Today I tried to learn Dreamweaver. Wow! What an experience. It took me 7 hours and two large mochas to get past lesson number 2. But tennacity paid off. I DID learn how to create a home page AND link to pages, link to return email and link to a URL.
Through this experience I found myself not unlike one of the students of knowledge on the steps of the gathering place at the School of Athens… trying to pick up any tips I can about web design and even moreso, advice about how to be a good learner.
While researching that “thought,” I stumbled on an interesting KM blog page– KM and learning: separated at birth? by Jay Cross. The headline definitely caught my attention! Can we be good KMers and not be good learners? In the blog Jay references a book he wrote, “Informal Learning”, and offers a WONDERFUL quote about the KM learner: When the job environment changed but slowly, corporate learning involved acquiring the skills and know-how to do the job. Now corporate learning means keeping up with the new things you need to know to do the job. Maybe daily.
The traditional barriers separating training, development, knowledge management, performance support, informal learning, mentoring, and knowing the latest news have become obstacles to performance. They are all one thing, for one purpose, and that’s performance.
So, learning Dreamweaver is just part of my KM responsiblities to acquire the skills and know-how to do the job. I’ll get back with you about my “performance.”
Go, you!