Close to the End and A New Beginning

We're almost at the end of another fast year. The pace has picked up dramatically this week since all the final assignments are due on Friday. At this time of year I often get a student or two that finally realize they might actually need to know how to edit in Final Cut, but not this year. Everyone seems to be already working under their own power and while maybe a little anxious, are chugging along on their own steam.

So it's slightly odd that at this time of the year I'm looking for an overriding approach to what we do, and will do again, in the fall semester. Happily I think I've actually found it. There is a link off of http://99percent.com web site about a Kevin Kelly post discussing the necessity of remaining a newbie about learning software – for the rest of your life.

Wow, that's just our philosophy. We're always learning new applications, new methods, new approaches both for good reasons of progress and for bad reasons of fashion or following the hot new thing.

Kelly's quote is really "You will be a newbie forever." I changed that slightly to: You will be a student forever, which directs it, I hope, away from only a techie mindset and reminds us that we're always going to be learning something through out life. If we're only in college for four years there's more time out of it learning that spent in it learning.

What we ought to get out of college is to be really skillful at learning all of the other things we'll need to know later and to be able to learn it more easily than when we started college and maybe more importantly learn all of this while you're still in college and could really use it. Right.

The other part is the asking, making, and sharing knowledge with others, all linked parts of learning and living in the world.

Making, we know, is one of the best ways to finally understand how those theoretical concepts play out in the world. Without theory we have to try things out every time to discover what the outcome might be. With theory we can project ahead what an outcome could be, try it out to prove the theory's validity, then build on that. The more correct our prediction the greater the reach we have in thinking things through. It's using that leverage, validated by direct experimentation, that gives us power.

The other part is asking questions of each other, the world itself, and oh yes, ourselves that keeps the dialog of learning going. The process of the dialog helps refine our thinking, our rhetoric, our plans and it can also show us when we're way off base, or our thinking is just fuzzy.

Sharing our knowledge with others is a terrific way to realize what we don't really understand after all and to also realize, proudly, what we do grasp and own as our personal area of expertise. Too often we gloss over what we think we understand until, whoops, we're called up short by having to clearly explain it to someone else. Working an idea through in order to be able to explain it is the best way to really understand it.

My work target now will be to develop ways to build a program to develop the skills necessary to give us the best beginner mode possible. This isn't just a button you can push to run the "easy scenario" of life, but a mindset that gives you an edge in learning the next anything. With beginner mode skills (BMS) you can shorten the cycle of learning and deepen your insights and the final outcome. CEB: Certified Expert Beginner. Cool.

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