This blog post is courtesy @quinnovator and his latest post on Distributed Thinking and Learning. So if you are one of my school team mates, sorry but I had to get this out of my head before editing any more of our papers.

Clark’s post is about Distributed Cognition (and now there is yet another book on my winter break reading list..). Here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

Distributed cognition is a branch of cognitive science that proposes that human knowledge and cognition are not confined to the individual. Instead, it is distributed by placing memories, facts, or knowledge on the objects, individuals, and tools in our environment. Distributed cognition is a useful approach for (re)designing social aspects of cognition by putting emphasis on the individual and his/her environment. Distributed cognition views a system as a set of representations, and models the interchange of information between these representations. These representations can be either in the mental space of the participants or external representations available in the environment.

Clark talks about applying distributed thinking to learning this way:

The implication is that having kids solve problems with executive support, but without scaffolding that executive support and the gradual release of those executive skills to the learner, we’re not really developing appropriate problem-solving skills.

Of course I’m thinking how that transfers to corporate learning, in particular technical education. We struggle all the time with trying to figure out how to think people to think – to go beyond the break-fix mentality that you need to start with and get to the point where you can pull back and look at an entire system and anticipate how applying a fix in one place may affect a different area at a later time.

I can teach you how something works, but in there are a million ways to implement and support any one thing. How do I teach you to pull back and see the entire system?

Maybe some of it goes back to information-seeking behavior. Techies have their own language, history, culture. We have our own distributed memory, our own languages that invoke that memory. If a n00b doesn’t have the language to ask some 133t techie a question, they may dismissed as unimportant. I’ve taken to being very sarcastic with some of our younger folks. If I’m asked, why doesn’t it work? I say, “because it hates you”. Not because I’m being mean, but this is how I learned to start figuring things out on my own.

Did you look at the logs? Did you look at the application logs? Can it talk to the outside world? Can it talk to the default router? Did you google it?

I learned not to ask for help until I had gone down every single path I knew about. I learned to think about what could be affecting the problem I was troubleshooting.

I learned who I could ping with a quick IM for a hint. I can’t imagine how twitter would have changed things for  me back then! Those of us who have been around for a while understand inherently the language of twitter, we all still have our ICQ accounts with super low numbers. we’ve been talking in compressed chat speak for 10 years. Its part of our collective heritage.

So is multi-tasking. We know how to IM (or now tweet), respond to emails in a help queue, build a server, test a script, and take care of a problem with sick child all at the same time. We haven’t had the luxury of 8-hour days because people have depended on us to keep servers, emails, networks, etc up and available 24-7. Multi-tasking is a necessity for techies, and now anyone who calls herself a knowledge worker.

So how can we teach these skills? Can we teach this in a class, or does it have to happen OTJ? How do new workers learn the old language so they can have words to do a search for information? I think first and foremost, the folks doing the education part have to speak the language, and have to be part of the culture. Because its very obvious when you try to assert authority but you don’t have access to that small world.

I wonder if its possible to be an information impostor in the world of distributed cognition?

I am editing this post, because this month’s Biq Questions are:

• Should workplace learning professionals be leading the charge around these new work literacies?
• Shouldn’t they be starting with themselves and helping to develop it throughout the organizations?
• And then shouldn’t the learning organization become a driver for the organization?
• And like in the world of libraries don’t we need to market ourselves in this capacity?

Back to my post already in progress—

These seem to be the question of the week, they are being asked everywhere. It’s being asked at the No Straight Lines blog (this person blogs about autism too, what a coincidence!!), on the Work Literacy Blog, and we’ve been starting to talk about it at work. And now they are officially the Questions of the Month at the Learning Circuits Blog.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is what happens if we design all this interactive learning but no one uses because they don’t have the required skills to use the instructional technology? As I said in one of my last posts, I think we either have to make the technology invisible or we have to teach people to use the tools.

But more importantly, how can you design with these new tools if you don’t understand them? How can you apply them to your existing systematic learning system if you don’t know what the heck wiki even means? So, yes, learning professionals must learn and use these tools, and then apply the tools to there existing framework.

So what are “the tools”? Here’s my list

• Wikis: How to edit, how to read, how to link to
• RSS Feeds: What are they, how do I read one, once I have a reader set up how do I scan info collected, how do I share info using one
• Blogs: How do I write one. Why SHOULD I write one. How do I evaluate info from one. How do I scan, collect keywords, and rescan to crystallize ideas and information?
• Information Creation tools: Exps: Youtube, SlideShare, Flickr. How do I use. Why/When do I use.
• Tagging: What is this? Why is it important? How do I use with content I create? How do I use to search for info I need?

These are the ones I can think of, just from interactions with my class team this semester, and from conversations I have had with co-workers. I think one of my goals this quarter will be a lunch and learn on at least one of these topics – to help get my co-workers up to speed. Maybe I’ll call it: What is a wiki and why the heck do I care?

Work Literacy is a new online community created by Tony Karrer and Michelle Martin. The stated purpose of the community is to create “a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work.”

So, what are you waiting for? Go see how you can participate!