[image: Ben Werdmuller]
I don’t seem to get much time these days to explore my RSS feeds but today enjoyed reading Mike Bogle’s post ‘My Learning Style‘ and have been pondering his question ‘when does a reference resource or artifact become a form of dialogue?’. I’m not sure it can be anything other than a trigger unless it offers others a means of relatively immediate engagement and feedback.
Mike’s post lead on to a closely related and interesting series of three blog posts Nancy White has responded to Tony Karrer’s query – ‘In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?’ (or indeed what Nancy suggests ‘for learning’ more generally)
In summary, here’s Nancy’s list:
- Self Awareness
- Generosity
- Humility
- Willingness to Risk
- Scanning
- Filtering
- Connecting
- Synthesizing & Sense Making
- Asking Good Questions
- Technology Stewardship
- Community Leadership and Facilitation
- Network Weaving
- Reflective Practice
Like Nancy I’m not really sure I know what a ‘learning professional’ actually is. Someone who facilitates the learning of others? Or someone who takes control of and manages their own learning perhaps? I would consider myself falling into both categories so will respond in a general personal way while agreeing with Nancy’s offerings above ….
Critical literacy and analysis -
This is linked to scanning & filtering but I think focuses more on analysing the purpose of authors and creators – online and off
Effective networking and relationship building -
Knowing who can help you when and how
Multimodal capability –
Being able to engage with, gain meaning from and communicate to others via a range of modalities, and knowing which to select for specific audiences and contexts.
Self confidence –
To take risks, speak out, question
Hearing –
As opposed to listening
Digital engagement –
An openness to and engagement with contemporary technologies and the ability to select the best tool/ media for the job at hand.
What would you add or focus on?
How well do our educational institutions foster these capabilities?
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Hey Robin, great … additions, amplifications, clarifications and all that good stuff. It would be interesting to create a mind map out of all the responses Tony has gotten. (Ah, for time.) The patterns that are emerging for me include:
* general groupings of skills (and aptitudes?) that are showing up across the posts
* divergence that seems to be related to terms – we don’t all share the same definitions, creating both some fuzziness, but also some really interesting interpretations
* personal filters and expressions of the skills based on experience
Lovely, different and useful filters, I might add!
Waving! (And I’ll be in Sydney in November! Ask Matt Moore. )