Toys for Christmas

As Christmas Day came to a close I was standing in my back yard having taken the dog out. It was a cool night in Phoenix with just a bit of a breeze that had blown the haze out of the city. The sky was black and the hunter was rising over the hills to the east of my home.

As I gazed at the stars and reflected back on the day I was pleased that I was able to enjoy kids and grandkids and that everyone had traveled safely. I was pleased with my gifts and that others seemed happy with theirs. But something was not quite right.

It finally dawned on me. No toys. No, not for the kids -- for me.  I’ve done pretty well in the toy department this past year.  I’ve gotten a couple of new model airplanes, some cool new software tools and nice new video camera to replace one that was starting to show its age. But no toys on Christmas.

It is clear that age does not a kid make.

I have a trip to a model airplane expo next week.  I think I’ll be able to fix the “no toys’ problem soon enough.

If you are a techie, I’m betting that you got some toys this holiday season.  With the speed that things change in the tech department, reading about new toys, talking about new toys and playing with new toys is all part of the addiction. But I can quit whenever I want to.  Really……

Fluffing the Rocks

Yard work in Phoenix in the summer is a task that is easily delayed. The nice weather this past weekend allowed for no excuses to being outside after months of 100+ degree weekend days. After some general cleanup it was time to fluff the rocks.

For those who don’t call the desert home some explanation is in order.  For many homes in Phoenix, landscaping consists of a variety of desert trees and shrubs each watered by a “dripper” from the home’s irrigation system. The rest of the yard is often covered with crushed granite or some other stone material.  Grass uses lots of water which can get expensive. Some years ago I was chatting with a co-worker about his weekend and he said it had been very quiet and he had gone outside to “fluff the rocks.” It was funny and it stuck with me.

You see, the crushed granite material tends to flatten out with the wind, limited rain, and kids and dogs walking on the yard. Dust storms, too, tend to deposit debris which helps stick things together. By raking the rocks with an ironed tonged garden rake, the rocks separate and the color, shading and texture of the stone is restored. So there I was -- fluffing the rocks.

It came to mind that it isn’t just the rocks in the yard that can stick together and get a little flat. Skills, too, can become flattened and stuck together resulting in the loss of color and texture – just like the stones. What have you been doing to bring the color and texture back to your skills?  Have you tried something new?  Have you done some creative design project or development task using a new tool or technique?  Have you downloaded a free trial of some new software product and dedicated some significant effort to see how it works or how it could be used in addition to or in place of some old standard?

I’ve been playing around with some new (to me) tools this summer in an effort to fluff some of the rocks in my skill set.  I’ve shot and edited some videos for my YouTube channel related to my hobby. Some are pretty good, others not so much but I’ve developed a better and personal understanding of what “user-developed content” means. I started a podcast that also relates to user-developed content as well as writing and publishing to the web.  My website got some updates, I upgraded to a new version of Moodle and my Wordpress blog got some new plug-ins.

I’ve learned about dynamic and condenser microphones (for recording my podcasts), how to edit audio in Audacity (free download), publish to ITunes and upgraded my video editing software to something a little more powerful than Windows Movie-Maker. All of which is to fluff the rocks.  

Due to the heat, the learning season in Arizona for me is summer.  For many, learning season begins with the onset of cold weather.  I hope that your learning plans include something beyond your reading list. While reading is a start, commit to doing something or producing something that goes beyond just knowing. So… how will you fluff the rocks?

Flip Flops

Wired magazine has an interesting article about Khan Academy. http://bit.ly/nqw7o0 . For those who are unfamiliar with Khan, the article describes how by providing cross-country tutoring to a relative, Khan's closet-made video explanations of math problems made an impact.  Today, pilot projects are popping up where students view the videos at home for the explanations of sophisticated math problems and then do their practice at school where the teacher can assist.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and Google have donated millions to Khan Academy to help see where this can go.

The idea of flip flops  comes from moving the explanation of the problem to the homework phase of instruction and the practice to the in-school phase effectively flipping the current model on its head. The driver of all this of course is the technology and its creative application.  In this case, user developed video hosted on something like Vimeo or YouTube.

Technology advances have led to several flip flops over the years.  Early CBT systems and their limited graphic and branching capabilities resulted in primarily information dumps.  The basic stuff was put in CBT lessons so the instructor could liven things up when the class met in person. That flipped when more sophisticated authoring tools like Authorware and Toolbook allowed animations and other complex interactions to bring systems alive in a CBT lesson.  Sophisticated branching and programming allowed for multiple paths through the material based on learner responses and so on. With this flip the teacher became the one who introduced the topic and conducted reviews and further explanations while the CBT did much of the heavy lifting.

This all flipped back with the use of the web as a delivery mechanism. Early web tools didn't allow for the rich media we had learned how to embed in our CBTs distributed via CD-ROM or via a network. Broad access via the web, however, won the day and web-based training became the basic stuff once again with instructors providing the richness.  As web tools grows more powerful and bandwidth grows more plentiful, the march to more sophisticated web-delivered learning continues to the place where we now can flip back to the place where instructors  can allow web-based resources to do much of the lifting.

Kahn's use of simple user-developed videos and the readily available hosting services like YouTube further allow this flip to occur. The basics are available 24X7. They can be reviewed, backed up, stopped and started at will.  As the Wired article states, the teacher can then be the tutor to many. He or she can deal with each learner form where they are as opposed to trying to herd cats through the topic.

Video and bandwidth growth allow for this next opportunity to flip. It will be interesting to see which schools and companies are able to gain the advantage by flipping things around.

Connections

Perhaps you remember the show on PBS several years ago called Connections.  It was a fun show where the host, science historian James Burke,  would start with some fairly standard item or concept and draw connections to current items.  The development of the connections would span centuries or sometimes more.  The result would be a relationship for example, of a 16th century Dutch ship and plastics.

The item that started my current connections process was a report on CNBC's website quoting the head of Siemens as saying that it while unemployment in the US remained high, it was difficult for Siemens to find skilled Americans to fill positions it had available.  You may have heard this same comment from leaders in the information technology industry. The next item in the puzzle was a report in several papers and Fast Company magazine about PayPal co-founder and investor Peter Thiel offering $100,000 to winners of a contest to start an interesting new business.  The catch is that the winners must forego college or if in college already, drop out for the two years of the award. Third was a report published by the Harvard Graduate School of Education entitled Pathways toProsperity. This report discusses alternatives to a college education and the growing need for some type of post secondary education to be successful in the world of work. The last piece is the battle over the US national debt and federal spending.

So how do these connect?  Working in or observing  private sector business, we see that when faced with lean times businesses generally focus on their core competencies and divest themselves of those things that can be better done by an outside group or simply abandoned.  Networking company Cisco recently demonstrated this by cutting the Flip camcorder from its product lineup. So as we see successful business people suggesting that college is over-hyped, overpriced and insufficiently rigorous; when businesses can't find skilled workers despite 9+ percent unemployment and schools of education pointing out significant shortcomings in the preparation of future workers one has to wonder what besides handwringing will help solve the problem.

Let's start with higher education. The debate on whether colleges should provide job skill-training or a more liberal education (classic definition) is not new. What is newer is the amount of federal monies spent on post secondary education either through grants to universities or through loans and grants to students and their families. Some more politically conservative economists suggest that the increase in the cost of higher education above the inflation rate is directly related to the amount that the federal government is willing to lend students.  More lending equals higher costs. The fact that there are few controls on the educational programs these federally funded students take contributes, in my view, to the problems facing Siemens.

With a federal budget that is out of control, it may be time for political leaders to place priorities on what programs those funds are used for. (Oh the horror!) Like a business determining its core competency, the government should participate with business in identifying high-need jobs in the economy and fund educational programs that support them. That is not to say that the wide variety of degree programs with "studies" in their names shouldn't exist, only that limited federal monies should not support them. That same process should apply to other post-secondary programs too.  Just how many federally funded cosmetologists do we need?

Next, let's look at industry.  The Siemens article begs the question, "Just what responsibility does a business have in providing skill training to its own workers or potential workers?" Is it fair to blame the US workforce and education establishment for not providing workers that meet Siemens' standards? I don't think so. As the Pathway to Prosperity article suggests, new ways of approaching post secondary training are needed. That just might require significant participation by industry.  What about the Siemens School of Manufacturing and Engineering Science as part of or in partnership with a community college?  How about the American Express College of Finance and Banking on the campus of some state university? Is the online Microsoft College of Software Engineering and Design a possibility? If not, why not?  And I'm not simply talking about naming rights to some building or an endowed chair. I mean faculty and staff who work for industry assigned to the school, much like employees are assigned to training departments now.

If public institutions aren't interested in effective partnerships (read shared control) then should large companies or industry groups form independent schools or institutes that can provide the skill training?  Can they provide meaningful certification programs which provide a documented skill set recognized within an industry that works in a similar fashion to college credits?  Can accreditation schemes be developed that allow this training to apply to more than associates or bachelors of applied science degrees?  Are applied science degrees where considerable content is provided by business sufficient for some significant part of the workforce?

I'm certain pockets of these kinds of activities exist already. In fact, I'm involved with one. It is time for these programs to grow. My sense is that one of the consequences of the current economic malaise will be the jobs that people left when the recession started will require significantly different skill sets when hiring picks up.

Déjà vu All Over Again

In the mid-1990's I worked in a military courseware development organization. It was fully networked with state-of-the-art Macs to handle the graphics and desktop publishing we did. By the time I left a couple of years later there were still a few Macs but Intel-based computers were the norm. As the power of the then x486 chips had grown and software previously available only on Macs came out for the PC the landscape changed. Much has been written about the controlled Mac environment or the open architecture of the PC and the impact that has had on sales. My preference for the PC over the years has been as much philosophical and emotional as it has been totally rational. I'm just an open kind of person.  I like the chaos of multiple companies trying lots of different concepts. The fact that some turn out badly is just the cost of creativity.  I don't like a gatekeeper whether Apple or the government or some other entity.

Wired Magazine has an interesting article about the Android operating system now predicted to dominate the mobile device market.  You can find it here.  What I find interesting is whether the corporate culture of control at Apple will again result in truly game changing innovation being overpowered by "me-too" products whose foundation is an open architecture vs. Apple's need for a controlled one. If you are an Apple fan, you are probably pleased that Google has alienated scores of Android developers by limiting the release of Android 3 commonly known as Honeycomb as reported in the Wired article. That limitation notwithstanding, the creativity and dynamics of the open Android arena bodes poorly for Apple even though Google seems to be trying to mess up its advantage.

I have an Android tablet. I use it nearly every day.  I can and have gotten apps from half a dozen "marketplaces" besides the Google market. One of the newest entrants to the field is Amazon. I don't need Google's approval and Google doesn't get to decide which apps I should be able to use.  I get to do that.  Does that provide some risk?  Yes it does. Do I care about that? Not so much. Even the Apple App Store has had some "stinkers." Recently Apple has decided to not carry or remove apps it decided weren't in the best interest of the Apple community -- read politically incorrect. That of course led the sponsoring organizations to send out email blasts to their constituencies urging them to email Apple or to boycott Apple or do whatever groups do when they get offended. Why set yourself up as the gatekeeper of propriety if your goal is to sell products?  Do you purposefully choose, by your actions, to surrender one group or another to the competition?  It would appear so.  And that is why despite introducing the game changer product in the IPad, Apple is likely to end up as the also ran.

It is early in the race.  The chaos in the Android Tablet marketplace will produce some winners and some losers just like it did in the PC markets of 15 years ago. Ultimately, though, the PC's open Intel-based architecture prevailed in all but some specialty domains. I'm betting Android will do the same.

As We Know It

Recently the big political fight has been over the budget and spending. One of the talking points has to be the phrase "as we know it" as it has appeared in numerous media reports and press releases. This post isn't about politics but rather the phrase. Is changing something "as we know it" the big, fearful thing that some would have us believe?  Is the use of the phrase just another technique to paralyze public opinion?  Let's take a look at some examples.

When you got up this morning did you spend the first few minutes of your day trimming the wick on your oil lamp to light your way into your bathroom to prepare for the day or did you simply flick on the light? Those who opposed electricity certainly could have said that it would change lighting "as we know it" and they would have been right.  But was it bad?

When you left for work this morning did you go out to the stable and saddle up your horse or hitch it to the buggy or did you get into your car and drive to work?  I know at my large office complex there aren't any hitching posts but there are a lot of parking spaces so I think I know the answer. Certainly many in 1908 might have said that Henry Ford's Model T would change ground transportation "as we know it." Do you wish for a horse to ride to work or do you kind of like whizzing along the highway with the heater or air conditioner keeping you comfortable and the stereo playing?

When you plan a trip by air, do you try to maximize your use of small propeller driven planes that fly low and in the weather and get you to your destination with multiple hops and an overnight stay or do you try for a large new jet that can whisk you across the country in one hop of just a couple of hours?  It can be rightly claimed that the Boeing 707 changed air travel "as we know it" in the late 1950's and for me, that was a good thing.

Last, when sick with an infection such as strep, do you wait it out or see your doctor for an antibiotic? Few would argue that an open petri dish, a particle of mold and an observant researcher did, in 1928, change medicine "as we know it" with the discovery and documentation of penicillin. Millions of lives saved and tens of millions of suffering people will attest to that.

I get a little curious when someone tries to make me afraid of changing something "as we know it." I have to ask myself what do they have to gain?  Do they lose power?  Do they lose income? Are they just timid souls? People who sold coal oil lost out to the electric light.  Saddle and tack makers suffered with the rise of the automobile. Manufacturers of large rotary engines used in propeller-driven planes lost out to the jet engine. Who loses what when we talk about virtual learning technologies? Who gets upset when the role of an instructor changes or the skill set changes? How is the daily routine of the classroom instructional designer upended when word processing skills are simply not enough technologically?

I admit to being an optimist. Some might say overly so.  I get excited when I see that something --whether tool or idea -- might change something "as we know it."  While the "something" as we know it might be fine, the new something could easily be so much better.

Process and Innovation

In my past I was a military pilot.  A lot of aviation is built around various procedures and processes.  For example, an instrument approach procedure is designed to transition my aircraft from enroute altitudes to the airport in an orderly way. A high altitude approach procedure would have me start at a specific place and altitude.  I would follow a specific ground track while descending to specific altitudes along the way. On final approach the aircraft would descend below the clouds and shazam!  There would be a runway right in front of me. If I followed the approach procedure the runway would always be there.

For the sake of this argument, I’m going to define a process as a grouping of procedures to ensure a predictable, reliable and quality outcome.  The question then, is how do we follow processes whose goal is a predetermined, reliable outcome with innovation which by definition has a significant component of the unknown associated with it? My sense is that the tension between the right-brained and left-brained among us or the orderly vs. the creative is all part of this. It seems crazy to say we need to establish a process by which we can be more innovative when in all likelihood it is processes are a significant drag on creativity and innovation. I can think of more than a couple of times someone has tried to discourage conversation on an interesting approach to some issue by saying, “Yes, but… that is not in line with our process.”

I’m a big fan of orderliness and efficiency.  I understand that having well defined processes and procedures help ensure reliable results.  I’m also a big fan of creative, innovative ideas—ideas that often clash with our processes. It takes leaders at all levels to understand that sometimes the process simply needs to be set aside for the next big advance to take place. When the innovation proves valuable, then define some processes to ensure a repeatable outcome, not before. I would say that if you can predefine the processes to define an innovation’s outcome, it really isn’t very innovative now, is it?

Experiencing User Developed Content

I had the opportunity to attend the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference in San Jose a couple of weeks ago and one of the topics that came up in several discussions was user-developed content. I ran across this in a personal way and upon some reflection came to understand I'd been participating in it for a couple of years. How do you miss something like that?

First the experiencing part. As with most conferences, there was a trade floor with a variety of vendors of both products and services. Several of them were giving away IPads or other fairly expensive prizes in drawings for those who visited their booths. I was surprised a week or so after the conference to find a nice new IPad in a box on my desk.  Pretty cool. After my initial happiness, it dawned on me that my company has some pretty strict gift rules as part of its ethics program and sure enough, the IPad would have to go back.

Having seen a number of the conference attendees using tablet computers I decided to investigate more after my near miss with the IPad. I did some research on some of my favorite tech sites to include CNET as well as some Google searches on the topic. To make this already long story shorter, I decided that a tablet was in my future. This is where the user-developed content come into play.

I found a tech developers online forum that had sections on many of the popular models.  They were filled with posts from satisfied and dissatisfied users. Since it was a tech forum, the posts were also filled with the ins and outs of maximizing performance through software "hacks" and other techniques. There were also a number of "help me" threads addressing issues both common and unique. After hours of research I settled on a likely candidate and spent still more hours in detailed reading of the pros and cons of this particular model. One post linked to YouTube and low and behold there were dozens of user-developed videos ranging in length from a minute to nearly 20 minutes. These videos discussed and displayed such things a general overviews to in-depth instructions on how to flash the ROM to replace the provided software with "improved" versions done within the user community.

It dawned on me that I, too, had been a content developer though I had thought of it more as "sharing" at the time. In my hobby interest of flying model airplanes, I had contributed to similar threads on large user community sites including a what is called a build log where I had described the assembly of one of my new models complete with photos. I also have a handful of YouTube videos I've posted -- mostly of flying events I've attended. All of it is user-developed content.

This disintermediation allowing users to speak directly to other users is both extremely helpful and a little risky. One doesn't have the implied assurance that following the advice of a recognized expert as vetted by some recognized publisher.  Caveat Emptor.  On the other hand, you can get a wider variety of opinion and topic coverage than an "official" source would likely tolerate. The manufacturer of my new tablet doesn't include the directions on how to bypass it's software as described in the tech forum for example.

One of the significant issues that training professionals will have to address is control. Will we embrace the sometime chaotic environment of user developed content with an understanding that the community will become self-correcting ala Wikipedia or will our intolerance for ambiguity or the reality of government regulations in some industry sectors prevent us from taking advantage of the knowledge stored in the brains of those around us?

Meta tagging and vastly improved search algorithms can help with the cataloging of large collections of user-developed content. Rating schemes of both articles and authors can also help indicate a community's validation. Both of these can add to the quality of a collection. For those who express concern over the accuracy of the information during the community vetting process, I simply point to the lack of "inventory control" applied to "official" documents provided to the workforce. It needs to be asked, "What is worse, wrong info provided by an ill informed source or wrong information due to source documents being out of date?" It is likely that a robust user community will provide the self-editing that keeps user content current. Governance?  Sure.  Control? I'm not so sure.

More on "On Demand."

I'm still spending some time thinking about "on demand" as it might apply in a large organization and in a job skill training setting.  I've also been thinking about the ideas in my November post below regarding the need to be a heretic if innovation is what you seek. Those who subscribe to the doctrine of whatever it is they are working with are not likely to lead a breakthrough.

What are the training truths about skills-based training that we all know to be true that, in fact, might be holding us back? The ones related to on demand training include some of these...

·         Skill training is best done in groups. You gain economies of scale and interactions within a group are more meaningful and add to the training experience.

·         One-on-one training is too expensive to be feasible.

·         The social experience of the learner is critical to the development of the learner as a new employee.

·         A trained instructor or trainer is critical to the effective transference of skills.

Well, that is a start. How does the heretic respond? Let's look at each one for a moment. 

Is a group necessary? Is the reason we use groups because it is the most effective training venue or is it because it is what we're used to and what we believe we understand?  Do we really gain efficiencies by having a class member who comes to us with some experience "throttle back" to allow the total newbie to catch up?  What are the opportunity costs lost for the one who could be producing but isn't because the group can't keep up? Are the conversations and instructor interactions so important that they can't happen in some other way?  Can pod casts on various topics or recorded interactions or session snippets not accomplish much of the same thing?  Are there really that many unique questions that come up class after class or are they simply variations on a theme that can be captured? Do we like to rely on the instructor as a crutch to cove "the unknowns" regarding the training, only to discover the unknowns are really just the "I'm too busy to plan fors?"  Do we insist on groups because it is most effective or because we have to justify the expensive training facilities we've invested in?

Is training an individual too expensive or is it too expensive when we try to train individuals the same way we train groups? Is the expense inherent in the concept or simply in the way we chose to execute it. Does focus on the content prevent focus on the learning thus blinding us to other alternatives? Does the need to control the experience drive processes or procedures that unnecessarily drive up cost?

What is the real value of the social component of group-based learning. Do we know?  Can we accomplish that goal some other way?  Does the group have to be other students?  Do the social components have to occur within the context of the curriculum?  Can planned interactions with incumbent employee groups meet that need.  Are we fearful of those because we might "lose control."  Do the single learners get bored because they are working alone or because we have boring instruction? Do we know how to design individual learning activities?  Would we have to learn how to do something differently?

Is a trained instructor really critical to the transference of skills?  Is the answer "yes" because we are or manage trained instructors? Was your dad or mom a trained instructor when you learned to ride a bike or drive the family car? Is the best place for the learning professional in the front of the class or involved some other way in the learning process?

Blasphemy!  Blasphemy!  Heretic! Heretic!  Or, maybe just crackpot.  Hmmmm....