Last year, I published a short article in the Future of Maintenance Training magazine.
It advocates a design process that is focused on real-world needs, activity-centric learning experiences and that acknowledges larger context in which the training is being used.
The article is available here.
The future is here now and it is fixing your beemer.
Other awesome examples of this technology here.
In the hours and days after dropping a connected computer in an Indian village, children had figured out how to record music and play games. In further experiments, newly connected students were given series of questions, challenged to work together to find answers. They did. The astonishing outcomes (see video!) where augmented by light encouragement and facilitation.
Reflecting on these experiments, the researcher, Sugata Mitra has come to frame education as a self-organizing where learning is an emergent behaviour. I don’t think that this means that we stop designing education and training. However, it does suggest a new model of instruction: provide learners with interesting challenges, access to (unbelievably powerful) information technology and then get out of the way to let the learning emerge.
According to new revelations, the Titanic may have gone down because of a wrong left turn. The performance gap-analysis is simple: though the Titanic was a steam-ship, North-Atlantic sailing was traditionally done by “tiller-orders”, which means you deflect the tiller right to turn left. The new modern steam ships acted like cars; you deflect the wheel towards where you want to go. When the captain commanded a sharp turn, the man at the wheel complied, but reverted to his training and commanded the ship right into the iceberg.
If true, this story provides a titanic-sized lesson about the importance of ensuring that training and operations are as aligned as possible. The best case would have been to modernize the language used on the deck. Second best would have been to train sailors in the actual vernacular, as antiquated as it was. Either solution could have averted the disaster.
What disasters could you be averting right now by either fixing the job or the training for the job?
When fully matured, “visual search” will allow you to point your smartphone at just about anything and instantly receive information about the thing you are looking at. Right now, it is really good at identifying businesses and buildings (using gps data and maps), books and CDs (using character recognition). So, you can get reviews, background info, lists of similar things and, of course, links to purchase.
The potential applications for training and performance support seem endless. The first thing that comes to mind is this: instead of putting people in a class or in front of a computer, why not have them tour and environment using augmented reality to discover it’s properties? With some simple game-logic, students could be given a challenge to discover a location (like a historical site), find vital information and solve problems…all without having to sit down.
So it turns out that the kids at the back of the class may not actually in a coma - it could be that they simply can’t hear what is being said up front. Maclean’s magazine just ran an article spotlighting the growing use of classroom amplification systems to ensure that the instruction can penetrate the din of distractors and reach the learners.
Apparently, students farther than 3.5 meters from the teacher can miss up to 50% of what is said due to air conditioning, chatter, classroom acoustics, the prevalence of ear-infections and the fact that pre-adolescent brains are still learning to filter out noise. These audio systems distribute sound so that a back-seater hears the same as a front-seater. Teacher’s throats everywhere are singing for joy.
My questions are:
Educational technology tends to focus on either the soft-tools of analysis/design/evaluation or the hard-tools like classroom aides and Learning Management Systems. Learners, however remain out of range…as recipients of our interventions.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could look under the lid and actually tinker with their brains to enable them to, say, be better at math or be more creative?
Australian scientists have created an actual thinking cap that “switches on” creativity - demonstrated by dramatically improved drawing skills. They suggest that by using magnetism to suppress certain types of brain activity, other parts of the brain overcompensate, leading to an awakening of otherwise dormant abilities. It’s thought that the same principal gives rise to “savantism” in people with autism. It is possible that different modes could supress/enhance different abilities…like the color controls on the remote!
This is definately a tool I’d like to be able to keep handy in my tool-box.
This question inevitably comes up every day one is developping training. While full job-task analysis is supposed to pre-emptively answer it, the truth is that few projects have enough time or money to do this. So…we often depend on experts to tell us what is important. In our hearts, we know that anything we train should be directly linked to skill development. Experts often argue strongly for including facts and information that seem hard to connect to those skills.
This presentation by Cathy Moore offers some serious Ninja moves for putting skills at the center of focus as we develop training or support tools.
A while ago, Merlin Mann of 43 folders put out some solid advice on how to overcome the all-consuming beast that is my inbox.
The “Inbox zero” concept is about keeping one’s inbox empty, and in doing so, minimizing one’s fear and loathing of the unknown that lives in that jumble of unfinished conversations, unrealized obligations and unsorted information.
I’ve started using the technique (on 1 of my 3 inboxes) and am already feeling a certain lightness of being coming on. His presentation (below) provides an inspirational launching point for attacking this monstrosity.
It turns out that like the common cold, happiness is contagious!
The research points to several factors: being around happy people, and watching happy people interact with each-other has a positive impact on one’s sense of well-being. Achoo.
While this viral effect has been identified in things like clothes, fads, internet videos, and tendencies to smoke or over-eat, it is refreshing to learn that something as positive as happiness can also be catchy.
Could this phenomenon apply to other fields? Could being around exemplary people help spread a culture of safety? An outbreak of innovation? An epidemic of customer service?
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