Dave’s Whiteboard

This week has been filled with anniversaries — August 26 marked the 88th anniversary of the nineteen amendment, guaranteeing the right of women to vote. August 28, the 45th annversary of Dr. King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial. And August 27, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lyndon Johnson.

There was a time or fifteen in my life when I despised LBJ, but I’m older and a bit wiser now. I was moved by Robert Caro’s piece in the New York Times on LBJ’s birthday.

Caro connects Barach Obama’s speeech with Dr. King’s, and also with one Johnson gave to Congress in 1965 to introduce what became the Voting Rights Act.

Even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

Caro says that at this point LBJ paused. Then he continued, “And we shall overcome.”

Johnson was an outsided figure, complex, flawed, irascible, passionate.  One unsubstantiated story has him saying that the Voting Rights Act would give the South to the Republican Party for fifty years.  Maybe so, but come November, less than 18 months of that timeframe will remain.

Well, technically, it’s not a blog. And technically, the author is Eric Blair, though George Orwell is the best known of his pen names.

The Orwell Prize (”Britain’s pre-eminient prize for political writing,” if they do say so themselves) is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog.

They began a few weeks ago and will post his entries in real time, 70 years to the day after each was written. He began the diaries on August 9th, 1938 and kept them till October, 1942. So we’ve got a just-started blog that’s guaranteed to last for the next four years. Get your feeder ready.

A splendid joining of technology (blog software) with one of the most observant writers of the twentieth century. As a partner for The Elements of Style, it’s hard to argue with Orwell’s Politics and the English Language (1946) — and I’m not talking just about politics.

More than one blogger (including me) could take on board advice like this:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

A while back, I read the four-volume George Orwell: Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, edited by Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell (George’s widow). Different content from his diaries, but just as widely ranging, from book criticism to short notes to friends to a letter suggesting four possible pen names to use on Animal Farm. (He seems to have left the choice up to his agent and his publisher. )

The Working / Learning Blog Carnival seems to have been on vacation for a while. Time to reopen.

The idea of a carnival is a regular collection of posts with some common thread. In this case, we’re talking about posts relating to the theme of work at learning; learning at work.

So if you’ve got something to say about how people go about their own learning, or how individuals and organizations try to foster learning at work, you ought to think about taking part.

If you don’t know much about blog carnivals, there are three mains parts:

• Participants write a post connected to the overall theme, publishing that post on their blogs on the designated day.
• One blogger acts as the host for the carnival, publishing a short description and a link to each participating post. (In return, each participant posts a link to the “host post” so readers of the one blog can find the rest of the carnival.)
• The carnival appears on a regular basis.

Once a month seems good for now. Past editions of the Working / Learning carnival appeared on the third Monday of the month. If I can get at least four hosts to step up, we’re covered for the rest of the year.

Can’t have a blog carnival without posts, though. Our process hasn’t been very bureaucratic: if you want to participate, just write a post ahead of time (or, if you must, recycle a hit from the past) and send the permalink and a description to the host. You don’t need an invitation; you don’t need to make a commitment to join each time.

It’s a good way to discover other bloggers you might not follow, and someone might discover you as well.

More details on these pages:

• Hosting the Working / Learning carnival
• Participating in the carnival

“Alive” poster photo by eqqman / Eric Hart.

In the way that New Hampshire has places worth hiking, Cathy Moore has ideas worth hearing. A recent example asks, “Can your learners wing it?” What she’s asking is whether the training you develop allows people to think for themselves — especially in situations that don’t exactly match those in training.

And, you know, in more than 30 years of full-time employement, the only places I’ve encountered multiple-choice questions are automatic teller machines and the Motor Vehicle Administration. (One of those locales has been weighed, measured, and found wanting.)

Cathy’s post made me think about design advice that makes sense to me, like “show and tell” rather than “tell and show.” That’s meant to capture the idea that by demonstrating something — say, the main steps in some process — you’re offering a conceptual frame onto which people can hang the specifics.

Her post has great examples based on the idea of using “I statements” appropriately in difficult situations. The recommendation about moving from a demonstration to some sort of application — “Here’s an example (not a sermon). Now, do something.” — made me want a quick mnemonic like “show and go.”

A better mantra for a design approach might be blink and think. Instead of yammering away about “seven keys to effectively manage difficult conversations,” go right to a striking example or demonstration — something to make them blink.

You want a little ambiguity, because brains are all about forming patterns — and when things don’t quite add up, we work harder at making sense (finding or creating patterns).

Meaning before details, remember.

What happens after a blink? We think. We try to figure out what’s going on. We’re not always right — but that’s okay; learning hinges on not always being right.

I know I’ve spent lots of my instructional-design time busily constructing safety nets, seat belts, suspenders, safety harnesses, overview, intros, and before-you-begins. (It’s a perverse variation of the Gaelic proverb that says, “A day’s work: getting started.”)

Better by far to treat learners as intelligent adults. You don’t want to plunge into esoterica, the way a Wikipedia page on, say, refraction clobbers you in the fourth sentence with Snell’s law:

(unless you know they’re already into the mathematics of physics). But you do want to assume they understand, interpret, and connect the new to the already known.

Blink and think photos both by K. Sawyer.

My current project involves working with statutes and with case law. One of my project partners has built a learning assignment around a court case. Eric Turkewitz has the details (as do many others, including the Boston Globe), but this is the quick summary:

Dr. Robert Lindeman was defending against a malpractice suit in 2007. While Lindeman was on the stand, the plaintiff’s attorney asked if he had a medical blog. He said he did. She asked if he was Flea (posting on the now-vanished drfleablog). He said yes.

The case was settled the following day.

Flea, it turns out, had been blogging before the trial began. He discussed meeting with “an expert on juries” for advice on how to behave on the stand. He also blogged during the trial, commenting on the judge, the sleepy jurors and the appearance of the plaintiff’s attorney.

Ironically, in a PDF that claims to have been made of Flea’s site before it was taken down, Flea reports his lawyer suggesting that the opposing side “may pull articles from Flea’s ‘legitimate’ web site to use against him.”

This apparently did not cause Lindeman to tell his attorney, “You know, I have a blog, too.”

I don’t know anything about the merits of the court case. I do know that a client needs to help his attorney anticipate potential difficulties. And that blogging, while free, can have costs.

Stethoscope photo by happysnappr / Adrian Clark.
Megaphone photo by LarimdaME / Gene Han.