Dynamic Education

brucelynn — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:32:19 GMT

The ‘workplace’ for our children is school and this institution suffers many of the same issues as the ‘knowledge worker factory’ mode of daily working. And here too the notions of flexible and ‘dynamic’ learning are just as applicable.

Dan Ramus, Microsoft ‘Futurist,’ and steward of its ‘New World of Work’ thinking, is a digital soul mate on the matters of Dynamic Work. His blog ‘The Future of Information Work’ carries lots of posts that support and extend the ideas and notions shared here. His recent post ‘Five Way To Reinvent Education and Stimulate the Economy’ describes an educational system as flexible in its use and application of resources as the Dynamic Workplace...

1. Complement teachers with retired or out of work professionals.

2. Think of schools as multi-purpose and cross-generational ‘learning hubs’ for flexible use or resources and facilities.

3. Foster entrepreneurship.

4. Distribute learning so it isn't about an educator or a single school.

5. Adopt new learning models that cross school boundaries, regional boundaries, even international boundaries.

Dan’s call for a dynamic learning place evoked memories of my own high school days where my first foray into activism was to protest a newly instated absenteeism policy. Essentially, the school said that 10 absences meant a mandatory failure grade. Not only did this smack of a violation of due process (which I had just learned something about in my civics class), but also it defined that the only real education was sitting in chairs in classrooms. At this stage of my life, I was getting involved with community programs, private study and a host of exploration. Who cared if I missed the class, as long as I caught up on the notes, did the work, learned the material and ultimately made the marks? I successfully fought back against this effort to straight jacket learning into presenteeism , and yes, the school kindly rescinded the policy later that year.

Dynamic Education, like Dynamic Work, is all about the desired outcomes and not routinely going through time-tested conventional motions in an education factory.

Dan makes underscores this factory parallel in his later post ‘If Everything Looks Like a Factory Maximize Productivity, Even If it Means Taking Drugs’ where he says “My biggest concern is that we use these [performance enhancing] drugs to create factory smart people, not open minded, creative people who test boundaries and want to discover new things rather than master many things we already know. The future of our society depends on creativity...not just on doing old things well.”

If we need the workers of the future to ‘test boundaries’ and ‘discover new things’, we had better start by immersing them in that environment today. If we want the workplace of the future to be more dynamic and flexible tomorrow, then the classrooms of today are a great place to start.

Tomorrow's Leaders of Dynamic Workers

brucelynn — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:17:59 GMT

The Institute of Leadership and Management (an organisation after my other blog’s own heart) on the demands and opportunities for a new generation leadership in an era of Dynamic Work. The report is titled ‘Tomorrow’s Leaders: Managing Teams Remotely’ with the sub-title of “20th Century Bosses Hold Back 21st Century Working Practices”. It features both survey statistics on UK organisations as well as a number of case studies (BDO Stoy Hayward, South West Water, Circle Anglia) and tips for aspiring trailblazers. The abstract summarises:

“The ‘Tomorrow’s Leaders’ study, undertaken by Henley Management College, shows that managers are struggling to reinvent their working patterns to get the best from a growing army of remote workers, with visibility and presenteeism still used to judge performance.

According to today’s findings, remote working is on the rise. Three quarters (73%) of managers say flexible working is common in their organisation, and, more strikingly, 37% of all managers now look after teams who are either entirely or predominantly based away from the office.

However, although the majority of managers are working with teams that include remote workers, nearly half (44%) of respondents say managers are unprepared for the supervision of remote teams, and only 25% had received any training on how to manage such a team.”

Dynamic Work : presenteeism

Dynamic Education

Tomorrow's Leaders of Dynamic Workers