Serendipity and Learning

Some weeks back we were working on an exercise. The discussion was a very useful one. Between us, those who would design the exercise, we were discussing what the customer wants - preferences, working styles, current need and so on and so forth. As we were discussing this, we realized that the customer wants something different from what we have currently (and that is no surprise). Our current offering was too time consuming for him and he did not have the patience for that kind of an exercise. However, we still had to offer that service for the benefit of the other members in the team - and as part of the hygiene factor of the exercise. What did we do? We came up with an alternate way of doing the same thing - that would get us there - without the rigmarole (the customer) associated with our original textbook approach. With a bonus, it tied in neatly with what the customer wanted out of this particular exercise. We spoke about stated and unstated needs and inside in and outside i...

Stumbled upon this beautiful representation of the solar system . It is quite difficult to explain the size of the solar system - it is clearly beyond comprehension for most ordinary people - leave alone kids. This beautiful representation shows how to make it comprehensible. Things like this make one go a-ha. The best thumbrule for most ideas is "Why did I not think of that" and this one gets there, by a mile.

Millennials, millennials, millennials. Millennials are the new black sometimes it seems in the human resources world. Every discussion is about how to accommodate them in the workforce, how managers need to change for the millennials and how to change learning strategies for them – to name just a few. So, in order to keep with the neighbours I read up a little .  Clearly, as in almost any human behavior trait description, there is no one size fits all. But my primary thought that was that really, Millennials, like many other sociological archetypes is a state of mind as well. Especially as seen from an Indian perspective. While technology may play a part, the state of mind is independent of technology. It may also be a ‘confirmation bias’ in a need to be seen as ‘millennial’. Maybe I am confused with my own understanding (read the traits and values in the above link), but the more I think of it, the more I think it is as much a sociological trait drive...

One of the things I do to keep up with the Learning and Education space is look through apps on the iOS store. This has become a side hobby with people walking up to me and asking what is the new app that you are looking at these days. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon Dragonbox , an app that teaches equations to children without them knowing that they are into solving equations. I was intrigued and let the little one on it. And sure enough over a few weeks, I saw her solve these equations with remarkable speed and awareness - not knowing that she was solving equations. The game is all about isolating a box using some permutations and combinations - it uses dragons and other beings at the start and slowly, it morphs into numbers and alphabets. But the app is creative - to get children to solve equations - and it is worth a dekko for all of us who sometimes claim that things cannot be simplified and there is no other way to learn certain things than by some 'tried and tested...