On the Road

I’m on the road this week doing learning paths.  I’ll try to share some new insights when I return.  Until then I’d appreciate hearing your ideas on how to speed up the learning process.  I’ve got another blog carnival ready to post as well

Read Full Post »

Quick Ways to Speed Up the Learning Process

Uploaded by jac.opo

There are lots of ways to speed up the learning process…and what I mean by speed up the process is that you get the same or better result in less time.  Here are some of my favorites.

1. Eliminate the Waste – Waste in education and training is anything that is taught one day and forgotten the next.  If it’s still something that’s really important, than you have to find a different way to teach it.
2. Focus on Speed – This may seem odd as a suggestion but the longer it takes to learn something the harder it is to keep the learner motivated.  Looking for ways to increase speed actually will increase speed.
3. Blend Hard and Soft Skills – the slow way is to teach hard skills and then soft skills and then try to meld them together.  It’s really hard to make good connections this way.  Instead teach how to do different tasks and skills that require using both hard and soft skills.
4. Teach in short segments – People tend to remember the first and last parts of any lesson.  With short segments, you have more firsts and lasts.
5. Don’t Talk so Much – Often the more your talk the less learning is happening.  Others often have to say the words to learn something and they can’t do that when you’re talking.

Read Full Post »

Cell Phone Novelists

Uploaded by Nuigurumi

Check out this article.  It appears that the top ten novels in Japan were written on mobile phones.  I can hear the click-clack of thumbs now.  If getting rid of keyboards is happening soon and literature is being produced on a IPhone, what does that mean for traditional education. 

I can just imagine Shakespere now, writing Hamlet with the Verizon network people following him.  Can you hear my writing now?  How about now?

Read Full Post »

Do We Still Need to Teach Writing?

Uploaded by cdevroe

I just read a fascinating article where Bill Gates predicts the end of the keyboard.  He says with the advancements in things like touch screens and voice recognition, keyboards will become less and less important.

 So what does this mean for teaching kids how to write?  Do you teach them with paper and pencil?  Do you teach them how to enter with a keyboard? Or, do you teach them how to talk into their computer?

I think some of the best and easiest to understand writing is when someone write the way the speak.  That is if they can articulate their thoughts.  I know that some people are still holding on to their old Royal typewriters and some like the feel of pen and paper.  I’m sure future generations will feel the same about their first computer they could talk to.

I think the world is going to get a lot noisier.

Read Full Post »

The Value of a Good Education

Uploaded by Unknown Cabbie

I wasn’t sure about whether to call this posting the value of a good education or where have all the good high paying jobs gone.  I was fascinated by this article in the Las Vegas Review Journal.  It seems that there are doorman in Las Vegas making $500,000 a year.  Yes, I got all the zeros right.

There are a lot of implications of this phenomina, but I’d rather let the article stand on its own merit.  I think I’m going to park a few cars.

Read Full Post »

Are We Smarter or Dumber than We Used to Be?

Uploaded Ms. Kathleen

This is my salute to presidents on presidents day posting.  I remember people talking about history when I was growing up.  They said it was much harder to know history to day because there was so much more to remember.  In fact, when my father was in grade school, he only needed to know the presidents up to Hoover. 

I think it’s really hard to compare an education today with an education from 30, 40 or 70 years ago.  It’s a different world and in a lot of cases all the facts have changed.  The worlds of medicine and science are completely different.  A  lot of what people thought was right turned out to be wrong and there’s also a lot of stuff that noone every dreamed of that has become common place.  Here’s to quick examples.  If you studied Einstein in physics, you would have heard that the universe is curved.  Turns out that last year they proved that the universe is perfactly flat in all directions.

If you graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D., in communications in 1960, you would have no idea on how to text message or do a simple Google search.  You won’t find it in any curriculum for another 30 years or more.

How about geography, try comparing a map from 1980 and 2007?  You’re straight As in 1980, become an F today.  You even have to change your 2007 map to make Kosovo an independent country.

Are you keeping up with your reading?  In 1900, only a few thousand books got published.  Today, it’s over 100,000.  And your vocabulary?  In 1960, there were about 200,000 words in the English Dictionary.  Now there are over a million.  Can you define “woot” and use it in a sentence?  Most 10 year olds can. 

 As with many things, the good old days often aren’t as good as people’s memories.  It’s tough to measure new world oranges against old world apples.

Read Full Post »

Another Learning Strategies Carnival

Uploaded by sctag1015

I seem to get new submissions every week.  Thanks to those who contribute.

1. Stephen Dean presents A Simple Solution To Increase Sales posted at Stephen Dean’s Copywriting And Internet Advertising Blog – Copywriter.
2. Woody Maxim presents The quickest way to more money is through testing posted at Woody Maxim.
3. Joshua C. Karlin presents Powerful Yet Reasonable Goals posted at Marketing & Fundraising Ideas.
4. Tiffany Colter presents Writing Career Coach: How I got here: Part 3 posted at Writing Career Coach.
   Enjoy!
5. James D. Brausch presents Failure? The Doorway to Success posted at Internet Business Blog.
6. Doug Kercher presents A Funny (Yet Sad) Thing Happened At The Range Today posted at Doug Kercher Golf.
7. David Cassell presents The Why Behind Select Courses Blog posted at selectcoursesblog.com.
8. Wayne Buckhanan presents How to “Win” in Life posted at Life, Love, & Learning.
9. James D. Brausch presents Cruise For Success? posted at Internet Business Blog.

Read Full Post »

Sink or Swim Learning

I’ve written a lot about the downsides of sink or swim learning.  However, I came across this video and I found it mesmerizing.  Enjoy!

Read Full Post »

Is Knowing How to Spell Words You Can’t Define Improtant?

Uploaded by foreversouls

When I watch the national spelling bee, I know they can spell the words but the don’t seem to know the meaning of very many.  So is it better to misspell a word you know or spell a word you don’t know correctly.

The concept of a spelling bee was first in print in 1876.  Two of the big differences between then and now are “Spellcheck” and a massively larger pool of words.  In 1876, there was probably a much smaller gap between spelling and understanding…about 7 or 8 hundred thousand words.

The moderators always seem so smart about all the words but I’m sure they have to look most of them up.  I thought is going to a definitions bee and including words someone might actually use some day.

Just a thought…not earth shaking.  I hope I spelled everything right.

Read Full Post »

It’s Like Polishing Canonballs!

Uploaded by Tambour_Unit

 I don’t know if you’d heard the expression, it’s like polishing canon balls.  It goes back to the old quality improvement and reengineering days.  In other words, you’re making improvements that really have no benefits.  Nice shiny canon balls are still obsolete.

So the question is, are the improvements to the education system really meaningful or are we just polishing cannon balls.  Is it a matter of making incremental improvements or trying something completely different? 

At your next meeting where this is discussed try asking the group, are we just polishing canon balls?

Read Full Post »