Serendipity and Learning

I am a huge fan of the Design Thinking Methodology of Stanford dschool. So, I was mighty thrilled to see that their website has kind of made all this information available online as an 'open source cookbook'. Having done this a couple of times before, it was a familiar process, but to have the site as a ready reckoner was useful. So I got all the materials done, printed and it all worked like a dream. The one thing which I faced an 'issue' was the understanding of 'empathy' by my audience. It took me a little while to figure that one out - but I know how I will do it in my next session. So, thanks D School for putting this out for people to use...

The topic of learning from the internet or learning in the internet era fascinates me. As mobile connectivity goes up, facts are on our fingertip - more and more. This is one aspect - so as we travel to say, historical places, our facts are on our fingertips. Recently, we had the opportunity to visit a few historical places. As we went from place to place, we had all the facts on our fingertip - including directions, history, names and so on. There is much more potential that can be exploited here I think. That is one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is the long tail of the internet. The fact that you have the internet, makes it easy for you to reach out to experts in almost anything - however obscure. And that is the power of the internet. Take for example - paper planes. When I grew up, I depended on cousins, friends and parents to learn about a design of paper planes. All in all, I knew about 5 designs. Until I stumbled upon a book in a friends place that had a few more....