Welcome To The MASIE Center: "Lisa's note reminds me of the strong need for us to develop methods for retaining and integrating content from longer duration on-line learning experiences. LMS system developers might want to look at ways of building a learner's content briefcase that builds from course to course."

From one of Elliot Masie's newsletters. Interesting intersection between e-learning and blogging. John Robb has hit on this before.

One of the curious things about the tools we create is how little time we devote to helping people learn how to use them effectively. Everyone is pretty much left to their own devices to figure out how to use a tool productively. This is aggravated in our educational environment because we deemphasize and denigrate apprenticeship so much. One of the last holdouts of industrial age thinking are our school environments, where the assembly line mentality is alive and well.

Two strategies I've gradually developed for learning how to use new tools (software and otherwise). I bought one of the first Radio Shack Model 100s when they came out 20 years ago. I was gradually working my way through the users manual and showing it off to friends. I showed it to Henry who was the father of one of my friends and a radiologist. He turned it on and started typing. Everybody usually did that. Then he did something that has stuck with me to this day.

After he typed in a few sentences, he figured out how to copy them and pasted them into the document he was typing. Then, he kept on copying the same sentence over and over just to see how many times he could do it before he filled up the memory. The scientific method for real in action. No exercise to be done to please the teacher or to complete the workbook. Henry wanted to know how big something could get in this little computer, so he ran the experiment on the spot. I could have told him the machine had 24 kilobytes of memory because I had read the manual. But Henry learned something more useful than this textbook learning and he did it in about 35 seconds. He knew how many sentences he could write. That's when I stopped worrying about users manuals so much. Play with it and break it. One of the best ways to learn.

With more complicated and potentially dangerous tools, I supplement that approach with another. Go find an expert and have them show you the tricks of the trade. Skip the handholding tutorials. Find the cheats that the craftsmen use. One of the exciting things about this whole blogging thing in general (and Radio Userland in particular) is the chance to sit next to the experts and watch them work.

12:34:19 PM •  • comment