As a fan of the TV show The Office, I challenged my daughter to learn the theme song on the piano. She neither takes piano lessons nor has any genetic talent from her mother or myself. But what she does have is determination (she is the third child of four). She learned it. Relate this to a recent class I took. Four days long, in the classroom 8 hours a day and the instructor read the slides. I didn’t take away much from the class. In short, determined people learn but they also learn to use the tools given. My daughter leaned the theme song from You Tube. I didn’t learn from a real live person. Could the future of IT Learning be You Tube?
Several of the presentations from the recent Partnering for Performance conference highlighted this same general question. One spoke about the impact social media tools are having. The presenters spoke about the large percentage of users in both K-12 and universities that use social networking technology. Others presentations spoke about “Tech-enabled learning” and the various applications in use to make it happen. While we all have heard of Facebook, Wiki’s and webcasts, there were others like Flips, Brainsharks and others which were new to many.
What I learned from the conference presenters combined with what I did not learn from my most recent class, makes me even more confident that a career path in technology education, or any form of education, must embrace the use of these new tools and craft them for the learning world. The traditional way of learning is dated, mostly ineffective and rather boring. In an article in Information Age, Rob Preston quotes from a TechCrunch article that “bubbles emerge when something is overvalued and intensely believed”. While his article is centered on university learning, I believe it can be applied to corporate training as well. The rise of online universities offering “cheaper, more convenient and often more specialized areas” is a major factor in their rising popularity. Those same attributes have been and will continue to change the face of corporate IT learning. In fact, it may be even more applicable to state that the bubble will burst on traditional corporate learning faster and more violently then it has already bursted on traditional university learning. Based on the presenters at Partnering for Performance, it sounds like in many corporate learning divisions, the bubble has already burst.
As always, I would love to hear from you and I look forward to your continued feedback. Feel free to contact me anytime at aust1648@gmail.com.
