KnowHow to KnowNow

What a difference one letter change makes to that old term “knowhow”. KnowHow meant retaining knowledge in your head so you could apply it at some undefined point in time in the future. While clearly there are basic skills and knowledge that we need to retain internally it is often a fallacy to think that short term, event driven training will be retained long enough, and in a good enough state, to be actioned confidently and competently at the point of need.

As we firmly move into an always online world our old assumptions of having to carry everything in our heads can and is being fundamentally challenged. Knowhow shifts emphasis from retaining facts and more to knowing how to find and fetch what you need when you need it. I call that “KnowNow”. That “N” that makes all the difference is the Network: the network of knowledge sources, people and tools that enable us to perform more reliably at precisely the time we need to. It represents a firm shift towards real time ubiquitous performance support.

Is this science fiction? Not really. Just look at the behaviour of anyone with an iPhone loaded with apps. On the immediate horizon is Augmented Reality – which in real time adds digital support to the immediate location you are in. All driven through your smartphone, which if you don’t have one now, you will do within 2 years.
KnowNow also represents a deeper understanding of how our memories really work and how technology can be used to support better long term recall. By simply bringing learning closer to the point of action and acquisition of experience, then it inherently becomes more memorable. Harnessing the spacing effect also helps cement the key learning drawn from that experience.

While much of education and training still dwells on digitising traditional practices, the real prize is in fundamentally reinventing the way in which we support learning. Rather than get in the way with our “learning interventions” (a descriptive phrase that is all too true for all the wrong reasons) we should be building ways to nurture natural learning. This can only be done economically by putting available technology at the heart of our education and training systems, and not as some digital appendage to longstanding, unchallenged, habitual methods.

KnowNow – spread the word.