Reinvigorating

I am not convinced that everyone in the world needs to be  a blogger.  I am not convinced that I need to be a blogger.  And I am pretty sure that the world is not going to notice my blog.  But it’s time to move beyond dabbling and make a commitment to either write or stop.  It’s simply embarrassing to write a single entry every year or two, when it seems that everyone is enthusiastically publishing their every action and emotion.

What will I write?  Well, I think that’s the problem with most dead blogs:  the owner doesn’t have a clear sense of purpose.  I often end up off-topic in real life, so I am sure that I will end up drifting here, too.   But I promise not to spew every thought onto the page, and to focus on my passion for training.

My Ride to End AIDS – It hasn’t ended yet

Once again, I am riding my bicycle in the AIDS/Lifecycle, to raise money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. It’s a 545 mile ride, from San Francisco to Los Angeles; it takes 7 days. I want to raise $4000 for SFAF.

Three years ago, I signed up for the ride with my husband. People said “Why? Who in your family or your life has AIDS?” The easy reponse is the slogan “we are all living with AIDS.” Very true and high-minded. But the real answer was that I wanted to prove to myself that I was “even better than before.”

In 1999, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I did surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. (There are several long stories about that time in my life, but to be honest I’ve become a bit bored with them. Maybe another entry someday.) At the end of the year, I said that I would do something special to celebrate my survival. But I put it off, and put it off. I couldn’t think of anything that was sufficiently meaningful.

In 2004, I started bicycling. In the fall, I saw a brochure for ALC4 in the bicycle shop and brought it home to my husband. “I want to do this,” I told him. “I want to prove that the cancer is behind me.” We raised the $5000 that was required for both of us to ride in June 2005. I made it through the ride, though I did have to take off one afternoon due to lymphoedema.

What I didn’t expect was the community I found on the ride. People of all faiths, genders, races and sexual orientations came together for a week, and treated each other with great kindness. I hated for the week to end, although I was a little tired of sleeping in a tent and not having a flush toilet. We were hooked.

Last year, I worked as a volunteer while my husband rode his bicycle. In 2007, it is my turn to ride the bicycle while he volunteers. I am lucky to be able to share in this community and the fight to end AIDS. It has become a cause that is close to my heart.

Knowing – Doing – Teaching

I was reading a post by Peter Isackson on the Learning Circuits blog,  called Saving Knowing from Imminent Execution In the final paragraph, Peter mentions that deep learning occurs when knowledge is formalized.  This led me to some tangential thoughts about learning.  In school, essay tests are sometimes used to see how students have synthesized what they have learned.  In adult learning, the ability to transfer knowledge is an indication that deep learning has occurred.  (Note that some schools, particularly Montessori schools, have older children show/teach younger children.) 

My own experience is that teaching a subject, or being a consultant on a subject, does require me to process knowledge more fully  — even more than being able to demonstrate the skill or execute the task.This is formalizing knowledge in the sense that the information must be digested and organized.  For me personally, to teach a topic also requires a broad understanding of concepts and context. 

Like Peter and Clark, I believe that the distinction between “knowing” and “doing” is a false dichotomy.  I propose that there is a cycle: 

Knowing
As preparation for doing, this might be as simple as “observing the master.”  But growth in knowledge continues throughout the rest of the cycle. 

Doing
There is a range of skill from beginner to expert. For many things, this progress requires years of both formal study and practice (for example, medicine).   

Teaching
The essence of teaching is passing on the skills and knowledge.  But the best teachers learn even more in this phase, synthesizing others’ expertise as well as their own experience and the experience of the “students”. 

Is “learning to draw a straight line” a part of “knowing” or “doing”?  I think it must be both.  In adult learning, I believe there is little that can be categorized as fully one or the other. 

How does all of this relate to formal vs. informal learning?  There seems to be some thought that 

Knowing = what formal learning emphasizes = ineffective 

Doing = what informal learning emphasizes = effective 

I don’t  believe that this is true.  I don’t know anyone who is actually working on informal learning that believes it either.  Informal learning can and does encompass both knowing and doing.  Formal learning can, too.  Good instructional design and good teaching need to consider the whole cycle.

Assignment: RSS Feeds and Aggregators

Our team was given an assignment to understand RSS, both feeds and aggregators.  I think we were confused about the terms "readers" and "aggregators" — they seem to be the same thing.  Aggregators allow you to look at your selected feeds.  Different aggregators present the information in different ways.  I use RSS Popper, which presents short summaries of blog posts as individual emails; the emails can be grouped by feed into different Outlook folders.  Bloglines.com presents the summaries "aggregated" on a web page.  The various tools (RSS Popper, Bloglines, etc.) examine your subscription list and check those websites for updated feeds.

RSS feeds are XML documents that are published to a web page. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication; it is a particular XML document format.  The feed contains summaries of the various items on the web site.  When something new is published, it automatically goes out on the feed.  There are a variety of tools that generate RSS feeds.

Here is an article by Robin Good that I found useful on the topic:  Intranet 2.0: Collaboration, Self-Publishing And Tools Mash-up New Driving Forces

Making Me Work — The UnWorkshop

I had a great conversation this morning with my teammates in the UnWorkshop.  One of the topics was Jay's comment from our meeting on Monday that "learners should work twice as hard as the 'instructor'."  [I'm sure that isn't an exact quote.] 

 The UnWorkshop is not just making me work by doing research and participating in a group — it is a catalyst for deeper questions:

What do I really think my role should be as an educator/trainer/instructional designer?  It's not just a question of doing my job right, it's really about doing the right job.

How do I make Web 2.0 work for me, personally and professionally?  At the moment, the cyberworld has become a giant time sink for me.  How do I manage all of this — from mySpace to the blog to the office wiki and my personal website?

These are hard questions, and I don't hope to resolve them in a month.  But it would be nice to make some headway.