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Monday, February 26, 2007

The future of learning is DIY

Harold Jarche tells us - The future of learning is DIY (Do It Yourself) and points to:
With Google you can find most information that you need. YouTube is a quick and easy way to get “learning objects” to the world. Apple gives the essential tools for knowlege workers, and in a nice package. Wikipedia has shown that the wisdom of crowds is just as good as the wisdom of elites. Starbucks gives free-agents and road warriors a place to meet and work. These top brands provide the equivalent of the interstate highway system for the creative age.

He concludes with:
If you’re in the learning business, don’t try to build another LMS or portal. Instead, figure out ways that enable DIY. Believe it or not, learners can, and will, do the rest. They already are.

Well said Harold. And, as you know, I've been asking us to think about how we can help enable, support, teach DIY learning (personal learning - as I call it). And I still strongly believe we need to learn how to learn better ourselves first. So, it sounds like the question is figuring out ways that enable DIY learning.

5 comments:

Harold Jarche said...

You know, Tony, the more I play with this stuff and help others, the more I see blogs as "the" core tool. Blogs are personal, and so is learning. Add-in RSS, aggregators and social bookmarks and you have the basic toolset. Getting people comfortable with these three tools is the start to DIY learning on the Web.

I think that there is a great thirst for the kind of presentation that you gave at TK2007. A decade ago we didn't have cheap and plentiful tools to create a personal knowledge management system. Now we do; but many people don't know where to start.

Being able to filter and assess multiple sources of information and then make personal impressions visible on a blog is a huge leap from listening to the "sage on the stage". Back-channel learning skills are required in all fields, and I think that there is a huge need to just take folks by the hand and show them the way.

Anonymous said...

Tony:

You mention Portals. Are you aware of any "content sharing" portals that allow LMS users of any ilk, to share and download training programs. In either a open free environment, or a paid e-commerce enabled one?

Thanks

Tom,,interest in imformal learning (PLE&PKM etc) based on Web2.0 said...

Hello everyone.I come from china,I agree what Harold Jarche said greatly.
Web2.0 bring us many software tools,just as BLOG,RSS,bookmarks etc.we can improve our study through the tools, and we want more and more people can know how to do,how to use. We want everybody has a "comfortable" personal learning environment (PLE).

MY BLOG URL: http://blog.cersp.com/68382.aspx

AND I have translated the article "The future of learning is DIY " into chinese.

Anonymous said...

'personal learning' or DIY - either way, we're keeping our fingers crossed that Harold's right. I very much feel that the future of education (well, online education) is interactivity & user provided quality learning...shared.

Unknown said...

I agree with Tony. I was in the learning and development industry for awhile and we would asses the needs of our learners and unfortuntatly most of the deliverables we created were in the form of CBT's or job aids.

Tools such as youtube, google, wikipedia, are tools that are currently successfully being used in online for adults to learn various things. If we could somehow duplicate this method of learning in the business environment I think we would see a higher level of engagement with employees.