“Now!”, thus spoke a good App to me,
“Click on my icon and you shall see,
treasures of knowlendge and wisdom so fine,
to help you make the most of the daily grind,
Excellence, you may claim, if but you will,
open me up and take your fill!”
App Yourself, by J. Diamond Arnold (A Paradoy of A Book, by Edgar Guest)
I am haunted by memories of long nights at the kitchen table, hot tears streaming down my face, trying to learn the rules of operations and relations within mathematical philosophies—frustrated at my inability to easily embrace the new concepts, but even more frustrated in trying to comprehend how I would ever apply those concepts to my life.
Maddness of Math
After all, that is the purpose of our education—our learning experiences—applying those learnings to our lives. Isn’t it?
To this day, those tears still burn at the thought of nights past, bleeding into present, evoked at the site of my own teenage daughter, sitting at the same table, laboring through the same equations and wrestling with the same questions about the purpose of learning Algebra, wondering if she will ever actually use this skill in her lifetime.
What is the Meaning
Those memories did not fade, but have been rekindled through similar angst during my days in the halls of academia, on the campus of the university, and recently in the corporate classrooms of my professional career. The thirst for learning and knowledge has often been but a mirage in deserts of secrets, seminars, and semesters—promising a path to enlightenment and understanding—only to leave me mysteriously cold and hungry, crawling on my hands and knees in search of a means to turn my potential knowledge into kinetic understanding and action.
The art of applying our learning to our daily tasks, projects, quests, and routines has always been a Valley of the Shadow between knowing and doing, excellence and mediocrity, success and status quo. The challenge has been, and will always be judged by our ability to use those learnings in our daily lives on a consistent and effective basis, not to shelve them on the dusty mantles of our lives, virtually untouched and largely unexplored.
The good news is that our generation now has the key to continual and effective learning—literally, right at our fingertips. Welcome to The Revolution of Digital Apps! Welcome to the Age of AppLightenment!
Mobile ApplicationsWhile Merriam-Webster Dictionary does not yet have an official entry on the word, “App,” their little brother (or Big Brother depending on how you want to put it into context), Wikipedia, defines it as a, “common reference to Application Software, made for computers and mobile devices such as Smart Phones and Digital Tablets.”
What is relevant to understanding the power that Apps have on the learning process is the Merriam-Webster’s (App version, of course) is the definition of the traditional word, Application—an act of putting to use .
Off course Apps are not new, they have been on your personal computer, running word processing and database software, or digital communication tools, for many years as Applications. What is new, is the explosion of practical and creative Apps designed to make your life more effective, more fun, more engaging, and yes, many will make you even more enlightened.
It’s estimated that one in three adults in the U.S. alone, own a smart phone that makes use of Apps. This past December, Apple announced that there are now more than half a million Applications available in the mobile applications-specific App Store, and that more than 100 million Apps have been downloaded from the desktop software marketplace Mac App Store within a year of its debut. Apple says that customers are ‘continuing’ to download more than 1 billion Apps per month.
Mac App Store
Regardless of whether you are downloading your Apps from Apple, Google, Amazon, or other App Stores, Apps are becoming a way of life. From banking, to budgeting, to hitting a baseball, making dinner, enhancing your workouts, your business, or your personal relationships, Apps are intuitively driving us to transfer our knowing into doing—helping us effectively engage and complete our daily professional and personal tasks.
The reality is we are in the midst of The Age of AppLightenment—A Digital Enlightenment era sparked by philosophical entrepreneurs named Jobs and Gates, and Zuckerberg and Wales—inciting a cultural movement toward digital mobilized learning and learning applications. Not since the mid-1400s, around the time the printing press was invented, has the world experienced such rapid and mass access to information— information that now can be rapidly processed into knowledge, and knowledge into doing, through the use of Apps.
This is our moment in world history to embrace, taking knowledge and taking action through simple and effective application to our lives. It’s time get up from the table and wipe away the tears. It’s time to App Yourself!
Jason Diamond Arnold
Co-Author of Situational Self Leadership in Action
Thanks Jason. You are right. That is, that we are held accountable for translating what we learn into meaningful, effective, and consistent behavior. When we consider applications, whether digital or those which are more intangible (like you suggest), the question we ought to be asking ourselves and each other is: How will this “application” help me translate my learning/experience into something productive and edifying? Your article inspires us to think more considerately about transforming ourselves into those who apply our learning versus those who acquire knowledge.
Steve, thanks for your feedback and comments. You bring up an age-old challenge, translating life lessons, be it in a classroom or something that just happens in life, into growing experiences. We’re really talking about a maturation process, or as my Mother would press me, “Grow up!” I think we really need to approach our formal learning experiences at work or at school, as opportunities to really become better people. That is, integrate all of our learning into a pursuit of happiness—to borrow a phase from our Founding Fathers.