Serendipity and Learning

 Future of L&D only, nothing more.  What will never change for employees? (Inspired the book Same as ever - by Morgan Housel )  Employees will want to learn - to grow, to deepen expertise, to stretch, to prove a point - many "humann" reasons. Employees will want to grow - laterally, vertically, monetarily, mentally etc etc. Almost always, growth will be accompanied by learning and many a time learning will be a pre-requisite to growth.  Learning will always be required - the mode might change, but learning will be required.  Multiple modes of learning will co-exist Whatever else happens, Human intelligence will need to be sharpened. Call it soft skills or call it real skills (I love this term), this will always need to be sharpened. And then there is raw intelligence, visioning, strategising - another set of skills. Every willing to be sharpened by technological aids.  So learning, growth, human skills will always be valuable.  Now within real ski...

 Like Cinema, Sports and possibly Restaurants,  the Learning industry thrived in getting people together under one roof. I say, was with intent.  A few years ago, 2 day and 3 day training were the norm. Over the years, it had shortened to a day or half a day. Or a somewhere in between - 6 hours. This was pre-Covid. What will learning look like in a post Covid world?  For one, all of us, virtual workshop naysayers have moved to virtual.  ( Read here ) 1. The duration of training is a maximum of 4 hours. Though I did attend a fantastic 4 day workshop ( details here ). But of late, much of the work I have done is for under 4 hours, often 2 hours. So, 8 hour workshops are dead forever.  2. More importantly, while we have started using tools like Mentimeter - the interface of these tools is still clunky - so expecting that to improve.  3. I also feel simulation led learning will be a game changer in these times. Because simulations accelerate the learning p...

Kids learn by themselves. Especially when there is youtube. Earlier, we used to learn a board games instructions by reading through the instruction manual, playing and by trial and error. It was a little difficult and took us quite a few tries. Nowadays, the kids teach us the rules. They watch youtube where a gamer duly takes us through the rules and often addresses "between the lines" doubts. And what is surprising is that this is a way faster process. Welcome to the age of the autodidact... Recent skills learnt - Coding in python, decoupage, Arduino, Making slime etc etc. Earlier posts on Autodidacts: Here , here and here . 

Now, if the future is uncertain (as it always is) - where does that leave us? Our children? What does that mean for us - as we think of developing the right skills for children? Here is my thought. As much as the future changes and in whichever direction, some basic things wont change. The fact is that nothing can be achieved by Effort. Discipline. Building these skills are very important. To know that effort has its rewards - not in a material sense - but in the joy of learning and becoming 'good' at something for the sake of it. It is good to try out many things - but being a jack of all trades is not good enough. One needs to master at atleast 1 or 2 things. That means conceptual clarity - clarity which comes with years of education, trial and error - is important. Having had the above conceptual clarity - how much can you step out of it and view the world that you know well and break those rules - that is innovation. Whatever else you have or do not have - in...

At a recent discussion between friends - we wondered how the world is changing and how we cannot, ever, predict which way the future will go. (That was quite obvious, was it not). Will the future belong to technology - as much as the temptation is to say yes, it will - a friend gave a different perspective - of how a coffee costs as much as a well engineered electrical plug and wondered if, as technology automates everything - what will humans contribute in the future? And if technical skill - valued as it is - becomes more and more commoditised what does that mean? Will the future belong to the arts? Or to science? Or a mix of everything? Is the future one modeled on consumption the only way to go? Or is there a more, self sufficient manner of living - like in the ancient times. Where each craftsman worked on her craft, provided for a community and made a living. Where there was no rush to grow, where greed did not fuel the next step, where an increment was not expected next ...

It is indeed the age of the autodidact and the world is filled with Ekalavyas . It is fascinating to see how they learn - especially on the things that they are motivated about. There is new fad called the Rainbow Loom that has somewhat taken the kids by storm. This involves making things using special rubber bands which are I think specially manufactured for this purpose. (I say that, because the rubber bands are better in quality than the cheap ones we are used to and have some designs on it - among other things). There is an entire body of knowledge on the internet on the design of these bands. It has its own jargon - with names for the design. There are a million youtube videos from which they learn. The process is also fueled by somewhat of a social component. The kids talk and show each other the newest designs they have learnt to make and they come home and try out new stuff. All in all it fuels a vicious cycle of learning and creativity. This is the nature of learning ...

There is a rich debate on as to whether a MOOC will revolutionize the learning industry. One side is the argument that is open, free, allows learning at your own time and if well built, it can enable peer to peer learning, reviews and suchlike. All in all, a great tool. No doubt about it. And thus I enrolled in the the Stanford V-Lab course. It seemed to start off well, but then one weekend (when I was supposed to finish my assignment) I was too tied up. And I did manage to write the assignment, but did not click the 'submit' button. So it stayed, in that un submitted state. That was one strike against me. And I did not want to be a student who did not submit an assignment. So, I stopped. Thus, I can relate to many a well-intentioned person who might have joined the course, but dropped off. Now, drop outs are quite common. From my own experience, many of these 'correspondence' classes like the Brilliant IIT tutorials and distance learning classes are littered with d...

One of the earliest memories I have of reading is the fresh smell of the newspaper - delivered each day at the crack of dawn. When I was a little boy, I used to spread the newspaper on the ground and read it. I could never get comprehend how appa and the big people could read it holding the newspaper up - it was just too big for my little arms. From the floor, I graduated to reading it on a table and then finally I could read the newspaper like my father could. In between, I realized why tabloids were so easy on the arms and shoulders - and that was an interim step. The newspaper made my day - each day - for the past many many years. During my travels - I found it so difficult to not have access to a newspaper. And for a long time, I would come home and read all the newspapers of the time I was away. Especially after our summer vacations in Kerala - I have read through newspapers for a month.  When I woke up early to study, the newspaper's arrival was a good time ...

Recently, I travelled on work. As part of work, I had to lug a laptop along. And I wondered if I should carry a tablet device as well while at it. After a bit of thought of carrying two devices through airport security, I decided against it and settled just for my phone. Now my phone is a smartphone - with wifi access even in airplane mode (yes, I am not rich enough to afford international roaming). And my laptop takes about the duration of one ice age to boot - among other things. So, through the duration of the travel, I used my phone for everything - mail, twitter, skype, reading stuff - which I would have used a tablet device. Sure, it makes for better reading etc., but other than that, the phone works just as well. And that set me thinking. The tablet is perhaps an overrated device - since one cannot do without a phone. Therefore, a phone does all what a tablet can do is much better than the other way round. So, is a mini-tablet the way of the future?

Push cars is one of the new game app on the Apple Store. We downloaded this quite by chance. It takes off where "Unblock me" (video above) and its parking counterpart (same game using cars) left. Myself and the little one have been playing this with gusto for the past few weeks (except somewhere during the iOS5 upgrade, the game went kaput). There are versions of physical unblock mes available - and are used quite widely in schools as part of their co-curricular (usually paid separately) activities. Where push cars scores is making the whole damn thing so mobile, and just so simple. The bad cars have to crash while the good cars have to escape. Every city introduces a new car (good or bad) with slightly complex features and keeping it all in mind, one has to ensure that the good cars escape and the bad cars crash. The levels are not simple. And require quite a bit of contrarian thinking to make it work. And yes, they are far better than mindless single person sho...