Best Buy, a renown electronics retailer perhaps better known for its khaki pants and blue shirt dress code, could be viewed analagously with that of an evolved corporate learning structure. Imagine that you’re at one of their corporate stores. What do you see when you enter the store? There she/he is, the greeter: “Hello sir, how are you today?” As you pass the greeter in this vivid, brightly lit and humming environment there are a number of learning sherpas … the guides on the side not pestering you to buy something, rather, able and available when you require assistance. There are no commissions at Best Buy to make a sale. Employees are there, quite literally, to help you as necessary. Sure, it’s a formal environment with walls, electricity and so on, but it is
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Whether you work for a private family-owned business, a publicly traded corporation or in the kindergarten-to-higher-education continuum somewhere, you’re going to have to define learning – whether it’s for your employees, colleagues or students. So let’s examine the “so what” learning definition – meaning why learning is present in organizations. As 2012 creeps along, the so-what of learning remains undefined for many employees and organizations, which is causing a disservice. If learning departments aren’t defining this, learning will remain thought of as training, and training will forever continue to be associated with a classroom- or e-learning-only modality. Worse, splinter groups will form, their own definitions of learning will surface and, tragically, learning fiefdoms will become the norm. As a consequence, definitions will be everywhere and
Rest assured, I am not against The Khan Academy … at least not entirely. There are several reasons to celebrate what its founder, Sal Khan, and the team have done: A discussion about ‘flipping the classroom’ (as the Economist helped point out) has become mainstream, if not a healthy obsession Outlets such as TED, Charlie Rose and even Stephen Colbert have helped push the topic of education reform to the masses by interviewing or showcasing Sal Khan Videos and learning have become an essential component of the learning cycle; as opposed to some form of babysitting tool. See this short video for an example Even vendors like Cisco are producing white papers outlining the benefits of video in education Where I take umbrage with The
For those that know me well, I’m a proud papa to three young goats aged 8, 6 and 4. My beloved is also in the education ranks (we met in Montreal through our B.Ed program at McGill University) so our goats have little choice in the matter of an all-education smorgasbord upbringing. The goats may end up demented, but that’s another story. I’ve got a story to share for any education institution at any level out there that believes learning isn’t part formal, informal and social. This past Sunday, around 3:30pm in the afternoon, the 8 year-old cracks open a formal learning asset (a book on science experiments) and shouts, “Hey Cate, let’s do an experiment.” Cate is the precocious 4 year-old. Claire, the 8