More word fun with Jay Cross. This post is a continuation from last month’s post part 1.

Learn. Gain the capacity to do something.

Learning styles. Faulty notion that it matters whether we’re visual learners, verbal learners, or kinesthetic learners. Research found it’s total bunk.

Lecture. Ineffective, one-way delivery of content. Listeners zone out in ten minutes or less.

Logic. Context-free blather used to justify emotional decisions.

Metadata. Information about information. Often, “metatags” that describe what’s inside a chunk of learning. Generally machine-readable. Analogous to a barcode on an incoming shipment.

Meta-Learning. The process of learning. Learning to learn is a major component.

Mindful. Opposite of mindless. Take a deep breath. Pay attention.

Modern Workplace Learning. Jane Hart’s term for focus on performance (support and improvement) and meeting business objectives – rather than on learning per se. A new, more inclusive and collaborative approach to solving performance problems in more appropriate ways, rather than imposing solutions top-down.

Next Practices. Guidelines for building a sustainable future. Best Practices look backward, providing advice on what worked in the past; Next Practices focus on what to do in the time ahead.

Nürnburg funnel. Metaphor that training is akin to pouring knowledge into a person’s head.

Opportunity Cost. The cost of not doing something, e.g. the sales the rep didn’t make because she was away at a seminar. Often the largest cost associated with training programs.

Over-clocking. Running something faster than it was designed to go.

Paradigm drag. When old thinking holds back new. From David Gelernter’s Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology.

Performance. The goal of learning. AKA productivity, results. It’s relative to context. Decide what constitutes performance, then design the learning to support it.

Pronoia. The belief that the world is conspiring to make you happy and successful.

Pull. Choose what you want. Self-directed. Pull learning = informal.

Push. Take what you’re given. Directed by others. Push learning = formal.

702010. Successful managers learn three to four times as much from experience as from interaction with bosses, coaches, and mentors. And they learn about twice as much from those conversations as in classrooms and formal learning programs.

Shelf-life. Knowledge is perishable. Some suggest it be labeled with pull-dates, like cartons of milk.

Selective attention. Also, inattention blindness. You see what you are looking for.

Singularity. When the artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, all hell will break loose. We won’t get it.

Social Learning. What eLearning was supposed to be.

Subjective well-being. Ed Diener’s term for judging life positively and feeling good. A person has high SWB if she or he experiences life satisfaction and frequent joy. Diener chose it because studying happiness sounded frivolous.

Synchronous. [pretentious] Live event.

Talent management. Ideally, the entire process of developing people from initial recruiting to learning and development to keeping the alumni informed. In practice, synonym for recruiting.

Tacit/explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is knowing how; it’s impossible to transfer to it you in words. Explicit knowledge is the opposite – you’re reading it right now.

Technophilia. The belief that technology will solve all ills. Especially prevalent during the dot-com delusion, fostered by Wired magazine.

Timing. The first 90% of a development project takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

Trojan mice. Small, well-focused changes, which are introduced on an ongoing basis in an inconspicuous way.

Trust. The foundation of human connections.

Unlearning. Make way for the new by throwing out the old.

WikiLeaks. Warning shot to all secretive organizations. There are no secrets. Might as well go transparent.

Work. Learning.

Working Smarter. Using your brain to be more productive at work and fulfilled in daily life. What finer definition do you need? Be mindful, not mindless. Common-sense practices include using social networks to foster conversations — the main vehicle for deep learning. It is informal learning, collaboration, and experiential learning, whatever makes us more productive and fulfilled.

Workscape. Performance ecosystem. Metaphorical environment where work and learning converge. Covers the entire ecology: could include the water cooler, the break room, the Friday beer bust, the conversation nook at the office, wi-fi in the cafeteria, the enterprise  The Workscape is where people do their jobs and develop professionally.

YMMV. “Your mileage may vary.” Recognition that your results may not be the same as mine. (Other things are never equal.)