Systems
Mission
Vision
Change
If the system you use in the mission to accomplish your vision is not built to change
then…
your mission will end up being about changing the system at the expense of the vision.
Create a system that is able to change, that is built to change, that expects to change.
Build in change.
Your vision is counting on it.
Imagine seeing related maps, pictures, artwork, architectural layouts, bible translations appearing on your iPad, Kindle Fire, or similar tablet, as your pastor gives the message or sermon.
This is the Second-screen experience.
A learning church could harness this technology in the form of an app and allow for people listening to a sermon or message to see pictures or artwork of the people being mentioned in the message appearing on their iPads. People listening could have maps of biblical locations or ancient kingdoms instantly displayed on their iPads as the pastor mentions them.
Think of Wikipedia or the Glo Bible, but in real-time, matched to the sermon you are listening to in the palm of your hand.
The ability to harness and enhance a message or sermon synchronously using second-screen app technology would have a powerful visual impact and increase learning and understanding.
I wanted to sketch out a paradigm for my approach to starting a new venue for Saddleback Church. I came up with this approach that I call "Awareness" - AWAARNESS
A- Ambidextrous Thinking
Hold two competing, if not opposite, ideas embrace the duality and integrate them into a workable solution.
Global and Local
Bigger and Smaller
Faster and Slower
Take risks and be careful
Bias Towards Thinking and Bias Toward Action
Kaizen and Tenakaizen
High Levels of Teamwork and High Levels of Personal Accountability
We Have the Answers and They Have the Answers
Data Driven and Skeptical of Data
Predictable and Change is Normal
W- Wisdom Stewardship
The knowledge, learning, and wisdom of the team is intentionally curated and viewed as an asset to be leveraged intentionally- not passively. New learnings are integrated with existing knowledge. No knowledge wasted.
A- Adapting
Copy, imitate, mash-up, pirate, re-mix and re-purpose ideas from outside to fit your needs.
A- Attaching
Find other who are on the same mission or doing similar things and look for ways to attach to what they are doing creating synergy and conserving energy.
R- Relationships
Human capital is key. Avoid falling into hierarchical traps. Keep the organization flat and insist on people building relationships. Relationships must be established inside and outside.
N- Network
Connect with other people, teams, organizations, and networks. Leverage personal networks, organizational networks, and social media to create serendipitous learning. Networks
E- Experimentation
Create a “skunk works” atmosphere where people are not afraid to experiment and fail. Fail fast and fail forward.
S-Sharing
Resources need to be shared between people, teams, departments, and organizations. Do not allow resources to sit that could be shared with those who can use now. No hoarding.
S- Scalability
Try ideas and systems with this question in mind, “Can this be done bigger and at a larger scale?” Those ideas will have power.
You know the story. Luke 17. Jesus meets 10 lepers. Leprosy in the Bible times was an incurable disease, dooming its victims to a life of poverty, rejection and hopelessness.
by Lisa Birle
via collegeministry.typepad.com
Excellent synopsis of Drew Dyck's research based book "Leaving the Faith"
1. Analyze Learning Habits
Is your learning planned?
How many books do I read in a year?
2. Schedule Time for Learning
Establish a reading goal
Prioritize and schedule time to read
Use empty time
3. Balance Your Learning
Read people you disagree with
Read broadly
4. Don't Just Read a Book
Wrestle with it
Respond to what you read
Mark up your books and take notes
5. Read Critically
Author- who wrote it?
Testimonials- who recommends it?
Contents- what's in it?
Research- what are it's sources?
Reviews- what do the critics say?
Publisher- who sponsored it?
Audience- who is it written for?
Time- how long has it been around?
Red flags- are there problems with it?
6. Do A Monthly Web Tour
Find new books on the web and social media.
7. Build Your Own Library
Virtual or physical
Literate Church vs. Transliterate Church
Literate Church helps people read and understand God's word- the text
Transliterate Church helps people read and understand God's word- the text--AND--connect and collaborate with God's word-the text- across multiple social media and technology platforms.
If it changes how knowledge is created
If it changes how knowledge is shared
If it changes how knowledge is evaluated
If it changes how knowledge is understood
If it changes how people connect
If it changes how people communicate
If it changes what people can do for themselves
Then it will change preaching and learning.
Guest Post: Sarah Fudin
Professional development doesn't take place in isolation. It requires a network of other professionals who share ideas and opportunities. In the past, most professionals depended on conferences and seminars for professional networking. Today, advances in the web technologies have enabled the development of online professional development platforms that support networking. By networking online, professionals can connect and share personal and organizational knowledge across geographic barriers and time zones.
Online professional development networks support continuous learning without requiring a professional to travel or spend time away from work. Enormous cost savings can be realized with online virtual development events compared to traditional physical events. Online networks provide peer support, encouragement and can help professionals stay current with industry news and best practices.
There are a variety of professional development platforms online, many devoted to a single profession or industry. You can also use general purpose social and learning networks for professional development. Here are a few suggestions for using social and learning networks for professional development:
Online networking is one of the best tools for overcoming isolation, finding support and exploring new ideas with a vast community of professionals around the world. As you chart your professional development, don't forget to take full advantage of social and learning networks. They offer unprecedented opportunities for professionals to increase their visibility, establish professional relationships, expand their knowledge base and manage their careers.
Sarah Fudin currently works in community relations for the University of Southern California's Master of Arts in Teaching program, which provides aspiring teachers the opportunity to earn a Masters degree in teaching and focus in TESOL online. Outside of work Sarah enjoys running, reading and Pinkberry frozen yogurt.
A Learning Organization or a Learning Church is...ARTful
Audio
Retinal
Thought-provoking
What do you get when you combine organizational learning with the books Here Comes Everybody and Wikinomics, with Lego, Saddleback Church, a website for solving problems, and a mining corporation? Let's put them in the Education Innovation blender and see?
Why are open source models and movements so powerful? Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, discussed the advantages of open models. In this case, open source movements. Open source movements have several powerful advantages that learning organizations and churches could leverage.
One advantage of the open learning system is that it highly tolerant of failure. Open source reduces the cost of failure because so many ideas are brought to the table.
“…open source relies on the ‘publish-then-filter’ pattern. In traditional organizations, trying anything is expensive, even if just in staff time to discuss the idea, so someone must make some attempt to filter the successes from the failures in advance. In open systems, the cost of trying something is so low that handicapping the likelihood of success is often an unnecessary distraction.”
The typical organization is limited because the number of ideas that an organization or church can consider can come from only a limited number of sources, usually the bosses, managers, and consultants.
A great deal of thought must be put into the consideration of ideas because the time and cost of failure are so high. Time spent with meetings, staff training, and materials, has a cost. This means the filter for ideas is very high. Only those ideas that seem to have the most benefit will be implemented, though there is no way to know in advance that one of the ideas picked will bring the desired benefit, and one of the ideas left on the table could be the most effective and beneficial.
The Open Learning Organization draws ideas from a greater number of sources, including the people it serves. A wider net is cast for ideas, more ideas are implemented, and the ones that work will receive more resources, while the ones that fail can be quickly dropped. Because resources are only directed at proven ideas, this model essentially allows failure to cost nothing. Failure for free. But the chance of coming upon a better idea is increased due to the shear number of sources and ideas to be learned from.
“Open system, by reducing the cost of failure, enable their participants to fail like crazy, building on the successes as they go.”
The open system has the advantage of exploring multiple possibilities.
“…the idea is that for any problem or goal, there is a vast area of possibilities to explore but few valuable spots within that environment to discover. When a company or indeed any organization finds a strategy that works, the drive to adopt it and stick with it is strong. Even if there is a better strategy out there, finding is can be prohibitively expensive.”
The Open Learning System, or Clay Shirky’s open system, allow for many more participants, lowers the filtering of ideas, and is much more tolerant of failure because of the flexibility of the system. Ideas that fail are dropped instantly, and new ones adopted. It would be hard to say that failed ideas are dropped as quickly in education. Usually failed ideas have personnel attached to them, resources that have been purchased, and possibly even capital costs. This makes ideas difficult to drop on a dime.
Further because the Open Learning Model allows participants from many areas to participate, the chances of great ideas and solutions are increased.
In the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collboration Changes Everything, the authors describe in detail how organizations from Lego to mining corporation Goldcorp have opened their systems to the public and reaped the learning benefits that come from this openness.
Websites like Innocentive.com open problems up to others learn from each other to help solve and give cash rewards. Saddleback Church says to its member, if you have an idea, let’s do it. They offer help where they can, but they allow the member to come up with and implement the idea. Learning from it’s own members. One member had an idea for a ministry from people struggling with addictions. That ministry has become a worldwide ministry called Celebrate Recovery. Other ideas went nowhere and failed. But in learning from many sources of ideas and having a low filter, they hit upon one of the most successful and powerful ministry ideas ever.
The Closed System does not tolerate failure, therefore restricting the quality and quantity of ideas and the chance for a superior idea. The Open Learning System is much more tolerant of failure because the organization or church learns from a greater number of ideas which enables a greater chance of finding the superior idea. It's at the heart of a learning organization and a learning church.
If you have never heard of a MOOC is stands for Massive Open Online Course. Watch the video below and ask yourself, "Could this be the next wave of church and organizational collaborative learning? Could a MOOC generate Lateral Wisdom among churches, organizations, and teams distributed, but connected across the globe?
"If a would be leader wants glamour, he should try acting in the movies. However, if he in fact want to make a consequential impact on a cause or an organization, he needs to roll up his sleeves and be prepared to perform a series of grungy chores which are putatively beneath him, and for which he'll never receive recognition or credit, but by virtue of which his lieutenants will be inspired and enabled to achieve great things."
Steven Sample
Guest Post- Lindsey Wright lindswright82@gmail.com
Studies have shown that students flourish when they receive one-on-one interaction with an instructor. Unfortunately, as class sizes have multiplied, that direct interaction between student and teacher has become increasingly difficult to achieve. Without that close interaction, it becomes difficult for a teacher to identify which students are struggling and which are excelling on an individual basis. Worse yet, students performing somewhere in the middle may miss out on opportunities to excel because they aren't getting the guidance they require.
It is too much for one teacher to handle on his own, which is why more schools are looking to adaptive technologies to help them teach. Adaptive technology isn't a new concept, and has been around since the 1970s. It was only in more recent years, though, that the technology has become sufficiently advanced and inexpensive to make it a realistic option.
Adaptive learning technology is a method of teaching that relies upon computers as interactive training devices. When students utilize adaptive technology they are still participants in the learning process. They don't passively sit and listen while a teacher lectures. Instead they are engaged in a multimedia presentation that involves auditory and visual components while also encouraging them to answer questions to gauge their understanding and progress.
The wonderful element that makes this sort of technology so invaluable is that 'adaptive' part, its ability to tailor itself to the needs of each learner. The technology tracks the student’s progress, noting when they are ready for a new challenge or providing further review if necessary. Students largely progress at their own pace, establishing a solid foundation of knowledge that can be built upon with increasing complexity. In schools or online courses these learning efforts are generally pursued in tandem with a teacher who can monitor the student’s progress and also provide further insight and guidance.
However, one needn’t be enrolled in school to take advantage of all that adaptive learning technology can offer. Websites like the Khan Academy provide a rich, interactive learning experience at absolutely no cost to the user. Many schools have already implemented Khan Academy videos on campus, while other learners use the resource out of a simple curiosity or a thirst for general knowledge.
Anyone can become a student at the Khan Academy and can therefore benefit from the more than 2,400 videos currently housed there. Available topics are diverse and wide-ranging, though most deal with math and the sciences. Salman Khan, the ambitious founder of the website, intends to cover other subjects eventually, but for now users are already benefiting from the videos. Many users have written to Khan expressing their appreciation and gratitude, reporting a rise in their overall grades or simply the joy of finally grasping a subject with which they have long struggled.
The Khan Academy provides users with a comprehensive map that allows individuals to track their progress. As students progress through different lessons they are awarded with badges and other awards marking their achievements. Students and teachers can link up their Khan Academy accounts so that teachers can monitor the work of their students and make helpful suggestions regarding direction and further areas of study. Each lesson at the website is formatted as a video averaging 10 to 20 minutes in length. The format is ideal as it allows students to stop, start, or repeat lessons at will. The website also tracks students' performance and provides suggestions for further study based on this performance.
The offerings at the Khan Academy may well represent the future of education in America and around the world. It is a free education available to anyone, anywhere with access to the Internet. Even better, it is specifically tailored to meet the needs of each student individually. Perhaps no machine can ever completely replace the teacher in the classroom, but it seems sensible to assume that educational improvements can only be achieved by merging the humanity and understanding of a teacher with the tireless and analytical functionality of a machine that fundamentally works toward the progress of each student at a very basic level.
At this time it's not difficult to project a future in schools where students study at their own computer terminals, advancing through lessons at their own pace while a teacher monitors their progress. Of course, it will take time and diligence to get there. Teachers will need training regarding adaptive technologies. Already some teachers are finding it difficult to keep up with the latest trends in technology, and some technologies are so new that it’s not yet clear how they might be useful in school.
Tomorrow’s schoolrooms are likely to look and feel quite different from those with which we are familiar today. The rows of identical desks will vanish, as will the teacher’s customary place at the front of the room. Future classrooms will encourage both collaboration and individual intellectual pursuit. Using their own personal computer terminals or mobile devices, these students will learn at their own pace, collaborating with other students or working individually, while the teacher monitors their progress and offers guidance when necessary. Only rarely will the teacher stand before the entire class. Rather, their interaction with students will occur more on a one-to-one basis, giving them ample opportunity to assess the student’s needs.
The strict division of subject matter will likely disappear as well. Students will merge economics with social studies and history and math with science and English. Arbitrary and artificial barriers between the subjects will be broken down so students can truly achieve mastery of their studies. It’ll be an environment that will foster achievement and creativity, spurring a new generation of learners toward a thirst for knowledge and a motivation to never stop learning.
Some may say we are living in the post-modern age, but I believe we are living in the ICE Age.
| I |
C |
E |
| IDEATION |
CURIOSITY |
EXPLORATION |
| INTUITION |
CREATIVITY |
EXPERIMENTATION |
| IMMERSION |
COLLABORATION |
ENTREPRENEURSHIP |
| INVESTIGATION |
CROSSING BOUNDARIES |
EXAMINATION |
| IMAGINATION |
CONVERGENCE |
EMPATHY |
| INNOVATION |
CONTRIBUTE |
EMERGENCE |
| INQUIRY |
CONNECT |
EVOLVING |
| INSIGHT |
CONTEMPLATION |
ENERGY |
Thes are my Learning Values...what are yours? What age are you living in?
Hearing is not...Learning
Learning is not...Application
Application is not...Accountability
Accountability is not...Life Change
Life Change is...Accountability
Accountability is...Application
Application is...Learning
Learning is...Hearing