Category: Learning & Development Food for Thought

(Microsoft, 2014)

A recurring theme about images keeps coming up in conversation and sticking in my mind. This week, a colleague who attended a workshop shared about the fact that images play an important role in educational content. A few months ago, I attended a talk about social media trends were it was shared that images are fast becoming the new social media currency, not text. Look at the evolution of online education, computer mediated communication (that is posting threads similar to what you do on Facebook or email) appears as dated or antiquated while video chat is more 2014.

Otto Peters (2010) commented on our hunger for digital images: “We accept and even demand this type of visual support because the influence of television has greatly altered our visual habits” (p. 144).

So what can you do to bring the “audiovisual land of milk and honey” (Peters, 2010, p. 143) to your learning solutions?

Here are some thoughts to start your brainstorming:

• In PowerPoint, use SmartArt to replace bullets points to better express concepts that include elements of direction or hierarchy
• Add a small image to each page of an upcoming project
• To introduce a new topic in the learning, use a page with relevant images to intrigue your audience rather than explicitly spelling out the topic
• Check out the concept of PechaKucha of 20 images shared with 20 seconds of audio for each page at http://www.pechakucha.org/

The printed word will still be an important part of learning solutions. However, with awareness of the impact images can have and a willingness to try something new, we can deliver even more to our clients.

REFERENCES

Microsoft. (2014). Remote control pointing at TV [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=tv&ex=1#ai:MP900442472|mt:2|

Peters, O. (2010). Digitized learning environments: New chances and opportunities. In O. Peters, Distance education in transition: Developments and issues Vol. 5 (5th edition, pp. 141-153) [Adobe Digital Edition]. Retrieved from Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg website: http://www.box.com/shared/ktx7ipccetotqrr11mct

(Microsoft, 2014)

This is a story from my husband, Dennis, that perfectly illustrates the learning-doing gap.  My husband was working as a janitor in the 1980s for medium sized printing press which is no longer in business.  Press operators would feed massive rolls of paper into the machines.  There were sharp blades coming down under high pressure to slice & dice massive quantities of paper that were whizzing through the press.  A lot of people would disable the safety devices, allowing them to put their hand on the plating allowing the machine an opportunity to sever off digits.  This was done in a false “Spirit of Efficiency.”

One day, Dennis was thrown on a printing press because he was another warm body and they needed to keep the printing press running while the trained press operator was rushed to the hospital to reattach his thumb.  The first thing that Dennis did was enable all the safety devices.  When a supervisor asked him why, Dennis held up his hand and wiggled his fingers and said, “Because I like these a lot.” He still has all four fingers and his thumbs because he respected the power of slicing and dicing machines.

With no other information, logic would suggest that Dennis would end up in the hospital while the trained press operator wouldn’t.  Yet, the trained operator was the one who cut his thumb off while my husband with no formal training, just by enabling the safety devices, kept his fingers.  Now, my husband did have informal training with slicers and other dangerous machinery during his earlier apprenticeship as a restauranteur.  However, both Dennis and his injured co-worker saw numerous other industrial accidents during their tenure at the same company (his co-worker was actually there longer than Dennis).

Why the learning-doing gap then?  Exposure from an early age about the dangers of slicing and dicing machines?  A larger quantity of exposure? An unhealthy absence of fear? An ego that that says “This couldn’t happen to me?!?”

REFERENCES

Microsoft. (2014). Bryce Canyon in Utah in winter [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=canyon&ex=1#ai:MP900442251|