Monday 19 November 2007

CLTI07 – Jay Cross Learning without foundation

It would not be Jay Cross if he did not go with his own flow, which in this case was an organic approach to discussing learning in corporations through dialogue.

Jay is an advocate of perpetual beta and he connects it to organic growth (which I like a lot) versus the more linear growth which is mostly found in business models.
Do define new ways of learning it is interesting to start without a foundation to keep an open mind. Especially if more and more of our economy is build upon information, knowledge and consumables.

The key idea was learning = co creating.

To assure the best possible way to keep in touch with everything that is changing and emerging, it is essential to get a strong knowledge network going. But… because information is exponentially growing, it is more and more difficult to keep track of relevant knowledge. Jay mentioned ‘the singularity is near’ a book by Ray Kurzweil in which the idea is written down that things can get so complicated that we can no longer comprehend them.
George Siemens added a notion of Eric Beinhocker an economist who reflects on economical networks that keep growing until they are so vast they no longer are a benefit to the network links themselves => network falls apart because of week ties (I am definitely paraphrasing the idea George mentioned, I need to read up on a lot).

Some thoughts I had while reviewing the presentation of Jay
- Organic learning is a process that has been growing since the idea that ‘there is no objectivity’. In my mind it seems only natural to evolve from non-objectivity and thus non-absolute truth to perpetual beta;
- Jay wanted people to get their thoughts out into the presentation to get a dialogue going. An idea I like a lot, but on the other hand it will again put people aside and get a non-equal dynamic going. Because a lot of people do have a lot of ideas but are not techy, not confident, not … to get their ideas out there. It is a bit like Virginia Yonkers said in the dialogue ‘power of politics’ which is not only true on an organizational level, but also on a personal level. The different skills of a person define what and in what way they can add information.
- Valerie Bock of Q2 mentioned a great idea: reinstating the apprenticeship. I really liked that idea, if learning is doing, living alongside a (couple of) mentors will definitely get knowledge across really rapidly. Carnegie and Napoleon Hill are an old example of that.

A couple of links from the session (and links I found while searching for something else, the organic harvest lets say), will need to put them in my del.icio.us list:
everythingismiscellaneous.com/
Geetha Narayanan podcast (an educator George Siemens mentioned)
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/category/uncategorized/
a slide presentation on learning in an immediate world by George Siemens
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/news/podcast/cache/offonce/pid/1819;jsessionid=AE5EB8F1EAD5AFDBC3BB3EF605C3481D

And a great set of workshops on education by LTC.

1 comment:

  1. I like this sentence: The different skills of a person define what and in what way they can add information. I need to remember this in my own teaching and instructional design. The question is how do we provide the opportunities with those who have good ideas to get them out there if they have poor technology or communication skills. I think of one of my classmates from Korea who had a very difficult time to formulate her ideas "on the spot". However, when given time, she had some wonderfully insightful points to make. The same can be true with the different technologies we choose.

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