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.

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Learning Strategies Blog Carnival IV

 

Uploaded by JucaFii

Here’s yet one more blog carnival.  Take a look and see what you like.

1. Adrian presents Becoming a More Creative Individual posted at Path to Your Destiny.
2. John Crenshaw presents The Biggest Scam Your Bank Gets Away With Everyday posted at Truthful Lending Mortgage, Refinance Advice.
3. James presents The Organize IT Habits: Always Ask Why And How posted at Organize IT.
4. Bhupendra Khanal presents Why are you a failure? posted at Business Analytics.
5. Colleen Palat presents How Tutoring Can Be Your Solution To Overcrowded Classes | posted at Shari Nielsen.
6. Todd presents Top 31 Motivation Hacks posted at We The Change.
7. Mike King presents Preparing for your own performance review. posted at Learn This.
8. Lenka presents All online dictionaries in one. posted at Learn English with “Sex and the City”.
9. FruitfulTime presents What feelings do you instil in your audience? posted at Productivity Blog.
10. Mark Fleming presents Respect Your Decisions posted at improvefast.net.
11. Louise Manning presents Individual centred training posted at The Human Imprint.
12. Eric Koshinsky presents Computer Mediated Communication & Teaching Grammar posted at Teachers Call.
13. Tiffany Colter presents Lesson Learned and How I got here posted at Writing Career Coach.
14. Raymond presents Take Advantage Of Gift Card Discounts At Supermarkets posted at Money Blue Book.

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Education vs. Training Vs. Learning

Uploaded on by Image Zen

I was once told that there are two kinds of people in this world.  Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.  Anyway, I’ve heard the discussion a lot about the different between education, training and learning.  Some see sharp distinctions and other see them as the same. 

I remember someone recoiling at the idea of being a training department.  “You train dogs not people.”  To that I always say, “Do you want your surgeon to be well trained or well educated?”

It’s seems like the academic world is more focused on education and the corporate world is more focused on training.  You are statements like, “the purpose of an education is to become a critical thinker and well rounded.”  “The purpose of training is change what participants will be able to do after the training is over.”  Maybe it’s the difference between knowledge acquisition and skill development.  

In schools, paper and pencil tests are mainstays.  Standardized tests which are mostly about knowledge acquisition and comprehension seem to be the level of measurement.  In a corporate environment, those tests are usually meaningless.  It’s more the rule than the norm that doing well on a test indicates results on the job.

So to sort all this out, you often see the word Learning substituted for both education and training.  Think about the advent of the Chief Learning Officer or Elearning, etc.  I look at learning as something that a student or participant does.  It’s not what the instructor does.  It’s good in a sense that it doesn’t suggest a particular approach or methodology. 

What do I use or prefer?  I tend to use them all and use them interchangeably.  I actually don’t think is a very productive argument.  When people argue about terms, I often say let’s just pick something or mayble make something up.  How about calling it “Bob?” 

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More Smart Adults

If you liked the last clips from Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, then you’re going to like these two as well.  I’m not drawing any conclusions, but I think they speak for themselves.

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Education that Speaks for Itself

I’ve used the show “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?”  to talk about knowledge retention and how to eliminate was in training.  I’ve run across a number of clips that basically speak for themselves.  This one is about science education.

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Accelerated Learning – What is it?

It’s interesting.  When you got to Wikipedia, there isn’t a definition of accelerated learning.  When you to a Google search, you find a number of different learning companies using the term accelerated learning in a number of different ways.  Often promoting whatever they are selling.

Is it that learning faster hasn’t really been a focus of education?  Is it that there really haven’t been a lot of advances to speed up learning? 

There certainly is an advantage to learning faster.  You can learn more in the same time.  You can learn something before you get bored or give up.  You can learn mutliple things easily in the same time.

So what should be included in accelerated learning?  Here’s my start at a definition.  

1.  Anything that helps take in more information quickly while improving understanding.  This might include speed reading.
2. Anything that helps retain large amount of information quickly such as memory techniques.
3. Anything that helps quickly sort through large amounts of material so that you can find out what’s really important and useful.
4. Any techniques that help you analyze and evaluate problems quickly.
5. Any techniques that help reduce the required hours and hours of practice. (Better practice)
6. Anything that reduces or eliminates trail and error learning.
7. Anything that helps make learning more just-in-time.

Please add your thoughts and ideas to this list.  With a little help, I can take a shot at writing the first wikipedia entry.

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Questions for Today’s School Systems

There’s always a lot of controversy about our public school systems.  Part of the crisis comes from the fact that it’s part of the political system where the money goes to the loudest squeeky wheel.  All the focus goes to failing schools instead of the stand outs.  There’s also a lot of nostalgia.  “The old days were better.”  I think I heard this outside the second little red schoolhouse.

 Anyway, I’ve put together a short list of questions I have about schools.  Maybe you’d like to add a few.

1. Why is k-12 the only time in your life that you’ll spend all your time with others of the exact same age?
2. Why do we have k-12 instead of some other number of years?  I know the historical reasons, but haven’t things changed?
3. Why do we teach subject by subject, in silos, rather than cutting up and sorting what needs to be covered in other ways?
4. Why are teachers basically at the top of their profession the day they start?  (There’s a very short career path for teachers.)
5. Why are schools all inclusive, one-stop shopping?  Couldn’t kids go to multiple schools at the same time?
6. Why don’t schools teach life and work skills? 
7. Why do we have homework instead of having kids finish their work in school?
8. Why do schools need to have their own buildings?  Couldn’t they rent out space in the community?
9. Why do schools promote a social system that is so clickie and unlike what people experience out of school?
10. Why is it so hard from one school to learn from and adopt the best practices from others school?

I think asking a lot of whys is a good process.  In fact, that process may be more important that the actual questions.  I think a lot of the answers to the “whys” are, because that’s the way we’ve always done them.

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PDAs and Training

I’m starting to work through how to put a detailed training plan, schedule and materials onto a PDA. A lot of people are wedded to their blackberries so it seems like a natural platform for those on the road.  As I find interesting stuff, I’ll try to post it.

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A Better Testing Strategy

True and false, multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching and even essay tests for the most part evaluate knowledge and comprehension.  They’re easy to write.  Easy to score and easy to compare one student to another.

However, knowing and doing are two very different things.  That’s why there is often very little correlation between how employees do on classroom tests and how they perform on the job.  Unless you’re training academics, there needs to be a more meaningful way to do testing.

It’s actually fairly easy.  You ask an expert to watch the student work or perform a required task.  That expert will be able to tell you a lot about what that student knows and doesn’t know.  Most experts tell me they’d know in less than five minutes. 

You can then ask the expert what he or she is looking at.  What are the key inidicators?  Now you have a good evaluation checklist that you can use to train others on this type of evaluation.

This type of evaluation doesn’t favor those who are “good test takers.”  It also tests the links between a range of tasks and knowledge.

Unfortunately, this type of test isn’t very easy with elearning unless you can do some very sophisticated simulations.

Here’s a reading test that any school system can use that is guaranteed to be better than what they use today.  Give a student a book.  Say, okay read it to me.  After five minutes, ask, “what did you just read?”  Any good teacher will know where this student is on their reading ability.  You also won’t get anyone through high school who fakes their way through without learning to read. 

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Free Learning Paths Webinar – 2 Dates

We offering two more dates for thos who want to learn how to dramatically reducing the time it takes to ramp up new employees.  The webinar give an overview of the concepts from the Learning Paths book.  This site gives an overview of the book and the whitepaper provides some important background.

The dates are December 19th at 10 CST and January 10th at 1 CST. 

 To sign up, simply send me an email at learningpaths@gmail.com.

 For more info, you can also go to my website at www.learningpathsinternational.com

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