My new, free, eBook “Learning, Knowledge & Meaning – the Singapore Diary”

Learning, Knowledge and Meaning: exploring how we interpret the world around us, how we learn

Our relationship with knowledge is changing: the ways we find stuff out and what we do with it once we have it. We learn on the move, in the bath or on the train and come together in social learning groups, emergent communities, to create meaning, often spontaneously, often globally.

Different learning spaces operate at different speeds, with differing levels of reflection: face to face the encounters are immediate, through Twitter it’s conversational, in the daily blog, it’s semi reflective and, as we move further down the spectrum of synchronicity, it becomes progressively less conversational, more reflective, more moderated, more of a book. And that’s the point of today: i am increasingly structuring my learning and my writing across these channels and timescales. Working with clients and within my various communities to build understanding, gather evidence, learn, then reflecting through the blog and social learning spaces before, finally, collating my thoughts into publications.

I used to view books as wisdom: the place to capture your understanding and send it out into the world, but today i view them more as curated collections of stories, my understanding of the world today, but not my understanding of it tomorrow. My books are snapshots of how i see the world: more reflective than the blog, but not set in stone. They continue to evolve.

Exploring the world of social learning – the book

Today is a new departure: a short, free eBook on “Learning, Knowledge and Meaning – the Singapore Diary“. Those of you who have stuck with me will remember that last year i released “Exploring the world of social learning” a book from the blog, and also visited Singapore, where i wrote a diary about learning. This effort brings those two ideas together. It’s a collection of five articles i wrote originally in Singapore, but rewritten and with the addition of a more reflective introduction and summary. In short, it’s my thinking, version two.

Already, as i release it into the world, my ideas are evolving, but this will form the foundations for the next steps.

I am evolving how i write: my next book, ‘Music in learning‘, is based on nearly thirty interviews with musicians and learning professionals, whilst the one after that, which i am already structuring, is being created through a kind of crown sourced table of contents. Writing is a beautiful way of sharing, crafting stories to send out into the world, but i find the process as fascinating as the end result. You’ll see that the Singapore Diary is short, it took me only a day of additional work to publish, but that’s the point. Iterative learning, continuous, agile, development. Certainly for me and, hopefully, for us as a tribe, a group of people with a shared interest in learning.

Please do let me have any feedback: it’s how we learn.