Five for Friday - edition no. 2

Phew, narrowing the field this week was tough, I still had some things from the previous weeks. Eventually I'll catch up ... maybe ... but for now, here are five more cool things.

#1 Make progress and achievements visible
#2 How my self-directed learning habits helped save a bird
#3 Visit before you visit the Willowwood Arboretum
#4 Making time for making
#5 A musical interlude

#1 Make progress and achievements visible

I have spent a lot of time the past few years writing and speaking about gamification. I've taken on the grumpy cats who claim it isn't suitable for learning or the workplace or wherever. Usually their arguments stem from fear of the unknown and/or bad experiences or examples of bad design. And I'll write more about all of this other times, but the key thing today, as I tell people who come to my sessions is that whether or not you gamify anything, we can all benefit from some of the key concepts. One of my key takeaways is always "Make progress and achievements visible." Showing people where they are, where they are going, and the giving them mileposts does magical things to their motivation. It's not about badges, it is about the meaning that the learner can attach to that badge. It is a symbol of success and success breeds success.

Here's my personal example of the week. I just completed one full year of using my Fitbit activity tracker. I have mine set with a goal of 5 miles of walking each day, which for me comes close to 12,000 steps, a bit more than the suggested 10,000 steps. Every day for the last 365 days I have met that goal. How do I know? Because I can see it on the Fitbit dashboard on my phone or computer. I have gotten badges and stars and other nice-to-haves, but it is the visibility of my daily progress that keeps me hooked. But, hey, it is pretty cool to know that I have walked the equivalent of transversing India (1,997 miles). And it's not just me. In the coming weeks my mother, who is 83 years young, who uses a walker, will complete one full year of meeting her daily goal of 2 miles (which is a more modest, but equally impressive for her capabilities). She knows she needs to exercise to keep up her stamina and strength so that she can continue to live independently but it is easy for any of us to take a day off, which leads to a couple of days, and then .... But making the progress visible has helped her to stay the course. As of today, she has walked 1.7 million steps over the past 50 weeks. Trust me gamification, but whatever name, works.

#2 How my self-directed learning habits helped save a bird

A couple of weeks ago, late in the evening, my husband and I were out for a walk and found a wounded bird standing on one foot in the middle of the street. It appeared to have bands on both ankles and was a pigeon, but clearly not an urban-poop-on-park-statues variety. Not wanting it to become roadkill or a midnight snack for one of the neighborhood cats, we scooped into a big plastic bin and took it home ... with absolutely no idea what to do with it. And oh, did I mention it was a holiday weekend? But being resourceful I decided we could figure it out. Life forms need water, I already knew that, although I also knew that scared animals don't always want to eat or drink, so we put some water in the bin, covered the top to keep it dark and decided that if it survived the night, we would do what we could.

The next morning I crept into garage and peeked in the box and guess who was peeking back up at me. Phew, still alive ... but also still on one foot. I started thinking about who I knew that knew about birds. See it is always good to build a network of people who know about a lot of different stuff. I also headed to the Internet. It wasn't hard to find out the basics of what they eat and figure out that while I didn't have wild bird seed I did have rice (uncooked) and popcorn. OK, we could put a dish of food in the bin with the water until we could get to a store for seed. Oh, and I learned that I should splash my finger around in the water so the bird would hear the sound and know there was water.

I kept reading, and learning, and after another day and night of rest for our pigeon guest we decided to freak him out again, as we had when we rescued him from the street (wow, that sounds dramatic), and try and get a better look at the ankle bands. I had already found information on how to read the bands, assuming by this point that it was a homing and/or racing pigeon. So hubby held the bird, I wrote down the info, and figured out which federation he belonged to. From their website I found the group his owner belonged to and got contact info. Hubby made some calls and we eventually got connected to the owner who lived about 40 miles away. Long story short, we ended up housing our new friend for a couple of weeks while he recouped (so to speak).

One day, he was suddenly in a window sill, and then up on a shelf, clearly improving and trying to get to higher and higher ground as he prepared to return to the skies. Or so we hoped. The owner wasn't in a hurry to come get him. This wasn't a pet per se and I guess it is sort of a occupational hazard of raising racing pigeons that, like soldiers, some don't make it back. We went through being worried that the bird would be killed if it didn't heal up all the way and wondering if we were going to end up keeping the bird. But in the end the owner made arrangements to pick up the bird and confirmed that the bird's leg was fine and he just needed a few more days rest and that the bird was supposed to be in a big race this month and that the new power lines they have built in our area have been causing the birds some problems.

I didn't get to meet the owner but I did get to see him because he told my husband that he was on a TV show about the pigeon races. Sure enough, I few more Google searches and I found videos from the show on the Animal Planet. It was called Taking on Tyson. Yep, Mike Tyson is a pigeon enthusiast and you could tell watching him with the birds that they bring a calmness to him while still fulfilling his competitive spirit. The videos were fascinating. I soon learned what the band on the other leg was for. The one leg had the identification tag with visual information, the other was a race tracking chip, like marathon runners have in their bibs. They scan the birds when they enter a race and then can get a clock speed on them when they return.

Aside from being a cool story with a happy ending, it is also a story of how important it is to be comfortable learning on the fly. I can't tell you how many people have heard about this story and said: "Gee, I wouldn't have had any idea what to do" or "how did you figure that out." Those of us who are lifelong learners sometimes take for granted what a special skillset we have.

#3 Visit before you visit the Willowwood Arboretum

Hey, did you ever consider that you don't have to be at a garden or museum or wherever that has a phone audio tour to enjoy it? I do it all the time for an number of reasons. Maybe I am with friends and don't want to hold up the group or be anti-social by stopping and dialing into the tour at each stop of the tour. Maybe I want to focus on taking pictures and juggling my phone and camera and everything is a recipe for a clumsy technology moment. I make note of the phone number and the numbers that you have to press to retrieve the various messages and then call in later. Or, even better, as Willowwood Arboretum suggested, call in ahead of time and use the audio tour to help plan your visit. Brilliant. They give you all the info right on the website and suggest you plan ahead. Even better still, they provide a printed version of the transcript. And here's a few of the shots from our visit.

#4 Making time for making

I got a chance to go to the Maker Faire this week but I haven't had a chance to review and process all of the cool stuff from there and since I'm traveling much of the next two weeks, it will probably have to wait a bit. But that doesn't mean that I am not living the maker lifestyle. I have been literally making things. Hey, check out some of the cool buttons I'm making for friends who are traveling to NOLA soon.

But I'm also making plans. I'll write more about this in the coming weeks, but by writing here I'm firmly committing to writing more about it in the coming weeks. I have had an idea dancing around in my head for a long time now and it keeps tapping me on the shoulder and clearing its throat and staring at me with a slightly disgusting yet mom-you-didn't-clean-your-room kind of look. So when I return from NOLA I'm going to outline everything.

The gist of it is that we are all presenting 24 x7 whether it is a formal presentation for work or school, a meeting, an interview, a date, a community event ... whatever. And we all have been on the giving and receiving end of presentations and we all are surrounded by pop culture, are all adjusting to the ocean of information we swim in daily, and we struggle to focus our attention and garner the attention of others. The upcoming project will be part book, part workbook, part do-it-yourself learning adventure, and hopefully part community of people who all want to improve their presentation skills and help others to improve theirs because frankly we are all really tired of boring presentations. Amirite?

#5 A musical interlude

For our final spot on this week's countdown, how about a little musical interlude. I will be showing a number of friends around my hometown of New Orleans in the coming days. To get everyone in the mood, I started putting together, among other things, a playlist of musicians and musical acts who have ties to New Orleans. It is by no means all-encompassing but it is an eclectic mix of genres. I'll keep adding to it, but for now, enjoy!

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.