You may find something that surprises or unsettles you. Or you may find something that confirms what you believe with data and not just some anecdotes or gut feelings. Some time spent here will help you move past “I think” or “it feels right” to “evidence shows.”

Teachers are learners. If they’re not, they shouldn’t be teachers.

<p>I believe that the roles &nbsp;of the Instructional Designer and Teacher are changing and must change in the face of the ever-increasing onslaught of information every human being faces today.&nbsp; Those roles must merge into the Sharer, who shows new technologies and connections to information to others while always keeping in mind his/her own role as perpetual student.&nbsp;</p> <p>To do this, the Sharer must, at least in some respects, plant the environment for others, set up what may grow into connections and give opportunity for emergence in ways even the Sharer may not envision yet, but in a reasonably “safe” environment for exploration.</p>

The Teacher/Sharer, parents and student collaborate on ensuring that whatever method the student is using is assisting in wayfinding toward those goals.&nbsp; If more connections are made, so much the better.&nbsp; But along the path, like signposts, each of the connections (parents, Teacher/Sharers) and&nbsp;each tool (video, Second Life, writing, drawing, blog, podcast,&nbsp; etc.) used&nbsp;to connect&nbsp;to people&nbsp;will prompt the student for responses (dates, opinions, responses to readings) of the set curriculum, but framed in the context best suited for that student.&nbsp;A&nbsp;record of the waypoints shows how the student connected and which connections seemed to spark the most activity and best learning.&nbsp; If the student misses a certain number of waypoints, the direction of the connections is adjusted until success is achieved.

1. How to predict consequences

The prediction of consequences is part science, part mathematics, and part visualization.

2. How to read

Oddly, by this I do not mean 'literacy' in the traditional sense, but rather, how to look at some text and to <span style="font-style: italic;">understand</span>, in a deep way, what is being asserted

<span style="font-weight: bold;">3. How to distinguish truth from fiction</span>

The first thing to learn is to actually question what you are told, what you read, and what you see on television. Do not simply accept what you are told. Always ask, how can you know that this is true? What evidence would lead you to believe that it is false?

<span style="font-weight: bold;">4. How to empathize</span>

Empathy isn't some sort of bargain. It isn't the application of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity">Golden Rule</a>. It is a <span style="font-style: italic;">genuine</span> feeling in yourself that operates in synch with the other person, a way of accessing their inner mental states through the sympathetic operation of your own mental states. You are polite because <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> feel bad when you are rude; you are honest because <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> feel offended when you lie.

5. How to be creative

Creativity, in other words, often operates by <span style="font-style: italic;">metaphor</span>, which means you need to learn how to <span style="font-style: italic;">find things in common</span> between the current situation and other things you know.

<span style="font-weight: bold;">6. How to communicate clearly</span>

Communicating clearly is most of all a matter of knowing what you want to say, and then employing some simple tools in order to say it.

7. How to Learn

Learning to learn is the same as learning anything else. It takes practice.

8. How to stay healthy

Finally, remember: you never have to justify protecting your own life and health.

9. How to value yourself

You can have all the knowledge and skills in the world, but they are meaningless if you do not feel personally empowered to use them; it's like owning a <a href="http://www.lamborghini.co.uk/">Lamborghini</a> and not having a driver's license.

10. How to live meaningfully

If you don't decide what is worth doing, someone will decide for you, and at some point in your life you will realize that you haven't done what is worth doing at all.

The whole point isn't to *add* online writing on top of everything else you do. Nobody has time for that.<br><br>Rather, what you want to be thinking of doing is to gradually migrate to writing online *instead* of writing for those other purposes.<br><br>That doesn't mean you become a blog writer and nothing else. Rather, what you'll find is that writing for the website makes writing for all those other things a lot easier.

The idea is to take the stuff you do for private audiences and to present it (as much as you can) to public audiences.<br>

Start here: Why should my son or daughter have to pick a single college and with it only the teachers and courses offered there?

Similarly, why should a professor pick just from the students accepted at his or her school? Online, the best can pick from the best, cutting out the middleman of university admissions.

Once you put all this together, students can self-organize with teachers and fellow students to learn what they want how and where they want. My hope is that this could finally lead to the lifelong education we keep nattering about but do little to actually support. And why don’t we? Because it doesn’t fit into the degree structure. And because self-organizing classes and education could cut academic institutions out of the their exclusive role in education.

<p>The bottom line: Organizations can no longer focus strictly on working, while ignoring living and learning. Neither can you, as a knowledge professional. The enterprise of the future must bring all three of those areas into balance.</p><p>Living means loving what you do and finding fulfillment in it. Working means doing what you love, in a way that is both challenging and rewarding. Learning means continually making new discoveries and putting those discoveries to work, both personally and professionally.</p><p>In essence, you and your organization, and your extended network, are now co-dependent. Your ability to grow is limited if your organization and network aren’t growing. Likewise, if you aren’t growing, you are inhibiting the growth of the organizations to which you belong. Think brain trust, as opposed to assembly line.</p>

Maybe basic skill sets for schooling should not be thought of as the 3 R's (reading, writing, and 'rithmetic), but rather beyond the memorization of facts and procedures, the efficient working of working memory and long term memory, the strategic use of brain resources for dynamic problem solving and multi-tasking, and the organization of ideas and perceptions for all types of output: verbal as well as non-verbal.

And so, the challenge is that when I try to divest myself of my teacherly voice I need to remember that this process is not about losing the voice of the expert but about losing the voice of the traditional authoritarian teacher who enters the classroom as an official persona armed with a pre-defined set of goals and very specific lesson plans for his students to follow. It is about giving the students the freedom to engage with ideas that they find relevant and interesting, not about dictating every step of their learning process.

I believe that it is important to lose the authoritarian voice, the controlling voice, but not the voice of an expert who chose to teach because of his passion for the subject. The students need to see that the instructor is someone who lives and breathes whatever it is that they’re studying, that they have in their midst someone who has a wealth of expertise.

The common wisdom holds that in the information age, we are each responsible for our own learning. The new insight is that we are each responsible for our own instructional design. We must ask ourselves whether we want to learn something or just to learn how to find it.

<li> <a href="http://christytucker.wordpress.com/">Experiencing E-Learning</a>: Mainly geared toward instructors, this blog offers advice and tools for any individual who is interested in lifelong learning.</li>

<p>I believe there are three primary reasons why an enterprise would want to “manage its knowledge”:</p> <p>One, to share learning, so that the same mistake is not made multiple times.</p> <p>Two, to share learning, so that activities get sped up.</p> <p>Three, to share learning, so that people are motivated to learn and to teach.</p> <p>To share learning.</p>

Knowledge management is not really about the content, it is about creating an environment where learning takes place. Maybe we spend too much time trying to create an environment where teaching takes place, rather than focus on the learning.