Read the news (Georgie Pauwels/flickr.com)

Publishing as learning

Reda SadkiLearning strategy

We are both consumers and producers of publications, whether in print or online. Publications are static containers for knowledge from the pre-Internet era. Even if they are now mostly digital, the ways in which we think about them remains tied to the past. Nevertheless, at their best, they provide a useful reference point, baseline, or benchmark to establish a high-quality standard that is easy, cheap and effective to disseminate. In the worst, they take so much time to prepare that they are out of date even before they are ready for circulation, reflect consensus that is so watered-down as to be unusable, and are expensive – especially when printed copies are needed – to produce, disseminate, stock and revise. With respect to the knowledge we consume, some of us may heretically scorn formal guidelines and other publications. Reading as an activity “remains a challenge”. Others manage to set aside time to …

10 habits (Audrey Low/flickr.com)

Learning habits

Reda SadkiLearning strategy

What are the learning habits that we perform on a regular basis to stay current? As professionals, we organize our personal learning habits in different ways that reflect our interests, personalities, and career paths. We rely on a variety of information sources, engage in reading, attend seminars and conferences, or take MOOCs or other online courses. And, of course, we connect with others. The content we seek may be directly related to our work – or conversely we may seek to acquire knowledge outside our immediate realm and field of vision. Some or if not most of our reading of work-related content takes place outside of work, even though some of us may choose to cordon off our private lives and succeed in doing so at least some of the time. We use these information sources in different ways, striving to question what we learn, sorting and organizing what we gather.  We recognize the deeply …