Getting My School On
I am going back to school this Monday. I applied to a new certification program at General Assembly for front-end web development where we get to delve into the world of HTML, CSS and JavaScript for ten weeks. I was lucky enough to get the thumbs up last week, so I will be “hitting the books” once again, something I have not done in over a decade.
Much of my desire is to round out my own understanding of the programming stack as much of my knowledge is in back-end architecture as opposed to front-end technologies and design tools. I am hoping to parlay my learning into building out some of my own product ideas combining my knowledge of back-end and front-end skills.
This led me to think about motivation and self-improvement. Much of my education in technology from my earliest job building database apps till now was self-motivated and self-guided. I burned through some books, barreled my way through lots of code, made lots of mistakes and did my share of debugging. It was an incredible learning experience and was a huge boost of self-confidence that I could do it on my own.
Looking back however, my learning was not quite “all on my own”. My colleague Kang helped me through the gnarliest of SQL code. Our sys admin guru Dave stepped my through Unix installs. Glenn taught me the rundown on debugging techniques. Later in my sales career, I took hours of classes on sales methodologies, negotiation skills and contract terms. Some of the best classes got us working in teams where we tried our hands at tactics we just studied such as discovering customer pain points or overcoming objections. It is the combination of motivation and structure that has yielded the most positive learning outcomes.
A major revolution is fomenting in learning. Starting in smaller corners away from the attention of the mainstream, Learning 2.0 is poised to have a major breakout due to social and technology dynamics. We are entering a period that people are calling the era of the freelance nation as the economy remains unstable and long-term stable employment becomes a thing of the past. This is leading people to acquire relevant skills quickly but at lower cost and more flexibility than what is offered by traditional methods. On the other hand, tools and technologies for learning and collaborating are significantly more accessible to the masses. We are already seeing this with tools such as TeachStreet, Skillshare, ShowMe and many others that are disrupting traditional learning by democratizing the process. In other words, we have what computer-based training really should have been about from the start.
What makes Learning 2.0 work and pulls social and technology forces together however is community. We are seeing the rise of hyper-community where the Internet has accelerated the convergence of diverse groups of passionate people around specific interests and causes. We had seen that in full force during President Obama’s presidential campaign and continue to see it with the emergence of Meetup groups around the global that bring the online conversation into real life. In the NYC startup community, we are seeing places such as General Assembly developing communities that are becoming startup learning campuses, giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to acquire skills that are highly relevant to their needs.
I am excited by the opportunity to walk into a classroom setting this coming Monday in a way that I have never experienced in the past. Whereas I viewed the classroom setting as drudgery and boredom, I am looking forward to being with a group and a setting that will be engaging, collaborative and relevant. In a nutshell, I will be participating in Learning 2.0.
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