Get Off the Download
/"Get off the download" is one of my daughter’s new phrases this week. I am not exactly sure what it means but I do know that if she wasn’t 5 years old and giggling when she said it, I wouldn’t be laughing. She is learning. She is learning from her kindergarten teacher and from us, her parents. She is learning from her peers outside the kindergarten classroom as she talks by her locker. She is learning as she rides the bus and she is learning as she walks the gauntlet past the scary first, second and third graders. She is learning as she plays and as she jams in the living room to Jennifer Nettles and Sugarland.
"The source of knowledge is not a class but rather a conversation with a colleague down the hall with exactly the right experience."
This quote was presented in the Human Capital Institute web based seminar, "Collaborative Learning Technologies: Wikis, Blogs and More, Oh My!" The seminar presented information on the technology and tools to support collaborative learning. The presenters addressed the significant shifts occurring in learning. Learning is increasingly flat and informal; it is peer to peer; it is collaborative, connected and collective; and learning is being driven by individuals, not organizations.
The thrust behind Web 2.0 is capturing and exchanging knowledge that is created or shared informally. Why is this important? With a larger portion of my workforce eligible to retire right now, we are on the verge of losing many, many years of organizational knowledge. All the procedure manuals in the world are not going to be able to fill the gap of the lessons learned from experience. That knowledge base is being built on a daily basis and each day that goes by without that being captured, reflected upon and shared, we are missing an incredible opportunity for the future.
The presenters highlighted many shifts and the two that resonate with me are the shifts from training delivery to information delivery and from expert instructors to experts discovered. Experts discovered, I like that. How many employees, if given the opportunity, would step onto the field and shine? Who would it be? Aren’t you curious? I am!
Web 1.0? That is so yesterday!
