Learning Conversations

I'm part of the generation of people that had to teach ourselves how to use computers. The classrooms had machines like the BBC Micro, and RM 380Z, with very little software (if any), and few teachers that had a clue what to do with them. Similarly our homes had Sinclair Spectrums, ZX81's and Commodore 64's. I even had a Commodore PET (image below) at one point. The common factor with all of these is that, on booting up, they just came up with something as helpful as:

> |

We learnt how to program by typing code in from magazines and then working through it to solve all the problems - in a very similar way to children learning a spoken language: mimic and then trial and error. In fact, very similar to the way this modern Python programming book works.

It's this that launched the games and software industry in the UK, and I expect elsewhere too.

But then computers started getting more "friendly". They came pre-populated with software that lets you carry out tasks like word-processing and data manipulation. The focus, in schools, turned to understanding how to best use those software tools, rather than how to make new tools.

It's like we've ended up with people able to drive in the safe environment of the left-hand lane (UK & a few other countries only!) of a motorway, but with very little idea of how to make use of all three lanes, or what to do if there's a crash up ahead, and no knowledge whatsoever of how the car actually works or how to tweak it so it can go off-road.

This approach has led to ICT becoming a very functional (boring), and unchallenging subject at school. Whereas it could be highly creative, full of opportunities to develop transferable skills in problem-solving and logical thought.

I'm not fussed about changing the name from ICT to computing, computer science or whatever. But we do need to make sure that it includes both the functional skills (eg. how to add a new post to your blog) and the computing skills (eg. the concept of write-once / read-many that is used in stylesheets, programming, and database design).

So many people have written on this subject already (including this excellent summary from Daniel Stucke - an assistant headteacher in Manchester), but I'm so glad Michael Gove has made the decision to push schools towards more of a computing approach. It's one of the few things he's done that I agree with! My only worry is that, as with many of the specialist subjects, there will be a severe lack of suitably confident teachers to take up the challenge - especially now that ICT will not have have any formal programme of study in the national curriculum.

Perhaps it's time, again, to provide the equipment (eg. the new, very cheap and very small, Raspberry Pi computer for kids - which seems to be all over the media this week) and let the students get on with it themselves. Given appropriate challenges - even competition - and access to each other's ideas through social media, there's no reason the new generation of computer scientists can't grow from the ashes of the current ICT lesson.

With ICT, almost more than any other subject, you could argue the case for totally individualised learning, with teachers/coaches located anywhere - setting challenges and giving support. In fact, they don't need to be teachers. Just look at any large open-source project and you'll find people doing just that: identifying problems, setting challenges, and providing support. It's a highly scaleable model - based on a meritocracy, rather than any sort of qualification, or even age. The schools just need to be there to monitor and encourage...

More reading: ComputerWorld blog post on open source + Raspberry Pi in education

As businesses scale-up their operations they have to standardise on things like technology platforms and processes.

But where does that leave innovation - which is essential for companies to maintain their competitive edge?

Standardisation is all about minimising risk whilst maximising throughput. It makes sense, but it can lead to unwieldy systems that are like oil tankers when asked to make changes.

Compare this to small start-up companies, which change direction like a champion downhill bike rider. (If you don't know what this is like, see the amazing video below!) They try things out, often with little regard to the risks, which are small at this stage in their development.

The challenge is for small start-ups to learn some of the standardisation practices of the large companies (otherwise they'll remain forever small), and for the large companies to adopt some of the innovation techniques of the small companies, without compromising on risk.

For the large companies, it's not just about allowing time to communication and innovate (like Google). It's also about providing test-beds where ideas can be tried out in safe ways. Sometimes these will need to be client-facing - as long as you've got a good enough relationship with the client so that they know they're acting as beta testers.

For the small companies, it's about identifying the things you do that can be replicated and documented so that, as you grow, new people can slot in easily. It's things like this that will make you attractive to the larger clients.

You've identified a learning need. Let's say you need people to know the best way to use a particular piece of equipment. In this case, there is only one way to use it, and the aim is to save people time rather than get them to understand the disadvantages of using it wrongly.

By far the best way to approach this learning problem is likely to be with live action video.

There are four things to consider:

1. How will you record the video?
2. How will you edit the video?
3. How will learners find the video?
4. How will you measure the results?

Recording

The example below was recorded using a very low cost, handheld Flip video camera - now, sadly, not in production, but there are many similar products, including the rather excellent Kodak Zi-8.

The commentary was recorded using my PC headset - again, nothing special.

The key thing was the planning. I'd worked out the process that I needed to explain beforehand, and then ran through the process whilst recording in a series of shots.

Total filming time: 15 minutes

Editing

The raw footage was pulled into iMovie (which comes free with any Mac). There are similar free tools available for Windows (eg. Windows Movie Maker).

The editing process consisted simply of trimming the shots where necessary, joining them together with (subtle) transitions, recording the commentary (whilst still keeping the sounds recorded during the filming to provide an audio backdrop), and then adding the titles.

Total editing time: 60 minutes - just because I was learning how to do it at the same time.

Distribution

The film was recorded because I knew, from personal experience, that there was no help available for this particular task, and wanted to share what I had learnt.

I wanted to make it as widely available as possible, as the potential audience was worldwide. If I'd wanted to limit the audience then it would have made distribution far, far harder!

So I popped it on Youtube. There are two versions - with different levels of rendering quality. (Again, I was experimenting here).

Total time for worldwide distribution: 15 minutes

Results

After a year, between the two versions, the video has been viewed 25,000 times. To me that's phenomenal! After all, it's only about changing a car lightbulb!

There have been 44 comments so far - mostly expressing how much time has been saved. I would expect (from my experience of social media) that these comments reflect a much greater number of people who didn't comment. Going on the 100:10:1 ratio normally quoted, I would estimate 4000 people have saved about £7 each (based on the the Halfords price for changing light bulbs). That's a total of £28,000! Imagine that reflected in your organisation...

If you self-publish, whether on a blog, a Youtube channel, on Twitter or even books and ebooks, then who owns the brand that you're building? You, or the organisation you're associated with?

The BBC and Phonedog have recently had to address this, with regards to Twitter accounts "owned" by personalities within their organisations.

It's a difficult question to answer without a specific context, but I'd like to offer a few guiding principles that might help protect both the individual and their organisation. As always, I'd welcome any feedback to help refine these...

For the individual

1. Don't mention the organisation you are associated with anywhere on your personally published materials
2. Put a disclaimer on your materials along the lines of:

   Disclaimer: The contents of this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer nor any other organisation with which I am associated.

3. Don't publish anything that is going to cause any embarrassment to your organisation. If in doubt - ask before publishing. It's very hard to retract things.

For the organisation

1. Use more than one author on your blog, Twitter account etc
2. Don't use an individual's name on your blog/Twitter account unless you have a clear agreement with the individual that they will lose control of these accounts if they move to a different organisation. This is especially true for public systems like Twitter.
3. Have a clear distinction between personal publishing and corporate publishing, with policies that release individuals to publish, whilst protecting the organisation.

Probably not.

In the UK, there are a number of things your website must do.

Some only apply to companies. For example, your website falls under the same law as headed notepaper and invoices.

Basically this means that you must display:

• The company name
• The company number
• Place of registration
• Registered office address

See: Companies House FAQ on Trading Disclosures

Some apply to virtually everyone. In particular, the new rule that says you must ask visitors if they are happy to accept cookies.

See: Information Commissioner's Office Guide to Cookies and today's news article from ICO.

The trouble with this rule is that almost every modern website or web application uses cookies. It might be to track visitors, or even just to keep a record that they've logged in.

This rule doesn't appear to have been tested in the courts yet. So take any guidance given by non-lawyers as questionable. But here are a few places offering advice:

Moodle discussion: Use of cookies in Moodle - The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations ( for the UK)
Wordpress discussion: How can we control cookies with the new EU legislation?
Article from Pinsent Masons (an international law firm): Commission advice on cookies is ambiguous, data protection watchdog says
Article from Silktide (a web design agency): The definitive guide to the Cookie law - NB. Please be careful when using the word "definitive" when talking about the law!!

If you're not sure how to deal with the law, then take a look at this short video:

Thanks to Matt Jukes for getting me thinking on this one.

Lots of organisations are looking through their corporate boundaries and realising that the world outside is changing - and fast!

Whereas fifteen years ago mobile phones were still quite new, now they are ubiquitous. Being constantly in touch and available has become the norm, so much so that people have to announce that they are going "offline"

The Internet has taken over from the High Street as the place where people shop and communicate. And now distance and national borders are really no barrier. Our networks of trusted suppliers and contacts are geographically dispersed; often to the extent that we don't even know where they are located.

When I was a child, when I needed to find something out for school homework, I'd turn to our set of Everyman's Encyclopaedia or take a trip to our local library. My own children now have the collected knowledge of the world at their fingertips. The skills they need to interpret and use it are far more advanced than anything I had to do.

Organisations that have direct contact with real people (ie. not business to business organisations) know that expectations have changed, and have had to change their sales, marketing and delivery processes to reflect them. These organisations tend to be the ones that have realised they also need to change the way they deal with people inside the corporate boundary.

These changes are particularly pertinent to learning and development, which is the cross-over point between internal communications and operations. We have to constantly reassess how we are working to remain relevant.

However, too many times, we simply pick up on the latest buzzword for the year and create a strategy to reflect it. So we end up with elearning strategies, social learning strategies and mobile learning strategies; all sitting separate to our core operation which continues delivering classroom-based training...

I wonder how many organisations, if asked, would be able to describe their learning strategy? How many would be able to show how their Learning & Development teams directly make a difference to the ongoing success of the organisation? How many would be able to show, by reference to research (not psycho-babble and hype), how their approaches to learning will actually help people to learn? How many would even know what they meant by "learning" in their particular context? And why is that particular "learning" needed anyway?

When I was working in schools, I came across many policy documents around homework, special educational needs, health and safety, report writing, learning styles (please don't start me on that!) etc, but only once did I find a school that had explicitly described its approach to learning.

What did it include?

1. A statement of the school's aims
2. The quality indicators that would be used
3. Examples of good practice
4. What we know from neuro-science about the brain and learning

So, what should you consider in a corporate learning strategy?

1. Your stakeholders
2. What you're trying to achieve and how you will know whether you've achieved it
3. Engagement approach with your stakeholders
4. What we know about learning from research
5. The role of managers
6. The role of the l&d professional
7. Your approach to trying new ideas
8. Your approach to communicating and rolling out new ideas
9. The technology toolkit that is available. This will keep changing, but it will need to be in a controlled manner

Each of these is worth a post on their own - that's the plan.

I've started getting a number of queries from web marketing companies (who will remain nameless!) wanting to pay me to put links into my posts.

The conversation normally goes like this:

Marketing company: Hi there, we'd like to pay you $x if you'll put a link to my client's website in your post at http://www.learningconversations.co.uk/[post_url]

Me: Thanks for the offer. Yes, that's fine, as long as I can put it in a section explicitly marked as advertising.

Marketing company: No, the link needs to be embedded in the post. Something like: "If you're interested in [service offered with link to relevant page], [Client] offers [service description]

Me: So you're asking me to break the Advertising Standards Authority rules which govern UK advertising? No thanks.

Just for the record, I will not accept advertising unless I can explicitly mark it as advertising copy. Any links that you come across in my posts are there just because I thought they'd be useful, and not because I've been paid to put them there.

And, if you're not clear what the rules are:

Committee of Advertising Practice > Recognition of Marketing Communications > Rules

2.1 Marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such.
2.2 Unsolicited e-mail marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as marketing communications without the need to open them (see rule 10.6).
2.3 Marketing communications must not falsely claim or imply that the marketer is acting as a consumer or for purposes outside its trade, business, craft or profession; marketing communications must make clear their commercial intent, if that is not obvious from the context.
2.4 Marketers and publishers must make clear that advertorials are marketing communications; for example, by heading them “advertisement feature”.

Don't ask me to break them!

Our internal communications processes are broken. Email memos sent down from on high very rarely get cascaded to everyone that should see them. The people on the ground don't believe anyone is listening to them. Information on corporate intranets is rarely up-to-date, or relevant. And, with information dotted around our organisations, there is no individual person who has all the current information you need, just when you need it.

I would suggest three things have contributed to this breakdown:

1. Organisations have grown far beyond the point where normal, face-to-face networks can operate effectively. It's not enough now to rely on knowing someone in your team who knows who to talk to. For one thing it's not quick enough, and often the people that you need to talk to will be several contacts removed from you.
2. Hierarchical management structures have created stagnant information silos. To remain useful, information needs to be constantly refreshed and be joined up to other information. Hierarchies are designed for top-down command and control, and cannot handle the rapid flow of information that is essential in a rapidly changing business and social environment.
3. Our unintelligent use of email has given rise to communication practices that are incredibly inefficient; both in terms of the amount of storage required, and in terms of the time it takes to get things done. Multiple copies of every email and every attachment have to be kept somewhere, often for many years. Every person that is added to an email's distribution list means that yet more storage is required. Many times emails are not sent to all the right people, or are sent to far more people than necessary. So we end up with time being wasted in dealing with messages that don't need a response, or dealing with multiple conversation threads, all ostensibly about the same topic, but sent to different people.

One company, Atos (a global IT Services organisation) has attacked this problem head-on. Over the course of the next three years they will be mandating that employees do not use email for any internal communication.

Instead, they will use a combination of social networking and instant messaging tools (ie. just like our kids do currently).

This will solve all three problems above:

1. Online social networking allows messages to fly around networks extremely rapidly. If you ask a question, your contacts may not know the answer, but will repost it to their contacts etc.
2. By connecting people across the hierarchy, information will flow, connect and make new information. It will drive innovation and reduce duplication.
3. Each message is only ever stored once. And each message is searchable, and auditable.

Email will never go away. It's valuable to have somewhere that you get notified about new messages. You might even use email to post things into central conversations (just like you can do with Posterous). But, as a place where conversations happen, and messages get stored, its days are numbered.

I've started using Derbyshire County Council's ebook loan service recently. Once you get past the initial setup stage (which really is too convoluted for the general user), it works very well.

The only problem is the extremely limited range of books available - particularly non-fiction.

Given that digital services are not dependent on location, I can't understand why each local authority needs to run their own ebook library? Why not have a single, national library, part-funded by the local authorities (based on their size) and part-funded by an annual subscription from the users. I don't know how much libraries pay for their books, so can't put any figures on the subscription, but it needs to be less than you'd pay to rent videos!

What's stopping this happening, apart from the political will?

There are times when I wonder about the whole purpose and rationale of the work I do. Where does it fit into the grand scheme of things? What real benefit am I bringing to humanity?

Big questions.

Often, they're very hard to answer. Especially when you're a small cog in a big, corporate machine.

Yesterday, however, I came across something that indicated that at least some of what I do can have wider meaning than just helping people use technology better...

When you can use that technology to create something beautiful.

When it's not about the technology, but about bringing together people from across the world with one creative purpose.

I wasn't part of this particular project, but it shows amazingly what is possible. I'm hoping as you watch this you will see the potential that technology offers to enable participation in creating solutions.

Even if you don't, just enjoy the experience!