Jay Cross helps people work and live smarter. Jay is the Johnny Appleseed of informal learning. He wrote the book on it. He was the first person to use the term eLearning on the web. He has challenged conventional wisdom about how adults learn since designing the first business degree program offered by the University of Phoenix.
Professional learning is increasingly driven by demand, not supply. You decide what you need or want to learn and you go get it when you feel like it. Since you chose your topic rather than being told, you’re more likely to retain information you find.
To keep from drowning in the gusher of discoveries, news, and insight on the net, astute foragers use services to filter the noise and present headlines worthy of further investigation. For generalized answers to “What’s happening?”, they visit sites like Original Signal, Digg, PopURLs, or Buzzfeed, where poplar items rise to the top.
Keeping one’s finger on the pulse professionally is a tougher nut to crack. In the realm of informal learning, I learn from David Weinberger, George Siemens, Nancy White, Ross Dawson, Mark Oehlert, Marcia Conner, and dozens of others. I follow people on blogs, Twitter and Friendfeed. I rapidly tire of any single format, so I have been using a variety of tools to keep up with my favorite feeds: a river of news or Google reader or Pageflakes. (FYI, these links and more adorn the top of my personal search & re-search page.) When someone asked where to get up to speed on informal learning, I haven’t had an ideal place to send them. Until today.
For the past couple of days, I’ve been consuming knowledge from a site that better fits how I learn. Called Informal Learning Flow, the site pulls together the feeds of the people I read and topics that I care about. You’ve got to see this in action to understand its power. Go to the site and click on a concept, say, informal learning. Then click on another concept, say, formal learning. You’ll call up entries that use both terms. Experiment a little; there’s more going on under the hood here than meets the eye.
This information engine is the brain child of my pal Tony Karrer whom you know from the eLearning Technology blog, enthusiastic conference presentations, the recent Corporate Learning Trends Event with George Siemens and me, and TechEmpower.
This is still beta.* The site grows richer every day. Help us make it better. Give your suggestions as comments to this post. Need more information? Tony just mentioned some new features that help show a weekly Hot List . Play with the widget-maker at the bottom of the page.
This sort of lightweight, custom-tailored information gatherer has a future. You can experience the same technology at the eLearning Learning content community. Selfishly, I’m happy to help Tech Empower find other homes for this technology, for it can only make the Informal Learning Flow more useful. Overall, I see a big future for technology like this, for it exemplifies the sort of self-service, pull, get-it-when-you-need-it learning style of learning I champion. It makes me life easier.
_________
Oh course, everything in life is beta. We all have, or will have, room for improving how well we fit with the environments we inhabit. (Return)
Related:
Jay’s search and re-search page
Today I’ll be heading across the Bay to attend Web 2.0 Expo. I don’t have a ticket. I don’t attend to buy one. It’s not that I’m cheap (although I generally am) so much as I don’t have three days for this. My plan is to suck as much knowledge from the event as I can in six hours.
(more…)
Review of Informal Learning in this month’s T+D magazine. (pdf)
As someone who makes a living out of designing formal learning systems for large corporations, I was an unlikely candidate to buy into Jay Cross’s theory that formal learning is largely ineffective. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself totally engrossed in his out-of-the-ordinary thinking on learning.
Informal Learning, You Tube, 10 minutes
If you somehow have not seen me telling the informal learning story, here’s a mercifully short video I just slapped up on YouTube.
Here’s a question that is popping hither and yon:
Informal learning will face a classical paradox: if it starts gaining ground as a formal discipline, will it still be informal?
Answer: yes, informal learning can survive formalization. Informal learning has been going on since humans first walked the earth. It’s how you learned to speak, to interact with other people, and to understand the world about you. Time hasn’t hardened informal learning’s arteries.
Formal learning is formal because it has a curriculum. Generally that curriculum is rigid. It is handed down from superior (=teacher, instructor) to subordinate (=student, learner). Informal learning does not have a set curriculum; it occurs as needed, or incidentally.
Thursday, 9 November 2006
Web22 is our tag for photos and podcasts. Note that this announcement came before telling us where the bathrooms are.
This is a do-it-yourself conference, a pure unconference.
Social Media Club Chris Heuer: We believe in people coming together informally. Goal is help people connect with others around the world to make it a better world. Social Media is here to provide a little push. It takes more understanding, so we are focusing on media literacy. We want to smash the barriers. For everyone. Schools. Also looking at trust. Disclosure. The social media release in lieu of the press release. Sharing best practices with everyone. We’re looking at the balance between structure and unstructured. We invite everyone to be our co-creators. Howard Greenstien: Started first user group in web space, which led to Razorfish, etc. Social Media Club meetings in 10 cities right now. Chris: When we say co-creation, we mean co-creation. We need help to figure this out. Initially member-funded. $100/person. $250/corporate. Etc.
Vyew is the free web-based collaboration tool we use in Unworkshops
Features include:
The Social Media Club. Cool idea. I’ll be jabbering about Informal Learning at their upcoming unconference:
Web 2point2 – San Francisco: November 9th and 10th
In opening Gnomedex6, Chris Pirillo challenged participants to challenge their belief structure. “You’ll find more opportunities here than sitting in front of your computer. Ask yourself what you are here to learn.”
The meta-message of Gnomedex is that the users are in charge. Control is an illusion; the user is not. (Chris) Now you can run your own network. This software is built so we can change the world. (Marc Cantor) It’s easier for a user to become a manufacturer than for a manufacturer to become a user. We live in the age of the individual. We’re coming from an age where only the best folk were allowed to create. Bill Gates is a user who became a manufacturer. (Dave Winer) Open software, open standards, and now open hardware. (Phil Torrone)
This echoes John Hagel and JSB, telling us the world is converting from push to pull.
Training is push; informal learning is pull. The learning revolution is not yet over but the learners are winning.
(more…)
Participants in our Unworkshops learn about using the web to support learning by jumping in and trying things. Our current group includes participants in Italy, Austria, Denmark, Australia, and across North America. Since we want to demonstrate technology that our alumni can use to prototype applications with their clients, we’re always on the prowl for free or nearly-free software and services.
7 comments