Rewriting Paradigms

Use of Expert Stories Expert stories are used in a number of ways in the development of training and performance support content. An expert story might provide the basis for the learning design, as a foundation from which objectives are extrapolated and around which the training content is presented. This is frequently the way most training design begins. Sometimes this is referred to as the “brain dump” in situations where the expert shares what s/he knows and the learning d

Designs2Learn: Can you provide a quick snapshot of e-collaborate for our audience? Naina Boveja: e-collaborate started in 2010 with the idea of connecting classrooms and communities globally. We developed programs in clean drinking water for the K-12 audience.  Since then, we have spent a lot of time working on a Virtual Internship Program that connects high school students to non-profits across the globe for the purposes of learning empathy, career readiness skills and socia

A Very Brief Overview John Holt, teacher and writer, is credited with coining the phrase “unschooling” to refer quite simply to “learning without going to school.” Holt’s many works detail his belief that children should learn according to their own curiosity and interests, that they spend more time out of school, and that they learn from a larger circle of teachers, including from their own peers. Holt had six years’ experience teaching in the fifth grade before he “dropped

This powerful image, called “At School,” first appeared in a series called “France in the Year 2000,” postcards created for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. In this prescient series, artists imagined what life would be like in the year 2000. The series is posted to The Public Domain Review, and I first saw it via a link from the innovative folks at Rise Out. What is so interesting about the series is how insightful some of the concepts were in envisioning how technology wo

As corporations and educational institutions either exult in or struggle with the evolution of learning, debates continue to rage over the myriad of technologies available to achieving success. According to Bersin by Deloitte, annual spends on learning are back to pre-2008 levels. Brandon Hall is reminding us to connect learning to organizational goals. Watch your KPIs! There is much to sort through. At the end of the day, one change in perspective is going to make all the d

(Or "Can College Prepare You for Real Life?") Last spring, I took a road trip with my then sixteen-year-old as we visited five colleges in six days. We drove a huge loop, traveling nearly 800 miles in total, heading northwest from New York City, where we live, stopping in Ithaca, Syracuse, Bennington, Boston, and western Connecticut. It's an annual rite of passage for thousands of families, and for someone in my line of work, one that brought into very sharp focus much of wha

Many of you are already familiar with Tracy Kidder’s work through “Among Schoolchildren,” and many may know of Paul Farmer through either Kidder’s work or Farmer’s own writings. Kidder is a world-class storyteller, and Farmer a medical practitioner and anthropologist whose quest for social justice is nearly impossible to replicate, but whose example is inspiration to at least try. Farmer is an out-of-the-box kind of guy not only because he spent part of his childhood living i

My initial query into her approach centered on how closely she had read the assigned material for a particular class. The assignment consisted of reading the assigned book and locating at least five sources to substantiate responses to a number of questions on key points of the book. Some potential resources were recommended for the outside sources but not much else in the way of methodology or support for completing the assignment. In the process of completing the assignment