You go Harold! The Battle Cry of the New Learning Professional - Give Me Relevance or Give Me....

...some other occupation where I can make a difference! (I tried to find a good Patrick Henry pic but the Napoleon just worked). I love this post by Harold Jarche. He is dead-on here:

"The challenge for learning professionals will be to change their toolsets from prescriptive to upportive. For instance, in our informl learning unworkshops we’re trying to foster a community with the tools and connections needed to address that essential 80% of learning that is ignored by formal training and education. I really do not believe that formal approaches, like instructional systems design, will be able to help these learning needs."

Harold talks about the subversive nature of the Internet and democracy but I think it goes even further...I  think we barely understand the degree of subversion that is happening both in the marketplace and in the world at large. Look at new companies like Nuvvo and nano learning - the people heading up these efforts have experience but they aren't out of any of the big name places that you'd think they'd come from - not from entrenched e-learning vendors. But here they are - making tools and creating business models that have nothing to do with the "way things have always been done." We haven't even begun to look under the water and the rest of the iceberg either (a useful analogy as long as icebergs remain) and see what is going on as it relates to informal learning. Understand this - people are learning, they create their own ways and theor own methodologies and the tools they have access to are now almost every bit as powerful as the tools that the big e-learning companies have.

Here is another favorite quote of mine from Harold's post:

"As a learning professional, it’s time to take a stance. Enabling learning is no longer about disseminating good content. Enabling learning is about being a learner yourself, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm and then taking a back seat. In a flattened learning system there are no more experts, only fellow learners on paths that may cross."

VIVE LA REVOLUCION! VIVE LA HAROLD!

Comments

[mark oehlert]

First - let's not go bringing up 1812 - things have settled down nicely and I don't want 'em starting back up!
Second - Doh! The Che Guevera thing would have been good - maybe I'll start a series of you as different revolutionaries....I'll have to copyright you of course.
Third - that anti-net neutrality argument is just a joke - we're all of a sudden supposed to trust these people? C'mon.
Fourth - there is a serious point here - I do believe that people have to start posting revolutionary thoughts for there to eventually be change - all progress came from someone who was dissatisfied right?

Good show HJ!

[Harold Jarche]

Ah shucks, and I even signed up for a typekey account just so I could post a comment. However, I would have preferred a good Canadian military hero. How about Isaac Brock? Oops, he defeated the American forces during the War of 1812 ;-)

Maybe Che Guevera instead? That's probably more suitable for us learning revolutionaries (little pay & lots of battles ahead). I think that your attack of the telcos on Net neutrality will get you branded a revolutionary too. Go get 'em Mark!