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4 Lessons Photography has taught me about Learning

If you follow me on the web, then you perhaps know that Im big on photography. I absolutely love taking pictures - my Flickr stream with about 13000+ pictures will tell you just that. Im no pro, but something makes me feel Ive gotten better with time. As I reflect on the last 10 years of having owned cameras, I think Ive some interesting insights on how adults learn. In todays post I want to share some of those thoughts with you and Id love to hear how you feel about what Im writing.

Learning is effective when its autonomous and purposeful

When I got my first digital camera I wasnt fussed about technique. I was just keen to take pictures. I think I had a 256 MB card for my camera and it was an absolute luxury for me. All I wanted to do was capture every moment of my life. You need to know something about me. I didnt grow up with many of the gadgets that kids my age in the west were exposed to. So I didnt have a computer or video games. I have some photographs of my life prior to getting a camera, but the frank truth is that we were always constrained by the 36 pictures on the film roll. The ability to take pictures and see them instantly was gratification enough for me. Gradually, I got interested in photography as an art and only over the last few years have I gotten over the desire to snapshot my life. Instead, I want to capture vivid moments that tell stories of their own. I havent yet been to a photography course. I havent let anyone dictate how I should shoot. As my purpose and subjects have changed, I have learned and my approach has evolved. I think this tells me something. It has taken me 10 years to learn what I know about photography, which frankly is precious little. On the other hand, someone else with a completely different purpose may have learned much quicker. I dont feel that Im stupid because I took 10 years - I didnt need to. I enjoy the autonomy with which I learned. My learning has served my purpose and thats all that matters.

Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Our educational systems are built around the premise of promoting success and success alone. I dont think theres anything wrong with celebrating success, but we cant forget that failure is a stepping stone to success. I love shooting wildlife. Unlike many other subjects, filming wildlife is a very unforgiving experience. I can safely say Ive had more failures than success filming wildlife and especially fast moving birds. A few days back I went to the lake near my house to try and follow the resident pied kingfishers. This is a curious bird and to watch it fish can provide hours of entertainment. It was no easy task filming these little geniuses given how skittish they can be. I failed at least four times before getting some satisfactory pictures on the fifth attempt. Failure was heartbreaking I must say, but the safety of knowing I have another chance gave me confidence. Each time I failed, I learned a little more. When I finally got the shot I wanted I was able to repeat my technique several times over. As you design learning experiences, how are you building in the safety to learn from failure?

Constraints make for great learning

When I bought my first camera, a simple point and shoot Yashica film device, Id complained heavily about the lack of zoom. That complaint carried on as I graduated to better, more expensive cameras and super-zoomers. What I failed to appreciate was that every camera has a built in zoom - our two feet! Ever since, Ive moved onto better equipment and longer lenses, but I must say my favourite lens today is a the 50mm prime that I own. Its a simple piece of equipment. It cant zoom, it has no image stabilization. That makes for great learning on how to get close to my subjects and how to keep my hand steady. In a similar manner I have learnt from the constraint of having to shoot vivid images through a single frame of a prosumer camera. Cameras dont see what our eyes see - theres way too much contrast to capture. This has led me to explore techniques such as high-dynamic-range (HDR photography) - the picture above is an example. I love placing meaningful constraints in the learning programs I design. For example at ThoughtWorks University I like to place the constraint of learning while on the job of delivering software to a client. It helps the new consultants to learn how to learn and gain useful experience on the side.

Theres no match to social media  and mobile platforms as learning tools

One of the things Ive learned from photography is that its extremely gratifying to get feedback from your friends, skilled or not. I often put up my photographs on Flickr and sometimes on Facebook. When people favourite my images or comment favourably on them I know that I must be doing something right. It motivates me to do more. Social media has been a big influence on my learning journey too. Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook and Flickr put together have become an integral part of my photography learning journey. The byte sized pieces of inspiration I get every day are just the right size to help me learn on a daily basis. Add to that inspiring mobile apps like Life and Guardian Eyewitness  help me analyse great professional photography. As Brent Schlenker writes on his blog, mobile apps and new media are removing the middlemen from the learning experience. I learn from the best today by following their blogs. Trey Ratcliffes blog is far more up-to-date than his book. Thats an example of how powerful the social media learning experience can be. The era of having to go to school is past. School comes to me - every day and at my own pace.

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Learning is an iterative, experiential process. We however seemed to have based corporate learning around a dated model of education which lacked autonomy, had little social structure and discouraged failure. I cant say my experience with photography is representative of all kinds of learning. I do think that there is something for us to think about as we analyse experiences such as these. Id love to hear how you feel about my musings today. I apologise my bad back has stopped me from being regular with my blog posts. As I grapple with this situation, I hope you continue to visit this blog as and when I post. Ill do my best to maintain a regular schedule as well. Hope you enjoyed todays post.

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4 Reasons Why YOU Dont want to Touch Social Learning with a Barge Pole

So, you recently read Jane Bozarths Social Learning for Trainers and followed it up with a read of Enterprise 2.0 by McAfee and The New Social Learning by Conner and Bingham. Youre excited by the promise of social software for learning. Youre already a Facebook and Twitter junkie and life couldnt be better with vendors announcing "Facebook for the enterprise". Wow! Youre going to be a hot-shot social learning pro, arent you? Errrm... think again. Life as a social learning consultant isnt a bed of roses and while the glamour of the Scobels, Hinchliffes, Ghoshes, Schrecks and others is inviting, youre likely to have a rough road ahead. Behind the glitz and glamour is a tough, painstaking albeit eventually fulfilling job, which you absolutely need to know about. So, before you get charmed into this shiny new world read my little disclaimer - it aint easy!

Its Not Really Facebook for the Enterprise
Ok, ok I know you love Facebook and I know Jane says you could potentially use established tools like Facebook and Twitter for learning. Jane is right, I must say and I personally believe that the most mature social business implementations need to have porous walls. With that said, I have to also note that were just not there yet! And frankly, theres perhaps a middle ground we need whichll just take some time. In the mean time, while you revel in the glory of Facebook, your employers need single sign on, integration with other systems, security, governance, uptime guarantees, content ownership assurances, and what not. Ah! That doesnt seem as cool anymore, does it? If youre heading the social learning route, remember that showing off the success of #lrnchat or the Learning and Skills Group is just the first step.

Youll be a Consultant with No Direct Control Ever heard of organisational politics? Its the bad phrase to describe the tension between innovation, internal systems and organisational structure. Once youve gone ahead and wowed YOUR boss with that demo of #lrnchat or or that matter your own PKM approach powered by social media, you should really have a free rein. Or should you? Well if youre championing the cause of collaborative learning in the enterprise, you cant do it alone. You need to get IT to buy into supporting you. Youll need to get leadership to champion your proposal, and to do that, youll need to champion some of their goals. As it turns out, none of them are your puppets - so getting the organisational machinery to start working in the same direction can mean several emails, presentations, meetings, arguments and consultative discussions. Forget about your role as an instructional designer - youre now only a consultant. You have no direct control. Hell, you cant even control behaviours for your learners. At least in the classroom you could set a few rules for participation. Now you need to model their exisiting collaborative behaviours onto your system. Youll often feel that "Click Next to Continue" in elearning or "Lets move to the next exercise." in the classroom gave you more power. Are you happy to live with that for some time?

Its Not the Kool-Aid Youve been Drinking
So, youre happy to rough it out - after all theres the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! I guarantee you, there is one, but its far, far away. Before you can get to the wonderful effects that youve only read about it blogs, youll need to do heaps of hard work. As a start, you may need to create dozens of proofs of concepts for the scores of teams in your organisation. Its not just about getting the executives involved, people are at the center of social business. Be prepared to sit at your desk for hours uploading files, setting up wikis, creating discussion areas and helping people wrap their heads around emergent collaboration. Be prepared to get laughed at and to take the feedback, go back, work and come back more resilient. Even when your community starts to thrive, things wont just happen by magic. Theres a lot of unglamourous work involved in community management, Im afraid. Take a look at what Donald Taylor does for the Learning and Skills Group and what Tom, Dave and Jeanette do for the Articulate community. In fact, with all the content curation, one-on-one support, online facilitation and constant manual gardening that Dave Anderson does, I wonder when he sleeps. Its effective, its useful and it comes from a genuine desire to help people. It may end up being glitzy and glamourous, but dont count on it.

Youve Got To Build Comfort with "Good Enough"
As an elearning pro and even as a trainer, you would have fussed hours, days, weeks and months to get things just right. After all, that slide needs to look polished. That activity needs to be instructionally sound. That elusive goal of perfection keeps you going everyday. Social learning has its own levels of perfection, but that perfection doesnt come from the quality of content. A badly formatted, abrupt, but contextualised answer is good enough for a social QnA environment. Its not pretty, nor is it the most awesome content - its just effective and works. It takes great patience to keep looking at gigabytes of user generated content that may not be as good as what you could have created but is so contextualised, that its far more effective. In social business, perfection comes from being an integral part of the way we work. Perfection is when information flows seamlessly across the internet and the intranet, and people can consume byte-sized content when they want to, where they want to. Its perfection all right, but of a different kind.

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If youve read this far, you probably see my point - being a social learning pro involves a lot of hard work. Its immensely fulfilling; after a while a lot more than just doing instructional design or training. Be prepared however, to take the long, hard road there. Put your heads down, think big, start small and keep iterating. And when you really start to deliver value, which could be sometime away, the accolades may come too. I guess its just a question of being patient. Thats just my two cents - what do you think?

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