Inspiration Through Information

One of the challenges self-educators, indeed all learners, have is capturing their learning in some manner so that they can easily reference it later. Let’s face it, we can’t possibly remember everything we learn, at least not in detail. You might want to remember key ideas you’ve learned, refer to a quote you recall but can’t quite remember exactly, or find the title of a book you read years ago. There might be many reasons why you’d like to capture such information, and more, about what you learn.

The trick is to keep things simple. Yes, there are various note and database applications that some people use to capture such information, but I find them overkill for what’s really needed most of the time. And I try to keep the necessity of learning new software applications to a minimum. So here’s my advice.

Create a simple word processing document for each subject area you’re learning about. I call these documents Learning Notes. Feel free to break down your learning notes documents into specific topics of a larger subject area. For example, let’s say the subject area is Software, but the specific software you’re currently learning about is the open source office productivity suite, LibreOffice (the office productivity suite I use). In this case, it would probably make sense to create a separate learning notes document for LibreOffice rather than what would eventually end up being a very large document for all of the software you might learn over time. You’re better off with many smaller documents than a few large ones. It will make finding the information in the future much easier.

Once you create the learning notes document, don’t be too concerned with how you format the contents. Do whatever works for you. Keep it simple. The simpler you keep it, the more likely you’ll use it. My learning notes documents are comprised of plain text with a few bolded headings to organize things. That’s it. Name your documents clearly for easy finding later. For example, I named my LibreOffice learning notes document LibreOffice Learning Notes. That’s pretty clear and easy to find later.

So what might such a learning notes document contain? Here are some ideas. Remember, these are just examples. Feel free to create your own learning notes document sections.

• Key Ideas and Concepts. Encapsulate the major ideas and concepts you’ve learned into a few bullet points. We tend to hang our learning on the big ideas that form the foundation of most subject areas. Identify them and capture them.
• Notes. Write down any notes you want to capture. Don’t worry about organizing them too carefully. The important thing is to note anything you find of interest, new insights, interesting information, or whatever strikes you as important.
• Reading. List books, articles, blogs, websites and other material you’ve read. You might want to reference these again in the future. So also include where you can how to find them again (your personal bookshelf library, your digital library, your local library, and so on).
• References. Include the URLs of websites you might want to reference in the future or other reference material you have (and where it’s stored or located).
• Images. If you want to capture images you see online, get yourself a free, open source screen capture utility (or use your operating system’s capture capabilities if it has them) and paste the image into your learning notes document along with a brief annotation about the image. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words!

Store your learning notes documents in a logical folder structure on your computer. I have a high-level folder called Library in which I store all of my digital ebooks, articles and other digital documents. Under the Library folder I have a Learning Notes folder and within that folder I have sub-folders by subject area. Use your own structure. Just make sure it’s easy to understand and access when you see it.

There is great power in these learning notes documents. You’ll be surprised at how often, over time, you’ll refer back to them, or add to or revise them, as you continue down your path of self-education.

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Recently I watched for a second time a fun movie, Accepted. For those unfamiliar with it, the premise of the movie is a young man graduating high school gets rejected by every college he applies to and his parents don’t take it well. In desperation he cleverly creates a fake college with some friends and…well, I don’t want to ruin it. It’s a fun movie and if you’re interested in a light humorous evening of movie watching, it’s a good choice.

Of course, this isn’t a movie review per se. It was certain aspects of the movie I found particularly relevant to the focus of much of my writing, self-education. Two themes that emerged during the movie immediately resonated with me.

• Most of the current college and university education approach is founded upon a worship of standardization and a one-size-fits-all mentality.
• Anyone with a passionate desire to learn can do so and traditional schooling need not be the means by which they do that.

I take great care not to disrespect all higher educational institutions because that would be foolish. There are some wonderful places, some wonderful teachers, and many students for whom the college experience is a good option. One of my guiding life principles is diversity – honoring the uniqueness of everyone – that when applied to education must naturally lead to a belief that there are as many ways to properly educate people as there are people.

Higher education is at a crisis point though. Tuition is increasing at alarming rates while at the same time educational institutions are struggling with funding issues. The rigidity of the traditional education methods can’t keep up with a body of knowledge and skills that grows exponentially each year and will continue to do so with increasing speed. An educational system that was founded to foster the growth of the industrial age has yet to adequately give way to the realities of the information age.

Self-education, informal learning or whatever you want to call it must be part of the present and future education solution. I do not believe our schools, by their very nature, can themselves satisfy all of the education needs of individuals and society.

It’s important for people to stop entering into college and university programs simply because it’s what we do to feel accepted and normal. Education is what’s important, not how we attain it. Learning that improves us and our lives is what’s important, not a piece of paper certifying such learning. Knowledge and information that contributes to the betterment of individuals and society is worthy of pursuit, not an academic résumé for its own sake.

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Yet again Sir Ken Robinson delivers a TED Talk that rightly skewers the misguided trends within the American educational system. In this brilliant talk Robinson outlines three principles crucial for the human mind to flourish and how the current education culture works against them. With both insight and humor he offers suggestions on how we can emerge from the educational “death valley” and how we can best nurture our youngest minds with an atmosphere of possibility. He suggests that it is only by honoring the creativity that resides within all students and fostering the creative side of the teaching profession that we will fix what’s wrong with the American school system.

I also love that Robinson points out that we often lose sight of the fact that education is ultimately about learning. That appears to be an obvious observation I know, but too often we seem to focus on the educational process to the exclusion of making sure if any actual learning is taking place.

Ken Robinson is one of the most important and influential voices in the world regarding the reformation of how we educate our children. Take a few minutes and listen to what he has to say. I think you’ll be impressed. I’d love to read your comments once you have viewed the video.

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Since the focus of much of my writing is self-education, some might think I am entirely antagonistic to formal education. Not true. In fact, I know formal education has its rightful place alongside informal education (self-education), although I do feel the shift must move significantly more towards the informal.

Higher education institutions however must rethink their purpose and their process and part of this rethinking must be to move the core of all good education to that of a more liberal education. It is only through the learning of a wide cross section of ideas, principles and practices that we, as a society, will rise to our highest natures.

This applies to self-education as well. Myopic focus on singular topics or singular skills to the exclusion of others will result in expertise perhaps, but not necessarily wisdom. And it’s wisdom that is in desperate short supply these days.

In the following talk delivered to the TED conference by Liz Coleman, President of Bennington College, a case is eloquently made for the necessity of reviving the liberal arts education and its accompanying mindset. Take a few moments and listen to Liz Coleman’s wise and inspiring words. I hope you take them to heart when pursuing your own education, self-directed or otherwise.

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Want to find a wealth of information about how to learn just about anything? Typing in just two simple search phrases into your favorite search engine will produce an astounding number of learning resources. The two phrases are “how to” and “how to learn”. Give it a try.

As I’m writing this, if I search on “how to” on Google, here are the first five search results I see:

• eHow – A website that offers a wide variety of articles on how to do just about everything.
• wikiHow – A collaborative writing project with the goal of building the largest online how to manual with thousands of articles currently available.
• HowToDoThings.com – Another large collection of how to articles.
• Video How To Results – A huge listing of how to videos at video.google.com.
• WonderHowTo.com – A site where they hand-select and curate the best instructional videos from over 1,700 other websites.

That’s just the first five search results listed and already it’s amazing what one can learn from just these five sources. Searching on “how to learn” will produce an equally robust set of learning options.

Do you have a specific subject or topic area you’d like to learn about? Just add that to your how to search. For example, if I wanted to learn about mathematics and I type in “how to learn mathematics” into my search engine, one of the results I get is math.com, a fantastic site that offers self-directed, online math instruction on topics from basic math to calculus.

And don’t restrict your how to searches just to search engines. Go to a site like YouTube and use the same search phrases and you’ll find an abundance of video tutorials on just about any subject you can think of.

I think you get the idea. Keep these two search phrases in your self-education toolkit when you’re exploring your learning options.

In a 2009 San Francisco Chronicle (my local newspaper) article it was reported that due to the state budget crisis at the time the entire California State University (CSU) system of 23 campuses would not accept any new students for its upcoming spring semester. Typically, about 35,000 students enroll in the CSU system each spring. Imagine 35,000 students not able to enter that college system. At the time, this was all being done to cut $584 million from CSU’s budget. In spite of an improving economy, it hasn’t gotten much better for students. What does this say about our current higher education system? I say it’s broken. Badly broken. Of course, CSU is by no means the only educational institution or system in serious trouble, then or now.

As I read the newspaper article I at the same time reflected on a book I’ve read, Recovering Informal Learning: Wisdom, Judgement and Community (Lifelong Learning Book Series), by Paul Hager and John Halliday. The book’s main premise is that society as a whole has given formal education far more weight and importance than informal education and that the dominance needs to shift to informal learning if we’re to educate our citizenry best. This has been my contention for a long time and it’s always nice to see others concur.

So what can we do to help fix a broken higher educational system while providing individuals with the education (and proof of such education) that they need?

I would suggest a bold program that I like to call Honoring Self-Education be undertaken to address this issue and I recommend such programs be implemented at local levels. This would counter what appears to be a growing problem of high cost and sometimes outright inaccessibility of higher education for many potential students. So what might such programs entail? Here’s what I propose as possibilities.

• Respect for Informal Learning. First of all, the programs must be organized, strategized and implemented from a mindset of full respect for the value and efficacy of informal learning (self-education or guided self-education). If this sort of respect for more casual and unstructured forms of learning does not exist from the start, any program will inevitably fail.
• Centralized Learning Hubs. Cities, metropolitan areas and perhaps groupings of smaller communities need to have a centralized way to informally organize information, learners and resources to facilitate such self-education and informal learning. Technology has given us the web and a website is the most cost-effective and efficient way to do this. Such sites might contain sections on the variety of learning methods, learning groups, a database of the subject matter expertise each site member can offer to others, internship and on-the-job training opportunities, self-education aids such as personal learning contracts, and anything else that might offer resources or networking for self-learners. Particularly well funded local programs might have actual physical locations with an administrative office and meeting rooms. Libraries would be a logical location for such facilities.
• Business Community Outreach. While the ideal of learning for its own sake is a worthy goal, the perceived practical value of such local programs will be in how well the education translates into job skills and career empowerment. To do this the local organizing body must reach out to the business community to foster their agreement that, at least for certain job categories, they’ll accept from their job candidates alternative proof of knowledge and skills apart from the traditional degree and certification methods.
• Proof of Education Strategies. While offering information, strategies and resources to students engaging in self-education, there must at the same time be some mechanisms in place to prove such learning. Why? Practicality necessitates such proof. Since the goal of education is often (but thankfully not always) to procure a better job or career, employers will typically need some form of proof of informally attained education. The education portfolio is one way to do this and I’ll write about this in future postings.
• Funding. Whether it comes from community fundraisers, government funds, private industry support or other means, such programs take money. Perhaps a small staff needs to be kept employed, but at the very least the website will need content maintenance and a board or other organizing body will need to direct the program.
• Community Outreach. Once a preliminary program is in place, it won’t do anyone any good until community members know about it, know what its benefits might be to them, and know how to access the program’s network and resources. Creativity is in order here. Low-cost methods like online social media, news releases, blogs and other free outreach methods should be employed before resorting to more expensive means of program advertisement. Where appropriate and fully funded, more aggressive advertising campaigns through more traditional venues can be employed.

Standardization should be resisted. Guidelines for local programs should be kept generalized and allow for each community to come up with creative solutions to the educational needs of their community members. That way each program can learn from the successes and failures of other programs so that all programs could be modified and improved over time.

So imagine this scenario. You want to learn something. Let’s say you want to improve your office administrative skills to improve your chances for employment or to get a promotion. Typically you would have three potential options. You can try to find all of the education you need through formal schooling or training. You can try to learn what you need to know entirely through self-education. Or you can do some of both.

For this case, let’s imagine money is tight and the self-education option is your best choice. You log on and access the Honoring Self-Education (or whatever it’s called) website. You register as a user and create your education profile. Your profile contains information about what you want to know and what you already know. This allows you to better interact and network with other self-learners on the site. Maybe the site then presents you with a short questionnaire and based on your answers presents you with information and learning options tailored to your individual needs. Perhaps it produces a learning guide you can save or print. Or maybe each subject area has its own community-created (open source) learning paths that everyone on the site as well as program organizers can contribute to.

The site may direct you to specific reading materials. Networking can be leveraged by connecting you with others within the learning network who already possess the knowledge and skills you want to acquire. They can guide you and maybe mentor you during your learning. For topic areas where discussion fosters the best learning, learning groups who meet in real time or over phone/web conference meeting tools might be identified.

On the business community/learner connection section of the site you discover a local business that provides non-paid (or perhaps paid), short-term internships that allow you to learn in a real-world setting. As you talk with others in the field you discover that understanding how to use certain software programs is vital. A non-profit job center listed on the site offers free classes on those programs and you sign up.

As you do all of this learning the site encourages you to download their education portfolio template and you begin to create your own portfolio as you learn, using a 3-ring binder to contain and organize it all (or the computerized virtual equivalent). This portfolio becomes your self-created proof of your education and skills and you’ll use this along with your résumé and other job-seeking collateral when applying for and interviewing for future jobs.

Anyway, I think you get the idea. I’ve only touched upon a few of the many possible aspects such a program might offer to learners. The community’s collective imagination can come up with many more I’m sure.

Until local communities begin to officially embrace and facilitate such informal learning programs, the formal college, university and training center systems will dominate the culture. Unless challenged, formal schooling and training will continue to push out any hope of establishing informal learning’s place within the accepted educational methods you can use to improve yourself and to improve your employability.

If anyone knows of such programs already in place, I’d love to hear about them. And if you have any ideas you’d like to contribute, I’d like to hear those too.