A Reflection on Learning: Learning in a Technological World
We live in a world described by Thomas L. Friedman called it a fast, fused, flattening and hyper-connected work in a complex adaptive ecosystem”. Learning has gone beyond the classroom. As an autodidact myself, I recorded about 5,000 hours of learning on YouTube within 6 months this year. YouTube is fast becoming the world’s largest university, with hundreds of millions of learners. Learning has gone beyond the walls of the classroom. The crucial advantage this brought with is the freedom to choose what I want to learn. Let me break it down:
1. Freedom to choose
Learning information and communication technology is a need for this age. I only had training for two weekends and continued to learn by reading books and watching YouTube videos. I became an agile project manager by learning continuously online. I had the freedom to choose which teacher on YouTube I want to listen to. I organize my day to determine the number of videos I would listen to today. The experiences I gained by listening to multiple teachers, over many concepts and multiple times, birthed a rich experience for my mind. I quickly understood within a few months that my thinking had changed and I see the world from a digital transformation view. Regulated learning model is good. But to enrich experience and make learning become transformational, this freedom is crucial for me.
2. Ownership and Authenticity of Learning
I merged these two points together because my transition to the ICT world is based on these two points. My ability to take ownership and learning with the tools i could leverage helped my understanding of difficult concepts. And the application of my learning to the real world through leveraging technological platforms has changed how I see the world. How I see the world has helped me solve problems. Today, I lead digital transformation projects involving about 11,000 people and delivered technological solutions impacting hundreds of thousand lives.
References
- Thibodeaux, T. (2015) The idea for abbreviating choice, ownership, voice, and agency as COVA came out of a conversation with my Lamar University colleague.
- Jonassen, D. H. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth, Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (pp. 215-240). New York, NY: Routledge.