An article for BBC by Maggie Jackson, September 2009, about our inability to pay attention in an age driven by speed through technology
"Still, I'm worried. These digital age wonders will be squandered if we can't think critically, research well, and evaluate the data-floods we now have at our fingertips - and these are precisely the skills alarmingly lacking among both digital natives and older generations. Half of college students can't judge the objectivity of a website. Workers now switch tasks every three minutes, half the time interrupting themselves. As David Nicholas points out, we spend our time online 'power-bouncing' from info-snippet to data-point. And this propensity to rely on point-and-click, first-up-on-Google answers, along with our growing unwillingness to wrestle uncomfortably with nuances or uncertainties, keeps us stuck on the surface of the 'information' age. We're too often sacrificing depth for breadth in the ways we make sense of the world.
Yes, we've always had 'power bouncing' and distraction. And surfing or multitasking may have an important place in 21st-century society as strategies of learning. But going forward, we need to do much more than hopscotch across the web, split-focused and pulled this way and that by choice distractions. We cannot mistake fragmented, diffused attention as avenues of higher thought. Instead, we need to do better at cultivating - perhaps resuscitating? - deep focus, keen awareness and meta-cognitive 'executive' attention - the skills crucial to creativity and problem-solving. "
Good quick study of how jobs change. Quote from intro: An overload of "DIY" and virtual everything may lead consumers to value skilled laborers as the new "big thing." Just remember that quality work is always in style and value will never be obsolete.
1. Social networking use is skyrocketing while email is plummeting
A recent study by OfficeTeam shows that more than one-third of companies feel that resumes will be replaced by profiles on social networks. My prediction is that in the next ten years, resumes will be less common, and your online presence will become what your resume is today, at all types and sizes of companies.
Dawn Schawbel writes for Forbes, 2/21/2011 on why the online presence will replace the resume (only has six years to make his ten year predictions come true)
The Chronicle of Research Services issued this report: The College 2020: Students. Although from 2013, it has a great section on a poll from students who identified the rigidity of University learning was stifling them. Their suggestions included customizable text books, mobile learning, and self-directed curricula.
Enrollment in Distance Education Courses by State: Fall 2012 from a USDOE Web Tables report from June 2014. Interestingly, black and native American colleges offered the least number of online courses.
Cultivating Learning agility is instilling (or re-instilling for many) a sense of curiosity in new ideas, and the willingness to explore the unfamiliar or established. It is developing the ability and instinct for a person to try to navigate uncharted areas to them or to their organization.
They particularly prepare people to best leverage emergent, dynamic, evolving and volatile contexts such as matrix- or network-organizations and teams, communities of practice, virtual teams and workplaces and external partnerships and ecosystems. These apply to any job role internal or external, in cross-functional or cross-team capacities.
The Wi-Fi-only tablet also arrives equipped with more than a dozen tutorial videos that walk users through tasks such as connecting to Wi-Fi, using email, setting up accounts at social networks and using video chat services like Skype for virtual visits with far-flung relatives and grandkids. In addition, RealPad owners get access to free 24/7 customer service via an 800 number that's accessible with the touch of an icon at the bottom of the screen. Remote help is also available.
Tech-Enabled Learning by Whitehorne, Associations Now, January 2016, refers to recent survey on associations using technology to help their members/staff learn
If you had to relocate to a place in which you knew virtually no one, how would you go about finding or creating a community of intelligent, creative, professional women (very much like yourself) who are interested in becoming their best self in order to do their best work – whatever that may be?
nice blog post by Jennifer Louden on finding your tribe nourished by women who wrote in examples of how they found their tribes (not necessarily online)