SLQOTD Blog Project: Learning is like Breathing

by Kevin Jones on May 29, 2009

Here is my SLQOTD Blog Project response: SL happens all around us at all times – like breathing. How do we take adv. of it?

This question first came up when Dave Wilkins and I were doing our last podcast.  We were talking about how we learn all the time, but those in the learning profession ignore that piece and focus on creating elearning, for example.  So the original question was: SL happens all the time – now what?

FIRST, we have to recognize that it happens.  Too often we ignore that it exists.  Or maybe, even worse, that we feel that we can’t do anything about it, so it isn’t even on our radar.

It is time.  Our job is to enable learning, enable performance improvement.  Yet if we ignore the most fundemental, basic ways that we learn, we are doing a disservice to those very people we claim to support.

During #lrnchat on Twitter last night, there was some discussion on learning and training: @marciamarcia: We still seem to be neglecting any mention of helping people learn how to learn or liberate their self-direction. #lrnchat.  Are we helping others to learn what they need/want to learn, or are we forcing learning that they don’t want?  Sure, they may need some of the latter, but what about all that they REALLY want to know?

But, truely, it happens ALL THE TIME.  Learning is ALL AROUND US.  How do we help others with that?  It isn’t by creating a course on it.

I think of homeschooling my own kids.  There are things they NEED to learn. But what about those things they are really interested in?  We point them to the resources.  We make learning available.  We hook them up with the books, sites, people and other resources.  We don’t try to give it to them in nice, neat little packages.  That is like saying, “Oh, you are running and need to breathe heavily?  Here let me give you this breath.  And this one.  And this one.”  Instead it is, “Here is all the oxygen you need.  Oh, and here is some more I found.  Breath away.”

(Another favorite tweeet of mine was from @ hjarche: if I had to develop a lot of learning “stuff” last people I would hire would ID’s (sorry) – artists, writers would come 1st #lrnchat.)

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Tagged as: #lrnchat, blog project, breathing, slqotd

  • http://newmiddle-earth.blogspot.com/ Ken Allan

    Kia ora e Kevin!

    You use the abbreviation SL.

    When I first came across this abbrvn, I read it as ‘subliminal learning’, not ‘social learning’. Funny enough, the context of the matter I was reading about made no significant difference to my understanding of it. Only some time later, when I realised I’d read the abbrvn wrongly, was I able to put it all together.

    This made me stop and think about so-called social learning. You say it happens all the time. I say you’re right. But more than that. I say it happens and often we may not realise that it is happening.

    What is it that’s been learnt when someone says, “I can’t put my finger on it, but there was something in the way she spoke, the way she reacted”, etc. We pick things up, socially, and often are unaware of what ‘it’ is, though it still makes an impact, however small that may be.

    I believe that a lot of social learning is like this. I frequently ask my teenage children about the things they do with their friends and acquaintances. There are some things they do that prompt me to ask about them and sometimes I get back an answer like, “I don’t know why we did it, we just did,” or something similar.

    Behaviour in social circles is not always understood or understandable, but it is learnt and recognised by others in the group.

    Subliminal learning, which I believe happens all the time, is of a nature that makes it very difficult if not impossible to give any assistance. Social learning is similar.

    Catchya later

    from Middle-earth

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