Education Innovation

The Coming Shift for Professional Learning Communities and Knowledge Workers

A shift is happening in workplaces across the globe. It is an evolution in the ways people will interact, collaborate, coordinate, and accomplish their work. This evolution, this paradigm shift is based around the social media rich ecosystem of the Internet and all of the emerging technologies that it brings into our lives.

 

Case in point, a recent survey conducted by Acrobat.com with Directions Research Inc. The results detail this coming change.

The survey results indicate that, “an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century.”

The 21st Century Professional has long been described as a “knowledge worker.” This term, famously coined by management guru Peter Drucker, is the very essence of educators and Professional Learning Communities. The survey identified four key categories of knowledge workers:

Leaders - Young professionals who use a variety of emerging technologies both at work and in their personal lives

Actives - Largely over-35 year old professionals who have adapted to emerging technologies to meet the changing demands of the workplace

Followers - The less technically-inclined who rely on e-mail at the exclusion of other technologie

Resistors - Generally older workers who are reluctant to adjust to shifts in the workplace and office technologies

The survey research suggests several trends that have will have an impact on the way Professional Learning Communities will work in the coming future.

1: “The leap in new technology options and the shifting demographics of the workforce mean that the old, traditional way of doing business is rapidly being enhanced by new ways of working. More business will be conducted using emerging communications technologies and social networking platforms.”

Professional Learning Communities will soon be filled members of this “shifting demographic.” They will be comfortable with technology as a natural extension of their work, how they communicate, how they collaborate, how they plan, etc. The technology is certainly going to continue to evolve making it even easier to collaborate virtually.

2. “Technologies that people prefer to use in their private lives will become the technologies people want to use at work...what we call the consumerization of collaboration.”

Technology is going to increase its involvement and importance in all aspects of our lives. The younger demographic will assume these technologies will be used, and demand it if they aren’t.

3. “The younger generation prefers to use multiple channels of communication, often choosing social networks, text messaging or instant messaging instead of e-mail and in-person meetings.”

The coming demographic (and a growing percentage of the current population of educators) will see these technologies as a logical extension of who they are and how they work.

Technology is going to change how Professional Learning Communities collaborate and interact with each other.

Why? The next generation of educators is not going to recognize a functional difference between person-to-person PLCs and virtual ones. The coming generation consider those who participate through the “virtual” technologies as present, as being there. They will live in two worlds simultaneously. And they will be good at it, because for them, it isn’t really two worlds at all. There is just real touch and virtual touch. But it’s all touch.

Professional Learning Communities will move back-and-forth from the conference table to the digital network.

If you are interested, here is the Acrobat Survey.

Tool Up Your PLCs with "25 Tools for Learning Professionals"

25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

The New Media Litearacies

Discovered this video from my PLN. It was created by the The New Media Literacies Project.
According to their site..."Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world."

This group is doing some great work in this field.

The video list these skills as part of the New Media Literacies student will need to learn.

Judgment
Negotiation
Appropriation
Play
Transmedia Navigation
Simulation
Collective Intelligence
Performance
Distributed Cognition
Visualization
Mulitaksing

Take a look at the video

Gatekeepers vs. Gatejumpers

I came across this thought provoking post on Chris Brogan's excellent blog on community and social media.

Gatekeepers vs Gatejumpers

His post deals with traditional business and their non-traditional online business counterparts.

"Consider traditional mainstream businesses. They are the gatekeepers of what we consider the standard, the typical, the recognized. It’s really easy to look at this when you consider various media properties and their online upstart counterparts."

In addition to the list that Chris started on his own, there is a great list going in the comments section. The comments are a post in themselves with some excellent observations.

But, this got me thinking about the bigger idea of Gatekeepers vs. Gatejumpers. The traditional education establishment is the gatekeeper. As a gatekeeper that tell students where to learn, when to learn, what to learn, and whom to learn from. It is completely focused on teaching.

The gatejumper to this gate is a focus on learning. When the focus is learning, the question of where, when, what, who, and even why are quite different. Gatejumpers or those of us who focus on learning and use whatever means, technology and internet included, to make that happen.