Hands They are as unique for each of us as our personality.
There is a learning method using our hands that I call “the Rule of the Power of Five”. It is deceptively simple.
Identify something you want to learn. You could phrase it as a problem statement of something that needs to be solved. (You could suggest 5 problems and pick the most urgent one to start if you are having trouble getting going.)
Now list 5 things you already know about this problem.
List 5 questions you would like answered about this.
Find 5 possible resources that would help. Include people and information.
List 5 possible activities that would get you one step further in your learning.
Now you have very good material to start working from. Develop a specific plan based on this collection of ideas, try it and then reflect on the experience. Repeat using the Rule of the Power of Five with the advanced problem or another one on your list. The Rule of the Power of Five can get us started on managing our own learning

This is my 100th 1 Minute Learner Blog. It has taken me over 3 years to get this far since I did the first one: To learn is to live. Gord Jones said if I made a 100 blog entries I would really have learned something in the process. So now I want to ask myself what have I learned this far?
1. Life is a continuous learning opportunity: many lessons unexpected, some unsolicited, but all are valuable. While we can use big words to talk about learning, if even a baby can learn, so can we!
2. I am surrounded by mentors. We can really learn from other people. The dedications I have made for each 1 ML are heart felt. I have so many people unmentioned and my words so inadequate.
3. There is beauty in learning. As I ponder learning, I see treasure, I see art. I see wonder.
4. There is also agony in learning. We hold it all with open hands.

So let’s keep learning.

In the Power of Pull, authors Hagel and Seely Brown declare that the only sustainable competitive advantage is the rate at which an organization can learn. This means in our globalized economy, learning is not an optional, easily-cut luxury.
It must deliver just-in-time answers while continually improving itself as it adapts to change.
What applies to organizations, also applies to us as individuals.
We can’t afford not to learn. Unless we want to automatically be disadvantaged. The problem isn’t that we will make mistakes or won’t know everything. We will do both.
The error is in stopping learning or thinking we know enough so we don’t have to learn.
Learning is not an investment. It is our survival.

Happy learning,
Jim

This morning my son Dan phoned me. He was late for a meeting and his brakes were frozen. The car couldn’t move forward.
While he was trying to push the car and see if he could jolt the brake lose, I started searching the Internet. One workable suggestion I found in a chat forum was to hold a hair dryer on the brake drum to warm it up. Had we not found an answer we could have appealed to a larger audience through Twitter. At any rate Dan tried it along with prayer and 20 minutes later he was on his way.

This is a simple example of social learning. The answer came between the two of us in a social interaction supported by online technical access, our combined evaluation of the options and immediate application of the ideas. All this while he was in Winnipeg and I was near Toronto. Social learning ‘just in time` and at its best.

I just learned a new educational term: Proximal zone of development. This means tasks should be given just a little beyond what we can comfortably do. This is not easy to construct and certainly can’t be mass produced. In a sense it is the holy grail of instructional design.
Make it too easy and the hoop jumping seems unnecessary. Make it too difficult and it seems impossible and one gives up. Chosen correctly, it respects the learner, maintains motivation and ensures best possible outcomes.
To what extent can we as learners choose the proximal zone of development? I think we can learn to evaluate challenges and choose wisely. Especially if the learning allows us to set objectives and provides feedback from others in the journey.

Happy learning,
Jim

Dr Arnall Patz, in the early 1950’s recognized a pattern that premature babies (before 32 weeks and below 3 pounds) suffered a higher incidence of blindness. He wondered if it was because of high doses of oxygen given which detached the retina in the eye.
He applied for a $4000 research grant but was turned down. His brother funded the research.
He confirmed that this treatment was the leading cause of blindness in newborns (more than all other causes put together) and that it affected 10,000 babies in the US in the preceding decade (including Stevie Wonder).
In 1953 because Dr Patz recognized a bad treatment pattern and learned the reason why, the harmful practice was discontinued.
This was the same year my twin brother and I were born were born prematurely. We did not receive any oxygen treatment and our vision was not affected.
Thank you Dr Patz for being a persevering learner recognizing a harmful pattern in spite of forceful opposition.

I am trying to get my head around the term Disruptive Learning. The idea is that it must challenge preset notions and lead to the formation of new paradigms. Sounds challenging, even threatening.

I worked in a sewage treatment plant where once a sample bottle that sat out in the sun, blew up in my face. From that disruptive experience, I learned to open them more carefully after that.

I would argue without some kind of disruption, no learning takes place. Unfortunately without disturbing some of the effluent, the duck will not learn what to avoid. We have a term for that which describes some people’s unique gift in this area.

We make learning too safe, too homogenized, to pegged to the status quo especially in inevitability of change. We need to be more disruptive- willing, more risk agile..

Recently Naomi had a camping experiencing on the north shore of Lake Superior of a storm so fierce that it snapped the tent poles and she literally had to hold the tent down. Experiencing a storm from a tent is a far different perspective than watching it from inside a building.

I associate this imagery with brainstorming. We generate a torrent of ideas, by taking risks and suggesting the preposterous, then two or more wacky ideas can be joined to become a something spectacular. We are not supposed to evaluate anything in the ideation stage, but let the creative deluge take us to where we have never been before.

My problem is that I do take my ideas very personally and especially your evaluation of them. But that is why it is called brain storming. It is not just the quantity and novelty of ideas but it is our vulnerability in offering them that is like experiencing a storm. Brainstorm from the perspective of the vulnerability of being inside a tent not from the safety of being inside a building.

There are 2 types of learning: Just in Case Learning , in case it is something we might need someday, like always carrying an umbrella in case it might rain or Just in Time Learning, which is finding exactly what we need when we need it.
Jane Hart says “People no longer want just-in-case learning, …They don’t want or need to have to memorize information just in case they need it;  they only need to know where to find it, when they need it.”

It would be unnecessary to always carry an umbrella: most of the time I would forget it somewhere and not have it when I really needed it. There is just too much information to memorize. That is why they make phone books. That is why we can google anything almost anywhere from our smart phone.
I wonder how this should affect the way we teach?
Instead of memorization, teach how to find the best information quickly and practice using it appropriately.
Release learners to find what they don’t know. They might discover more than you could ever teach them.

Happy learning,
Jim

Learning is Pattern Recognition
I have talked about learning by imitation before but recently Iris has driven this point home. One of her first words has been “NumNum’ originally to mean “this tastes good”. She learned this by imitating her care givers because this is what they said as she would eat a spoonful. So when she liked something she began to say it “NumNum”.

But when she saw others at the table eating and she wasn’t, she would use “NumNum?” as a question, like “I see others are eating, why am I not eating”. She recognized a pattern (eating), recognized she was not part of that pattern (I am hungry), then recalled a word that identified the pattern (this tastes good) and then used it as a question (Why am I not eating).

This is social learning built upon pattern recognition. I think a lot of social learning goes on under the surface exercising more influence that we recognize. If a 9 month old can learn this, what happens if, with formal learning, the patterns contradict what is being taught? The desired results won’t be realized.