It should come as no surprise to readers of my blog that I'm a fan of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath - I mean where did I come up with my blog's name!?
Today I was sent a link to a video from a friend in Texas (thank's Sue!) The video features Dan Heath speaking on the subject of 'Selling your Innovation". Unfortunately I'm unable to embed the video in my blog (well I could if I illegally copied it....) however just below is the link to the video. It's quite short, after watching it come back and read what I've got to say about it!
Video link: Dan Heath - "Made to Stick-Selling your Innovation"
Now, as I watched the video I was thinking, "this is similar to how learners process new ideas". Dan's key pont in the video is the importance of using an anchor and a twist.
Anchor = existing knowledge
Twist = old knowledge with a new angle.
This screenshot illustrates an example used in the video. When cars were first invented Dan Heath asks, 'how would you have described what a car was to a person who had never seen a car?' As it turns out the description that stuck was 'a horseless carriage'. Everyone already knew what a carriage was, so this became the Anchor, next a twist was added, Horseless, now people could visualise what a car might be.
Mirror neurons
Anchor and twist, is a good analogy for how we learn and taps into recent research on a concept known as 'Mirror Neurons' (see an earlier post on this blog) In particular look at the later sections of the post looking at 'Mirror Neurons' and 'How can mirror neurons assist learning'.
Anchors, Twists and Learning
You may understand now why I like the concepts of anchor and twist. The anchor activates the mirror neuron, retrieving existing knowledge. The twist then uses existing context to build a new idea in our mind. I suppose I'm using the idea of 'anchor and twist' as I'm writing this blog post. My anchor is the video and it's take on selling innovation, my twist is to replace the term innovation with learning.
Remember anchor and twist when your designing your next learning program or writing a presentation!
