A Thousand and One Tutors

Like Scheherazade with her thousand and one stories, I have a number of stories to share that were inspired by my watching The Learner with a Thousand Tutors from the Self-Blended Learning Movement course. I added an extra one to my title of this post because I had the wonderful fortune to be born to a teacher. My mom taught me, from an early age, that there was something to be learned from anyone I encountered. And that there was never an excuse for not learning, even if I had a poor teacher. So I lucked out big time in the self-directed learning lottery.

I always carried that notion with me that I could learn from all types of people. I don't know if she had studied the theories of Lev Vygotsky when she was earning her master's in education but I later read about his concept of the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and I immediately recognized the way I have always learned in it. I have no problem saying I don't know and seeking out ways to find out. For those not familiar with the idea of the MKO, it is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process. Traditionally the MKO is thought of as a teacher or an older adult; however, this it can be a peer, sibling, a younger person, or even a computer. The key to MKO is simply that they have more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does. And since no one can be an expert in everything, we all need many MKOs.

One of the very first emails I ever sent, back in the screeching-modem-connected-to-a-phone-line days was to a professor literally half way around the world. I was working on a writing project about trees and had found some vague references about a language that was spoken by aboriginal tribes in Malaysia only when they were out harvesting camphor. Yeah, it was a pretty obscure topic. But I had a specific question about whether the language was still in use or if this was a language that had faded into obscurity, much as I sort of expected my question to do. But I found a professor in Singapore and figured, what's the worst that can happen. He ignores me? So I sent him a message and then headed off to work. At the time I was working evenings as a proofreader, which was early morning for the professor. By the time I got home I had a reply. I was beyond shocked. He not only answered the question but gave me the name of another professor who might have even more knowledge of the subject. 

Of course, I'm not the only one to discover the amazing things that can happen when you click Send. Bernard Bull shares his own email moment. Results may vary but I have recently encountered others who had similar tales. In his book The Art of Self-Directed Learning, Blake Boles tells the story of a 15-year-old middle-school dropout with a love of chemistry. The young man emailed a professor and said: "Hi, my name is Jonah. I'm 15; I'm really interested in chemistry, and I'd like to sit in on your class. Would that be okay?" He not only got the chance to go to the class but got a letter of recommendation from the professor. Another is Leah K Stewart, whose site I learned of through Global Collaboration Day. I am just getting acquainted with her work, but in a video I watched she passionately proclaims the successes she has had by reaching out to others in her field and building mutually respectful mentoring friendships.
Once you have gotten the hang of making these learning connections, maybe it is time to move onto creating, as mentioned in the video, an advisory board. Oooh, that sounds formal, you say. Well, your learning and success is something that you should take seriously and approach with some degree of planning and purposefulness. Again, the video jogged my memory of other sources on the subject that perhaps some of you may find of use as well.

Career coach Joy Chudacoff's book What's Next: The 7 steps to discover your big idea and create a wildly successful business was one of the sources I recalled as I listened to the section on creating your own advisory board. She recommends a Board of Advisors who provide a fuel support system that will help you create your spark. These people will encourage and mentor, provide wisdom both of maturity and youth–in other words they will provide different perspectives. Have people from different areas of expertise and backgrounds, older and younger, those who have been there and done that and those who haven't. These are probably not people from your mutual admiration society like friends and family who may not be best situated to push you out or your (and their) comfort zone. It should be people with positive but honest opinions. It is not about creating an echo chamber. Another source you might want to check out about career enhancing advisory boards is this article by Chris Brogan.

Finally, one of my favorite articles on the topic of personal boards is from almost 2 decades ago. The title, Looking Out for Number One, may not imply the reciprocal relationship that Jim Collins goes on to describe, but it does support the notion of self-directedness, self-awareness, and self-actualization so crucial to anyone's success. Among the nuggets of wisdom in his piece are the following:

"Personal-board members from outside your profession or industry can help you overcome the limitations of conventional wisdom and remain true to your goals.

Look for board members who, while strong in their views, are nonjudgmental and compassionate. The best board members dispense wisdom like Socrates—by asking questions, drawing analogies, and making dispassionate observations.

The best payment is simply to emulate them by giving time and guidance to others, especially younger people who need mentors. Additionally, most personal-board members appreciate being kept informed of your progress. In fact, it's good discipline to write a letter once a year or so to your board. That personal "annual report" not only keeps your board informed but also helps you clarify your own thinking and take stock of how you're doing."

Before I conclude for today I will point you to two other examples of how being connected to others can bring about amazing results. I first wrote about these two people a few years ago when I was first becoming an advocate of self-directed learning as part of a graduate school project I called Learn, Rinse, Repeat: Where the learning never stops. The post was entitled "So does it work? Spoiler: Yes!" 

The first example was Thomas Jerome Baker who wrote Connectivism & Connected Knowledge: Participating in a MOOC. The reason I mention him again was that even when he wasn't actively communicating with others from the MOOC he was writing about he frequently used mock interviews to help himself talk through his learning journey. He also wrote letters that I said "could almost be considered love letters with the subject of admiration being both his correspondents and learning." Sometimes reflecting happens when we bounce ideas off of another person and sometimes when we practice speaking those ideas to ourselves in the mirror.

The other person that the Thousand Tutor video reminded me of was the following video entitled American Polyglot Practicing 20 Languages. Learning languages is a perfect example of a skill that requires other people. Sure you can use recordings and such but ultimately language is meant to be spoken (unless you do what I did in school and stick with taking lots of Latin, lol). The point is that, aside from the video showing a really amazing young man, he explains how he learned the various languages. Some from classes and books, but also movies, and an entire network of friends he amassed locally and globally that he can connect with via Skype.

Self-made learners are the future

A couple of years ago I started trying to get people to realize that training, as we knew it, had to change. There was no way, in workplaces where the technologies were changing at ever-increasing speeds and employees needed to perform work that could not be condensed to a job aid, that trainers could train people to do what they needed to do anymore. Everyone was frustrated. The employees were overwhelmed. The trainers were overwhelmed. No one was getting their development needs met. In fact, sometimes people didn't even know what those needs were.

While looking for ways to help our trainers and staff I came across some comments by Google's VP of People Operations, Laszlo Bock. He said the most important skill for today's workers was the ability to learn quickly. I was fortunate to have had a mother who was a schoolteacher and an insatiable curiosity that had led to a lifelong love of learning. I had been exploring DIY learning for years ... it seemed natural to me. But there's the rub. I came to see that many people don't know how to learn on their own. They don't know where to start or how to proceed.

That was when I started talking to people about personal learning environments and how they could start to build a support system to help them move into a new age of learning. Last year I spoke at the USDLA National Conference and told people that If You PLEs (please) You'll Thank Me Later. Among the key points were to help people start to see the whys and hows of getting started developing their PLEs.

In the coming days I will be participating in a MOOC that is trying to create a Self-Blended Learning Movement. The course description says:

Be part of the Self-Blended Learning Movement, an approach to teaching and learning that takes the best of blended learning, combines it with the best of self-directed learning, and creates a pathway to optimal authentic learning. Explore how savvy students are designing amazingly creative ways to find success in the traditional classroom through self-blending.

One of the first videos suggested as a great example of self-blended learning is Scott Young's Can you get an MIT education for $2,000? Spoiler alert: yes ... and no. His talk in no way diminishes the value of attended an institution of higher learning, but it also points out that there is a lot of learning that can and must be done outside of those hallowed halls. I too would highly recommend watching this talk.

Scott Young beautifully shows his thought process and the methodical approach he took. And that is a key point for all of us. Part of learning how to learn on our own is coming up with a deliberate and focused approach to learning. While he undertook his MIT education project as an experiment, I had to do a similar thing when I found that I did not have the funds to complete graduate school. And frankly, I was not entirely happy with the whole school experience. Sadly I found it had many of the limitations that I experienced in the workplace. I was a bit disillusioned I suppose. One of the things I didn't like in both environments was how captive my learning was. At work, my artifacts of learning were held hostage in the firm's LMS. At school, pretty much the same thing. I couldn't even interact with people taking the same course I was in another time slot. For someone who had spent years exploring the wonderful connections to be had over the Internet, I felt very restricted. So I went back to charting my own course.

The video also immediately reminded me of three books that I have read that are directly on-point with the idea of DIY learning. I'll post more about each in the coming days, but the list is Kio Stark's Don't Go Back to School in which she interviews dozens of people who took non-traditional learning paths; Blake Boles' The Art of Self-Directed Learning in which he too helps chart the uncharted approaches to learning; and Josh Kaufman's The First 20 Hours in which we get a front-row seat to his approach to learning any skill quickly.