The Power of Failure

Karyn Romeis had an interesting post in which she spoke about taking the perfect photo (which was on this post) quite by accident.

I commented:

This actually reminds me of something I've been thinking of lately as my students expect me to "teach them how" rather than giving them opportunities to learn.

Many times, because of our inner critic, we are afraid to just let the situation go where it will, using a gut feeling. The difference between my husband's photos and mine, for example, is that I will take dozens with the hope that one or two will come out "perfect". I don't wait, but just DO. He tries to set up his perception of what perfect would be so he misses that odd photo where someone has such glee on their face. I'm looking at a picture I took when my son was 18 months old where he is smelling the flowers. It is perfect. It only took me about 10 different shots to capture.

So my question to you is, how to you get students to just let go and try things, knowing they may end up being total disasters? How do you get them to quiet their inner critic until AFTER they've experienced something they will learn from?

With that in mind, I went out to capture the recent winter storm we had which ended up in everything being iced over (the French word "glacee" comes to mind). Beautiful to look at (not so nice to drive in). The first picture is one of the ones I would term as "fail". It didn't capture the light and reflection the way I thought it might. I also was too close so it ended up being blurry.

The second one came out just as I would want it. There is contrast between the beautiful blue sky and the basketball net. The icicles coming off the net are unexpected. It only took me 10 photos before I came up with one that conveyed what I wanted to convey.

This was achieved with a combination of a set goal in mind (conveying the beauty of the ice, but also the "coldness") and trial and error. It also required that I keep checking, getting feedback (from the camera) and making changes until I achieved what I wanted.

Karyn's response gives further insight into this process:

Ah, the 64 million dollar question! That mindset is the result of generations of a results-focused education system, where getting it right is what counts, not the process by which we achieve that rightness. Or so I believe anyway. We have become so fixated on results that we have lost the courage to experiment.

I attended a presentation recently where the speaker said something along the lines of "the fear of failure is the enemy of success." We learn so much from failure. That presentation was part of the Learning Technologies conference and a key theme that emerged was how grossly undervalued failure is in our current culture.

I think we are limited in the extent to which we can make a difference, but we could do worse than praise students for trying, even (especially?) when they fail.

There is more to her comment and it is worth it to read her entire response. The gist is, if we don't try we won't fail, nor will really grow.

So what do you think? How do we get people to open up to failure? How do we support them as they fail to learn from those failures?

What I learned this year blogging

In response to the Big Question for this month, I followed directions, reviewed my posts, and reflected on what I learned.

First of all, I really like my writing style (which is good because I wrote it). Sometimes, as I reread the post, I realized that it was really well-written! (Enough of self promotion). I feel that the best posts, however, were the result of other bloggers pushing me to reflect on and write about an issue I had not thought was really important. Ken Allen, Michele Martin, and Christine Martell especially, asked some questions and entered into dialog that really made me think.

So what did I learn?

About Blogging:

• Comment on others blogs, but when the comment is more than 2 paragraphs, write a post and link it.
• You can vary your voice and tone.
• Tag so you can find links when writing about the same subject in subsequent posts. I can't tell you how many times I had to go searching for a post I was SURE I had written, but had not done a good job of tagging

About Research:

I have been submersed in Academic Research for the last 5 years. This year, through some simple questions from Michele and Ken, (can you give us an example or tell us what you saw in your class), I reconnected with the importance of "quick and dirty" observation and analysis.

In academic writing, you look to the literature to give you theories. Then you set up your research in a well planned systematic way, analyze the data, and then go back to the literature to explain your findings. While this has its place, I feel it also makes academic research (and even corporate market research) outdated. After looking at my posts on the use of wikis in my classroom (Group Communication and Wikis , Lessons learned about wiki use), the lessons learned from my New Communication Technologies in Organizational Life course, and even my observations on my own children's use of facebook, ipods, and cellphones has allowed me to begin to create an emerging portrait of the new knowledge worker and the type of training he or she will need to be successful for the 21st Century workplace. This has taught me that I can begin with my observations in realife circumstances and still come away with some valuable information that would be helpful to others. I wonder if this is a new direction for academic research (and a new battleground in academia as it does not fit the model of "academic rigor").

About technology:

More and more as I write about the Web 2.0, I find that there is less need to know the tool and more importance should be placed on the affordances. It seems that many of the postings came down to what technology could allow us to do rather than the tool itself.

I find that I am also moving away from blogging sites that list tools, and concentrating more on sites that discuss HOW to USE the tool and the impact it will have on instructional design and student learning. Don't get me wrong, I still refer to Jane's E-learning Pick of the Day and Cool Cat Teacher on a regular basis. But I go to these sites when I know what I am looking for, usually a specific tool use. I wonder if this is the natural progression of Web 2.0 users? Do we start with the tools, then see the potential after using the tools, then look for new ways to use the tools and look for advice on more design or instructional uses?

Comments and reader interaction:

I have learned to be content with the few people that comment on my blog. I value them highly. I also like the new google option that identifies followers as it allows me an opportunity to get to them on their blogs. While I think I work best with comments, I took a page from Michael Hanley's blog where he commented that as long as he can see through the viewer stats that people are reading his blog, he is satisfied. He recognizes (as do I) that his posts tend to have a lot of information. As long as he has the feeling that this is helpful to readers, he won't worry about comments. I have adopted this philosophy as well (although I do like people to comment as it takes the guess work out of what your thoughts are). I hope that I am inviting enough for people not to be intimedated to post questions, comments, and even disagree with me. I learn so much from those disagreements (as long as they are civil).

I learned the most in an interaction with Ewa. Her comments have really inspired me to look at alternative ways to assess learning in the workplace.

Emerging Technologies for Learning

George Siemans, on his Elearnspace blog, gave a number of definitions for Emerging Technologies for Learning.

As I read through the definitions, it struck me that many were still using traditional definitions of "learning" and failed to capture the affordances that new technology provide.

As I scan at what people are doing that create new opportunities for learning, I realize that there should be a greater emphasize on new ways of learning and how various technologies (perhaps not "emerging") can be used in new ways.

Look at the following link provided by Karyn Romeis on the elearning Technology blog, for example. Vicki Davis's Flat classroom project, for example uses technology that has been around for a long time in new ways.

So perhaps what we should be defining is Technologies for emerging learning.

Reinforcing learning from an online conference

During one of the sessions in the online conference Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008, one of the presenters (I can't remember which) brought up point that we may not be taking notes as we used to.

This got me to thinking about how my learning is reinforced when I attend a conference like this. I can tell you that I am not sitting by taking notes using pen and paper--or even taking notes via the computer. I do take notes in a more traditional class, but more often than not, these are just keywords. The keywords are used to trigger a memory.

However, my style of learning requires that I make a connection to ideas or something I have learned previously to retain the information. So how do I do this in a digital environment?

First of all, I look for visual cues; chat, discussion, images. In a format like this conference, I monitor the oral presentation, but really pay attention to the text and images. Part of the reason is that I know these sessions are being taped, so I know that I can always go back to hear something I missed.

I think typing my reactions to the speaker helps to reinforce my learning. It is like social note taking. I like the feel of talking through a concept which the chat function allows. I then leave the session and go to the discussion forums. This also helps me to process the information and concepts presented in the sessions.

Finally, blogging allows me to tie in ideas that I have been working on, bringing in resources, and synthesizing ideas to conceptualize my learning, sometimes ending in mental models, sometimes frameworks, and often new questions to pursue.

As a result, I come away from these online conferences with a much deeper understanding than from face to face conferences.

Contextualizing tools

I have been participating in the Work Literacy Learning Project. This week they are looking at RSS and aggregators. This has been a challenge to me as I had a totally different idea as to what RSS aggregators were. In fact, I had been using one for a while (iGoogle) but did not know it.

Michele Martin gave a very good explanation of RSS and aggregators, much better than I had read in the past. Most just give you as literal definition of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and don't really explain how it is used or examples of how and RSS is used by readers or bloggers/podcasters.

Michele explained it this way

First, we're talking about two different things here--subscribing to feeds from
other sources and creating feeds for your own blog. Let's start with subscribing
to and reading feeds.When you click on the RSS ("squiggly") icon on a blog's
page, that's going to give you the feed for that particular blog. You're right
that there's often more than one option, like "Atom" or "RSS 1.0." These are
just different feed formats and most readers can support all of them, so it
doesn't really matter which you choose. To be able to read the feed you find on
a blog, you would paste it into your feed reader--Google Reader, Netvibes,
Bloglines, etc. In Netvibes, you can create individual tabs to organize your
feeds, so in my case, I have Learning, Technology, etc. as individual tabs and
then the associated blogs I read are contained in those tabs.Now Feedburner is
what you use to set up a feed for your own blog and to do things like provide
people with an option to get an email subscription, etc. It's also how you can
tell how many people have subscribed to your feed. For the most part, you want
to encourage people to sign up for your feed, as it's more likely that they will
read it if they are getting the content pushed to them every day.As for
tags/labels--Google reader lets you use tags to organize and share--the concept
is similar to Delicious tagging where you can use any words you want as tags. I
don't use Google Reader, so wonder how others might use the tagging feature.
Also not sure if Bloglines has that or not.

As part of the course on new learning tools, I have participated in the French Speaking Forum, which has also given me new insight into the use of aggregators. Stephane Wattier made the distinction between the aggregators and "annuaires", which is just a directory of links. I am not sure that we make the same distinction on the anglo web or if there is a difference in the French and Anglo system.

Learning in Context

This experience has reinforced my belief that some people (like myself) just learn better when they are in the context than in a more traditional training room or classroom. Interestingly enough, I was never able to do well in languages within the classroom, but speaking and communicating in a foreign language came easy when I was in the context.

I find for example, that my French (which had gotten a bit rusty) has improved. I thought perhaps that the terms used for technology would make it difficult for me to participate in this forum. However, learning the terms in context not only gives me an understanding of the language, it also has given me an understanding of the tools themselves and how they are used in the culture.

We can extend this to using tools in the context of this course. A very well designed course, the work literacy learning project is set up in such a way that we learn within context, but also are encouraged to use the tools in our own contexts, to understand the bounderies and possibilities of the tools. I think this allows us to expand the possibilities as to how the tools can be used and the outcomes. Just like playing around with the language (which many think is set and static) can give us a new understanding of a situation or concept depending on the the context, playing around with a tool in different contexts can give us new affordances for that technology, dependent upon the context.

People who inspire me

I have been thinking recently that the biggest role of the instructor is to motivate and inspire students to learn, to take risks, and to try new things that may flop initially, but can lead to even greater knowledge. However, a benefit is to learn from students as they go through their journey.

With this in mind, I have a few students that stick out in my mind as inspiring to any teacher.

One of my students was the child of an immigrant. The eldest of 6, he came to me three weeks before the end of the semester to explain that he had to drop out of my class, but that he had enjoyed the class. His mother had breast cancer and he had to be home for his siblings, as his father was barred from the house under order of protection, and my student was afraid his father would return to cause problems. I explained to him that he could work out a study plan with his professors, and I am glad to say that he not only stayed in school, but managed to graduate (only 2 semesters late) and receive his citizenship.

Another one of my students was a single mother, semi-retired from the air force. She gave me one of the best tips on reconciling a checkbook (if the difference is a derivative of 9, you have a number reversed). She was one of the best teachers I have ever seen in action, and she motivated me to learn how to do web pages.

Three of my students have been from inner city New York. Two of them in my public speaking class had me riveted as they gave an insight into the issues of living in inner city New York. Their passion and conviction made me encourage them to present the speech in a more public forum (although I don't think they ever did). The third was a teacher who taught technology at a grade school in Harlem. She told about the most up to date technology they had at their finger tips in a school that was falling apart around them and which needed to have the circuit breaker tripped at least once a day due to the power surges caused by the use of the technology. She worked in the worst conditions and would not trade her job for anything. Rather, she wanted to find resources so the school could be upgraded and create opportunities for her students to make change within the system.

Finally, I have had many students who approach learning with a great deal of enthusiasm. I currently have a student who's enthusiasm is contagious. Others in the class seem to feed off his energy to learn. The first day of class, he looked through notes from a previous class (the semester before) to answer the question. He asks questions (sometimes hard to answer) and wants to understand when he doesn't get something right. I had similar students last year who were never content with just going through the motions. They would disagree with what I said, ask for clarification, or give examples of exceptions to what I presented. These students push me to change my classes every semester, to learn new things, and research their questions when I don't know the answer.

Who inspires you?

Why can't learning be fun?

I just ran across a new book/game series by Rick Riordan called "39 Clues." Riordan is a middle school teacher who has designed a series of books that has been tied to an interactive on line game that builds on the interest middle school students have for both gaming and social networks. It appears to be a good way to get the next generation interested in reading, critical thinking, and problem solving in a fun way.

Now, I am actually surprised that I have not heard of this series: neither negative or positive. I would have thought it would be an instant hit from all the Webkins fans or seen as the next threat to the educational system by educators who still choose Ethan Frome as required reading.

Bringing Fun into Education (regardless of age)

I have seen my own kids become interested in history, math, and even engineering through playing computer games. I know it is rarely used in their schools, but I see the role games can play in helping students learn to problem solve, think critically, and even learn content and skills. Both Karyn Romeis and Ken Allen have written good posts in the past about its potential.

However, as I begin to think about the possibilities of learning from games and social networks, I can't get past the barrier of convincing company executives of allowing their workers some periods of fun as they learn. I can hear the complaints now: How do we justify investments in games to our stakeholders? It's play, not learning. How will that help their productivity? Can you give us the numbers on that? This is work, not recreational time.

If we look at the track, though, of some of the more successful students in a school, we will see that many have extra-curricular activities that give them the skills they need in the workplace (group work, critical thinking, strategies, interpersonal communication, task management). So why aren't we creating more "fun" elearning activities such as those used in second life? Because it is an uphill battle to convince society that "fun" and "playing" have a role in learning.

Not a New Debate

You need only read Dewey's and Taylor's works to see that this debate has been around for decades. For some reason, I will never understand, Taylor's theories that basically equate humans to automatons, seems to win out when investment decisions are made. Perhaps that is because it is easier to measure quantitatively than qualitatively. I also wonder if management is afraid to make workers too content and/or lacking in discipline. Related to this is what to do about the parts of a job that are not fun or exciting? Such as report writing, weekly meetings, resolving personal conflicts, and taking care of daily routine tasks that can become tedious.

I think there is definitely new possibilities into make learning more enjoyable. But first we must achieve the Mount Everest task of convincing management and workers that learning can be fun.

Is there (should there be) a difference between workplace learning and "academic" learning?

I am beginning to find out the divide that some people have created between "workplace" learning and "academic" learning. As someone who has helped develop and deliver workplace training and taught for a number of years in business and communication education, I just don't see the disconnect.

Granted, I come from a different perspective than many business faculty and from many in the "training" field. Working on my Ph.d. in Education, I find I am fighting (although not alone) the "trainers" who feel that adult education in the workplace is "different" than teaching at the university level. The main differences I have seen have been in expected assessments (which are becoming increasingly dictated by business recruiters), motivation, and price. However, even in the motivation area, I have plenty of students that really want to be in college and many that don't just as I have had participants in a workplace seminar who only wanted to get out of work or did not want to be in training because they had more important things to do along with those that really wanted to learn what I was teaching them so they could do their job better.

So, what are the similarities?

1. Relevant content for the student
2. Student choice
3. Time for reflection (multiple workshops over a long period of time for the workplace; in class time for students to reflect)
4. Theory and practice (in other words, a good explanation as to WHY students or trainees should do things differently)
5. Good classroom management skills and many activities to practice
6. Feedback
7. Developing a safe environment to make mistakes and learn from them
8. Something tangible to take away (a paper, a project, a report, an outline, a check list) that demonstrates what you learned

I was shocked at the line drawn in the Working/Learning Carnival. It was obvious that "academics" were perceived to have nothing to contribute to the "real world". However, I think there needs to be more collaboration between workplace and academic learning specialists especially as there is a greater call to align college graduate standards to business needs. Schools need to start working with the learning specialists in companies to identify what skills are needed and what is working in training, just as learning specialists need to look at what skills are being developed in the "academic" world. Both groups might be surprised to learn what was attempted and what has really worked.

Are we doing our students a disservice

This week has been one of frustration for my teaching. I have three classes, all of which are using technology. I am finding that my students post and expect immediate response. This can be very demanding, as I have a family, snow days, my dissertation, and other outside pressures to contend with. I feel that my immediate response to them is training them to expect immediate responses.

Our Students Expectations

I believe that this is a generational problem that perhaps in 20 years will not be as important. Our current students are used to IMing, not having to wait for information. If they do not get the response they want, they simply move on to the next thing. Many of my generation (late babyboomers) look at this as impatience and rudeness. However, for those that have grown up using technology, this is a normal way to communicate.

So how do we prepare them for the intergenerational workforce? By accommodating to their form of communication, are we adequately preparing them for life after school? And will they be able to conform and learn how to fit into the communication styles of the generation to follow them?

Teaching them to be Life Long Learners

Related to this is a problem I saw when reviewing the course feedback. In comments about my course, students complained about having to do readings, projects, and even coming to class. Many of them perceive education as a means to find out information that they then will need to have to pass a test. They have very little understanding (or patience) in learning how to learn. They do not see this as necessary. I think they feel that if they have a set of facts and figures for a specific profession, this is all the learning they will need for the rest of their life.

So how do we prepare them for the rigors that the new organization will require? Is this why there is a perception that our students are ill-equipped as they enter the business world? By allowing them to fill out simple course and instructor evaluations in which they identify their preferences, are we really finding out how effective an instructor or course was in preparing them for their chosen profession? Or is this a tool that can be used not to evaluate the instructor, but rather to determine the need gap between student expectations and instructor delivery? And how do we close that gap, once we have identified it? And what about the larger gap between what a student wants and what employers expect?