WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT LEARNING IN 2009?
Posted by RK Prasad
Tue, Dec 08, 2009 @ 05:11 AM
This month’s Big Question in The Learning Circuits “WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT LEARNING IN 2009?”
Being a Learning and Training professional, I think it a good time to take stock about our own learning about learning. Reminds me of the adage, “Physician, heal thyself”.
It is in this year that I started to participate in various online forums and social media regularly. I also started to blog on learning and training with special emphasis on learning styles and learning tools.
Year 2009 taught me that you can learn a lot by:
- Asking the right questions
- Keeping your ego at subsistence levels
- Realizing that there is so much to learn from others
I discovered that humility is the best friend of learning. Maybe that is why we learn the most, in the shortest possible time, enjoying every minute of it, when we were children. Children instinctively follow all the three of my discoveries constantly. On the other hand, I have also discovered that our ego is the greatest enemy of learning. Maybe that is why our real learning drops as we become more accomplished in life (in our own eyes).
I have also learnt what Stephen Covey enunciates – you will learn best when you learn in order to teach or teach. Not only have I learnt that I have greatly learnt by using this quality of learning, but also realized that I thoroughly enjoyed myself in the process.
The third learning I have learnt about learning is that it happens when you suspend the noise in your head. I always wondered how the great sages achieved ‘nirvana’ (enlightenment) by meditation. Not by reading or discussing, but by keeping silent in the real sense of the word – achieving tranquility outside and inside, though for a short time. I have read somewhere that the human mind contains all the wisdom of this universe and all you have to do is to connect yourself with the ‘Higher Power’ to tap into it. [I think that it is an excellent idea to include a brief period of silence and contemplation in a corporate training session 
]
I would like to take this opportunity to thank and salute all my colleagues, real and virtual, in helping me discover these wonderful aspects of learning!
RK Prasad
CEO
Tags: Corporate Training, Learning, Learning Styles, learning tools, Training
Thanks for that great article Mr. Prasad!! I have been taught for a couple of years now that its better to keep quiet and let the other person talk, submit your ego to a higher power and LISTEN more!! All it really takes is the effort. Have a wonderful day!
Michael
Thanks a lot, Michael. Happy Holidays!
Mr. Prasad,
In doing research for my dissertation I have learned that, along the same lines as you discussed, the teacher must put their comfort zone and ego aside in order to meet the learner where he/she is instead of making the learner adjust to the teacher.
Wonderful post with great points. Agree 100% with what you said about silence and humility. They are an incalculable aid not only in learning but in life itself.
I fully agree on the Covey quote, I constantly find myself in teachings situations on topics I myself wish to learn more from. Adding to this, this year I learned that learning can be defined as the process where experience is turned into new behavior; or that learning is the strengthening of synaptic connectivity between neurons in our brains, and memory is the maintenance of those circuits constructed.
Thank you guys for your sharing.
I learned the value of establishing a personal learning network that includes others who don’t think like me but have the same goals in mind and share the same sense of responsibility. By aggregating the blog/twitter/status/etc. feeds from my community into a single iGoogle or Netvibes page, I become part of an intellectual community that learns and grows side-by-side with emerging technologies. It’s potent stuff (AND stress relieving), to say the least.
We have emerged as eReWise to help students belong to low-achieving-schools and filling the gap therein. I fully agree with the concept of “already always listening” noise from mind to achieve greatness.
i would like to say thanks for this post… fantastic job.