding recommendation in this article and this TED talk by Susan Turkle for learning to love yourself better by being comfortable with and appreciative of solitude.  However I think that Turkle's TED talk and her new book Alone Together,make a fatally flawed assumption that using things such as texting and social media are eliminating our alone time and that our virtual means of expressing our emotions are replacing the real ones and lessening our human connections.

I simply don’t buy into Turkle’s assumptions that we are letting technology "take us places we don't want to go." and her conclusion that"The little devices in our pockets are so psychologically powerful that they don't eve change what we do, they change who we are."

Sorry Susan, but in my experience and observations at least NO! this is NOT necessarily so and WE as fundamentally social animals decide how, when and where to use tools and technology .  While learning to choose the best tool for the job and how to use it well is a big challenge that takes time and lots of experiential learning to figure out, and this is an exponentially increasing learning curve in our world filled with such abundance of choice, most of us DO figure it out and are all the richer for it in terms of improved connections with the other special snowflakes we chose to include in our lives.   Some of us are slower to learn than others and we pay lots of “stupid tax” in the wonderful cycle of try/fail/learn/adjust/repeat, but this tax amounts to less than a rounding error in the overall net value we gain through such learning.

While I understand that there are some glaring examples of poor choices we make along this learning curve which gossip and the media focus on, based on my experiences and observations, these examples are by far the vocal minority and represent a small extreme end of the spectrum of human behavior.  Surely by now we understand that such examples and “failures” are necessary components of learning and improvement and we should see them as positive things we want more of not less in our quest to continuously enrich our lives with greater breadth and depth of connections with both ourselves, our friends and our families?!

History shows that we make this same mistake over and over again where the pundits proclaim the arrival of new tools, technology and media are going to eliminate those that came before.  TV was going to eliminate radio, flight was going to eliminate trains and automobiles, eLearning was going to eliminate teachers and so on.  While new innovations clearly have a significant influence on what came before, (when was the last time you sat around with friends or family listening to the radio??), the new hardly ever eliminate or replace the old.  Our world is much more one of a giant Boolean Add equation than one of subtraction or reduction.

The new and sometimes daunting challenge as we acquire more and more tools in our toolbox is to know how and when to use the right tool for the job.  When is a Tweet or a FB update the best choice?  When is an Email or a phone call better?  When best to wait for the chance to meet in person and what to do in the interim?  I concur and hope that we will always prefer in person human contact over more distanced and removed virtual forms, but surely we would also want to augment the limited opportunities we have to be with those we love and care about with every possible means to converse, share, love and learn with them.  And as our tools and technology continue up the exponential curves increasing capabilities and decreasing costs, not too how the tools become more and more transparent and the connection we have with others becomes the focus.  Does it matter HOW an emotional personal connection with another human happens or that these happen more often for all 7+ billion of us snowflakes?

Turkle posits that our increased use of digital technology to converse with each other is lessening our ability to self reflect.  Seriously?  For me at least it has produced the exact opposite effect and something I’ve blogged about several times on my Learnativity blog as I try to reconcile how I can have so many deeply rich experiences in my day to day live in such a very short time.  It is an effect I have called ELD or Exponential Learning Density which I believe is created by a cycle of living IN the abundance of moments life offers us every day, then reflecting upon these and then sharing our thoughts, questions, feelings and learnings with others.  My conclusion is that by repeating this cycle of Live-Reflect-Articulate I end up with this extreme “density” or rich learning experiences and a life that is filled with non stop adventures, interactions with others and Mother Nature and more love, life and learning every day.  As I reflect back on how filled with rich experiential learning my life is, I still can’t quite comprehend I’m only just starting my fifth year on this grand sailing life adventure!

As one who perhaps has more solitude than most as I wander, wonder and ponder the world one nautical smile at a time single handing my sailboat around the planet, I can offer at least one shining example where I use the entire plethora of means at my avail to express my thoughts, feelings and emotions with the many friends and family who I am blessed to be surrounded by.  When I’m with others I meet out here or on my trips back to see friends and family, I’m as good and frequent a hugger as you’ll ever meet, I’m as comfortable kissing men as women (on the cheek/forehead) who I love and care for when I’m given the gift of the opportunity to be with them in person.  If I shake your hand, clink glasses with you or talk to you, I will be looking deep into your eyes.  However to the best of my knowledge all these people in my life also feel my love and caring for them more often as I use a vast array of tools and technology.that augment my abilities to connect with them.  All of these additional means are “virtual” through the use of the increasing abundance of communication choices I have.  I care SO much less about the means through which I get to express and share with others as I do with ensuring that we have more and more opportunities to share our lives, learning and love with each other.  So let’s please keep our eyes on the prize and not mistake the means we use with the end results of deeper human connection, commitment and conversation and ensure that what we have the most abundance of is Life, Love and Learning!

Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think

One of the fundamental enablers and causes of the Snowflake Effect is the transition to a world of abundance.  I've long admired the thinking and actions of Peter Diamandis, founder and CEO of one of the most powerful models for change & innovation I know, the X-Prize model.  Peter along with Steven Kotler have written a new book that I can highly recommend called "Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think" which reflects my experiences and understandings of how this new world of abundance looks and works.  Peter is certainly far better at articulating this than I will ever be and makes for great reading and stimulated thinking.  IMHO it is a much needed and clear perspective on what is really happening in the world and how the gap between reality and reporting is widening at an ever increasing rate.

 

As is my experience on a daily basis the world is a much better place than ever before and this trend is accelerating.  This is not a Pollyannaish view nor one that refutes that there still is much suffering still and work to be done to further reduce poverty and health and have quality of life for all 7 billion of us on this planet.  However the trend towards this goal is clear, large and increasing dramatically.  This is not about celebrating the advances made but rather about changing the prevailing perspectives that things are getting worse.  My ongoing concern is that too many people are overwhelmed with the “prevailing wisdom” that things are getting worse, that there is more bad than good in this world and that things like the Snowflake Effect are even possible.  Yet the evidence and data show that the opposite is true and I see more examples of this every day.

You can read this recent interview with Peter to get a feel for the perspectives and points he covers in the book and decide if you want like to know more by reading the whole book.  I liked this clarification Peter made about abundance in the interview:

Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing everyone with a life of possibility." 

“…….. ultimately, abundance is about creating a world of possibility: a world where everyone’s days are spent dreaming and doing, not scrapping and scraping.”

and his summation at the end of the interview when asked what he hopes people will get from reading the book:

“Most importantly, we want people to understand that, more than ever before in history, individuals can now band together to solve grand challenges. We don’t believe abundance happens automatically. It’s up to each of us. That’s what makes today so different. We face enormous problems, but we—as individuals— have enormous power to solve them. It really is a magical time.”

It’s been said that a new perspective is worth 50 IQ points so reading the interview and the book just might make for a world filled with smarter snowflakes!

Perspectives on Loss & Learning

One of the sadder points of 2010 was the loss of a great learning leader and colleague, Jonathan Kays.  For an all too brief time Jonathan was the Chief Learning Officer of the Masie Center’s Learning CONSORTIUM after following a long career with the Central Intelligence Agency, including a stint as their first CLO.  However our loss has also resulted in much gain as my long time friend and colleague Elliott Masie inspired and pulled together a fascinating collection called “Learning Perspectives 2010” in memory and commemoration of Jonathan.  This collection of “Over 40 learning leaders from global corporations and government agencies contributed perspectives on how learning is changing (and will continue to change) in the coming years” is as eclectic as it is excellent IMHO.

Nigel Pain, another dear friend and colleague, along with Elliott, Meghan and Brooke from the Masie Center somehow managed to tap all these contributors, get their submissions and expertly edit them all in mere days and the result is something Jonathan will have appreciated and smiled at.  A printed version was given to the 2000 people fortunate enough to attend the big Learning 2010 event at the end of October.  Better yet, and in part the purpose of this posting is to let you know that earning Perspectives 2010 is available for anyone as a free download at http://learning2010.com/ebook 

I’ve long since departed the USA and resumed my life of constant adventure aboard the good ship Learnativity* and have been reading and re-reading more of the articles in Learning Persepctives 2010 as I float out here in the tropical atolls of the Marshall Islands.  As I’ve been doing so I thought many of you might also enjoy starting off your new year being inspired by some of these articles and by Jonathan’s legacy and hence this post.

* Cut and paste these lat/long coordinates 07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E  into Bing or Google Earth to see my current location

As another gift to yourself courtesy of the Masie Center I’d encourage you to go check out the enormous collection of even more great content including lots of video and audio from the Learning 2010 conference that is all available at www.learning2010.com  Even if you’ve been there previously it is worth return trips as there have been lots of additions in the last two months.

I was humbled and honored to be asked to submit some content for this tribute to Jonathan and I’ll be posting some out takes from that in the coming weeks here to stimulate some additional comments from you and inspire me to add more of my own so please stay tuned for those.

Wherever this note may find you today I hope that 2011 is floating your boat as well as it is mine and look forward to another fun year of learning, loving and living.

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog

Back aboard the good ship Learnativity
moored off town of Uliga on Majuro atoll, Marshall Islands
07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E

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Getting Small is Still a Very BIG Idea

Some of you will have heard me going on about how “getting small” is a really BIG deal for over 15 years now.  The context is that by making and breaking everything down into the smallest possible units (and not one bit smaller) we enable the creation of infinite numbers of infinitely customizable combinations so that each new assembly or mashup is a unique combination that fits a unique set of conditions just right.  And yes, I’ve been using the Lego ™ block analogy for as many years to illustrate this.

One of the latest examples comes in the recent announcement of Amazon “Kindle Singles” which they describe as;

“twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book.”

Obviously not a new concept in terms of format or size but what this does do is add a significant new publishing venue and dramatically scales up the number of people who can now have their ideas and writing published for a much larger audience.  For those who wish to do so this also adds some incentive and options to have their writing earn some money but I think the larger opportunity this presents is for more ideas to get out to more people.

You could argue that this is superfluous because anyone can already publish anything they want by posting it to the web via the blog and other means, and maybe these Kindle Singles won’t amount to much.  However as you know I am very big on how well the whole Kindle environment or experience has been put together (see links below) such that it is not so much about a piece of hardware as it is about content and ways to seamlessly have what you want, where you want and how you want, when it comes to text.

There are a LOT of examples out there where a seemingly small and simple idea has amounted to a very big deal in terms of how it just hits the right note at the right time and takes off with far reaching effects.  I’m not talking about fads that spike and then die off but small things which become very big and influential.  Take something like Email for instance, which on its surface is just electronic letter writing and how “big and new” did that sound when first proposed? More recently things like Facebooka and of course Twitter would seem to be top examples.  We often don’t factor in how much making something quick, easy and simple makes all the difference when it comes to adoption.

So it is with this line of thinking that I believe Amazon Singles could become a big deal.  Yes, it is a proprietary solution and comes with the usual limitations and detractors who will quickly point this out.  But again, so too have many such innovations and small new things started out this way and then caught on to become either defacto standards or otherwise broken out of the proprietary limitations.  Some of us will remember the days when Email was very proprietary and you could only communicate with others who were using the same Email program.

In any case I think this intoduction of Kindle Singles is worth keeping an eye on and even more so to trying out for some experiential learning so I hope more and more of us will give it a try and get those good ideas out there.

Related articles

• Amazon Introduces The Digital Pamphlet With 'Kindle Singles' (crunchgear.com)
• REFLECTIONS on TIME and EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING DENSITY (ELD) (waynehodgins.typepad.com)
• Top Three Big Little Reasons Why I Now Prefer eBooks to pBooks
• Kindle Singles Will Bring Novellas, Chapbooks and Pamphlets to E-Readers (wired.com)

Here’s a Good Idea:

Several in fact; check out the two videos below from Steven Johnson, consider reading his new book “Where Good Ideas Come From: the Natural History of Innovation” and see if these help you generate more good ideas of your own.

I also love these RSA video animations like the first one below which are intriguingly from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Art and are an extremely effective way of presenting ideas and concepts.  If you’ve not seen one before I think you’ll enjoy not only the topic but the presentation style itself and you’ll find lots of them available on YouTube and elsewhere if you start searching.

But my real purpose of this post was to bring your attention to this provocative pursuit of the challenging question “Where do good ideas come from?” and a book which Steven Johnson has recently released after his five years of his pursuit from an environmental (our surroundings) perspective.  The presentation and the book provide the patterns he has gleaned from his research and observations. 

I particularly liked his his notion of “creating spaces where ideas can mingle, swap and create new forms”.  And as a real serendipity and Lego block kind of guy I was particularly drawn to Steven’s thoughts on good how good ideas are formed by the collision of smaller hunches and the cognitive catalyst of serendipitously stumbling over some rich bit of new information.  He notes that what we’ve been seeing, over the past six to eight hundred years, is the historic rise in connectivity to reach out to other people and borrow their ideas and hunches and let them collide with ours and create something much bigger than the sum of these hunches themselves.

Check out these videos below and see if they don’t provide some great cognitive collisions with some of your hunches and ignite some great new ideas that you can share with the rest of us and keep this cycle ever growing and widening.

 

Future of "print" = Digital Goo?

Note:  I am much better at starting things than finishing them and have this bad habit with starting postings that never get posted.  This one has been sitting in my drafts folder for several months now and long overdue to finally get to you so here it is.  The iPad announcement has since come and gone and will help fuel some of what I'm looking for but as you'll read I'm still optimistic and holding out for a future covered in "digital goo".  - Wayne

Seems I’m on a bit of a print sprint of late (see previous List with a Twist posting for example), though I’m surely spending more time in front of a screen than ever. Today’s update is about the future of magazines and an update on my long standing quest and wait for the arrival of true digital paper or digital “goo”.

I LOVE Magazines!

I read a lot of magazines—more than one a day—on a very wide range of topics. And I’m one of those silly people who reads every page of the magazine, including all the ads. So as digitally inclined and geeky as I may be, let’s get this out of the way up front: I LOVE magazines.

Things I love (and want to retain) about magazines:

• Focused topical areas
• Relative, informative, and clever (sometimes) advertisements
• Great glossy color photos, graphics
• Serendipitous discovery of cool new ideas, products, etc.
• Reading anywhere I’m sitting, having it in my hand/lap rather than on my desk
• Just the right size/heft for handheld/lap reading
• Easy on the eyes for extended reading
• Cleared for take off and landing times! (reading anywhere such as planes)
• No cords or batteries

However, as with any love or relationship, here are a few things I don’t like so much and would like to see improved:

• Physical delivery format limits me to mail subscriptions, magazine stands, etc.
• Weight.  On my last flight 28 lbs/12.7kg of my bags were magazines!
• Wastefulness. Apparently 15% sale of magazines in bookstands is considered high!
• Static images only
• Read only
• Requires good external lighting
• No easy search/find capabilities, especially across issues
• No connections to related items of interest
• No cut, copy, paste, share, keep (I used to have boxes full of torn-out magazine pages)
• No disctionary or lookup
• No easy way to archive them

Can I do some of this reading and resolve some of these problems on my laptop, tabletPC, smartphone, eReader?  Yes, but not well, and with no where near the same reading experience of real magazines.

I Love Books Too

I don’t equate magazines at all with books, though books too are another love. Many of the items on my like/don’t-like list apply to books as well, but my Kindle has resolved most of my don’t-like list items and it has increased my book reading quantity and quality. I’ve still got some key items on my wish list for the next eBooks version such as a touch screen interface, handwritten notes, etc., but the ease of getting new books no matter where I am, access to so many (including almost all of the classics for free), linked note-taking and having my entire library with me all the time (including manuals for all my boat equipment) has been one of the best experiences in the past few years.

And for me, Kindle passes the most important test of all for book reading—I can lose myself in the story.  By this I mean I am unaware that I’m reading, paper or otherwise and I'm in the story or in my thoughts as I read! Much of this is due to the very paper-like screen technology (E Ink in the case of Kindle and many other eReaders) as well as its baby bear (not too big, not too small) size and weight.

eMagazines?

So far, eReaders and tablets don’t work too well with magazines…at least not for me. I’ve tried quite a few and continue to try more of them—both software and hardware based. But with magazines, I’m looking for a different experience: color is critical, so is size of the images (larger), and yet not larger in weight and size in my hand/lap. However, I’m seeing some help on the horizon for my magazine reading and in the short term (next year), I think some of the new digital formats could provide some near-term solutions. 

Check out the video below for something we’ll almost assuredly see in the next few months, and which has some promise.  If you’re like me, you’ll need to look beyond the content of this example (Sports Illustrated), but I do like much of what I see in the demo (thanks to Dan Pink for the tip). Peter Kafka also has a posting on this: “Game On: Time Inc. Shows Off a Tabletized Sports Illustrated”

I am especially intrigued by the interface and the nice mix of old and new with such things as retaining all the familiarity of the old, a print- and paper-based magazine, blended with new capabilities, such as richer content with video and audio, search, rearrangement, sharing, and linking. This video is well worth 3 minutes of your time. Have a look and see what you come away with?

Note that pretty much everything you see in this demo, and what I’m most intrigued by are the changes in content and interface features. However just as important as these will be the issues of the hardware and the physical attributes of what comes next.

Here is another example of a different set of perspectives on what the future of eMagazines might look like. It’s worth watching to see what these researchers and developers assessed to be some of the essential elements of the magazine reading experience which we want to retain and what we want to avoid.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Tablets to the Rescue?

I’ve been a tabletPC champion and user for over 10 years (bought one of the first Apple Newtons too!) and still believe that tabletPC-based features, especially screen-based features such as multi-touch, “flippable”, handwriting recognition and input, and so on will become standard features on all laptops and all screens for that matter. At this point in time, tabletPCs are the best and almost only choice for any digital magazine reading I do, but the benefits I get from magazines are not there. Much of the problem is due to the physical limitations of the device, too thick, heavy, and clunky. And there is still no help with subscriptions, integrated note taking, integration of content across devices, common formats, ease of access, and very limited content beyond what is in the print versions. 

It is no coincidence then that there is so much rumor and hype surrounding things like the upcoming “iPad” and rumblings from other hardware sources. It may also bode well that some of those in the publishing world are taking a more future-oriented view of these developments, such as is demonstrated by Time Inc. in the video above and by this more recent announcement of Wired's upcoming version for the iPad. Adobe is also rumored to be developing a publishing tool and magazine reader for tablet devices. And here is a recent list of "5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010". At the very least, 2010 promises to be a significant year for more options that may help deliver some of my wish list items for magazine-type reading.

Digital Goo:  The Only Book or Magazine I Ever Need?

As excited and optimistic as I am that we will see all of the above, and more over the coming year, I’m holding out for a completely different development—digital goo. This is what I’ve been asking for and evangelizing about for more than 20 years. Digital goo will be the advent of “real” digital paper, virtual paper or whatever we come to call it, and more importantly, will be a major shift in the way we think of, access, create, and consume content.

Here is an excerpt from an old paper that will give you an idea of what I have in mind for “digital goo”. I wrote this back in the 1990’s, so you’ll have to pardon the black and white and television orientation, but I think you’ll get the idea.  It is as simple as it is profound, and yes, I’m still waiting. 

… imagine a substance at the molecular level where each molecule is a tiny sphere where one half of its surface is black and the other half white. Each black and white sphere can easily be controlled by electrical input so that either the white or the black side is facing up. Now, mix this substance into paint or wood pulp or plastic and you suddenly have the ability to make ANY surface digital and capable of displaying ANY image you’d like with almost infinite resolution.

You can see the possibilities. Imagine binding a few pages of digital paper together to create truly digital books! Oh, and note that the images on this digital paper can move, so suddenly that you can be watching “TV (the content) in a book.” Just throw in some other colors with those black and white molecular spheres and we’ve got color screens literally EVERYWHERE! An equally frightening and exciting vision for most of us, I suspect.  Based on what I’ve been privileged to see in research labs for the past few years, the introduction of this technology into the marketplace can’t be far off.

Therefore, I’m hoping that the next iteration of eBooks will consist of a few pages of real digital paper bound into the only book/magazine/paper I’ll ever need. These pages will be made by adding some “digital goo” to the regular production of paper, or paint, producing sheets of relatively ordinary looking and feeling paper which are now essentially “just” digital surfaces capable of displaying any content at near infinite resolution including video and animations. This same digital paper could also accept inputs such as touch and handwriting.

For me at least, I still want multiple pages, and I think we may see a renaissance of books as a format and form factor in this regard. Maybe it is just a function of my rather severe ADD affliction, which results in my flipping back and forth through multiple pages of a magazine that I’m reading. I bring most of my laptops to their knees because at any one time, I usually have more than 30 tabs running in my browser, and more than 10 other apps running at the same time. But I think we all have versions of this problem, and having multiple pages, both for just larger display areas (think centerfolds and flip outs) as well as speed of access, means that this will become a very common and highly desirable feature.

Research is going on to support much of this and I’m sure that like most things, it will be here sooner than we expect and also take longer than we expect for us to take advantage of.

Peter Kafka in another related posting on Condé Nast’s Offering for Apple’s Mystery Tablet: Wired Magazine finished with the following paragraph that seems just so apropos for the world of exponential change we are living in and a fitting end to this post:

“But all of this assumes that consumers, who’ve shown no inclination to pay for this stuff on the Web, will be willing to pay for it once it appears on devices no one owns yet. We’ll find out soon enough.”

--Wayne

Cycles vs Triangles?

The Problem with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom Hierarchy

HBR Tuesday February 2, 2010 by David Weinberger

The data-information-knowledge-wisdom hierarchy seemed like a really great idea when it was first proposed. But its rapid acceptance was in fact a sign of how worried we were about the real value of the information systems we had built at such great expense. What looks like a logical progression is actually a desperate cry for help.

I’m catching up on some reading and finding some good stuff as usual from David Weinberger, perhaps best known for his recent book “Everything is Miscellaneous”. 

See some of my Tweets for other links to David’s “Everything is Miscellaneous” blog postings and it is his recent article (below) in the Harvard Business Review that seemed to warrant more than a Tweet.  And with typical serendipity and synchronicity I find out that my colleagues Harold Jarche and Stephen Downes have also been reading and commenting on this one.

This is all well worth reading an in particular the points Weinberger makes in the last 2 paragraphs:

"But knowledge is not a result merely of filtering or algorithms. It results from a far more complex process that is social, goal-driven, contextual, and culturally-bound.

The real problem with the DIKW pyramid is that it's a pyramid. The image that knowledge (much less wisdom) results from applying finer-grained filters at each level, paints the wrong picture. That view is natural to the Information Age which has been all about filtering noise, reducing the flow to what is clean, clear and manageable. Knowledge is more creative, messier, harder won, and far more discontinuous.”

I think David’s observations that knowledge is much messier and discontinuous will resonate strongly with most of us.  The concept of “flow” and “streams” which are becoming more obvious and talked also match up well and I still find great value in the cyclical models such as the SECI model: (see diagram below)

• Socialication
• Externalization
• Combination
• Internalization

which Nonaka and Takeuchi proposed back in the 90’s remains a very useful one for me, in particular with the constant interchange between tacit and explict knowledge.  They also cover the Japanese notion of “Ba” which is a challenging concept to understand but can be defined as “a shared context in which knowledge is shared, created and utilized through interaction.” which matches up well with my experiences and observations.

I don’t expect any sudden outbreak of agreement around these concepts and models, but in our shared pursuit of knowledge and wisdom I’m sure and I hope we will continue to explore and debate them vigorously which these recent articles and postings are doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinitely Scalable Teaching = Limitless Learning

In order for the Snowflake Effect of mass customization and personalization to succeed when applied to learning, teaching and teachers will need need to scale exponentially.  Imagined within our historical and current definitions and assumptions this would be deemed impossible.  However I’ve had some recent experiences that have convinced me that both teaching and teachers can indeed scale exponentially and I am finding more and more examples of this all around.  Here are some examples of both as I continue on my quest of the question of “What if the impossible isn’t?”

Last year while my sailboat was safely moored in El Salvador, I went ashore for a month to increase my Spanish language skills from a level of zero to a larger positive number and to learn more of the cultures and geography of the surrounding countries. I went to three places—Antigua, tiny San Marcos La Laguna on gorgeous Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, and Suchitoto in El Salvador—and in each location, I enrolled in a “language school” where I spent five to six hours a day Monday to Friday for four weeks, engaged in a on-on-one conversation with a Spanish language teacher. I learned A LOT!  Not only a lot of Spanish, but also a lot about each area, country, culture, the people, and especially about learning. 

Language Learning Dating Services?

I’ve often explained that I think it would be better to call these language schools “language dating services” because what they do is find a good match between two people—not for romantic purposes, but for learning as a teacher and a student. It is VERY effective! Similar to dating services, it is up to each pair to decide how they will structure the teaching/learning relationship so that it is just right for both people in terms of pace, level, goals, focus, etc. In my case, I was most interested in being conversant in Spanish so that in everyday situations I could understand others and express myself aurally. I also wanted to have some ability to read and write Spanish. As a result, I did the same thing with each of my three very different teachers, we had an extended conversation for 5-6 hours each day. 

These were true conversations. They were unplanned and spontaneous with all the serendipity of any great conversation where the conversation wonderfully wanders along unexpected paths as you discover different areas of mutual interest. In my case, this included such things as conversations about the mutual interest in music, particularly what makes for “good music”, understanding the roles of technology in the day and life of average citizens in the different cities, and sharing our mutual love for great food and wine.

Note: I’m using the learning of a new language as the subject here but this same approach works well for just about any application I can think of. 

One of the biggest and best things I came away with was a new sense of how personalized learning AND teaching can scale exponentially and  how my notion of a future society of “Tearners” (Teacher + Learner = Tearner)—where each and every one of us are both teachers and learners—is both possible and already happening. If you’d like to read more about my experiences and thoughts on this form of language learning, please read these postings on my Learnativity blog:

• Learning Spanish, culture, geography and SO much more!
• Adios Antigua; Hola San Marcos le Laguna!

Do It Yourself (DIY) Learning via “Tearners”

One of the essential elements for enabling this kind of limitless learning and teaching is to enable and empower an “expert”—anyone who is significantly better than you are in some domain of interest—to be an effective teacher, often without even knowing they are doing so. Rethinking expertise in this way enables us to tap into the skills and knowledge that others have, which in most cases they are not even aware of. 

In the case of language learning for example, anyone who is a native speaker of a language you want to learn, including and perhaps especially children, can teach you what they don’t even know they know. The trick is in finding interesting, fun, and effective ways to do so. And as you’ll see in the following examples, and as was the case with one of my teachers, they don’t even need to know how to speak your language!

In my search for resources to assist with this type of limitless learning, I have found several good ones, including the book “Language Acquisition Made Practical” by Thomas and Elizabeth Brewster. Kevin Kelly featured this book in one of his “Cool Tools”  postings and you can read this concise review for an overview of the book and its methods. I particularly like Kevin’s typically insightful observation:

“Like realizing that you don't need a degree in anything to build your own house, learning that you can become fluent in another language without a course or classroom is deliciously radical.”

The following is an excerpt from this book and it will give you a better idea of how this works in language learning:

Production of Modifiers

Kino says a sentence with modifiers. You repeat the basic sentence without modifiers.

Kino: "The blue jug with the pretty flowers is on the high wooden shelf."
You: "The jug is on the shelf."

Then reverse roles -- he says a simple sentence and you embellish it.

Kino: "This is a book."
You: "This is a good book about the people of this country."
Kino: "This is a candle."
You: "This is a red candle."

Look around you. You can talk about virtually any object, then restate it with modifiers.

Word/Thing Association Game

By using these sentence patterns you can get extra drill on new vocabulary while talking with people. You can touch an object and ask "What is this?" They may answer, "This is Kefala." You can then touch a similar object and ask "Is this Kefala?" and they will answer positively or negatively.
If you are talking with children, this can become quite a game and give you lots of practice with new words. Children will often catch on, and participate with you in the game. First, you can ask the questions while they answer. Then you can trade roles and let them ask the questions while you try to answer. If you enter into the spirit of the game, everybody can have fun while you practice vocabulary.

 

As is often the case, this type of learning is not a new idea or method and as the authors point out this method was used by missionaries trying to learn other languages without the aid of any formal resources, such as books, curricula, classrooms, or teachers. I’m sure you can see how this method enables a form of limitless learning and why I’m so excited about  it. As you try it out and reflect upon it, I think you will also soon be able to apply most of the same techniques to many other subjects. I’ve used it for example to learn how to do wood carving and how to do whitewater kayaking.

Consider learning by doing and try using this both ways—as the learner the next time you need to learn something or as the teacher when you see a teachable moment to help someone benefit from your expertise.

I’d very much appreciate hearing back from you about your experience.

-- Wayne

Bendable Magnesium Mags?

http://www.skiff.com

via www.designboom.com

I've been following the various eReader hyperbole for a long time, including this recent entry called the Skiff, (interestingly developed by newspaper publisher Herst) but I just came across this shot that gave me pause.  According to the specs available for the Skiff it  "comes with a sleek magnesium casing"  so degree of bending seems rather remarkable.  Anyone else know more about this?

Other than preventing it from breaking, reducing glare, I'm not sure the flexibility is a big factor for me, but if it ends up we can make these even more paper like and fold these devices, that's another story!

List with a Twist: My Best Learning Books in 2009?

I am always looking for the next great book to read and thought I’d tap into the collective intelligence, the annual end-of-the-calendar-year trend for lists, and the power of new tools such as Twitter to find the next great book to read. Below is some of the why, how, and what I have in mind.

Mashup of Old and New

I continue to be intrigued by the power that comes from creating mashups of old and new. In this case, it is about finding the next great book to read (how old can you get?) using a new means such as Twitter, blogs, etc.

In short, what I’m asking you to do is reflect upon books you’ve read this past year, choose one or more that you found to be the best learning book for you, and share this with the rest of us via a tweet.* Ideally you can also articulate with more detail on why you chose this particular book and post this to your blog, Facebook page, or otherwise share your thoughts with the rest of us.

I considered making this more wide open and going for “best learning resource” that could include books, websites, blogs, tweets, slides, presentations, etc., and perhaps we should expand this idea and format to other resources.  But for now, I have purposely limited this to that oh-so-yesterday medium—books—as I’m interested in finding more in-depth and detailed exploration of ideas, concepts, techniques, models, and the like. I not only find myself reading more than ever from a greater diversity of sources, dates of publication, and formats than ever, but as a voracious eBook reader, I find myself reading more books than I ever have (something which I already did a lot) and am finding exponentially more value in doing so. I’d like to continue that trend.

Vaguely Focused

I have also purposely focused on “learning books” and have left the definition and interpretation of what a learning book is in this context to be open-ended and up to you. You can treat learning as a verb or a noun, just make it personal and passionate. For example, you can decide to choose the book which was the best at:

• Stimulating your personal learning, was most provocative, made you think the most, perhaps one you disagreed with the most?
• Causing the most change in your thinking, your perspective, your behavior.
• Stimulating new ideas, new questions, new paths to pursue.
• Being most helpful in your personal learning and/or with learning in your organization—personal or professional.
• Affecting a change in learning as a topic/subject.
• Any other way you want to interpret what “learning book” means to you.

Like to learn by example?  Check out this list of “Books that Changed My Life” (and a very cool library pictured here as well) from Kevin Kelly.

List with a Twist

This is not an attempt to create a new top ten list, and least of all, any kind of most popular or bestseller list! There are lots of these and there are more to come I’m sure. And by all means, mention them here if you find some good lists that helped you find a great book for learning in 2009. 

While I would not want to stifle more input, rather than creating an echo chamber of agreement with someone else’s #myBLB09 tweet, I’m hoping you will either add your own book or tweet about an additional benefit you got from reading a book someone else listed. I will not be compiling a summative list, I won’t be taking votes, or in any other way trying to categorize or rate these books. The #myBLB09 will help enough with that. Rather I’m trying to stimulate more sharing of what you found to be the most valuable for you.  My assumption is that we will all benefit from our individual sharing of personal great reads.

However, I’m actually hoping to see hundreds or thousands of books listed here, which will enable each of us to add a new book to our own personal top ten list for 2009 before it ends all too soon.

Here’s how I’d suggest we can all help make this a productive and valuable resource and use of our time:

• Create a tweet with one of the best books you have read in 2009, which had a profound effect on your learning and perhaps that of others around you. 
• I’ve created a Twitter hashtag #myBLB09 and be sure to add #myBLB09 to your tweet so others can find, follow, and benefit.
• Avoid the temptation to list a book you plan to read, have skimmed, think you should read, or ones you think everyone else is reading!
• Reflect upon books you read in 2009 and do not limit this to books which were published in 2009. In fact, I’m hoping that we’ll see more old, obscure, forgotten books than those on any bestseller lists.
• Write less about why you think others should read this book and more about why it was so beneficial and influential for you. 
• Bonus points for a link in your tweet rather than text regarding the author, book, etc. so you can use more of the 140 characters to state why this is a great book for you! 

  Tip: Use the “custom naming” option in the URL shortener (bit.ly, snurl, tinyurl, etc.) that you use to make the link text more descriptive and part of your tweet text.  Search on “custom naming URL shortening” or the like for help with this such as:

  • http://www.seoconsultants.com/twitter/shorts/
  • http://www.geekpreneur.com/the-top-10-url-shortening-services

• Consider writing a more detailed account of how and why this was such a great learning book for you and posting this on your blog, Facebook page, or other ways you can share these thoughts with the rest of us. Then send a tweet with a link to your notes and include the #myBLB09 hashtag.
• If, as will often be the case, you have more than one great learning book you read in 2009, consider creating and posting your own personal list of “My Best Learning Books in 2009” and tweet a link to your list, adding #myBLB09 as well of course.

Help Me, Help You by Helping Me Help You

In the wonderful ways of the cyclical benefits of gifting, I’m hoping that by asking you to help me find my next great book to read, you will find your next great book to read. And at this time of year, if you are looking for a gift for friends and family, perhaps this will provide you with some gift ideas. However my real hope is that by doing this, I may in some small way be able to give a gift to you by asking you to consider giving yourself a gift—the gift of time for reading, thinking, and reflecting, which I find books to be great catalyst for. How’s that for circular!

While the end of year certainly brings with it lots of demands on your time, it can also provide an opportunity for the luxury of time to read. Consider it an investment in the future and an investment in yourself such that you can in turn be that much more useful and effective in helping others in the upcoming New Year and beyond. For those of you who use calendars and schedulers—electronic or paper—to help organize and manage your time, consider simply scheduling time for you to read something stimulating and provocative and the time to reflect and think about it all. It is no coincidence that in my experience with others who I regard to be extremely successful, I’ve discovered that they specifically carve out time for just this kind of activity at least annually and often more so. Why not you too?

You’ve done your best to be good all year right?  You not only deserve this gift, but in the end it will enable you to better gift the rest of us with an even more powerful and passionate you in 2010.

Looking forward to your help in finding the next great book to read.  Thanks!

Wayne

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* If Twitter and tweeting is new to you or you have been trying to figure it out, my experience is that this is one of those things that you can only learn experientially. Use it for a month and you’ll know if it is valuable for you. See my previous post “Twitterpated” for more details. Why not use this opportunity to start your experiential learning of Twitter now?