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An important part of learning is to build your own personal learning network -- a group of people who can guide your learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions, and give you the benefit of their own knowledge and experience.

we are all inundated with data (Stage 1) -- all those manuals, brochures, memos, letters, reports, and other printed material that cross our field of vision every day, not to mention all that we receive electronically

when you take data and give it relevance and purpose, you create information. Information (Stage 2) is the minimum we should be seeking for all of our learning activities.

(In a study conducted on one college campus, a faculty member gave a student assignment to a group of colleagues for analysis. Few of them could understand what the faculty member wanted. If experienced profs are confused, how can we expect students to understand?)

Some recent research shows that many students do poorly on assignments or in participation because they do not understand what to do or why they should do it.

Attending to the need for power could be as simple as allowing students to choose from among two or three things to do--two or three paper topics, two or three activities, choosing between writing an extra paper and taking the final exam, etc. Many students have a need to have fun in active ways--in other words, they need to be noisy and excited. Rather than always avoiding or suppressing these needs, design an educational activity that fulfills them.

Early research results aren’t surprising: - Students are heavy users of computers, but not for education. - Teachers make limited use of computers and other technologies in class - Parents are limited computer users - Teacher training is lacking in utilizing computers effectively in classrooms

At the core of the discussion surrounding the future of education is a concern of how to navigate shifting power and control. What is the role of the student? The teacher? The school? The parents? If learners have the ability to do what educators have done in the past (access information directly), what role should the educator play?

Perhaps face-to-face time should take on a different model than we currently utilize. We should do what we can with technology outside of classrooms. Then we wouldn’t need to meet in classrooms as often.

"First and foremost, I look for someone who asks good questions," Parker responded. "Our business is changing, and so the skills our engineers need change rapidly, as well. We can teach them the technical stuff. But for employees to solve problems or to learn new things, they have to know what questions to ask. And we can't teach them how to ask good questions - how to think. The ability to ask the right questions is the single most important skill."

"All of our work is done in teams. You have to know how to work well with others. But you also have to know how to engage the customer -- to find out what his needs are. If you can't engage others, then you won't learn what you need to know."

Where in the 20th century, rigor meant mastering more -- and more complex -- academic content, 21st century rigor is about creating new knowledge and applying what you know to new problems and situations.

“Historically, the learning community has stayed away from informal learning and social learning, and that is where most of the learning is taking place,” ASTD CEO Tony Bingham said during an interview promoting his new book, The New Social Learning, with co-author Marcia Conner. “We now have the tools, and the catalysts, to engage [employees] with that kind of learning. I think that is going to help the learning community take it to the next level.”  

An ASTD and Institute for Corporate Productivity study made a strong business case for using social media to enhance productivity. Millennials found social media tools more helpful in terms of learning and getting work done than Generation X workers or Baby Boomers. More organizations dabbled in social media during 2010, using shared workspaces, social networks, and wikis to deliver learning and development.   “The next generation of workers coming into organizations will demand the ability to work in ways they’ve already found to enable success,” wrote Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd in a July 2010 T+D article. “If the learning function does not step up to the task, some other department in the organization will, and the learning function will become irrelevant.”

As Daniel Pink wrote in The New Social Learning foreword, social learning will not replace training and employee development, “but it can accomplish what traditional approaches often cannot … [It] can supplement instruction with collaboration and co-creation, and in doing so, blur the boundary between the instructor and the instructed. … It can bring far-flung employees together into new communities in which they can not only learn from one another, but also fashion new offerings for customers. In short, social media can change the way your company works.”  

But writing assignments are not just exercises in grammar and grading. They are exercises in learning

Psychologists and other cognitive scientists know so much about psycholinguistics, language, and memory that they should well understand the close link between composition and knowledge. Yet many view writing as only a means of assessing a students' understanding of course material, and overlook the profound impact that the writing process has on understanding itself

The act of writing is an act of thought

Two broad approaches exist for learning technology implementation: The adoption of a centralized learning management approach. This may include development of a central learning support lab where new courses are developed in a team-based approach—consisting of subject matter expert, graphic designers, instructional designer, and programmers. This model can be effective for creation of new courses and programs receiving large sources of funding. Most likely, however, enterprise-wide adoption (standardizing on a single LMS) requires individual departments and faculty members to move courses online by themselves. Support may be provided for learning how to use the LMS, but moving content online is largely the responsibility of faculty. This model works well for environments where faculty have a high degree of autonomy, though it does cause varying levels of quality in online courses. Personal learning environments (PLEs) are a recent trend addressing the limitations of an LMS. Instead of a centralized model of design and deployment, individual departments select from a collage of tools—each intending to serve a particular function in the learning process. Instead of limited functionality, with highly centralized control and sequential delivery of learning, a PLE provides a more contextually appropriate toolset. The greater adaptability to differing learning approaches and environments afforded by PLEs is offset by the challenge of reduced structure in management and implementation of learning. This can present a significant challenge when organizations value traditional lecture learning models.

Self-organised learning networks provide a base for the establishment of a form of education that goes beyond course and curriculum centric models, and envisions a learner-centred and learner controlled model of lifelong learning. In such learning contexts learners have the same possibilities to act that teachers and other staff members have in regular, less learner-centred educational approaches. In addition these networks are designed to operate without increasing the workload for learners or staff members.

Instead of learning housed in content management systems, learning is embedded in rich networks and conversational spaces. The onus, again, falls on the university to define its views of learning.

Just 18% of last year’s high school graduates in Michigan were prepared for college-level English, writing, reading, mathematics and science, according to the ACT’s Profile Report for the Class of 2009.

Nationwide, it has been estimated that one in five students at universities enroll in a remedial class. At community colleges, which do the heavy lifting in remedial work, it has been estimated that 60% of first-time students need at least one remedial course. Many of those students, certainly, are returning adults who left high school years ago. Others are students who have mild developmental disabilities. But what bothers educators and policy-makers is this: Many are also recent graduates who have left the high school stage with a diploma, only to find out a few months later that they’re not ready for even basic college work.

For me, the FLIP is when you “Focus on your Learners by Involving them in the Process”

This is the moment when you stop talking at your learners and “flip” the work to them instead.  This is the moment when you allow them to struggle, ask questions, solve problems and do the “heavy lifting” required to learn the material.

Students can look up the content on their own and find the answer to a question within a matter of seconds.  What they can’t always do on their own is analyze, synthesize, and experience the process of engaging in higher levels of critical thinking. This is when they need to do the messy work of learning, evaluating, and critiquing. This is when they need your structure and guidance, but not your answers. They have to make meaning for themselves. This is a “flippable moment.”

For a while, it’s been okay to be less than an expert in social media. It’s time to get on board. Regardless of your age, your survival in the workplace depends on your intimate knowledge of social media.

The reasons for this are myriads. Social media has profoundly changed a company’s public face. And with game-changing implications for sales, human resources, public relations, marketing and customer service, virtually nobody is left out of the matrix that touches social media.