I have been a subscriber to springwise.com and trendwatching.com for a couple of years now and have been following the “Status Skills” trend. An update today about cheese related status skills caught this cheesehead’s eye (once a cheesehead, always a cheesehead). In a nutshell, providing your clients and customers with “status skills” to become experts at using your goods and services helps to fuel our consumer society. The idea is that consumers get a rush out of showing off their skills while you gain an army of loyal consumers who (in turn) breed a “status” image for your product. Skill mastery is at the heart of this trend (hence, the instructional design tie-in). Note that benefiting from this trend is not limited to just big companies. Think about the entrepreneurial guides who are popping up in Second Life to help teach newbies the ropes … or even those who prepare and deliver live interactive webcasts about the latest news and resources in the worlds of education and technology. Just one more out of millions of examples of how learning and instruction is far from limited to the walls of class or training rooms.
Technorati Tags: status skills, learning, trends
I wholeheartedly agree with the "once a cheesehead" sentiment. Growing up in a town where the major landmark is a big plastic cow has that effect, I suppose. Our team is all meeting in person for a conference in Madison later this summer, and I promised that I'm going to buy them some fresh cheese curds so they can have the real WI experience. My manager is a little skeptical of the concept of cheese that squeaks, but she says she trusts me enough to try it.
BTW, I believe I've actually marched a parade in Lodi. My brother and sister and I all marched in the summers, although I quit much sooner than they did. If you ever saw a very small bass drum player who wasn't tall enough to see over the top of his drum, that was my brother. 🙂
Oh, I suppose I should write something about the actual content of your post too…yeah, this seems like a cool concept. Actually, I do like that it is a way of encouraging lifelong learning. This is almost one of the "third places" Teemu discussed in his presentation at FOE yesterday–learning outside of the usual environments.