Zen This!

I was introduced to videos by Garr Reynolds on YouTube.  He uses concepts of Zen to put together PowerPoint presentations.  His concepts are spectacular and his PowerPoints are amazing.  The problem is that when I try to recreate his PowerPoints, it is very difficult.  And if it is very difficult for me who is a computer programming and graphic designer by trade, then I can only imagine how difficult it would be for someone who uses the PowerPoint basics.  Garr modifies his graphics in Adobe Photoshop, uses obscure fonts and creates simple graphs in complex ways (such as overlaying a faded arrow over a bar graph). 

Isn't this just always how it goes for training and education.  You learn a life changing concept but then you don't have enough information or training to apply it to real-life situations.

Denzel Washington - The Ultimate Teacher?

Just got back from the movie Safe House starring Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington.  Near the end of the movie, a coworker of Ryan Reynolds states that Ryan is lucky to have escaped the safe house and traveled with Denzel.  Lucky because traveling with Denzel is the best training experience a CIA op can have he states.  It reminded me of how some students learn best by experiencing a situation and having a mentor or coach with them.

Come to think of it, Denzel trained a rookie cop as well using the same method in the movie Training Day.  Together, Denzel coached the rookie by having the rookie follow him on his patrol.  Scary way to learn, but by the end of the movie the rookie was no longer a rookie.

Mind Mapping Shows How Far Off Topic Facilitators Can Go

I tried this past week to take all of my notes in class and in my work using mind mapping. At first it was challenging to take notes in this new way. Once I adjusted to the format though, I found it to be an interesting excercise. Not neccessarily because it is an effective way to take notes, but because it shows how off topic meetings and classes get. I found myself with a condensed map for the course content but since I was mapping all conversations, the off-topic banter went out of control on the map.

It just reinforces how important it is for a facilitaor or instructor to make sure they have the skill to keep the class or group on topic.

How Some Class Instruction is like an Infomercial

The infomercial is a 30- or 60- minute commercial that markets a product to a consumer.  The interesting thing about these types of commercial is that they spend this entire time training the consumer about the product.  Of course the commercial could have trained the consumer about the product in about 5 minutes but instead they use the entire time. 

I believe a lot of educators are like infomercials.  They take content that could be effectively taught in 5 minutes and stretch it out over an unbelievable amount of time.  The expression, "less is more" comes to mind.  Instead of overwhelming the concep being taught, the time would be better spent with classroom discussion, student interaction, student discovery, etc. after introducing the core concept.  

To me it is why some classes can be taught in a weekend as opposed to a sixteen-week stretch.

I keep getting asked about all of the different technologies I know about that relate to adult education.  I then stumbled across an online website builder called Weebly.  It's a free website tool.  So I used that technology to list all of the other technologies that I know about and use for training. 

Here is the result: http://adultedtech.weebly.com/

How the Movie "50 First Dates" is like Education

While reading the chapter on the Progressive philosophy to adult education I could not help but be reminded of the movie "50 First Dates".  In the movie, the central character wakes up each morning with no memory anything prior to her waking up.  Each morning she has to watch a video that catches her up on why she has no memories and who the people are who are around her.  Although disorientating at first, she quickly picks up her situation and experiences the rest of the day with memory in tact.  The next morning, it all starts again. 

That is how the chapter presents Progressive education from the stand point of replicating and continuing society.  Each time a child is born in the United States, it goes through the process of learning our history and whats its role is in society.  In the movie, it was a video tape.  In real-life, it's schools.   The common theme is that the video tape was created to present certain memories and not all, since that would not be possible, just as schools just touch on a little of what can be taught. 

The discussion and argument seems to be around what to put on the video tape.  Because you change a lot about who the person is simply by changing what's on the tape.  That's a lot of power and influence over a person.  And that is why there is so much disagreement in what are curiculum's should consist of.

The Encyclopedia Killer

It's amazing must how fast the Internet has dramatically changed things.  Take a look at phone books, nearly obsolete in the matter of years.  And now the encyclopedia, single-handedly destroyed by Wikipedia.  Wikis are fascinating creatures.  They are created and maintained by the masses.  I never thought in a million years that an online encyclopedia edited by the world would be credible.  But people use it, oh how they use it.  It is by far the number one used tool to look up something.  It is up there with Google and YouTube.  I use it just to find citations of related materials that I can read based on certain topics.  It's an amazing new technology and so simple at its core.  It will be interesting to see what other long standing, traditional resources the Internet will replace.

Learning Through YouTube

It's amazing how many learn by using YouTube.  Just the other day I needed to learn how my running toilet, properly cut a tomato and how to replace the bulb in my HD TV.  So I popped up YouTube, did a quick search and was able to learn it in minutes.  Not only was I able to learn it but I was also able to apply it.  Oh how quickly you can travel up Bloom's taxonomy with Internet tools. 

Interesting stat: over 3 billion YouTube videos are viewed a day.  Now I realize that not all of that is leraning, but when you think about the context of education to replicating or forming cultures and societies, YouTube is doing that on a massive scale.  And it's no longer limited to local communites, states or nations, it is now global.  Informal education is rapidly changing and the opportunities for learning are endless.

Khan for Adults

* Note: Not to be mistaken for Star Trek's Wrath of Khan as pictured

Most educators are now familiar with Sal Khan and his website http://www.khanacademy.com/.  In my personal opinion, it has single-handily advanced the field of math education by leaps and bounds and has probably statistically increase the collective math score of American by a couple of points.  The beauty of the website is that it truly leverages technology, gamification concepts, instructional video and learning maps and brings all of them together seamlessly.  Another bonus, it's free.  I think many education tools and ideas don't spread very quickly because they aren't free.  That is why the Learning Management System (LMS) and online course authoring is still not widely adopted, because the good software is expensive (Camtasia, Captivate, etc.).

Khan Academy is such an exciting new experience that one Google's founders has left Google to work for Khan Academy.  He left Google, one of the most innovative companies in the world, to work at Khan.  That's saying something.

I cannot wait to see the concept of Kahn Academy spread to all of the disciplines (math, science, English, foreign language, art, history, etc.).  This is self-study at its finest.  And the best part is, this technology works for adults too.  I personally have taken the time to freshen up my math skills, learn more about economics and even ventured into a little art history (just for the fun of it). 

The Age of the Dinosaurs

Today part of a lesson I attended covered the proper use of overhead projectors.  Do they even make overhead projectors anymore?  It's almost the equivalent of learning how to use an old-fashioned typewriter.  I do not understand why there is a such a large gap that keeps widening between those who embrace new technologies and those who are scared of them.  What's so scary about Prezi?  You can play around with it for free, watch YouTube videos tutorials and use pre-built templates.  It's puzzling to me how sometimes educators don't like to learn new things.

Intuitive Training

Is is possible for something to be created in a way that it trains a person as the person experiences the new thing for the first time.  The example I think of is Facebook.  There are several people who use Facebook that I personally know that have an aversion to technology.  Even with this fear, they were still able to create a Facebook account, add friends and family, poke said friends and family (in the old days), play Farmville and Bejeweled Blitz, add photos and add status updates.  And they did all of this without any training.  They didn't read a manual or watch a video on YouTube.  It's like Facebook secretly trainined them as they experiened the technology.   Is this a new form of tactile learning?  Can user interfaces be designed in a such a way that it trains the user as they experience it.  iPad anyone?

PowerPoint-less

Ran across this Dilbert cartoon today and it reminded how quickly "PowerPoint" became a bad word.  You rarely here of anyone using effectively anymore.  I wonder if that is Prezi is gaining some much ground so quickly?

Student Presentation + Freire's Method = Needs Assessment

During a student presentation in a class on Paulo Freire, I saw Freire's Cultural Circle technique introduced a new way that I had not seen before. The students doing to presentation posed a series of questions related to job interviews to the other students. They took the key words that came up in the answers and wrote them on the board. Then they said that the words on the board could be used to drive the agenda and discussions.

When it was presented this way, I could not help but make a connection between needs assessment and this technique. This is almost needs assessment in its purest and simplest form. In the past I would use techniques such as asking the students what they hoped to get out of the class or ask them what they were most interested in learning about the topic. But in my experience, the answers have always been pretty narrow. What I saw with the student’s reactions to open ended questions related to the topic was a different experience. It was like mind-mapping the class agenda and objectives.

I have used a similar technique for brainstorming sessions but it seems like it may be so much effective in assessing the needs of the student in a training or learning environment. Of course, this type of technique will require more flexibility in the class' structure, but it seems like it will almost instantly create interest and engagement, which in turn will increase motivation.

Schopenhauer, Plato, and Jung Found in the new teen movie "Chronical"

I took my son to see the new movie Chronical today.  Could not believe that the movie contained a lot of the content that we are covering in class.  Here are some examples:

• Schopenhauer (In Will Durant book)
• Allegory of the Cave
• Hubris
• Jung

Who would have thought that a teenage superhero movies would reference many of the philosophers we learned about in the opening chapters of our text book?  Even more interesting is that the writers used the teen who was versed in philosophy as the rational and ethical boy with superpowers, while the other kid, who was heaped in personal issues began to abuse the powers, was unethical and eventually went insane with the new power he had acquired.  This was a parellel to our classroom discussion of Lord of Flies and the example in our web readings about being stranded on an island.

The Problem with Plato

While doing some research on the writing of Plato that we are assigned in class, I ran across this.  Very intresting indeed.  I also found a funny comic panel about Plato and Socrates.

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Plato's problem is the term given by Noam Chomsky to the gap between knowledge and experience. It presents the question of how we account for our knowledge when environmental conditions seem to be an insufficient source of information. It is used in linguistics to refer to the "argument from poverty of the stimulus" (APS). In a more general sense, Plato’s Problem refers to the problem of explaining a "lack of input." Solving Plato’s Problem involves explaining the gap between what one knows and the apparent lack of substantive input from experience (the environment). Plato's Problem is most clearly illustrated in the Meno dialogue, in which Socrates demonstrates that an uneducated boy nevertheless understands geometric principles.

Clinical Education Revealed

Met today with the director of clinical education.  It is amazing how effective and efficient the clinical education program is at hospitals and health systems.  The preceptor model is proven to be extremely effective in educating adult clinical staff.  It's the evaluations, tests and competencies validations that I think is most impressive though.  Clinical staff take short survey during classroom instruction to identify the immediate feedback.  But assessments that occur by the preceptor, the coworkers, the team manager and clincal director occur a couple of weeks and several months after the training to asess if learning and change in behavior occurred.  And these assessments are done by simulation, stretch assignments, testing and observation.  All of the data is also collected and analyzed to see if there is a decrease in grievences, turnover, fatalities, etc.  In my experience, this evaluation model is the only one I've seen that truly captures all 4 phases of Kirkpatricks evaluation model.  I wonder why the clinical industry has been able to capitalize on this and why a lot of these best practices have not been applied to human captial, universities, financial sectors, etc.