A 'Novel' Learning Experience

I have just finished reading an intriguing and deeply moving novel called "The Warsaw Anagrams" by Richard Zimmler, which tells a story of life for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the second world war.  That description completely underplays the magic, mystery and impact of the book, but it allows me to open up what I really wanted to talk about in today's blog.

Half way through the book, I suddenly realised that this was the fourth book I have read in the last year or so, which has been either directly or indirectly about Germany, the Nazis and the German people before and during the Second World War, and about the treatment of the Jewish people at that time.  This was not a conscious intent on my part - in fact, I was taken aback at this realisation, as if my subconscious had been leading me unaware down a literary path for which there must be some kind of reason.

In order of reading then, these four books are:

"Alone in Berlin" - Hans Fallada. A novel, based on an actual case, about an elderly German couple's passive resistance to Hitler, following the death of their son at the Front, by dropping anonymous anti-Nazi postcards across Berlin, and the authority's hunt to track them down.  Written during the War, it brought to my attention the oppression and hardships of the German people themselves under Nazism, something about which I was unaware.  I bought this book on impulse in a book shop.

"The Hare with the Amber Eyes: a Hidden Inheritance" - Edmund de Waal. This was one of my first e-book purchases for my Kindle e-reader, and I purchased it because I was aware of its coverage in the media, as Winner of  the 2010 Costa Book Biography Award and the 2011 Ondaatje Prize.  I loved this book and have recommended and gifted it in paperback to friends and family.  It tells the story of a Jewish family banking dynasty, through de Wall's investigation of the history of a collection of Japanese Netsuke (small, intricately carved ivory pieces), which he inherited.  Again, in a fascinating family tale starting in Odessa, through the Paris of the Impressionists, Austria and the eventual diaspora (dispersal) of the family, the most revelatory section of the story for me was how the Jews were systematically brutalised and disinherited during the Austrian Anschluss of 1938. At times difficult, this is a deeply moving and satisfying read.

"Fatherland" - Robert Harris.  Another e-book, I was drawn to this story by the 'alternate history' angle.  It is 1964.  Hitler won the War.  In a Greater German Reich, a Detective follows a murder and conspiracy trail, which ultimately leads him to the exposure of atrocities about which we know in reality, but which, in the novel, were suppressed from the victorious German people.  My Science, Detective and Historical Fiction 'buttons' all got pressed effectively when reading this well-crafted novel.

"The Warsaw Anagrams" - Richard Zimmler.  As I said at the start, this novel is set in the Warsaw Ghetto of 1940, as the Nazis seal 400,000 Jews inside a small area of the Polish capital. Children are murdered and an elderly Jewish psychiatrist investigates. A mystical, horrifying, moving, sometimes humourous and cleverly plotted sorta-detective story, I was gripped throughout.

I should just mention here that I did not read these books 'back-to-back'.  I read them over a period of about a year, interspersed with lots of other books, periodicals and blogs.  I'm a commuter, as I have mentioned before ("Under the Commute" 1st May 2011), so I've always got a book on the go.  Hence me not initially noticing that there might be an underlying theme going on in my reading choices.

So, why am I sharing this with you? What's the point?  The least I can say is "Here are some interesting books I've read and been moved by; you might want to check them out yourself."  This is not a piece of literary criticism nor is it a a set of book reviews. It's not an advert for the Amazon Kindle either.  I have written this blog more for my own reflection than anything else - but I have learned something along the way... 

I also mentioned in a previous blog ("Man on the Moon" 17th May 2011) that I am not a book-learner.  But I think that the four novels listed above have taught me something about looking deeper into 'received wisdom', about not just going along with the 'accepted view'.  And also maybe, about listening out for what my subconscious whispers to me.  Some of my views have shifted, and I am much richer for the learning I gleaned from having read these books than had I not.

What do you get from reading fiction, as opposed to factual books?  Do you read both? What other written materials feature in your reading lists?  And how do you access them - good old paper books, e-reader, tablet, smartphone, laptop? Where do you get your books from - online, bookshop, library?  I'd be interested in your experiences.

What (else) I learned on my Holidays

In my previous blog, I shared some insights gained on my holiday with @MandyRG in Northumberland.  I usually make a point whilst on holidays of distancing myself from the normal daily news ‘noise’, but two almost coincidental events at the end of that week were unavoidable - the world was horrified to learn of the killings in Norway and shocked at the untimely death of singer Amy Winehouse.  So on Saturday evening, I logged into Twitter.

In my timeline, I read lot of tweets and comment along the lines of “RIP Amy Winehouse” and what a sad waste of a young talent.  Several people used the words ‘tragic’ and ‘tragedy’.  I took a different view and kinda got on my high horse; I re-tweeted and responded to one particular tweet with the comment “A Tragedy? Really? Tell that to the Norwegians”.  I got an instant and angry response suggesting that I should get a grip and that I had no more right to pronounce on the scale of tragedy than the author had.  This then stimulated a short tweetstorm amongst half a dozen of my followers around whether or not comparisons were valid (differing views) and I expressed the opinion that we tend to overuse the words ‘tragic’ and ‘tragedy’ nowadays, and that there was a big difference between Amy W’s sad death and the horror of the mass shooting of teenagers. However, having been ‘bitten back’, I was careful to make my comments general and not aimed at, nor in response to, anyone else’s specific tweets.

For an hour or so thereafter, I sat back and monitored my timeline.  I picked up a recurring theme in the tweets and retweets, that people generally thought it was NOT OK to compare the two situations and moreover, that there was a real affection for and sadness at the loss of Amy W, which was different to the genuine distress felt over the Norwegian atrocities.  What surprised me was the depth and passion of some of those feelings and the implications that if one thought otherwise, as one tweet put it, “you are idiots!”  I began to feel a little beleaguered and paranoid but, as it was the last night of our holiday, thought it wisest to keep my counsel and step back.

The next day we traveled back to Brighton and during the 7 hour car journey, I mulled over what had occurred the evening before.  I reflected on my own opinion about the difference of the two ‘news’ events and definitions of ‘tragedy’; I reflected on the different views expressed by others within and outwith my immediate Personal Learning Network, some more mature and measured than others; I reflected on how I had been exposed to, and felt impelled to comment on, events and views outside of my usual Twitter L&D/SoMe themes, really for the first time; and finally, I reflected on how valuable Twitter and my PLN had been in making me  think more deeply about these things.  I was concerned about how I had ‘shown up’ and whether or not I had upset and/or alienated any of my followers, but equally, whether any of them harboured similar doubts or concerns themselves.

So yesterday, I tweeted to everyone who had been involved in Saturday evening’s conversations and thanked them for making me think more deeply about these things.  Within a very short space of time, I heard back from several of those same people, acknowledging the pitfalls of ‘firing from the hip’ but also recognizing the value of sharing thoughts and opinions in Twitter, and reflecting more deeply thereon. I will be mindful of these themes in the future.

I feel that I now have a more personal relationship with those same people, beyond the immediate 140 character ‘sound bite’ that Twitter can sometimes become;  I hope I have shown up as authentic and that our future dialogue will continue to enrich and add value to my and their ongoing professional and personal development. I hope that they feel the same.

I’d be really interested to know what thoughts and feelings last week’s events and social media commentaries brought up for you.

Things Are Looking Up!

A month since my last blog and here I am on holiday with Mrs G (@MandyRG) in the previously unexplored (by us) county of Northumberland - and we are loving it!  In previous years we have visited and walked in the Lake District, the Peak District, Devon, Cornwall and Wales and I traveled extensively in Scotland when I was much younger.  We live in a beautiful country and I heartily commend it to you if you have not yet taken the time to explore our own land.

Bamburgh Castle

This week, we have visited and walked coastline, town walls, castles and gardens.  And in our explorations, I have found myself looking upwards a lot of the time; at spectacular cloud formations, at the tops of trees and hills, at castle ramparts and frequently the ceilings of those same buildings. In the interiors of two of those castles, my eyes and attention have been drawn by the beautiful carvings and embellishments created over years by past master craftsmen, and often cleaned and restored more recently by today's generation of similarly talented and passionate artisans.  One of the castle guides today commented how infrequently people look up in their rush to tramp through the state rooms and get to the gift shop, coffee shop or toilets, and what artistry and beauty they miss as a result. 

I was reminded of some work I did many years ago when I was a Drama Student in Edinburgh.  I developed and led my classmates through a discovery and exploration of their 'personal space'.   I asked them to describe what they could see, how much space they had around them, above them, below them. I asked them to try to define that space, to claim it, to feel their way into, and to fill it in some way.  The results were fascinating; people drew circles on the floor, or created barriers with clothing or furniture, someone stood on a table and declared ownership of the space from ceiling to floor, someone else took to the top of the cupboards, someone shouted or sang loudly whenever anyone else came near his self-defined space, whilst others collaborated and defined a shared – and therefore much larger – space.

I was especially taken with those who looked upwards, who recognized that we earthbound creatures do not always realise the opportunity to explore and expand beyond what we can see and do at eye-level.  In exploring Northumberland, I have been reminded again of the value of looking upwards as much as possible.
 

So here’s my thought for the day – as we push on with the day job, focusing on the task in hand, getting the job done, we should all take some time emotionally and intellectually to pause and look up.  We might see something beautiful – either created by nature or by someone else – which might help us to think about and develop other ways of completing that task and maybe inspire others to lift their eyes upwards occasionally.

Releasing the Inner Cowboy - a professional confessional.

As I have mentioned before, I've had a variety of paid jobs over the years.  Apart from the obligatory 'student' Summer jobs and the like, most of these other roles came about because it was difficult to find and stay in work in my first chosen profession, as an actor.  In a professional acting career of some 12 years, I probably worked as an actor for about 5 of those years; the rest of time, I was "resting" (a bigger misnomer I have yet to find), and undertook a variety of other jobs between acting work to keep the wolf from the door.

I left school able to type (I have a Secretarial Studies SCE 'O' Grade) and I learned to drive in the Summer holidays before I started Drama School.  So between those two ‘essential skills', I was always able to find work in between my infrequent acting jobs - usually in some kind of audio-typing or transcription work or as a delivery driver.  And the typing jobs led to me being offered several permanent officework positions.  Why?  Because I was still acting when I took on those roles - I dressed the part, I walked the talk, I was articulate, accurate in my work, I stepped in where the need arose and tried to do the best possible job I could.

An actor friend put it this way, "When you put an actor into another job, you're employing a cowboy who doesn't necessarily know the 'rules' or the politics of the situation, who is 'quick study' and just gets on with it, but in a more creative and effective way".

Eventually, marriage, mortgage and a desire to start a family, coupled with a realisation that the next level of acting work wasn't happening quickly enough to achieve those aspirations, led me to take up one of those offers of a permanent job, and I became the Office Manager for a Transport & Planning Training Company in London.  Again, I learned the job on the job (the work is the learning is the work) and I was off on another professional career, which eventually led to training and training (now Learning) management.

But what I realised over the years is that the more 'professional' and good at the job I became, the less spontaneous, creative and engaged I felt.  I was gradually conforming to my different employers' cultures and politics such that my 'inner cowboy', the amateur pirate that got me into these positions in the first place, had become depressed and gone off in a sulk.  And you don’t want to be around a sulking actor, believe me!

Jump forward to last year. I attended a one day Learning & Skills Group conference, and got my first experience of Twitter, in a session run by Jane Hart and Barry Sampson.  People around me were whipping out their iPhones and laptops and we could all see something called a ‘Twitter Backstream’ projected from the Internet onto the screen.  People, identified by strange @names, were commenting, answering - and asking - questions; and some of them weren't even in the room!  Jane and Barry (or @C4LPT and @barrysampson as I have come to know them) kept things on track by getting everyone to use the same 'hashtag' (more magic), which meant that we could focus in on the topics under discussion.  I had vaguely heard about Twitter, but with no context or application, had never grasped its potential.

So I came home, signed up and got myself an account.  I said 'hello' and people I knew (and some I didn’t) said ‘hello’ back, and a dialogue commenced.  I started following people in the L&D and Social Media industry, and over the last year, I have developed an inspiring and challenging Personal Learning Network, to which I hope I have added some value myself.  I have re-engaged, conversed, argued, learned from and generally 'got my mojo back' through the conversations and discussions with these clever and creative people.

I’ve realised that there’s a parallel here with my professional career.  In between acting jobs, I was essentially an amateur at everything else I did, until they became more permanent, professional positions.  I started out as a Twitter amateur (an #amatwiteur, if you will) and have found the whole thing to be an interesting and inspiring experience.  It has opened my eyes to the potential of social media in learning, and by being 'under the radar' at work, has refreshed and re-energised my inner cowboy.  I have engaged with others, with my own team and with people at work in a way in which my 'professional' approach was not working - for me or for them.  We’re all now playing with and reflecting on the potential of these new technologies in the workplace.

Now, with a role change imminent at work and the refocus of a new leadership position in Learning Technologies, I am releasing my inner cowboy, my creative amateur, and starting to mix things up again.  I’ll be updating this story with how things are progressing, in my session with Clive Shepherd at the World of Learning Conference in Birmingham on Tuesday 27^th September (#WoL11).  I hope you can be part of that too.

Assumptions in a Virtual World

In one of my previous blogs, I talked about my daily commute to London. One morning recently, my train pulled in to City Thameslink station and the usual crowd got up and left the train. In the ensuing - and brief - silence which followed, a woman standing at the door of the carriage called out "Is this City Thameslink?" Without giving it any thought, nor looking over my shoulder to see, I made a very presumptive judgement about her. "The station name's written on the wall! It's just been announced by the driver! Stupid woman." I didn't say that obviously, but I most definitely thought it!

But then I had another thought, "Hang on, who's being stupid here? What assumptions have I just made without checking? Maybe she's blind; or deaf; or both! Maybe she has learning difficulties, or is Dyslexic! Did I hear a foreign accent? Is English not her first language?" You see where I'm going with this. Because I couldn't see her or be bothered to find out anything about her, I made a horrible, knee-jerk, inappropriate judgement about her because of that one heard question. There, I'm glad I got that off my chest - confession is good for the soul!

Then I got to thinking how similar that situation is to that in which I have found myself when running virtual classroom sessions or webinars. My guess is that the majority of us don't use webcam or video in these sessions (bandwidth, etc), so we rely on our participants' voices, their web chat, their interaction with mark-up tools, responses to questions or polls, for us to get any sense of who they really are and the circumstances in which they are participating in our session.

But what don't we know or can tell from this? Are they private? Are they in a shared office? Can they interact freely? Are they shy? Do they have difficulty in seeing the screen? Do they need glasses? Are they 'newbies' to this environment? Do they not like the sound of their own voice? Is English not their first language? Is this session engaging enough? Am I encouraging participation with my questions, my polls, my arguments?

In the classroom, we identify some of these issues because we can see the learner and actively flex to engage them as we go along. Do we pay enough attention to the quiet ones in our online sessions, without those clues?

We talk a lot about non-verbal communication and how we rely on it to contextualise our face-to-face or classroom sessions. As my team and I look to retool, revitalise and revive our Virtual Classroom sessions and uptake, maybe we need to pay even more - and urgent - attention to our virtual interpretation and communication skills.

Have you got any similar experiences and/or hints and tips to share?

Man on the Moon

Being something of an armchair astronomer (remember, I know a little about a lot…), I was recently asked to write a short, 300 word piece, on the subject of ‘The Moon’, for a local community newsletter. That was the extent of the brief; so I wrote and submitted the following:

TITLE: "There is no dark side of the Moon really..."

Towards the end of Pink Floyd's seminal 1973 album, Dark Side of The Moon, a character can be heard saying "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark." Sounds deeply mystical and meaningful, doesn't it? But it's wrong.

We assume that, because we always see the same 'face' of the Moon turned towards us, the other side must be dark. However, we see the different phases of the Moon each month - New, 1st Quarter, Half, 3rd Quarter, New - when the sun illuminates it from different angles as it orbits the Earth every 29 days. And remember, when we have an eclipse, the Moon comes between us and the Sun and blocks it from view for a few magical moments. At that point 'our' side is the dark side and the Sun is shining fully onto the other side.

We also assume that the Moon doesn’t rotate like the Earth does (our 24hr day). But it actually rotates one full turn during those 29 days!

Don't believe me? Draw a Man in the Moon face onto a ping-pong ball (your ‘Moon’), turn it to face another larger, spherical object (your ‘Earth’), and then, WITHOUT TWISTING your hand, move it in a circle round your Earth. You'll see the 'face' eventually turns away from the 'Earth' until, half way round, it has turned its back and faces away from the Earth altogether! To keep the same 'face' towards the earth, you HAVE to twist your ‘Moon’ round so that by the time you return to the starting point, you have rotated it by one full turn. Our Earth Month is one Lunar Day!

The truth is there is no dark side of the Moon really. Full Stop. (End of article)

So why am I sharing this article with you in my blog? What has this got to do with my professional life and interests - or indeed, yours? Well, the clue is the last paragraph, where I suggest a practical exercise to explain the concept. It’s not a theoretical exercise. I wanted to make an out-of-this-world scientific fact into something tangible. Having read up the science bit (fttp://www.universetoday.com/19725/lunar-day/), I did it myself to be sure I fully understood the principle, and then I talked my son through doing the same thing with a grape and an orange, to check that it was an understandable - and do-able - practical exercise. He learned something he didn’t know about our Moon, without us getting bogged down in complex discussions about orbital dynamics and tidal locking.

You see, I’m not a book learner; I need to do and see things for myself for them to make sense. That’s how I developed as an IT trainer many years ago, by learning to use software for myself. For example, any time I had to write a new word processing course, I used the actual software itself to write the course materials – Word, WordPerfect, AmiPro etc. - so I could walk the talk when it came to sharing with my students. It's how I'm learning to blog!

My limited knowledge and understanding of astronomy came initially from buying a pair of binoculars 20 years ago and pointing them at the moon (I was really trying to see Halley's Comet - never did). I subscribed to an astronomy magazine, which really whetted my appetite to see more. So I bought a telescope and hunted down some of the planets - Mars, Venus, Jupiter - and I will never forget the thrill I experienced the first time I saw the Rings of Saturn for myself through that telescope. Theory became reality by translating it into action, discovery and by looking closer.

That’s how I learn, and I’ve used that approach with many others over the years in IT Learning & Development. Make it real, make it challenging, make it fun and they'll be with you all the way. Don’t, and they won’t.

What are your techniques for keeping your training alive for your learners?

Under the Commute

Another beautiful day in Sussex on Sunday, so @MandyRG and I hit the road to Ardingly Reservoir for a country walk - nothing as strenuous or as challenging as @BenedictBeau's recent South Downs walk (http://lionslastroar.blogspot.com/) mind you - and then I took myself off for another hour to walk down the Ouse to have a look at the Balcome Railway Viaduct and take some photos (see below).

There are a host of facts about this 1841, 37-arch viaduct, which I won't repeat here - you can find all that stuff easily on the Web.

So, why did I need to get up close and personal to this piece of our industrial architecture?  Well, apart from my natural geeky curiosity about all things 'trains', I actually pass over this viaduct on my daily rail commute to and from London, and have often admired the surrounding countryside as we sweep overhead at 75 mph.  I thought it would be cool to see both the viaduct and its setting from another perspective.

I was reminded of @StephanieDedhar's post last week "Looking at things the right way", where she discusses how seeing the same topic from different perspectives can add weight and understanding to a learning experience (http://stephaniededhar.wordpress.com/). 

And talking of perspectives, I can't think of a better illustration of that than the second photo, looking through the piers of the viaduct, from one end to the other.  They were built with hollow centres (to save bricks?) and can only be seen in all their glory by being directly underneath the structure.

As this picture was being taken on autotimer, a train thundered by overhead and I smiled to myself that, come Tuesday, I'll be doing that again myself, with several hundred other regular commuters. But I'll never take that particular part of my journey for granted again - I've been under the commute.