National Apprenticeship Week [November 14-20, 2022] — from apprenticeship.gov

Excerpt:

What is National Apprenticeship Week?
NAW is a nationwide celebration where industry, labor, equity, workforce, education, and government leaders host events to showcase the successes and value of Registered Apprenticeship for re-building our economy, advancing racial and gender equity, and supporting underserved communities. NAW is an opportunity to highlight how Registered Apprenticeship, a proven and industry-driven training model, provides a critical talent pipeline that can help to address some of our nation’s pressing workforce challenges such as rebuilding our country’s infrastructure, addressing critical supply chain demands, supporting a clean energy workforce, modernizing our cybersecurity response, and responding to care economy issues.

Also relevant/see:

  • Understanding New Collar Apprenticeships — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org; requires you to complete a form to get the guide
    Apprenticeships aren’t what they used to be. Long a pathway into the trades, apprenticeships now are also preparing Americans for new-collar jobs in fields from healthcare to tech. And governments and companies are putting big money into modernizing, diversifying, and growing the system—hoping to change the face of apprenticeships. This guide takes a look at this evolving landscape.
 

From Teaching to Tech – Q&A With Joanna Cappuccilli — from devlinpeck.com by Devlin Peck and Joanna Cappuccilli
Would you like to transition out of the classroom and into a corporate instructional design role?

Excerpt:

In this Q&A session, we talk with Joanna Cappuccilli about how she transitioned from full-time teacher to full-time curriculum developer at Amazon Web Services, as well as the steps she took to get there.

Joanna and I discuss how developing a portfolio, networking effectively, and preparing extensively for interviews led to her successfully landing a tech role.

 

To future-proof a workforce, kill the perpetual hiring machine and embrace lifelong learning — from fortune.com by Clay Dillow

Excerpt:

A looming economic slowdown, the Great Resignation, a relentlessly expanding skills gap, and employees that would simply rather work from home. This week at Fortune’s CEO Initiative forum, a panel of company executives discussed the litany of challenges they face in developing and maintaining their workforces over the next several years.

 

Beyond Courses: Instructional Approaches in 2022 — from learningguild.com by Jane Bozarth

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

 In researching “upskilling for L&D practitioners” earlier this year, Learning Guild members were asked what they feel has been the biggest shift in their work over time: While technology has driven much change, sometimes seemingly exponentially, nearly everyone talked about a different sort of shift. This was true even of those who landed on the younger end of the experience spectrum. According to respondents, the biggest change is the move away from the idea that the primary role of L&D is to create “courses.” Technology changed and became easier to use, enabling development of myriad digital solutions. As noted in that report, respondents viewed this change as welcome and positive.

When asked what other types of content respondents created to be delivered OUTSIDE of a traditional course, the most common responses were creating video and job aids/performance support materials. Microlearning and curated content were also frequently mentioned, and curated collections of existing material was popular with those engaged in traditional design.

Also relevant/see:

Games, Organizing, & Motivation: ID Links 10/25/22 — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker
Curated links on games built in Twine, storytelling, organization, useful tools, motivation, and transitioning from teaching to ID.

From DSC:
Under the Storytelling and CYOA books section, it was interesting to see the Random Plot Generator, where Christy wrote: “A writing prompt tool to generate two characters, a setting, situation, theme, and character action. This could be a fun way to start scenarios if you’re feeling stuck. h/t Jean Marrapodi.”

I thought this might be a good tool for developing writers, improv actors, and likely others as well!  🙂  

Random Plot Generator

Also from Christy Tucker, see:

If the content is very stable and unlikely to change much over time, voice over might make sense in a branching scenario. Investing in creating video also makes more sense for more stable content and skills than for something that changes every 6 months.

 

How to survive as the only remote person in the hybrid room — from protocol.com by Tim Stevens
Experts weigh in on how remote tech workers can be seen and heard when everyone in a meeting is in the office.

Excerpt:

The hybrid approach to remote work can meet the needs of diverse teams of people, but too often those who sign in from afar can feel left out, absent from impromptu hallway discussions or outright ignored on Zoom calls.

When you’re on the outside it’s tempting to just stay quiet and hope things will improve, but if your team isn’t aware of your struggles, things will only get worse. I spoke with three experts in remote work and here are their pro tips on how to survive and even thrive.

Addendum on 11/14/22:

84% of meetings have at least one remote participant — from inavateonthenet.net

Excerpt:

A report commissioned by Crestron has found that 84% of employees regularly have at least one remote participant in their meetings.

The report, titled Tackling the Modern Workplace by the Numbers, explores employee behaviors and preferences in a hybrid workplace, the technology tools they need and lack, and what employers are (and could be) doing to enable more consistently productive collaboration remotely and in-office.

“The findings of this report reveal that for the first time in years, we have a reliable sense of what to expect from the enterprise workplace in terms of where work is done and how meetings have to be held,” said Brad Hintze, exec VP, global marketing, Crestron. “If every meeting isn’t equipped to be hybrid, the data unequivocally shows teams will experience challenges in staying connected to each other, to leadership, and to the company culture, no matter where they’re working.”

 

Recent Advancements In Artificial Intelligence — from forbes.com by Gaurav Tewari

Excerpts:

As the founder of a technology investment firm, I’ve seen firsthand just how much AI has advanced in such a short period of time. The underlying building blocks of the technology are getting astonishingly better at an exponential rate, far outpacing our expectations. Techniques like deep learning allow us to run complex AI models to solve the most difficult problems. But while those who work in technology-centric careers are aware of AI’s explosive capabilities, the public at large is still largely unaware of the depth of AI’s potential.

Enterprise functions such as marketing, sales, finance and HR are all areas that can utilize new AI-enabled applications; these applications include providing customers with 24/7 financial guidance, predicting and assessing loan risks and collecting and analyzing client data.

Also relevant/see:

What is the Future of Artificial Intelligence? — from thedigitalspeaker.com by Dr. Mark van Rijmenam

Excerpts:

Let’s explore some real-life artificial intelligence applications.

  1. Using Artificial Intelligence for Navigation
  2. Marketers Use Artificial Intelligence to Increase Their Efficiency
  3. The use of Artificial Intelligence in robotics
  4. Gaming and Artificial Intelligence
  5. Incorporating Artificial Intelligence into Lifestyles

Artificial intelligence (AI): 7 roles to prioritize now — from enterprisersproject.com by Marc Lewis; with thanks to Mr. Stephen Downes for this resource
Which artificial intelligence (AI) jobs are hottest now? Consider these seven AI/ML roles to prioritize in your organization

While these seven AI roles are critical, finding talent to fill them is difficult.  AI, machine learning, and data analytics are new fields, and few people have relevant experience.

This leads us back to the fact: We are dealing with a Great Reallocation of the labor force to an AI/Machine learning, data-driven world.

3 ways AI is scaling helpful technologies worldwide — from blog.google by Jeff Dean
Decades of research have led to today’s rapid progress in AI. Today, we’re announcing three new ways people are poised to benefit.

Excerpts:

  1. Supporting 1,000 languages with AI
  2. Empowering creators and artists with AI
  3. Addressing climate change and health challenges with AI
 

What’s Stopping You from Reinventing Your Career? — from hbr.org by Heather Cairns-Lee and Bill Fischer; with thanks to Mr. Roberto Ferraro for this resource

Summary (emphasis DSC):

In the authors’ work teaching and coaching thousands of managers, they have identified four traps – self-sufficiency, overthinking, procrastination and searching for the answer – that prevent leaders from taking the first steps necessary for considering and exploring possible new versions of themselves for the future. The authors have found ways to help leaders recognize which traps they are falling into and start imagining a way out — largely inspired by design thinking principles such as rapid prototyping, making ideas visual, and getting quick feedback.

 

It’s time to redesign organized learning — from chieflearningofficer.com by Eric Albertini

Excerpt:

Organizations will need to think about three layers of learning content and access methods:

  • Thoughtfully curated by the organization for business fit.
  • Semi-curated with the learner having some control of what they learn.
  • Open for all, where the learner makes all the choices of what and how they learn.

Employee-centric learning approach. There must be a match of learning to organizational objectives as well. Non-curated, open content on platforms is great for focused and deeply aware employees but may not work for everyone, especially in cultures where self-direction is not very strong. Moreover, too much open, non-curated content, driven by non-contextual algorithms, is as detrimental to choice-making for the learner as is too little quality content.

To enable effective learning, technology must be part of a more systemic learning eco-system that includes things such as rewards (the “what’s in it for me”), building blocks from one intervention to the next and post-learning support.  

Also from chieflearningofficer.com, see:

 

Coursera is Evolving into a Third-Wave EdTech Company — from eliterate.us by Michael Feldstein

Excerpts:

This is the vision of Coursera’s three-sided platform at scale, connecting learners, educators and institutions in a global learning ecosystem designed to keep pace with our rapidly changing world.

Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda

Coursera's diversified model with 3 segments -- consumer, enterprise, and degrees

The point of this slide is to show the diversification of Coursera’s business. Degree programs may be down, but enterprise licenses and direct-to-consumer certificates are up. But it also indicates Coursera’s ability to diversify revenue streams for its university content providers. The enterprise business provides a distribution channel between universities and employers. From what I can tell, it’s a Guild competitor, even though the two companies look very different on the surface. The consumer segment started as the MOOC business and has expanded into the “tweener” space between courses and degrees: certificates, microdegrees, whatever.

 

11 The Lord detests dishonest scales,
    but accurate weights find favor with him.

From DSC:
I thought about this verse the other day as I opened up a brand-new box of cereal. The box made it look like I was getting a lot of cereal — making it look like a decent value for the price. But when I opened it up, it was about half full (I realize some of this occurs by pushing out the box as the contents settle, but come on!). In fairness, I realize that the amount of the cereal is written on the box, but the manufacture likely kept the size of the box the same but decreased the amount that they put within it. They kept the price the same, but changed the quantity sold.

This shrinkification of items seems to be happening more these days — as companies don’t want to change their prices, so they’ll change the amounts of their products that you get.

  • It just strikes me as yet another deception.
  • We BS each other too much.
  • We rip each other off too much.
  • We bury stuff in the fine print.
  • Our advertising is not always truthful — words are easy to say, and much harder to back up.
  • We treat people as though they just exist to make money off of. It’s like Philip Morris did to people for years, and it still occurs today with other companies.
  • In today’s perspective, people are to be competed against but not to be in relationships with. 

I hope that we can all build and offer solid products and services — while putting some serious quality into those things. Let’s make those things and offer those services as if we were making them for ourselves and/or our families. Let’s use “accurate weights.” And while we’re trying to do the right things, let’s aim to be in caring relationships with others.

 

Get Ready to Relearn How to Use the Internet — from bloomberg.com by Tyle Cowen; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource
Everyone knows that an AI revolution is coming, but no one seems to realize how profoundly it will change their day-to-day life.

Excerpts:

This year has brought a lot of innovation in artificial intelligence, which I have tried to keep up with, but too many people still do not appreciate the import of what is to come. I commonly hear comments such as, “Those are cool images, graphic designers will work with that,” or, “GPT-3 is cool, it will be easier to cheat on term papers.” And then they end by saying: “But it won’t change my life.”

This view is likely to be proven wrong — and soon, as AI is about to revolutionize our entire information architecture. You will have to learn how to use the internet all over again.

Change is coming. Consider Twitter, which I use each morning to gather information about the world. Less than two years from now, maybe I will speak into my computer, outline my topics of interest, and somebody’s version of AI will spit back to me a kind of Twitter remix, in a readable format and tailored to my needs.

The AI also will be not only responsive but active. Maybe it will tell me, “Today you really do need to read about Russia and changes in the UK government.” Or I might say, “More serendipity today, please,” and that wish would be granted.

Of course all this is just one man’s opinion. If you disagree, in a few years you will be able to ask the new AI engines what they think.

Some other recent items from Sam DeBrule include:

Natural Language Assessment: A New Framework to Promote Education — from ai.googleblog.com by Kedem Snir and Gal Elidan

Excerpt:

In this blog, we introduce an important natural language understanding (NLU) capability called Natural Language Assessment (NLA), and discuss how it can be helpful in the context of education. While typical NLU tasks focus on the user’s intent, NLA allows for the assessment of an answer from multiple perspectives. In situations where a user wants to know how good their answer is, NLA can offer an analysis of how close the answer is to what is expected. In situations where there may not be a “correct” answer, NLA can offer subtle insights that include topicality, relevance, verbosity, and beyond. We formulate the scope of NLA, present a practical model for carrying out topicality NLA, and showcase how NLA has been used to help job seekers practice answering interview questions with Google’s new interview prep tool, Interview Warmup.

How AI could help translate extreme weather alerts — from axios.com by Ayurella Horn-Muller

Excerpt:

A startup that provides AI-powered translation is working with the National Weather Service to improve language translations of extreme weather alerts across the U.S.

Using GPT-3 to augment human intelligence — from escapingflatland.substack.com by Henrik Karlsson

Excerpt:

When I’ve been doing this with GPT-3, a 175 billion parameter language model, it has been uncanny how much it reminds me of blogging. When I’m writing this, from March through August 2022, large language models are not yet as good at responding to my prompts as the readers of my blog. But their capacity is improving fast and the prices are dropping.

Soon everyone can have an alien intelligence in their inbox.

 

More than half of L&D pros foresee demise of in-person corporate learning, survey finds — from hrdive.com by Ryan Golden

Dive Brief:

  • Learning and development leaders increasingly see online and hybrid learning models as a permanent fixture in the talent space rather than a temporary trend, according to a survey of 515 L&D leaders at North American and European corporations by NovoEd.
  • Per the company’s survey, 83% of respondents said that hybrid work would force organizations to rethink and redesign corporate L&D offerings. Additionally, more than half said that they agreed with the sentiment that the growth of remote learning would “lead to the demise” of brick and mortar corporate learning.
  • As their organizations increase investment in the space, most L&D leaders said they would evaluate their programs by emphasizing metrics such as improvement in job performance; improvement in knowledge and competency; and application and implementation of learning.
 

Future Today Institute's 2022 Tech and Science Trends Report is now available

The Future Today Institute’s 15th Anniversary Tech Trends Report

Excerpt:

Future Today Institute’s 2022 Tech and Science Trends Report is now available. Downloaded more than 1 million times each year, FTI’s annual Tech Trends Report is a must-read for every industry. Learn the key trends impacting finance, insurance, transportation, healthcare, sports, logistics, telecom, work, government and policy, security, privacy, education, agriculture, entertainment, music, CPG, hospitality and dining, ESGs, climate, space and more. Discover critical insights. See what strategic action you can take on the futures, today.

 

From DSC:
I’m very proud of our sister Sue Ellen — who worked hard to bring this idea/vision/exhibit to reality.

Sue Ellen Christian


Kalamazoo Valley Museum explores media & its messages — from woodtv.com by Jessica Jurczak

Excerpt:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – We are constantly on the lookout for fun ideas that also involve learning and one of our go-to spots is the Kalamazoo Valley Museum! There’s a big exhibition there now called “Wonder Media: Ask the Questions!” As we all know, we’re bombarded everyday with messages from all types of media: TV, movies, social media and this exhibit encourages us to stop and evaluate some of those messages. The Kalamazoo Valley Museum also has a planetarium, and vast science and history galleries and today, we’re taking you inside!

 

Great leaders ask great questions: Here are 3 steps to up your questioning game. — from bigthink.com by Christopher J. Frank, Oded Netzer, and Paul F. Magnone; with thanks to Roberto Ferraro for this resource
Questioning isn’t just a way to get the right answer — it’s also a means for sustaining relationships and creative thinking.

Excerpt:

Building an inquisitive team
One of the best LinkedIn profiles starts with “I am insatiably curious.” What would it take to build a team of insatiably curious, truly inquisitive people? Building an inquisitive culture involves a combination of what and how. The what is a combination of the types of questions previously outlined, and the how is the environment you create. Great leaders create great cultures. There are three basic steps to building an inquisitive culture:

  1. Start with an open-ended question.
  2. Respond, don’t react. Embrace silence.
  3. Ask a stream of questions.

Also relevant/see:

 

 


Addendum on 10/29/22:

Innovation starts with the quality of your questions — from edte.ch by Tom Barrett
In the final publication of the October throughline we explore how to build a culture of innovation one question at a time.

Snapshot
A quick synthesis of this issue to share

  • Innovation starts with the quality of your questions. Asking the right questions leads to new possibilities and innovative solutions.
  • We are often drawn to ideas because we want to fix problems; starting with an idea feels safe and more fun than starting with a problem.
  • If we want an innovative culture in our teams, we need to start with questions instead of ideas.
  • Trust and psychological safety create the culture for collective negative capability, which John Keats coined as “the ability to live with ambiguity and uncertainty.”
  • Commit to action by being aware of your need for certainty, make space for ambiguity and uncertainty in development work, and build trust by encouraging questions.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian