The Bamboo Project Blog

How Do We Learn in the 21st Century?

Kathy has an interesting post on why the U.S. is falling behind in preparing math and science workers for the future. Her point is that the educational system we've set up doesn't teach people the skills that they actually use as mathematicians, scientists and engineers.  There's a focus on a rote/drill and kill, problem-solving by recipe approach that has nothing to do with the kinds of right-brained, holistic, design and intuition skills that are necessary for true success in the field.

I think that what she has identified is a problem that's applicable to all workers in all fields. As she points out:

Our educational institutions--at every level--need drastic changes or we're all screwed. The generation of students we're turning out today need skills nobody really cared about 50, 40, even 20 years ago. Where we used to prepare students for a "job for life", now we must prepare students to be jobless. We must prepare them to think fast, learn faster, and unlearn even faster("yes, that drug was the appropriate way to treat the XYZ disease, but that was so last week. THIS week we now realize it'll kill you.")

The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.

This is where I think nonprofits need to be thinking differently about how they're preparing their own workforce for the future and how they use technology to do this. Reality is that we need structures in place that support knowledge management and "just-in-time" learning. Speed and adaptability are of the essence. We must be unlearning and re-learning on an almost daily basis. But the question is, how do we do create the right kinds of learning opportunities?

According to Jerry Wind and David Reibstein of the Wharton School of Business, in the new world of work, organizations must adapt their training strategies to:

• Provide learning opportunities that are tailored to the backgrounds, interests, learning styles and motivation of individual learners.

• Create learning that is active, experiential and based on the real-life contexts in which workers will use their skills.

• Use mechanisms for delivering learning that staff can use anytime, anywhere as the need for that learning arises.

So times have changed. How do we adapt? While I think that nonprofits have been at a disadvantage in the training arena for years, this is where Web 2.0 technologies can finally put nonprofits on equal footing with their private sector counterparts.

Tools such as wikis and blogs are now ridiculously inexpensive to access. A Typepad account is $15 a month.  Some wikis can be had for free.

Audio and video options are equally accessible. With a $13 microphone and free recording software, I can create "just-in-time" learning podcasts that can be stored on the web and made easily accessible to staff anytime, anywhere.  Decent video cameras can be had for around $200 and through free video hosting services like YouTube and VideoEgg , I can easily and quickly create simple training/learning videos that can again, be accessible to staff as they need the information.

The real issue that we're dealing with here is the paradigm shift in our thinking about learning that we need to make in order to operate in a world like this. We aren't used to thinking that we could create and share audio and video on a dime. We're not accustomed to the idea of having a wiki where staff could collaboratively create knowledge and problem-solve around their learning needs. We simply have not adjusted to the fact that we must be constantly alert to where learning needs to be happening and then considering how we can use technology tools to provide those learning opportunities as workers need them.

Our other problem is that most nonprofits and their staff have not had experience in designing effective learning experiences. Having grown up in the "drill and kill" days, they don't necessarily have the background and skills to design learning experiences that will have the most impact. But again, this is where Web 2.0 technology can step in.

The community aspects of being able to share and access solid knowledge about training and learning ACROSS nonprofit organizations is a huge opportunity for leverage that we're simply not accessing. Yes, it can be expensive to design good learning for a single organization. But why do we have to design it for just one anyway? Why can't nonprofits create learning consortia that allow them to share knowledge and skill development opportunities among many different agencies? Why, for example, can't they share a "learning consultant" who designs learning experiences and manages the tools for delivering that learning for a group of agencies that share similar skill development needs?

I think there is a lot of untapped potential that is just waiting for us to find it. The challenge we're facing, though, is less about learning the technologies and more about changing our thinking about how we use them.

Michele

How are you the solution to someone's problem?

While reading through Dan's site, I came across a link to Chillcasting, which bills itself as "downloadable solutions for stress." Basically, for a very reasonable price, the site sells mp3 files that you can download to your computer, i-Pod or mp3 player. So when you're feeling stressed, for $6, you can listen to one of several recordings guaranteed to activate your relaxation response.

What struck me about this was the "downloadable solutions" idea. Everyone is about wanting a solution these days, but how often do nonprofits pursue this route as a way to both provide services to and create relationships with their various stakeholders?

When I think about the potential "downloadable solutions" for NPOs, I think of things like:

• For an NPO that serves victims of domestic violence, podcasts that cover issues like how to keep yourself safe or how to talk to your children about what's going on.

• Employment and training organizations might provide brief podcasts on how to answer specific interview questions or how to find job leads.

• Consumer credit counseling agencies could use podcasts to share "tax tips." Or at holiday time, they might have a recording about how to create and stay within your holiday budget.

• The American Diabetes Association might have audio clips on recipe tips or on how to read and interpret food labels.

These are just a few off the top of my head--I think that with a little brainstorming, you could come up with an extensive list of even better options that are more geared to your specific needs.

The process of recording, editing and storing the audio is relatively simple and can be done very inexpensively. For the investment of time and money, I think that there's the potential for powerful impact.

I personally believe that the use of audio and visual media is great, but it has to be done in the right context. Looking at what you have to share in terms of what solutions you have to offer your customers, your staff or your donors is a good place to start.

UPDATE--Just to give an example of what we're talking about here, I did a 5-minute podcast sample  on how to diagnose a job search problem. This is something that could be used by an employment and training program or by any organization that works with people who are trying to find a job.

I'm uploading it to the blog using an embedded player format (see above this update) so that you can just click on the play button and listen to it from you computer. But I could also upload it in a downloadable form so that someone could pull it off the web and into their i-Pod or mp3 player to listen to at some other point when it was more convenient.

I also did a little scouting around to price mp3 players--you can buy a decent one for $40. Now think about getting some to be used by staff to listen to training modules at their leisure. Or having donors "sponsor" an mp3 for clients to use for training, "news you can use," etc. Just some additional thoughts. . .

Michele

Teens & Technology

I do a lot of work with youth employment and training programs. One of my major clients is Job Corps, which operates mostly residential training programs for economically disadvantaged youth all over the country. I've also helped design U.S. DOL-sponsored youth training programs in local areas working with smaller, community-based organizations.

In the years that I've been working with youth programs, I have been consistently saddened by the lack of training in technology that's provided to these kids. There seems to be a pervasive belief that they just need to "learn a trade" because they are not capable of something as "complicated" as technology. It seems enough to these programs for their students to learn how to send e-mail and how to use Word to type a resume. Yet if The World is Flat is to be believed (and I think that it is), this means we are  preparing many of these students for lives of economic hardship because we are failing to equip them with the skills that they need to be successful in a knowledge-based economy.

One of the reasons for this failure, I think is because the staff who work with these students are often themselves not particularly tech savvy. Compounding the problem, I've found, is a need to be "in charge," that for whatever reason seems to be particulary strong when staff are working with disadvantaged youth. Maybe it's the fear that if the staff person isn't in control, the sage on the stage, then the kids are going to take over the class. Or maybe it's a feeling that these kids can't have much to bring to the table. I'm not sure. What I do know is that they are not getting the same education and advantages that their suburban peers enjoy.

I thought of the issue this morning as I was doing some surfing and stumbled across this great project just started by Jeff Scorer.  Jeff has  launched Teentek with a group of 19 middle school students to explore the use of new media by having students talk about cool technology using Web 2.0 tools.  As he wrote last year when he was considering the idea:

"The class would consist of everything 2.0. Really bring all these new tools into the hands of the students and let them experiment with them. At this point I envision a blog with a title Tech for Teens or something like that. The students would create podcasts about technology tools, do how to screencasts for teens, talk about research skills  and other sites besides Google to use for researching homework. I would love to have a weekly video podcast doing like a CNET style review of the latest teen gadgets. The new cell phone, the new mp3 player, or the hottest new online game."

The project is now up at TeenTek and based on what Jeff has found, his kids are loving it. I think that, in part, it's because he's teaching them what he calls 21st century skills--how to USE the technology in ways that are meaningful for a new world:

"Skills like learning to comment appropriately. Writing for a worldly audience, producing content for others to use. We talked about how students will respect information if you give them the power to “own” the information. When you hand the power of information over to students and you have the discussions that come with the power of information you eliminate a lot of your problems."

For most of us, technology is a vehicle for expressing yourself, which is something all young people want and understand. Creating opportunities for them to learn technology, information gathering, writing, speaking, etc. in the context of exploring what interests them offers real opportunities for both teachers and students that I find are often lost on many of the youth programs with which I work. They're so focused on teaching kids a "trade," that they lose sight of the more global skills of thinking, problem-solving, communicating, etc. that would actually move these disadvantaged youth to a better life.

I know that there are programs that do focus on these skills, but there aren't enough of them. I also believe that there are ways to integrate these ideas into every youth program that are not being explored.

Several years ago I was working with Lehigh University on a project and we pitched the idea of running a summer youth program on careers where we would have young people assess their interests, values, etc. and then identify careers that interested them. They would then go out and produce some kind of product--a newsletter using desktop publishing software, a website, a video--to research the career from their perspective and to share what they'd learned. Sadly, we didn't get funding for it, but it's something that I think is even more viable with today's technology.

It used to be that cost was the limiting factor, but when you can get a digital camera  or microphone for less than $100, a digital video camera for less than $300, a laptop for less than $1,000 and you can store and share your creations for free or a pittance, cost should be much less of an issue. At this point I think the barriers are human--a lack of vision, lack of staff skills and an unwillingness to move out of traditional ways of teaching these young people. Even more than that, I'm afraid that there's a sense that these youth simply are not capable of learning these skills because if they don't have a high school diploma, how can we expect them to learn how to use a camera?

I think this is shortsighted thinking, having found that these kids are DYING for a reason to learn. A few years ago I designed a Job Corps program using the technology they have--PowerPoint--where students had to produce a presentation on the career they were considering. They had to present their career and were videotaped doing it. Next to the social entrepreneurship program we designed for them (a story for another day), this was their absolute favorite project. We had kids who, within a week, went from knowing NOTHING about PowerPoint to embedding audio and video and using all the slide transitions they could find. Not always the PRETTIEST work (a slight sense of nausea was an occupational hazard as we watched some of these), but the kids were expressing themselves in ways they never had, and learning technology in a flash. And they LOVED to share the video--the looks on their faces when they saw what they had produced brought us close to tears on many occasions.

Why don't we do more to tap into what they love, using that as an opportunity to learn these kinds of skills? I'd love to see a youth program that was teaching young people how to write their own blogs or do their own podcasting. Or a summer program where they designed their own vidoe game. Think about how cool that would be and for once, I don't think you'd have to pay kids some kind of incentive to show up every day to the program.

So a very long post to say this--I think that technology offers some amazing opportunities for all of us, but in particular I think that we should be doing more to use Web 2.0 tools with the young people in our programs. I know that many non-profits are serving youth and I wonder how they're using these new technologies to expand young people's skills and equip them with the skills of the 21st century. I'd love to do more with this, as it's one of those things that's near and dear and I can't seem to find enough organizations willing to travel the road with me.

Photo courtesy of Circulating