Understanding better: helped by Clive Shepherd then Coach Carole

I promised yesterday, I will tell you about the new book I got. In fact, I was reading it for some time, on my Kindle and even on my iPad, but decided I needed also a printed copy.

This was written before the More then Blended, by Clive Shepherd, and alas published with difficult to read characters. But with my eyeglasses on, I can read it, and so I begun to read again from the beginning, and highlight on the way again.

So far, I arrived this morning, to read the introduction and the first chapter, both important. As I read this part the second time, I understand it better. 
The picture before, is inside the book, the cover is this one, reflecting his introduction about what is an Architect and why the new Learning Systems need one. Also what an "architect" does or does not do.

It is not his job to build but it is his to tell when those who ask him to create a new learning is not corresponding with what his "client" thought, explaining how and why it has to be re-thinken.

In here, I will have to add some of the parts I highlighted that explains what changed in the 40 years since Clive begun his career as facilitator. 

Not only the arrival of Information Age, with the WEB used by billions of us every day and all it bring with it, but also by the hand held devices that billions have now all around the world. Nowadays, Clive writes, we can not hold, do not hold all knowledge in our heads, but what a whole new generation learned is the reflex to go and search for what we need when we need it. 

First, I was stunned, when seen this through my grand children. We were discussing, they did not know some answer, suddenly to my surprise, they opened their iPad and here it was! They showed me or told. With time, I got used to interact with them like this.

I realize now, that it is what is proposing the Level 1 project 3: Research and Presenting. Beginning to give us a reflex to look for what we are interested and present it. Many times, through different projects we are prompted to search farther. All is not inside the projects and their texts, images and videos. Suggesting, we go farther, by ourselves.

As adults, used or not to the Information Age, we are prompted to explore ourselves, think over our experience and that of others and reflect on them. "Experiential learning". 

I found out that he proposes writing blogs regularly as one of the experiential learning tools, as when we write blogposts about a topic we are passionate about, we also reflect on what we just learned, as in a diary. Today, popped up from Flickr, my first diary that I begun at age ten, in dangerous times and conditions. Published the picture with a link to what I wrote on the first pages, on my Facebook page. There is a lot more, even in the first chapter of the book, relevant to Pathways, but let me tell one chunk at a time.

Then, I discovered a wonderful speaking picture from Carole's blog! 

"George" her fictional character is already well versed in Learning Techniques, needs to choose his first Pathways Path and his mentor, after asking about his short medium and longterm goals, provides him this information  : to choose, look at Level 5 Required Projects. As the mentor is there, of course, she explains what is HPL to "George".

As you can see from the picture, he did choose Leadership Development, before even going to the Toastmasters Assessment to choose a path. Good choice! My preferred one so far. It seems, Carole also likes it. That one is also what I have chosen to do in French, again. On my side bar there is a link to Coach Carole's blog: it is worth following it. 

If I were me, I would say today that the two last projects have similar ends, as one needs a team to build a successful event. I can not really say it, as I am only at the beginning of the Motivational Strategy path and do not yet understand the difference. I assume, Team Building, through an Event, the focus is to build a team that last after the event.