Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2012 - (Page 11)

emerGING teChNoLoGIes | garY woodILL don’t panic, you don’t have to know everything too big to know … too much to train? I n 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told conference attendees, “Between the dawn of civilization through 2003, there was just five exabytes of information created. That much information is now created in two days, and the pace is increasing.” As David Weinberger argues in his new book, Too Big to Know, the amount of information is exploding. While most of us are familiar with gigabytes and terabytes (1,000 gigabytes), few have heard about petabytes (1,000 terabytes) or exabytes (1,000 petabytes) of information. One exabyte is equivalent to about 10 billion copies of the Economist magazine, the amount of information now being generated by humans every four to five hours. Wow! That explains why I am feeling so overwhelmed these days. Much of this newly created information is the result of hundreds of millions of users uploading photos and videos. Facebook now is home to over 40 billion photos. Then there is email, Flickr, YouTube and the myriad of other programs where users store their personal productions. Businesses collect data on billions of consumers, and then mine that data, producing still more information. For example, WalMart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour, feeding databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes — the equivalent of 167 times the books in America’s Library of Congress. Data storage company EMC expects a 44 fold increase in information storage by 2020. The field of learning and development isn’t exempt from this astonishing trend. A recent search for the word “learning” produced more than 190,000 psychology articles, and over 210,000 education articles. A search for the word “training” in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) yielded over 120,000 books and articles. Traditional ways of managing large amounts of information in a specific field doesn’t work very well any more. The idea of an “expert” is changing from someone who knows a lot of information to a person who knows where to find the latest and best information needed to solve a specific problem. Instead of “just in case” learning we need to teach people how to find the most appropriate information for their present needs, how to judge it critically, and how to convey it to others who need it to complete a task or make a business case. And relying on information in academic publications is also unsatisfactory, as it takes several years to get a book or major article in print, by that time the information is often out of date. The world’s knowledge base is growing and changing that fast. So how can we cope? I have several suggestions. • Don’t panic — you don’t have to know everything. And, be aware that new technologies are now being developed to help us find, filter and apply information in more intelligent and efficient ways. • In each major organization, hire at least one person to act as an information “curator.” A curator’s job is to find the best and most relevant content to bring forward to the group. • Use external curators — there are hundreds of dedicated people in the learning and development field who regularly scan the world’s information for interesting and innovative ideas in their field(s) of interest. Follow people in your field who regularly make your job easier by supplying you with great tips on what to look for to keep up-to-date. • Be part of a cooperative knowledge tree — friends and colleagues in the learning and development field send me information they think will be of interest to me, and I reciprocate. The job of scanning in your field is too big for one person to manage. • Set up alerts and feeds — by setting up an alert, I get a daily summary of what Google has found on selected topics. My 1300+ RSS feeds organized in categories in Google Reader alert me to new information on emerging learning technologies. Training curricula need to change from being comprehensive information dumps (most of which people quickly forget) to focusing on the basic essential operations within the company. After that you need to show employees how to discover and evaluate new information as they need it. There seems to be no other way to cope. Dr. Gary Woodill is CEO of i5 Research and senior analyst, Float Mobile Learning. Email Gary. 11 Training Industry Quarterly, Summer 2012 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.i5research.com http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2012

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2012
From Where I Sit: The Leadership Perspective
Table of Contents
Ad Index
Guest Editor: Recipe for Leadership Development Success
The Real Power of e-Learning is Social
Too Big to Know … Too Much to Train?
Where Are You on Your Leadership Journey?
Ideal Behaviors for Building Innovation
Going Local: Six Ways to Keep Leadership Development Alive
Building Your Leadership Brand
How Simulations Develop Leaders
Organizational Burnout: How Training Can Help
Increasing Leadership Performance with Emotional Intelligence
Casebook: General Mills: Leaders Teaching Leaders
Tracking Trends: First Step in Leadership Development Training
Tweet Suite
Company News
Closing Arguments: Nature versus Nurture

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2012