Learning Technology Consulting

Man!! My second day of the conference was a lot more hectic than the first. Of course, that is simply because my first day was a single session. Today was all about deciding which sessions to attend and therefore, which ones to miss.

The day started with a key note from Keith Sawyer, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology & Education, Washington University and author of the book, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. He states that while there are many reports on how important innovation is to the future of America - what's missing is an understanding of how innovation works. He poses the question, How do you create a learning organization to support innovative knowledge? He frames teaching for innovation as learning for creativity.

Characteristics of Learning for Creativity

• Build on learner's prior knowledge


• Encourage reflection on the learning process


• Carefully scaffold authentic situated practice


• Combine inquiry and project-based activities with information delivery


• Foster learning in collaborating groups

Innovation is not the work of a single idea or individual. The innovation process is a constant combination of many small ideas with many contributors. We have to create a learning environment that leads people to that way of working.

I also attended a presentation on LMS & Community: Like Hand and Glove facilitated by Dave Wilkins, Senior Product Manager at Mzinga. My good friend Dave, pictured above, discussed how new technologies and social networking empower the individual and the community and ways in which community and learning 2.0 technologies can help organizations better manage "informal" content and informal social networks. He discussed the differences between expert-generated content and user-generated content and how learning organizations must enable both of them to truly support the ways people learn. One of my favorite quotes from Dave's presentation is

What if instead of teaching someone to fish,
we could teach someone to teach someone to fish.

This was also the first day that teh Expo Hall was open with all of the learning technology vendors. Every time I go in there I feel like a kid in a candy store and can't decide what to investigate first. There are way too many vendors to list but here are some that stood out:

• Udutu offers a free course authoring tool called myudutu and now they are working on embeddding an LMS into Facebook.
• SuddenlySmart offers a graphical flash authoring tool called SmartBuilder.
• Flypaper offers flash presentation tool that operates much like powerpoint in the way that you use templates. One interesting slant is that they have created an online community from which you can retrieve templates and submit ones that you created.