Extraordinary times call for extraordinary learning and extraordinary thought. We are all on an accelerated learning curve just trying to cope with what’s going on around us every day.At the Learn and Get Smarter community meeting on Saturday, June 6th, 2020 we will explore societal and global solutions to the problems we are all facing.
How do you deal with an unprecedented situation for which you have no pre-existing mental frameworks… no appropriate prior knowledge?That’s the challenge our entire planet has been facing for the past several months.How are YOU facing it? How are you holding up?If you’re like most of us, you may have been finding this time incredibly
If you think back to New Year’s Eve, 2020 (that sweet and innocent time Before the Dawn of Covid), you may remember that the general mood was one of happy expectation. Individually and collectively, we were hoping for great things from 2020, not least because the number makes us think of having perfect vision and
Most of us, I think, would agree that the current situation can best be defined as a “hot mess”. But what KIND of a hot mess? Are we living in complete chaos? It certainly feels that way at times…yet as our discussions at the weekly Learn and Get Smarter community meetings show, many of us are starting
At our Learn and Get Smarter community meeting on Saturday, May 2nd, we started filling in the content for the course we’re creating about how to survive and thrive under changing conditions imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic.We started by sharing solutions we’ve each found, that are working for us, to take good care of ourselves. Each
What do you do in a totally unprecedented situation, when there are no answers?One thing you can do when you don’t yet have answers is focus on asking more effective questions. Another thing to do is to reach out to others to create communities and networks that can provide resources, guidance, and support.None of us has
At last Saturday’s community meeting, we discussed the questions can we ask ourselves, that will help us survive and thrive under all conditions, and especially, the conditions we are all dealing with now in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic. We decided to use the questions we came up with, to develop a sample cognitive strategies
At our community meeting last week, we used the structure of a “how to” course to think about how to survive and thrive under conditions of extreme uncertainty, specifically, the current conditions due to the Coronavirus pandemic. We decided that the “target audience” for the course we are creating together, will be us, ourselves… this Learn
We’ve talked about the five domains of learning defined by educational researcher and theorist Robert M. Gagné.Gagné divided learning up into the following major types:Verbal information (declarative knowledge)Attitudes (mindset)Cognitive strategies (learning how to learn)Intellectual skills (how-to)Motor skills (physical movement)The Course Design Formula® that I teach in my book and course provides research-based guidance on how
At the most fundamental, biological, level, learning is the process of adapting to one’s environment in ways that promote survival. Which means that all of humanity is currently facing a learning task of tremendous proportions. One of the things I’ve heard most often during the past week, is that we can’t know how to adapt, because we
As the world goes through a sudden, enforced global experiment in living online, we’ve all come face to face with what the online interface can, and can’t do well.The online interface CAN (thankfully) connect us in ways that allow us to interact with each other, conduct many kinds of work, and counteract physical distance with
How are you feeling right now? What changes have you had to make to adapt to the coronavirus threat? Do you find yourself suddenly needing to take programs, meetings, clases, processes that work well in the physical world, and put them online? Would you like some guidance and help in figuring out how to do that, effectively and
You’ve warmed up your audience. You’ve gotten their attention. You’ve told them what they’re about to learn, and you’ve reminded them of their prior related knowledge. It’s time to start actually teaching….this is the exciting part! “Actually teaching” is a three-step process, if you want your course participants to actually REMEMBER and be able to use
In my book, Course Design Formula®: How to Teach Anything to Anyone Online, I use the process of building a house as a metaphor for the process of building a course. Watching the fascinating series, Tiny House Nation, on Netflix recently, I realized that building an online course is not just like building ANY house.Building an
Educational theorist and researcher Robert M. Gagné observed skilled teachers in action, and noticed that they followed nine specific steps in order to create effective learning. He codified these steps and called them “The Nine Events of Instruction”. Let’s take a closer look at the three things Gagné noticed highly effective teachers do, BEFORE they present
Love is the greatest motivator for learning, that there is. We’re biologically hard-wired to make it so. When we are newborn and helpless, our parents…the people who (hopefully!) love us most in the whole wide world, are our first teachers.Incredible amounts of learning take place in early childhood. A baby dropping the spoon over and
As a student, or just a regular person going about your daily life, have you ever tried to learn how to do something, that was presented as being easy… and you just could not for the life of you figure out how to do it?As a teacher, parent, or coach, have you ever tried to
Technology. Can’t live without it, can’t hurl it out the window. Amiright?If your life has been anything like mine recently, the window hurling option may be starting to seem attractive. (Don’t do it! Gravity is not your friend!).What is going on? I don’t know if it’s sunspots, or a flux in the space-time continuum, but the
Master business storyteller Chris Brogan has come up with a fascinating and creative way to set himself and his business up for success for a new year. He calls his technique “My Three Words” and you can learn about it on his blog at https://chrisbrogan.com/3words2020/.Chris has been using this method since 2006, and in the process
What has to happen in order to actually teach someone something?If simply exposing people to information is not the same as actually teaching them, how DO we actually teach, especially online?Educational theorist and researcher Robert M. Gagné studied good teachers in action, and discovered what they were doing that made their teaching effective.His research revealed
We’ve talked about the difference between being exposed to information (especially online), and actually learning it.But what about teaching? What’s the difference between simply presenting information online, and actually teaching it?You heard right: presenting information is not the same as teaching it.Just because you’ve said something (using text, video, or audio) doesn’t mean you’ve taught
With all the information that is constantly bombarding us online, how can we know what real learning is? And how can we make sure it’s happening?
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary learning and extraordinary thought. We are all
How do you deal with an unprecedented situation for which you have
Most of us, I think, would agree that the current situation can
At our Learn and Get Smarter community meeting on Saturday, May 2nd,
What do you do in a totally unprecedented situation, when there are
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