Our libraries and Learning Commons are key to supporting innovation. Therefore, Librarians are at the heart of the innovation narrative that takes place in our schools. Librarians are facilitators of learning and knowledge building. Sometimes this is about technology, sometimes it is about other resources, but it is always about people. We don’t make […]

This week I am reviewing my posts from 2015 and putting some of the core ideas together. Here are some thoughts on personal and social learning in the network era. Training, and education, are often solutions looking for a problem. But good training and education can have a huge impact on behaviour and performance. Remember that great teacher who inspired you? Did you ever have a coach who got you to a higher level of performance? But throwing content at someone and hoping for learning to happen is not a good strategy. This is how far too many courses are designed and delivered. 9 ways to improve workplace learning Training helped us prepare for a relatively stable workplace. Integrating learning and work ensures that we can adapt to a changing workplace. By extending the borders of work, through communities of practice and social networks, we can support social learning. Structured and goal-oriented work still needs to get done. However, knowledge workers also need to develop emergent practices through their social relationship outside the workplace. This keeps work connected to the changing external environment, through human relationships and social networks. from training to social learning Too many people in the training department make the leap from a performance issue (lack of skills, abilities, knowledge; lack of access to appropriate data and resources; etc) directly to ‘training as the only solution’. This is a wrong approach and is the most costly. Management plays into this, with statements like "We have a training problem" while no one challenges that statement. There is no such thing as a training problem. enough training Learning out loud in our social networks helps to seek new opinions and share our own with a diverse group of people. Outside the organization we can make new connections without permission. In addition, trusted spaces, like communities of practice, give us a place to take our half-baked ideas and test them out, with minimal risk. Meanwhile, we can sharpen these ideas and share them in our digital workplaces when we discern the time is appropriate. All of this is an art, requiring ongoing practice, and countless negotiated conversations and relationships. digital workforce skills Removing barriers should be the focus of the learning and development professional, not delivering content. It is time to stop being takers of orders and become better diagnosticians. Solving problems will help L&D be seen as a valued part of the enterprise. L&D professionals therefore have to master their own field as well the business they support. In addition, they have to understand that few outside L&D think what they do is important. It’s a big challenge, but learning is becoming critical to all businesses. It is up to L&D to be part of this. L&D outside the box Communities of practice act as filters of new knowledge in order to find competitive knowledge for your organization. People who understand the context of the work teams must participate in communities of practice, as only they can identify what new knowledge could be competitive. That means that those doing the work need time and support to get away from their teams and see the bigger picture. innovation means learning at work Building knowledge networks of trusted connections is one way we can learn as a society and address the complex problems facing us. Nobody can do it alone. Explicitly using social media and social networks to better understand complex issues should be part of all education programmes and everyone’s professional practice. There is so much to know and very little time. I call this serendipitous drip-fed learning. You just have to find the feeds, thankfully of which there are many. serendipitous drip-fed learning It is not the size of our networks that matters, but the diversity of opinions and expertise that we can draw upon, in order to prevent group think, or an ‘echo chamber’ effect. In times of crisis, when information is critical, then having a diversity of opinions can ensure that drastic measures are not taken for the wrong reasons, or that viable options are not ignored. diverse networks, strong relationships "Work is learning, learning work" — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. learning and the future of work Image: finding perpetual beta

Top 5 Learning Technology Trends for 2016 https://t.co/zsywkhinLu #elearning

  What is your problem? No.. really! What problems are you facing and trying to solve in your classroom this year? What student needs are at the forefront of your teaching journey right now? And how does this impact your mindset for adopting new ideas and initiatives? I have been thinking about this a lot […]

This week I am reviewing my posts from 2015 and putting some of the core ideas together. Here are some thoughts on the changing nature of work and shifting wealth creation. Platform capitalism is beginning to define the economy for the second Gilded Age we seem to be entering. It requires 4 contributing factors, which when combined, create a perfect opportunity for the ‘uberization’ of almost any industry. A platform: a mobile application delivered through an oligopoly like iTunes or Google Play. A critical mass of users: upwardly mobile knowledge workers, especially those in Silicon Valley or the tech sector. Desperate service providers: people with no ability to organize due to weak or non-existing trade unions in their field, who see opportunities for better cash flow. Lack of regulations and oversight: bureaucracies that either cannot keep up with technology advances, or political leadership that condones poor working conditions in the name of progress. uber-proof your labour Platform capitalism is the ability of a common internet exchange medium to enable easy commercial transactions. Buyers of services get convenience, while sellers get a larger market. The spoils go to the owner of the platform, receiving a percentage of revenues. Most of these platforms are created when regulations and oligopolies make these transactions difficult by traditional means. Platform capitalism initially disrupts a sector that is poorly served. play the long game The emerging economy of platform capitalism includes companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple. These giants combined do not employ as many people as General Motors did. But the money accrued by them is enormous and remains in a few hands. The rest of the labour market has to find ways to cobble together a living income. Hence we see many people willing to drive for a company like Über in order to increase cash-flow. But drivers for Über have no career track. The platform gets richer, but the drivers are limited by time. They can only drive so many hours per day, and without benefits. democratizing distribution Consider open source software versus software as a service. If you do not own the software, you do not really own your data, as they are usually useless without the software to use them effectively. The same can apply to labour. If the workers do not own the platform that provides the work, then they may be of little economic value without it. Über is an excellent example of platform capitalism that turns labour into an easily replaceable commodity. Some day that labour may even be automated, eliminating the need for drivers. open source workers The job is a social construct that has outlived its usefulness. Freelancing may be a replacement but often lacks a safety net, and many of the self-employed become the pawns of the platform capitalists. In the next five years, many professionals will have to change not only who they work for, but what they do. Are they prepared? We are entering a post-job economy. Our careers will be shorter as our lives get longer. Companies and institutions are no longer the stable source of employment they once were. The structures we create now to shift society to a post-job economy will determine how much turmoil the transition will create. Now is the time to construct better ways to distribute the wealth of the network era. turmoil and transition Changing How We Work If those who are educated, knowledgeable, and experienced do not push for a better world of work, then who will? An effective knowledge network cultivates the diversity and autonomy of each worker. Knowledge networks function best when each person can choose with whom and when they connect. Solving problems together is becoming the real business challenge. caught in-between

As 2015 comes to a close, you may find yourself reflecting on the past year. Self-assessment or thinking about what we’ve accomplished or left undone, and what’s led to success or failure, is a process most of us engage in as a closure activity at different times such as at year’s end or after losing the big game. But, what if we engaged in self-assessment "during the game" so we could alter what we do when we get back on the field and change the outcome? That’s what educators are asking students to do now—to engage in self-assessment with low-stakes activities during the learning process before they have to demonstrate achievement on high-stakes assessment. As formative assessment, self-assessment helps students shape their learning process to succeed in achieving learning outcomes. It is an essential component of effective personalized learning. Defining Self-Assessment According to educators James McMillan and Jessica Hearn, in Student Self-Assessment: The Key to Stronger Student Motivation and Higher Achievement, … Self-assessment is… a process by which students 1) monitor and evaluate the quality of their thinking and behavior when learning and 2) identify strategies that improve their understanding and skills…Finally, students must be able to make adjustments to their work prior to graded evaluation. Self-Assessment Works Engaging in self-assessment and experiencing success with it motivates students to apply themselves and persevere. In a review of studies on the effectiveness of self-assessment, researcher John Ross, University of Toronto, found that student self-assessment consistently "contributes to higher student achievement and improved behavior." Self-assessment is associated with varied learning approaches including "growth mindset," a concept promoted by Carol Dweck, Stanford University. With growth mindset, students understand that exerting greater effort and changing strategies will help them succeed where they have failed. Self-assessment helps students figure out new learning strategies. Students who develop growth mindset achieve higher levels of learning. In one study, inner-city fourth graders using growth mindset for only one year went from doing poorly to placing first in New York state math exams. At the college level, B. J. Zimmerman and colleagues taught urban developmental math students to use self-reflection during their course. Students engaging in self-assessment not only achieved 25% higher grades than the control group on a standardized test, but also gained general insights: Instead of viewing the reception of an academic grade as an end-point of learning, these students learned to view it as an opportunity for further learning. Self-Assessment in Practice In Acrobatiq courseware, the self-assessment process mirrors McMillan and Hearn’s definition as a regular activity. Students engage in self-assessment after completing activities for each topic with targeted feedback so that they can adjust their learning strategies. Then, they have the opportunity to apply their insights to additional exercises on previous topics or new topics before summative assessment. What makes this type of self-assessment powerful is that it’s ongoing so that students can improve their learning in real time. Self-assessment is a positive process that students can apply to learning throughout their lives.

Around the middle of December, I received an awesome email from one of my favorite companies, EDpuzzle, sharing a new addition to their wonderful site. As is typically the case during the school day when I check my email, I saw the email title, squealed a little, and made a[Read more] The post EDpuzzle + Google Classroom = Awesome! appeared first on Teaching with Technology.

About a month ago, I was contacted by Stile, an EdTech company out of Australia. They presented their super cool lesson builder, and asked if I would give it a try. I did. My thoughts? Holy moly. This tool is AH-MAZING! Stile allows teachers to build interactive lessons with a[Read more] The post Stile: A Great Interactive Lesson Tool appeared first on Teaching with Technology.

We are going to give and receive feedback in the classroom whether we are aware of it or not. How lucky would students be if we all learned how to effectively give and receive feedback? My own struggles with the answers to this question fueled my passion for writing, and I ended up writing a […]

This week I am reviewing my posts from 2015 and putting some of the core ideas together. Here are some thoughts on how the increasing automation of knowledge work can be addressed by a new approach to organizational leadership. Any work that is routine will be automated. Jobs that only do routine work will disappear. Valued work, enhanced by our increased connectivity, will be based more on creativity than intelligence. The future of human work will require tacit knowledge and informal learning, and will create intangible value that cannot easily be turned into commodities. The future of work will be complex and this will be even more obvious in the next five years, as robots and software keep doing more complicated work. Just as people had to become literate to work in the 20th century workplace, now they will have to be creative, empathetic, and human: doing what machines cannot do. preparing for 2020 Thinking for ourselves is the foundation of a new way of working. This requires an understanding of the whole environment in which we work. Artificial structures like jobs remove our ability to see the whole system. As we learn to think for ourselves, we must also connect with others. We are only as smart as our knowledge networks. But we do not need someone to manage our connections. The simple guideline of self-direction, often enabled by network technologies, can create beautifully complex relationships amongst interconnected people. This is already happening outside the organization. We need to bring it inside. For the first time, we have the technology for democracy at work. The writer, Gwynne Dyer, has observed that, "Tyranny was the solution to what was essentially a communications problem". This problem no longer exists. democracy at work Anything less than working on creating a better system for people is not leadership. It may be self-aggrandizement, vanity, or even custodial work, but it is not leadership. Good leaders prepare for their departure. All that is left when they depart are the structures and systems they have helped put in place. The measure of a leader is his or her legacy. If they get a performance review, it should be given years after they leave. leadership in the rear-view mirror Those in leadership and management positions today must find ways to nurture creativity and critical thinking. Management must set the initial example of transparency and working out loud. In addition, self-governance is required at all levels. When there is no one to defer work to, everyone sets an example through their actions. In this environment everyone is learning and everyone is teaching by example. As a result, work gets done very quickly. From this foundation, today’s organizations can prepare for a new world of work. Machines will continue to replace jobs but people can create new work roles that are creative and social, beyond the reach of automation. leading beyond automation