FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1012

Life means we have to spend time with each other.

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Can we be without know? Can we do without know? Can we know without either? Can we be without the other two? Or do?

:- Doug.

Information and knowledge are not the same as application.

Someone recently remarked that taking a shower is a difficult thing for a person with dementia to do: it takes many mental steps and processes and a coordination of them which is sometimes beyond their abilities. A towel must be laid out. Soap and shampoo placed within reach. The drain must be opened, the shower curtain drawn, the hot and cold water turned on and then tempered, the water redirected to the shower head, and only then must one step in. Then the body is rinsed, then soap applied, then rinsed again, then shampoo, then rinse again, then the shower turned off, then the curtain opened, then the towel retrieved and the drying process begun. Oh, did we remember to set out a bath mat to step onto? Quite a process, and an intelligence we do not all always have.

It takes another step to put information and knowledge to use. Beyond that, it takes a different intelligence: an intelligence of what steps and persons are necessary and how to assemble them to get good action.

:- Doug.

Group process is somewhat akin to putting together a jigsaw puzzle: it is easier to do in a group. Someone starts working on edges, another seeks out the corners, someone starts putting together pieces that fit with each other. The difference is that with group work, there is no predetermined design, no picture on the box to tell us what it “should” look like, and the pieces fit or almost fit in many different configurations.

:- Doug.