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.

In a comment on Jen’s post about web 2.0 not necessarily being the future of education, Rob Wall talks about B.S.O.S. — Bright Shiny Object Syndrome.

Many educational technologists have a slightly geeky personality and become attracted to cool new technology toys. I myself have been guilty of over-using nifty new technologies because I find them “bright and shiny” rather than picking tools that suit what my students need to learn….

There are many good tools that can be put to good use helping students learn. Some of the technologies are, by our thinking, old ones like the printing press or paper. Some of the new ones and upcoming ones will also be useful. I think mobile devices like the iPhone/iPod touch hold some exciting possibilities. But I need to remind myself to pick the tools to fit the job, not to pick the jobs that fit the newest tools.

I followed Rob back to his Open Monologue and his recent post, No Gurus. He talks about many smart, funny, articulate people he’s learned from. He appreciates what they’ve shared but doesn’t see them as gurus, a term he equates with sitting on a mountaintop in a state of blissful enlightment.

I like the term guru, myself, as a way of describing someone with in-depth knowledge or insight. Informally, I think we use the term as a synonym for expert, with a twist: a guru helps you move toward the expertise and insight you seek.

(Or, sometimes, helps you make the decision to choose another path.)

Speaking of sects and cults, David Lane said that the bigger the claim a guru makes, the bigger the chance is that the guru is unreliable. That makes sense in the world of learning as well.  I often refer to Joe Harless as my guru because of what I learned from him.  Joe would no more claim to have all the answers than he would claim to know all the questions.  Even after much professional success, he’d revisit what he thought he knew and question it, rework it.

“Rely on the teachings to evaluate a guru,” says the Dalai Lama.  ”Do not have blind faith, but also no blind criticism.”

This applies to your personal learning as well: if you’re guiding yourself, you need to think every so often about how good the guide is.

Photo of Bright Shiny Object by Sidereal / Jack Lyons.

Harold Jarche, who knows what he’s talking about, wrote the other day about keeping learning and performance in balance.  In passing, he linked to an insightful post by Jay Cross, “Whatever happened to performance support?” Like Jay, I remember Gloria Gery’s influential book on electronic performance support systems (EPSS).

In a way, they are another example of the almost inevitable bandwagon effect that new technology seems to take in the world of training.  Make no mistake; Gloria was trying to shake up the world of corporate training departments, scheduled courses — the whole panoply of schoolhouse-like behavior that characterized “learning” in the typical large organization at the time.

Jay points out  that tools like wikis, Google, shared bookmarks, and so on are the new EPSS.  We thought at one time we’d all be carrying around little gizmos like the crew on the Enterprise (and some people are, right down to the communicator and no doubt the phaser).

What happens when there’s too much top-down thinking?  What happens when you try to cover every eventuality?  What happens when you violate that Ted Williams principle (”If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.”)?

Something like this:

That’s an actual sign from an actual elevator.  (Click the photo to see the text in excruciating clarity.  I’ve also copied it into this post, after the continuation break.)   Over 300 words, 50 of them coming before “what to do.”

I can hear E. B. White weeping, while Joe Harless cackles at “instructions” that are much more of a job than an aid.

Malfunctioning sign photo by Matt Grommes.

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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. )

Will Thalheimer’s thinking out loud again, refining models he’s been working with. Specifically, he’s looking at how learning can prompt performance — in other words, how should work-related learning relate to on-the-job performance and the desired results.

Here’s his model (click for a larger version on his site):

I think Will’s focus here is more on what I’ll call scheduled learning (rather than “informal,” which is too loose a term). And that works well in many cases in organizations: if you’re managing properly, then you’re finding out where someone may need or want to gain additional skill; you determine ways that can happen; and — the key part of Will’s model — you connect that learning to the job, both in terms of performance and in terms of desired results.

For example — maybe I want to learn how to create cascading style sheets. Or maybe I want to make technical sales presentations to clients. That’s fine for me as an individual — but in the context of the organization, I need to figure out how that’s going to contribute. Am I trying to gain more responsibility in my current position? Do I want to have different responsibilities in the same general area? Am I trying to take on something entirely new?

And, does this make sense in terms of the organization? For most of the time that I worked for GE Information Services, the bulk of our revenue came from applications that ran on a proprietary operating system GE had developed. Many people had built impressive skills with Mark III, as we called it. In later years, though, both IBM mainframe applications and the PC came along, followed by the web.

As the company’s goals and needs changed, it had less and less use for Mark III skills, no matter how strong they were. If you wanted to stay only in that realm, you were in a sense closing out your own options.

Going back to Will’s chart, one of the additions I’d like to see (and Michele Martin had a similar opinion that I failed to read before adding my own comments) is a column for the learner.

After all, the individual is the pivot point for the performance system. Not only (as Will points out) do learning processionals need to understand business needs, not only do managers need to clarify them, but the individual needs to understand them as they related to that person’s own job.

I have other thoughts on Will’s chart — for example, I am mulling over ways it could reflect not only the somewhat linear sequence of preparation –> learning situation –> on-the-job, but also just-in-time learning.

Maybe it’s it’s just-after-time learning. I’m thinking of unplanned occasions in which the individual realizes he or she needs to learn about something, usually with a timeframe that precludes a more scheduled learning event (like a workshop or synchronous training). That’s much more learner-centric, and the “learning professionals” are not as likely to be able to help unless they’re well informed, flexible, and willing to aid the individual in making intelligent judgments on his or her own.

More on this in a future post.