I see the techniques and technologies of video games playing an increasing role in helping to close the work literacy gap. This is especially true as games and systems become increasingly “network ready” and the games become more multi-player and social.

Commenting to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the Educational Games Research blog writes in the post PSP Mini-nets Show Small Group Potential:

The possibilities of harnessing the mini-net features of the PSP are striking. Small groups could be set up with the PSP to tackle a project together in an educational game. Excluding other players from the groups would allow a room full of students working on PSPs to organize into teams working on objectives within the game.

This is obviously a very small-scale, artificial (ie, classroom) situation, but it does show the potential of “social” games to help teach, and to help learn.

Dr Rogers persisted thinking, if only he could get one farmer to try it out and then they could influence everyone else. After a time he did find someone to try out the new corn, a hipster dude who wore Bermuda shorts and fancy sunglasses. He enjoyed a bumper crop but the other farmers were unimpressed. This maverick farmer derided their way of life, he was an outsider and there was no way they were going to adopt anything from a Bermuda short wearing weirdo.

The story Shawn is discussing comes from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, which has this to say in regards to the story:

Rogers learned that the first people to latch onto a new idea are unlike the masses in many ways. He called these people innovators. They’re the guys and gals in Bermuda shorts. They tend to be open to new ideas and smarter than average. But here’s the important point. The key to getting the majority of any population to a adopt a vital behavior is to find out who these innovators are and avoid them like the plague. If they embrace your new ideas, it will surely die.

Though I hate to say it, this explains a lot. I don’t know if I buy into it completely, but I think anyone who fits the description of “innovator” given above can probably recount more than one story like this from personal experience. Shawn goes on to say that the recommended approach is to approach “early adopters”, but I must admit I’m not sure I understand the difference between an “early adopter” and “innovator” in this context.

I also can’t help thinking of this in the context of Michele’s recent question in Developing Work Literacies: Who’s the Target Audience? Regardless of whether you stake out your target as the workers themselves or the organization’s leadership, it seems that you should maybe avoid targeting the people who already embrace the concepts of Work Literacy.

Silly me.

Our training vendor politely informed me that the training material was what it was, and it couldn’t be changed after it had been approved. In fact, they seemed shocked that I even brought the idea up, as if it were some sort of training community heresy. I was not, and am not, a “training person” so the attitude was a bit surprising to me.

“What do you mean, you don’t want to make your training product progressively better as you learn more about it” was what was going through my mind. (In fact, I went to my project manager and told him he needed to fire the training vendor we had and get someone who “knew what they were doing.”) I’ve since learned that this was not an isolated incident; on the contrary it seemed to be the standard.

In a post today titled Learning content should be hackable, Harold Jarche makes the case for content developers to take a lesson from what’s going on in the rest of the digital world.

However, there is one principle that is not taught or followed in instructional design that would really reflect the nature of the Web. There should be a principle of making learning content hackable, so that it can change with the times, the needs of instructors or learners. Licenses such as CC-By-NC would allow remixing. Perhaps we need a special “CC-Education Remix” license.

Anyway, if you want your content to live a long, healthy and even diverse life; make it easier to hack.

Good advice for any content developer, but especially for learning content developers.

Knowing a solution is at hand is a huge advantage; it’s like not having a “none of the above” option. Anyone with reasonable competence and adequate resources can solve a puzzle when it is presented as something to be solved. We can skip the subtle evaluations and move directly to plugging in possible solutions until we hit upon a promising one. Uncertainty is far more challenging. Instead of immediately looking for solutions to the crisis, we have to maintain a constant state of asking, “Is there a crisis* forming?”

Solving a puzzle that you know has a solution may require knowledge, but it is knowledge that already exists. Figuring out if there is a solution to a problem, or even if there is a problem at all, requires the manipulation of existing knowledge, the gathering of new knowledge / information, and the creation of something new.

See my earlier post, A conversation on the nature of knowledge work, and the links in that post for more discussion on those ideas.

* In this context, Kasparov explains, “crisis” is not a disaster, as the word is commonly used, but rather a “turning point, a critical moment when the stakes are high and the outcome uncertain.”

/* */

Early in my life, my mentor explained to me the three paths that lead to the creation of knowledge. The analytical path, where philosophers reflect, meditate, and make sense of objects and events; the empirical path, where scientists manipulate variables and conduct controlled experiments to validate reliable principles; and the pragmatic path where practitioners struggle with real-world challenges and come up with strategies for effective and efficient performance.

I think we’ve all been down each of these paths at various times in our lives and careers, the challenge is to understand how these paths intertwine to get us where we are trying to go.

My issue is first that the public school curriculum, as it is implemented, is based on subjects and not processes (e.g. critical thinking; research methods; logic; etc). Secondly, I know from experience that the NB Department of Education does not have a process by which its subject-based curriculum is developed. Basically, a number of “experts” are put in a room for a week and when it’s over they have developed a curriculum. It is a rather black art. There are no first principles on which a subject’s curriculum is based so one cannot go back and determine if the subject is still relevant, if it ever was.

Curriculum, as currently practised, constrains learners, as there is no room for exploration because the teachers must cover what’s on the curriculum. This is the flaw in being subject-based. If education were process-based, then teachers could facilitate learning using a variety of subject areas. Why should I learn about history when I am more interested in art? Can’t I learn critical thinking in either discipline? Such an approach would mean giving up control, and that of course is the real issue.

The emphasis there at the end is mine. This is a recurring theme from the industrial age, which is all about control, that we need to overcome so we can move into the information age.