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Kevin expressed mixed feelings about talent management being the new flavor of the month, given that he’s been talking about it for years! Kevin characterized Talent Management as recruitment, development, and performance, with lots of components under each one. All the activities that accrue around the workforce qualifies, really.

I recognized that the performance ecosystem really deals with development and performance, and hasn’t been about recruitment, though there could and should be an ongoing process identifying new competencies and new needs in professional capabilities. Part of the knowledge work itself may be identifying needed competencies, and a management concern may well be whether to acquire that need temporarily or permanently.

I asked how his model adapted to the increasing changes in competencies with what I foresee as increasing change and decreasing stability in job roles, and he discussed how there’re really two workforces: the core who does the knowledge or concept work, and the rest still doing the mainstream work that could potentially be automated (though that’s a longer term trend, not happening as fast as could be for reasons economic and political). He also suggested that the competencies are shifting from specific skills to more general capabilities, e.g. not knowing a particular programming language, but instead knowing software engineering and having an ability to learn new languages quickly.

Our conversation roamed across the switch in competencies from being compliant and doing what you’re told to being able to deal with ambiguity and solving problems, even questioning authority. Ah, meta-learning. Too bad schools are still working on the old model! Societally, we thought about those folks who prefer to have a simple, predictable job (the majority?) that allows them the freedom to pursue their passions, versus those (the creative class, Kevin termed them) who live to create, design, engineer, the ones who advance our understanding and our lives. There are different roles and needs, and organizations have to adjust to that.

Kevin also proposed that the shift to small and nimble organizations is a pendulum shift that’s been seen before, and that there will be a subsequent shift back; that other paradigm shifts (e.g. agricultural to industrial) had similar dynamics. Food for thought: will the networked era evolve to larger and relatively stable organizations, or is change and the need for nimbleness going to be persistent?

It did appear that at least for the near term, organizations have to balance their investment across maintaining the necessary administrative and support functions, but new investment really should be on those activities that enable new work. Either society needs to slow down (which isn’t an awful thought), or companies are going to have to be able to adapt and innovate for survival, not just execute against a fixed plan.

And that’s where I think the opportunities to improve are. We know a lot about learning and innovation, but we’re not practicing them in the organization. That’s an understanding I’m trying to help develop, and then execute against. On that, I believe Kevin and I are in agreement. A public thanks to him, and a reflection that great conversations are one of the best tools of learning!

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One of the mistakes I see is ‘cookie cutter’ instructional design. I’ve rarely found an elearning course that wasn’t flawed, and there has typically been a reliable pattern in execution that can be remedied fairly systematically with a straightforward approach. I wrote the whole ‘broken ID‘ blog series around it, but that was at the very specific design level. At the organizational level, what’s a firm to do? It’s about updating the design team understanding (workshop) and reviewing the design process (templates). It may also take a stronger attitude with stakeholders about meaningful outcomes (strategy update).

Another mistake I see is a limited technology repertoire. Many organizations are ignoring the opportunities afforded by the proliferation of mobile devices. Folks have them, but organizations aren’t capitalizing, and for the wrong reasons. Sure, the different platforms have different standards, but this is more a barrier at the top end, not the entry level (and those problems are going away as certain areas are getting easier). There are some low-hanging fruit at the ‘making existing material available’ and at the ‘easy development of custom application’ levels. Taking the time to develop a mobile strategy is a small investment with a potentially large payoff.

A further mistake is not recognizing the need for organizations to go beyond formal training and deliberately start supporting informal learning. With training budgets shrinking, it just amazes me how many units are still taking the ‘we do courses’ approach and missing out on the bigger picture. With my TogetherLearn colleagues, we’ve been on about this, and again, the development of a social media infrastructure is relatively low-cost, and while it takes some time again the payoff for the organization can be huge. Figuring out an approach that suits your current situation and infrastructure is another big opportunity.

Beyond these steps, there are organizations still developing content without consideration of the underlying content model and the opportunities. Not developing content in a delivery-independent framework is a missed opportunity both for now and the future. The development redundancies in most organizations is a real potential opportunity for savings in efficiency, and the possibility in relatively advanced organizations to start using business rules to do personalization and mass-customization is hard to fathom.

The list goes on. I’m not saying you need to do all of them today, but taking the right next step for your organization, and realizing that wherever you are, there are low-cost, high-return possibilities available, should be something you are thinking about. Whether you take one on, tactically, or step back and make a plan whereby you figure out what your next steps are going to be, in order, you should be thinking ahead. Status quo is definitely threatened, I think, and therefore I encourage you to be considering how you’re going to be in a continual improvement loop. Time’s a wasting!

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I just learned, from the ThinkQuest website, why we have such a difficult time appropriately funding education.  No surprises here, but it’s a Chinese proverb that I was not aware of.

“If you are thinking a year ahead – plant seeds;
If you are thinking 10 years ahead – plant a tree;
If you are thinking 100 years ahead – educate the people “

When was the last time anyone you know was thinking a hundred years ahead?  When was the last time you saw somebody do something a hundred years in mind? 

I can think of no one more in need of thinking ahead than teachers — and those who empower teachers.

Some how, the outreach folks with the House Committee on Education & Labor have found me and have been forwarding information related to the issues they are considering.  Yesterday, they sent the following web links related to Secretary Duncan’s testimony before the committee.  I have only watched Chairman Honorable George Miller’s opening remarks, but plan to sneak in as much of the rest today and tomorrow.  Well, that and finish preparing for tomorrow morning’s virtual keynote for the Webheads.

• The hearing page with written testimony – I actually couldn’t find the full testimony here.  So if you see it, please comment.
• Flickr Photos
• Videos:
  • Chairman Miller’s Opening Statement
  • Sec. Duncan’s Entire Opening Statement
  • Sec. Duncan’s statement on seclusion and restraint
  • Sec. Duncan’s answers regarding FFEL and DL¹

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1. Kruger, Mike. “Sec Duncan’s testimony in front of Ed & Labor Cmte.” E-mail to David Warlick. E-mail.20 May 2009.

I’m still at Oracle, but they’ve given us a break.  So I opened up my RSS Reader and the first thing in the list is the WIRED Gadget Lab article, a Building Guide: How to Choose an eBook Reader.  I won’t be buying one anytime soon, but I know that they have increased in popularity over the last many months.  As the article opens…

E-books are the ‘it’ gadget of the year. But picking an e-book reader is more difficult than choosing a brand of cereal or a bottle of shampoo. Every other week, a new reader is gussied up in the factories of Taiwan, ready to make its debut. At last count, we estimated at least 12 different e-book readers on the market or close to release.

A matrix for comparison is also linked from the article.

So if this is something you’ve been lusting for, this Gadget Lab report may be helpful.

A little more sleep and a little less cramming may be in store for students next year if lawmakers decide to get rid of some standardized tests.

Flickr Photo by Lauren Brown

That’s the opening line of a 27 May Raleigh News & Observer story, Student Testing Might be Reduced.  Our new governor, Beverly Perdue, recently proposed that the legislature “dump” all state tests that are not required for high school graduation or by federal law.

According to the article, the NC Senate proposes that five high school subject area tests would go — Algebra II, geometry, chemistry, physics, and physical science.  These are subjects that are not required for graduation.  U.S. History stays, since all NC high school students are required to take that subject (not world history, an issue of recent discusson with some Canadian educator friends).

I’m sorry that U.S. History will continue to be tested.  I suspect that it is one of the main reasons that my daughter decided not to become a history teacher.  She wanted to teach history, not prepare teenagers for a test.  She said that they were not the same thing.

Also to be “dumped” is our state’s Computer Skills Test.  To my knowledge, North Carolina was the first state to mandate testing of computer skills and to tie high school graduation to the passage of that test. 

I never liked the test.  I like to say that it was when the state announced the required computer skills test that I left the agency.  But it was purely coincidence. 

There are two reasons why I disliked the test. 

1. Middle school computers became monopolized by efforts to prepare students for the test, rather than making authentic use of the technology for learning.
2. Though they did a descent job with the test itself, including both knowledge and performance skills, I suspect that most technologists employed in Research Triangle Park, just north of Raleigh, would have failed the test.  Solving problems with computers is about inventing solutions, not memorizing them.

The plus side of the test was that school boards and superintendents bought a lot of computers for their middles schools and kept buying them.  My hope is that we are reaching a tipping point where learning in our schools in the 21st century is best and most reasonably done with networked, digital, and abundant content.

Read the article for more on the debate.  But Angela Quick, the deputy academic officer for the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is quoted as saying,

In an era when students will be competing with people around the world for jobs in science, technology and engineering, it makes sense to know how much students have learned about those subjectsuty chief academic officer of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is quoted as saying.

Another state education official said,

The tests help standardize the statewide curriculum and make sure students are taught the same material no matter where they go to school.

I have no real objection to either of these statements except for what I have often say.  In a time of rapid change, the value that we bring to our endeavors will not come so much from what we know that is the same as other people.  It will come from what we know and how we think that is different.  We have to ensure that all students graduate with a common context for their world and their future.  But it is just as important that our graduates are able to resourcefully make themselves experts, and be able to adapt and innovate.

I am at the Games for Change conference (festival) in New York.  I’m not sure if I’m uptown or downtown.  It’s on 12th street, just east of 5th avenue, at The New School of Design.  It’s a small/compact conference with lots of people who care.  Games for Learning is about designing and using video games as a force for social change.  It’s an area that I know little about, except conceptually, since I don’t really play video games.  I’m here to learn, and the opening keynote certainly offered lots of opportunities for that.

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, has writing extensively about social change, apparently focusing most recently on Darfur.  He made some interesting points about communication, that Toothpaste companies do a better job of selling ideas than most humanitarians.  He said that large numbers simply do not do the job, that the human brain isn’t wired to handle large numbers.  As we evolved, we were seldom surrounded by anything exceeding a dozen in quantity.  “Six people starving is a tragedy.  A million people starving is a statistic.”

He told about a middle school in the Bronx, where the plight of Darfur had become an integral part of the culture of the school — because of the video game, Darfur is Dying.  Incidentally, two of the developers of the game were in the audience.  He said that they school sent him an invitation to come and speak by sending him to a web page URL: dearmrkristof.com.

He said that the struggle that defined the 19th century was irradicating slavery.  Of the 20th century, it was defeating totalitarianism.  He suggests that gender inequity in the developing world will define the 21st century.

The next session was about Pew’s recent report on teenagers, video games, and civic involvement.  Joseph Kahne listed five myths about video games:

• Video games are violent.  There are violent video games, but teenagers, in truth, are playing all kinds of video games.
• Many boys play only violent games. In truth, most youth play many genres of games, especially boys.
  
• Game Play isolates you. 65% reported that they play in the presence of others and 27% reported that they play online, collaboratively with others.
• The Game defines the experience.  Not true.  Many games offer huge opportunities for differentiation of the game experience.  My son got bored with Halo in a couple of weeks.  So he and his friends started inventing their own games to play in the Halo environment.
• There is a huge digital divide when it comes to different groups’ video game play.  Again, nearly 100% of teens play video games across all demongraphics.

What I found interesting was the notion that the digital divide is more about the divide between classrooms that are making authentic, productive, empowering use of digital technologies, and classrooms that are using it to drill and kill (my wording).

The second speaker of that session was Ian Rowe, who works for the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.  He is currently focused on college completion.  He reported that only 70% of U.S. teens finish high school.  But only 50% of entering college students graduate with a degree.  Part of the problem is that only half of the graduating high school students are prepared for college (1/3 of all high school students).

It’s time to bring this entry to a close, except to share one thing that Jim Gee said in a later session on assessment and video games.  He said, “Looking at the choices that people make in solving problems is a good predictor of knowledge they have gained. But measuring knowledge does not predict problem solving ability.”

Choice vs Knowledge

I’m home again, and being Saturday, I’m taking walks and just geeking out.  I’ve made it a ways through my aggregator, popping in and out of things that I would normally write about.  But, today, I just feel too lazy.  This one broke through my mode filter.  Published yesterday (May 29), eSchool News reports in Gates Foundation: Teachers Trump Class Size that,

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent billions of dollars exploring the idea that smaller high schools might result in higher graduation rates and better test scores. Instead, it found the key to better education is not necessarily smaller schools but more effective teachers.¹

Some issue is made of the fact that the B&MG foundation spent so much money to find out what most of us already knew.  As L.A. Unified’s chief of staff, Jim Morris, is quoted in the article, “Every teacher matters…”

I think that the new CEO of B&MG, Jeff Raikes, makes a good point.  We can’t really expect business to willing try things and fail.  It’s not in their short term interest.  And in the political environment of the past few decades, U.S. tax payers won’t stand for public dollars going into experiementing with education.  Who’s left?

Of course, if every teacher matters, and every classroom matters, then perhaps that’s where the power to innovate should be placed, in the hands of that teacher — funded by those who have the greatest interest in an educated future — everyone?

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1. Staff, “Gates Foundation: Teachers trump class size .” eSchool News 29 May 2009 Web.30 May 2009. <http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=58946>.

“We’re trying to help our students learn to express themselves in words and images, and moving images in particular,” says Richard Miller, Chair of the Rutgers English Department, in a YouTube’d video presentation, The Future is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors.  He continues,

This is all building towards a larger vision, re-imagining the humanities for the 21st century.  Unquestionably, we are working in a world that is driven by technological advance and improvement, and some people see that as obviating the need for people who excel in spoken expression, the written word, telling stories — for some people that (technology) is the fluff of life.  But actually, that is the backbone of life.  We work in an area that is essentially concerned with the quality of living.

In this presentation, Miller introduces the university’s planned/proposed Center for the New Humanities, and he says that new humanities should be considered a single phrase.

Having mentioned Wikipedia earlier in the presentation, he states that,

At the center of this new humanities is a collective, collaborative kind of composition that is represented by this globe (see left).  But what Wikipedia doesn’t have is what the university has to offer.  That is sustained study and deep understanding.  When you add that to the picture, you get human creativity put at the center of the humanities.  Over the past 10 to 20 years, the humanities somewhat lost its way, becoming overly focused on critique.  The real function of the humaniteis is to engage in the act of creativity, moment by moment, to improve the quality of the world we live in.

You don’t need me to tell you how much Richard Miller is talking about a much MUCH broader world of education than the Department of English at Rutgers University.

We have lost our way.

I discovered this video through a blog entry, (We Can Do This. We Should Do It.) from Carl Fisch, where he mentioned this entry (Videos – The Future of the humanities in the Internet Era) by Scott McLeod.  They both embedded two other presentations by Miller, This Is How We Dream, Parts I & Part II.

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I started Disrupting Class a few weeks ago, but have not been able to get back to it.  However, I ran across this June 2 CNN article, which partly disrupts my own anticipation of federal spending coming to education  — not to mention pointing in some directions that may be difficult for a non-marketplace industry, such as education, to re-orient itself to.

In Commentary: Don’t prop up failing schools, Christensen and Michael Horn say,

There is great danger in the sudden and massive amount of funding — nearly $100 billion — that the federal government is throwing at the nation’s schools. District by district, the budgetary crises into which all schools were plunging created the impetus for long-needed changes.¹

I recommend that you read the article for all of the insights shared, but I’ll list the authors’ four suggested “criteria” for developing programs and grants for states and district education initiatives.  I’m adding my own comments between the lines.

1. Don’t fund technology that simply shoves computers and other technologies into existing classrooms.
   Well I wouldn’t turn down a laptop for every student or a ceiling-mounted projector and interactive smart board.  But anyone who believes that technology alone will save education — will save our children — isn’t really interested in solving the problem.
2. Don’t fund new school buildings that look like the existing ones.
   When speaking at school board conferences, I frequently go to the exhibitor halls and, for sport, ask the architectural firm representatives to describe how school design has changed in the past 20 years.  The only answer that I (rarely) get, beyond, “Nobody ever asked me that before,” is a long spiel about “green” building materials.

   There are some interesting things going on in other countries about learning environment design.  Follow Stephen Heppel’s work.

3. Don’t fund the institutions that are least likely to change.
   This is complicated and I’d like to hear more of what Christensen has to say about it.  But I suspect that the further up the hierarchy we go, the least likely we are to see change — with some dazzling exceptions (Think “The State of Maine” – and I’m not talking about the bear).  The fact is that the entire industry is designed to resist change — and this is not entirely a bad thing.  ..and I’m still not comfortable with completely ditching education as we know it and replacing it with something completely new — at least not yet.
4. Direct more funds for research and development to create student-centric learning software.
   According to the authors, just “..1 percent of the $600 billion in K-12 spending from all levels currently goes toward R&D.”  Assuming that these figures are correct, that’s $6 billion.  That’s not an insignificant sum, and I wonder where it all goes. 

   I’m not an expert on budgets, so please share what I’m missing.  But in scanning the President’s FY 2010 Budget Request for the U.S. Department of Education, specifically the Detailed Budget Table by Program (PDF), I found that research, development, and dissemination are appropriated $224,196.  If you factor in statistics, the regional educational laboratories, national assessment, research in special education, statewide data systems, and special education studies and evaluations, you’re up to $689,256.  That’s an increase of only 72.081 dollars over 2009.  Looking at Nintendo’s 2008 Annual Financial Report (PDF), that one company spent $370,000 in R&D that single year.

   But that’s just the amount.  The far more interesting question, I think, is, what should that education R&D look  like?  Do we increase funding to universities and research laboratories.  I think we should.  But I think that we should also fund research at a more local level — in actually classrooms.  I think that teachers (and students) can learn a lot about best practice and we can easily disseminate that knowledge around the globe.  Now we’re talking about the potential for change.

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1. Christensen, Clayton M and Michael B. Horn. “Commentary: Don’t Prop Up Failing Schools.” CNN.com 2 Jun 2009 US. Web.4 Jun 2009. .