On March 5, 2010, a great travesty occurred in the State of Texas. A radical, right-wing faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded in replacing fact with fiction in the state’s official curriculum that dictates how the children of that state will be taught. The new curriculum directives touch upon a wide array of subjects including social studies, history and economics. You can read more about it here.

As just one example of the new outrageous and dangerous guidelines, teachers in that state will be required to focus on the Judeo-Christian influences of our nation’s Founding Fathers. At the same time, they will not be allowed to teach the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. I fear the United States is beginning to form its own version of the same theocratic crazies that dominate elsewhere in the world. I thought our country was better than this.

While this blog is about self education, any affront to true learning and education is something I feel I must speak out about. These types of decisions must not be allowed to stand. They also point out why developing the self education skills in our children is so vital if we are to ensure we survive as a nation and as a civil society. Students must be taught to seek out facts and ideas unrestricted by any particular bias. By fostering self education skills we can at least counteract some of the shortcomings of traditional formal education highlighted so clearly by the Texas debacle.

I’m currently reading a great book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto, which was recently picked as an Amazon.com book of the month selection. The message of the book is that in today’s deluge of information and processes that many of us are required to utilize in our daily lives, and in our professional lives in particular, there is no way we can remember everything we need to do without a reference. That reference can be a simple checklist.

A checklist is simply a concise listing of steps or considerations that should be addressed as we undertake a task. I won’t go into the power that checklists have. Go ahead and read Gawande’s book to learn more about that, but the gist is that the introduction of a simple checklist into a task or process significantly improves the likelihood that all steps or considerations will be addressed and that the resulting outcome will be better. The evidence put forth by Gawande is irrefutable in this regard.

So, how might this apply to self education? I’d like to propose you consider creating for yourself a simple checklist you can use to jumpstart any self education effort you might undertake. As you begin to embark on a learning project, use each of these checklist items to hone and improve your learning. Each checklist item need only have one or a few words to queue you to thinking about the item. How you construct your checklist is up to you and should be tailored to your preferred ways of learning. Simple and short is usually best. This following checklist should give you some ideas.

1. Start a learning document. This can be a simple word processing document that contains much of the content we’ll talk about in the remaining checklist. A learning document becomes your central repository for learning guidance and documentation of learning.
2. What do I want to learn? At first glance, this seems like a silly checklist item, but too often we start to learn about something and realize we’ve failed to identify exactly what it is we want to learn?
3. Why do I want to learn it? Why we want to learn something is important. Having a good reason to learn something motivates us and helps to keep our learning on track.
4. What learning resources are available? Are there people you can communicate with who understand the topic? Books? Websites? eLearning? Discussion groups? Make as thorough a list of resources as possible.
5. Can I identify some good overview material? Most of us learn best when we digest and understand high-level, overview material about the topic first. We hang the more detailed aspects of our learning on these larger, overarching ideas and concepts. Understanding them will improve your learning.
6. Use the overview material. Learn from any overview material you can find until you feel you have a good, high-level understanding of the topic.
7. Can I outline the topic? Creating an outline, even a rudimentary one, can assist you in organizing your thinking and your learning. No one will see the outline but you. So use whatever format works for you.
8. What should I do and in what order? Identify some specific learning tasks such as reading a book, viewing a documentary, talking with a knowledgeable person, attending a speech or presentation, investigating a website, and so on.
9. Act. You know what you want to learn, why you want to learn it, identified some resources, identified and learned from overview material, outlined the topic, and created an ordered list of learning tasks. Now it’s time to act and learn.
10. Can I produce something that proves I know what I know? Can you create a document, presentation, video, photograph, audio recording, or anything else you can think of that “proves” you know the topic. This serves two purposes. First, it helps you solidify the learning that’s taking place as you create this product. Second, if you should ever need to prove to an employer or someone else that you know about this topic, such proof is incredibly valuable.
11. Update, organize and store your learning document and any other materials you used to learn or prove your learning. Most of what you’ll be organizing are likely to be digital computer files, which are easily organized, but you might have some tangible physical stuff to deal with as well. When it becomes necessary to reference this stuff in the future, you’ll be glad you spent a little time doing this.

This checklist is just a suggestion for the creation of your own checklist. Adapt it to suit your needs. No one knows how you learn best better than you. And if you have any other suggestions for checklist items, please enter a comment to share with everyone so we can all keep learning.

These days a popular term has emerged in learning circles – social learning. It’s not an entirely new term. Discussion about social learning has roots going back as early as the late 1800’s. In recent times it has become somewhat synonymous with social media learning. While learning theorists will rightfully disagree that the two terms mean the same thing, common usage has blurred the meanings and the two are now often used interchangeably.

Social learning is currently a hot topic in the corporate world. Many organizations are adopting social learning practices that focus on employees often learning best from peers and internal subject-matter experts. Collaborative and multi-faceted learning is the key to social learning. Mechanisms such as communities of practice, wikis, blogs, discussion groups and expert directories are being used to bring about more efficient and useful learning in the workplace.

Outside of the workplace, social learning takes place in similar ways with a contemporary focus on social media as the primary vehicle to loosely organize and facilitate this type of learning. Again, the focus is on learning from others in an informal manner.

Whether taking place in the workplace or in other aspects of our lives, social learning is a concept that will only grow over time as we network further with each other and in more robust and intricate ways. Technology will continue to facilitate social learning to the point where I believe it will significantly challenge, head-to-head, traditional classroom approaches to learning. A tipping point is approaching at which time social learning will be considered a viable alternative to classroom-based education. I look forward to that day.

However, when talking about social learning, it’s important to remember that social learning is really a subset of the larger topic of self education. Informal learning, self-directed learning, social learning and social media learning are all so closely related to each other that we must continue to think of them within the context of the broader topic of self education.

I believe self education is the future cornerstone of all education. In truth, it always has been, but the dominance of formal education in the community consciousness has been so overwhelming that it’s drowned out any reasonable discussion of self education until fairly recently. I hope the rise of social learning’s importance will help to usher in a new era of more useful, cost-effective and personally-relevant learning gained primarily through self education.

When I first read James Geary’s The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. Language has always fascinated me and the types of quotes and aphorisms highlighted in Mr. Geary’s book are particularly fascinating. Amidst such golden language resides the metaphor. Lots of them. Metaphors aren’t just an option in our language; they liberally populate the written and spoken word in every aspect of our daily lives.

No one can be considered truly educated without a good understanding of the metaphor. In this talk at TED, James Geary explains the pervasive, influential and vital nature of the metaphor. Enjoy.

People who work in the instructional design or training field know of the concept of test outs. A test out is a test someone takes to determine if they have the prerequisite knowledge or skill necessary to take a particular course or module of training. In other words, the test out determines if the person already has the appropriate amount of foundation knowledge to take the class.

I think the time has come for the test out concept to be broadened. If someone can take a test to demonstrate adequate knowledge about something, why can’t there be test outs for virtually every subject area taught in schools today. Not every area of study would be a perfect fit for the test out, but most would.

Traditional higher education institutions have already adopted the test out concept to some extent. For example, many colleges and universities accept passing scores on College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests as adequate evidence of knowledge in subject areas such as literature, history, science and mathematics and they award college credit for those passing marks. However, they place a limit on the number of college credits that can be attained using such testing. Why? If I can demonstrate 30 hours of college-level knowledge using a test out, why can’t I do the same for up to 120 hours of knowledge (the average number of credits required for a degree at most colleges)?

Sure, there are some areas of study I wouldn’t want to leave entirely to test outs to prove competence. I don’t think I’d want a surgeon operating on me who only took a bunch of tests to get his degree. And I don’t think I’d want a lawyer representing me who never engaged in legal theory debate with others studying the field. But for many other professions I’d be quite comfortable with people proving their competence through testing.

There are certainly problems with the test out concept. I’d have concerns that we’d once again go down the road of the overly certified society and not value self education adequately because we’re awarding credit only for those who pass a test doled out by some “official” entity. But I’m also a realist. I know our society will continue to worship at the altar of the college degree for a while yet and my hope is that elevating the role of test outs might encourage more overall acceptance of self education whether gained from individual study or life experience.

If you have experience with, or thoughts about, such test outs, I’d appreciate your insights and opinion.

If you’d like to learn about earning college credit through the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP), take a look at this site and then consider buying their official study guide.

Educational institutions, companies and organizations often create online learning portals to act as entryways into learning resources and opportunities for their students or employees. Search for “learning portal” using your favorite search engine to see some examples. You can create your own learning portal using just your browser.

No matter what type of browser you use, they all share the common feature of allowing you to bookmark a web page and to categorize those bookmarks. You can leverage this capability to create your own learning and reference portal.

Online learning destinations tend to fall into a few general categories. By categorizing your bookmarked web pages under appropriate category names, you can emulate the links you’d find in a typical learning portal, and this one will be tailored to your specific needs.

The trick is to decide upon the right categories. Here are some suggestions, but you should use these only as a starting point. Your learning portal should be individualized and relevant to what you want to learn, how you learn, and your areas of interest. You might create these categories under a single browser category of My Learning Portal.

• General Reference
• Libraries
• Professional Organizations
• Tutorials
• Blogs
• Videos

Within each of these categories you might break it down into sub-categories related to specific subject areas. Ultimately, how you organize your links is up to you. Only you know best what organization makes sense.

Keep your links and their categorization current. Over time it’s easy to get lazy about organizing your bookmarked pages and that will significantly reduce the usefulness of your learning portal. If well maintained, your personalized learning portal can serve as your pathway to ongoing learning for the rest of your life.

Here’s a great link I stumbled upon to a number of useful commercial learning portals.

This post thread started with my book review of Proving Your Qualified.

In previous posts I discussed some of the elements of an education portfolio – résumés, letters of recommendation and testimonials. Although what elements go into the making of a good education portfolio varies by individual and job target, a good one might consist of a résumé, letters of recommendation, testimonials, work samples and documentation of learning. I’ll discuss work samples in this post and documentation in a future post.

Work Samples

A work sample can be anything viewable, readable or listenable that demonstrates you have certain knowledge, skill, experience or other qualities (professional or personal) that will contribute to a future employer’s bottom line. Work samples provide solid evidence of your past work, showcase your skills and abilities, and validate the quality of what you do. And all of it contributes to proving your education.

It’s also good to think of this as not just “work” samples, but samples of anything that highlights an accomplishment or learning of any kind.

All kinds of material can be used as a work sample. Some are obvious and others are less so. Think big and broadly.

If you work in a traditional office setting, depending on your specific job and level you can include copies of material you create such as reports, brochures, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, database designs, project plans, job aids, budgets, and requests for proposals. Almost any work product generated in a business environment can be used as a work sample.

If your work is in the more artistic realm, photographs, photographs of other physical artworks (paintings, sculptures, and so on), graphic designs and publication page layouts can make great work sample inclusions.

Anyone who makes a living with the written word, such as a writer or journalist, can use samples of their written work. Having examples of work that’s been published in the actual published form is always best. But your material nicely typed will suffice.

Entertainers, speakers, trainers and others who make their living in front of an audience or class can make video or audio samples of their work available.

And don’t forget other samples not related directly to your work. For example, if you wrote a killer research paper in school on a relevant topic, include a copy of that in your portfolio. Or perhaps you volunteer with a non-profit organization and have planned and executed a large charity event. Samples of the event advertising, donor mailer letters and other collateral you created can make excellent work samples.

I think you get the idea. Anything someone can read, view or hear that contributes to someone’s understanding of what you know, what skills you have, and what you’ve accomplished, is fair game for inclusion in the work sample section of your portfolio.

Come back to my blog as I talk about the last element of an education portfolio in a future post.

We all make mistakes. Nothing we do is perfect. That’s how life is supposed to be. If we ever achieved perfection in all aspects of life we’d be very unhappy. Much of our joy in life, whether we realize it or not, comes from learning, from improving, from fine tuning this wonderful journey we’re all on.

Some folks don’t get to experience such joy because they don’t accept feedback very well. Walls go up the moment they receive any type of criticism, even when it’s delivered with the best of intentions. Sometimes people take feedback badly even when they have specifically asked for the feedback.

I’ve observed that those who learn best are those who are the most open to correction and advice. In fact, I believe that the ability to easily assimilate feedback from others is one of the key learning skills necessary to learn optimally. If someone is closed to feedback, their learning will suffer significantly.

So as you live your life, consider making a conscious effort to welcome feedback with open arms. You’ll learn more and you’ll learn better.

One of the skills that benefits everyone in terms of networking and productivity is learning people’s names. Once you are introduced to someone, it’s amazing how impressive it is to others when you remember their name the next time you see them. Of course, this is not new information.

Many years ago my father gave me a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and I still consider it a classic. One of the guiding bits of advice Carnegie offers is to “remember that a man’s name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” That’s wise advice.

By nature, I’m not inclined to remember people’s names. I have to work at it. But I consider it something for which exerting the effort is worthwhile. So many times I’ve remembered someone’s name upon meeting them again and seen the clear sign of pleasure the other person experienced when they realized I’d remembered their name. It’s validating. We all like it.

Enter Facebook. While I use Facebook for my closer circle of friends (I use LinkedIn professionally), I also have an extended range of casual friends I’m connected to on Facebook that I meet only rarely and often don’t remember their names. Now on Facebook I regularly see their picture alongside their full name. This reinforces their name in my mind, and this includes their last name too which most don’t remember nearly as often as a first name. All of sudden I’m remembering people’s names better. Yay!

Human interaction skills like remembering names is something we should all learn. It will serve us well in both our personal and professional lives. Not all learning has to be comprised of absorbing facts or complex technical skills. Much of the learning we should all pursue centers around how we can best interact and communicate with others. I’m glad Facebook has helped me with one human interaction skill in which I was truly lacking any expertise. Maybe it can help you too.

This post thread started with my book review of Proving Your Qualified.

In previous posts I discussed some of the elements of an education portfolio – résumés and letters of recommendation. Although what elements go into the making of a good education portfolio varies by individual and job target, a good one might consist of a résumé, letters of recommendation, testimonials, work samples and documentation of learning. I’ll discuss testimonials in this post and the remaining elements in future posts.

Testimonials

While a letter of recommendation is a formal letter that packs quite a punch when trying to impress someone considering whether to hire you or not, a testimonial can also be impressive. What is a testimonial?

You might be familiar with the many testimonials (or endorsements) that populate the infomercials so prevalent on television today. These are generally written or spoken statements, sometimes short quotes (often from a well-known celebrity, expert in the field, or private citizen) extolling the virtues of some product or service. For our purposes here, a testimonial is someone extolling your virtues, experience, knowledge and skills.

When someone says something nice about your work or your high level of expertise or skill, ask if you can quote them. Or better yet, ask if they’ll put what they said in an email and send it to you. Ask them if it’s alright to include the testimonial quote in your portfolio. Also ask if it’s alright to use their name, title and company (if applicable) and contact information (email address usually). If you feel the quote needs to be reworded, don’t hesitate to revise it and send it back to them and ask if the rewording is OK. You want it to read in that testimonial “style.” They’ll generally say yes as long as you didn’t change the meaning of anything they said.

Why ask if you can use their name and information? Because testimonial quotes attributed to a specific person who can (if one were to want to) be validated make the best impression. But even if the attribution of the quote is from “a satisfied client” or “a fellow co-worker at ABC Corporation,” use it anyway.

Present your testimonials neatly typed as quoted material along with whatever attribution you can include below it. For example…

“John Doe’s computer savvy, work ethic and experience in the software development field have contributed significantly to our company’s success.”
- Jack Smith, Vice President, Big Corporation

 In a portfolio that someone will be flipping through, formatting each quote in a large font that fills an entire page can make an impact. If presenting the testimonial quotes online or in a printed document you’re sending to or giving someone, just present the quotes and attributions formatted nicely in a regular font in a series sequentially on as many pages as is necessary.

Come back to my blog as I talk about the other elements of an education portfolio in future posts.

This post thread started with my book review of Proving Your Qualified.

In my last post I discussed one of the elements of an education portfolio – résumés. Although what elements go into the making of a good education portfolio varies by individual and job target, a good one might consist of a résumé, letters of recommendation, testimonials, work samples and documentation of learning. I’ll discuss letters of recommendation in this post and the remaining elements in future posts.

Letters of Recommendation

Letters of recommendation are typically written by past employers or clients extolling your background, virtues and skills to another potential employer. Aren’t sure what one looks like? Just go to your favorite web search engine such as bing.com or google.com and type in “letters of recommendation” (with the quotes) and you’ll see all sorts of sites devoted to this topic including lots of sample letters.

How do you get a letter of recommendation? You ask!

So many people think it’s wrong to ask for a letter of recommendation. It’s not. Go ahead and ask. Even better yet (and you may find this strange at first), write the letter yourself. I mean it. Write your own letter of recommendation and present it to the person you want the letter from. When presenting it say something like “I know you’re a busy person and I’d like a letter of recommendation from you. I’ve taken the liberty of writing one myself. Of course, you can change it or write your own, but if you agree with what it says and just want to sign it, that would be great. Let me leave this with you and you can look it over.”

You’ll be shocked by how many people will simply sign it. Why? Because the hard work of writing the letter is done for them. Assuming you’ve portrayed yourself accurately in the letter and you know the person sees you and your work as you do, they will likely sign the letter.

When presenting the letter, have it printed on the company or department letterhead. This adds significant credibility to the letter. Make sure to identify the person’s title under their printed name, just below where they’ll add their signature. If you don’t have access to the company stationery, create a simple, professional-looking stationery letterhead yourself and use that. Use at least their name and title in the letterhead. If the company name, address, phone number and email in the letterhead seem appropriate, add those too. You can always offer to alter the letterhead text before they sign it if they don’t like it. There are thousands of letterhead templates available. Again, simply type in “letterhead templates” into your favorite search engine and you’ll find plenty of them.

Try to mix up the way you write these letters of recommendation. You don’t want them to sound like they’ve all been written by you. Likewise, if you create the letterhead for them, don’t use the same template twice.

If the only way to get a letter of recommendation is as an email, then take it. A printout of an email might not have the visual impact of a signed letter on letterhead, but it can still be powerful and influential to those who read it.

Come back to my blog as I talk about the other elements of an education portfolio in future posts.

This post continues the topic I started in my previous book review of Proving You’re Qualified.

Here’s the dilemma. You’re about to search for a new job. You have some work experience behind you. You’ve learned some things along way. Perhaps you’ve read some books, learned on the job, taken some workshops, or otherwise gained some great experience, knowledge and skills that a potential employer will undoubtedly find of benefit to their company. Now you’re looking for a new job or a promotion, but you don’t have a college degree. What do you do?

College degrees (or professional certifications) are far too often the litmus test by which companies have filtered out job applicants. Assuming that someone is a better fit for a job because they hold a college degree often turns out to be a terrible way to judge job candidates. Luckily, many companies are seeing the wisdom in having a more broad set of applicant requirements. You’ll often now see the words “college degree required – or equivalent work experience” listed in a job opening description. As more and more baby boomers retire and companies seek out the required workers in a dwindling pool of talent, I expect this trend to continue.

Sure, for some professions such as physician, attorney or architect, formal education is not just a good idea, but the only way to go. But for the majority of jobs, including many professional jobs, a college degree means little when determining if someone is right for a position.

Even for employment positions advertised as requiring a college degree, there are sometimes ways to get past this requirement. If you can make a direct, personal contact with someone at a company they can often arrange for the college degree requirement to be waived if there is a compelling reason to do so. There is always someone at some level of the company that can waive the requirement unless it’s one of those jobs that absolutely requires a college degree.

So what do you do? How do you prove to a potential employer that you have what it takes to do a job as well as someone with a degree (if not better)? The answer is to create an education portfolio.

What is an education portfolio? It’s documentation, presented in a concise and easy-to-view form, of your job/life experience, learning, skills, competencies and other factors that taken together comprise your unique, individual education. Truthfully, even if you have a college degree, a good education portfolio will give you added credibility when interviewing for a job.

So what goes into an education portfolio? It can vary by individual and job target, but a good one might consist of these elements:

• Your résumé.
• Letters of recommendation.
• Testimonials.
• Work samples.
• Documentation of learning.

I’ll discuss each of these elements individually starting with your résumé in this post and the other elements in future posts.

Your Résumé

When looking for a job, your résumé is your most important piece of marketing collateral. And that’s how you should look at it. You’re marketing yourself to prospective employers. So your résumé should sell you in the strongest manner possible. In one or two pages your résumé should tell someone what you know, what you’ve accomplished, and how your knowledge and experience can translate into a better bottom line for their company.

Writing a résumé can be tricky. If you can afford it, hiring a professional résumé writer can be beneficial. I would avoid hiring someone through a job board’s résumé service or without some good references. Like the rest of the professional world, quality varies dramatically. Ask around to see if any of your friends have hired a professional résumé writer. Don’t ask someone at your current place of employment unless you’re absolutely sure the person will hold your inquiry in confidence. You don’t want to tip off your employer that you’re looking for a new job.

If you don’t know of someone, consulting a professional organization’s roster like the National Résumé Writers Association is a good idea. If you choose to write your résumé yourself and you have decent writing skills, you can produce a good résumé on your own. I recommend you read The Elements of Resume Style: Essential Rules and Eye-Opening Advice for Writing Resumes and Cover Letters that Work by Scott Bennett. It’s an excellent book you can read in a day and it will give you great basic advice on creating your résumé along with some useful job search advice.

Come back to my blog as I talk about the other elements of an education portfolio in future posts.