Archive for February, 2008
From Seth Godin’s book, small is the new big:
… As we’ve turned human beings into competent components of the giant network known as American business, we’ve also erected huge barriers to change.
In fact, competence is the enemy of change!
Competent people resist change. Why? Because change threatens to make them less competent. And competent people like being competent. That’s who they are, and sometimes that’s all they’ve got. No wonder they’re not in a hurry to rock the boat. …
It’s easy to forget that learning new things and facing new challenges involves being, let’s face it, incompetent. That’s never fun. Remember when you were learning how to ride a bike? You were frustrated at first, you felt like a dolt, you had skinned knees and a bruise on your shin, you wondered if you’d ever be good at this, even though everyone told you you’d pick it up in no time.
Read the rest of this entry »
Read comments (0)
Some educational reading for your greater learning contentment …
Janet Clarey: An instructor I use to work with told a story one day about a manager that had called him up to complain about the course he’d taught to one of the manager’s reports that week. His complaint? The employee … if you can believe it … had fun! So the instructor asked if, really, the manager was mad about the employee having fun at a mandatory training. There was spluttering, then sheepishness. Anyway, I was reminded of that story when reading Clarey’s guide to avoiding red alert levels of boredom in courses.
Jay Deragon: Social networking convergence is coming, exemplifying the way technology should provide support to human enterprise, but isn’t an end in itself.
Read the rest of this entry »
“We are clearly on the edge of a recession.” – Alan Greenspan
I followed this article last Thursday with another that very effectively argues how corporate training is viewed by most executives as simply a cost to the business. A function that clearly fails to present a business model that can justify its existence.
The sum of these parts - a looming recession plus a perceived cost center - doesn’t bode well for training organizations.
Read the rest of this entry »
As everything moves online and becomes digitized, our computers and mobile devices take on more of the role of gatekeepers to our relationships with others.
Sometimes, this can make people nervous. Content management and communication technology is an increasing part of our personal conversations, our family lives, socialization with friends, every aspect of our work. It touches how our minds process what they sense. It’s easy to see why technology makes things like travel and construction better, but it isn’t always an unmixed blessing in the personal sphere.
In the learning experience, there can be natural, experience-based skepticism that more technology is the answer.
Read the rest of this entry »
The learning and information industry world pre-surfed for your reading entertainment.
Learning Circuits Blog: The big question for February is when, if and how much your project needs instructional design, and what do we mean by that, anyway?
Read the rest of this entry »
