Tweets From 400 BC

Informal learning isn't a new concept, but it is garnering more attention from professionals in the learning community.   The concept of informal learning is pretty simple -- one critical part of how we learn is the moment when we apply knowledge, whether that application is doing a task at work, learning a new hand craft or playing a sport.  In short, you learn by doing.

What is new in the professional learning community is finding ways to leverage technology, especially social technologies, to support application of knowledge.  I've been reading up on the subject for some projects at work and came across this quote at the beginning of one of the chapters.

"One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty, until you try." - Sophocles

Sophocles - photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Shakko

So not only is informal learning not new, it's been floating around since the 4th century BC!  And interestingly enough, Sophocles wasn't a teacher, he was a writer.  A playwright, in fact.  So learning from others outside the "education" community isn't new either.

But my real revelation came when I posted Sophocles' quote to Twitter and realized it's exactly 121 characters, including the quotation marks and attribution to the author of the quote.  So communicating with a big impact in 140 characters or less is just the same thing we humans have been doing all along too.

Everything old is new again.