CANIS Learning Systems

This site is the home base for Canis Learning Systems, but I’ve pretty well taken it over as my personal soapbox and bully pulpit.

So I should probably tell you little bit about me.

I’m Todd Wieland. When people ask me what I do, I usually just say “educator,” or I describe one of the projects you see on this site. Otherwise, if I start getting all detailed, people’s eyes glaze over.

I’m real exciting that way.

Truth is, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I get to work on things I really care about, in a way that might actually matter some day.

I work on projects that help people make their lives better and prepare themselves to succeed in a mind-bogglingly tough and complex age.

If I was a little more into hype and had better hair, I’d pimp myself as a motivational speaker. As it is, I seem to see everything through a “learning lens,” so I work constantly on education projects.

Let me tell you upfront: I think education is a mess. And I don’t see any reason to hope that “reform” will ever make it better. It’s irreparably broken and needs to be crashed completely. (Or, more to the point, it is crashing even as we speak.)

Some people say that makes me “anti-school.” I’m not anti-school. I love school. I have school clients, for goodness sake. Heck, I’m IN school (one of my hobbies: I’m working on a doctorate in Sports Management; how fun is that!?).

It’s becoming obvious that “school” is not for everybody. However, in a world where information is exploding, careers are being reshaped quarterly, and confusion reigns, learning IS for everybody. Learning and applying constantly is the only way people are going to survive and thrive in our future.

We’ve just got to figure out a way to get learning to everybody, and make it so they can use it.

So that’s what we’re working on: get learning to everybody; and make it so they can actually benefit from it. If you start picking those two issues apart, you uncover ENORMOUS challenges right underneath them.

A couple of specific things we’re doing:

- We’re working to create a new kind of school model, basically by democratizing film school through our Ames Media Institute project.

- We’re trying to help students complete their GED’s through PlanetGED. It has this little bit of logic at its  foundation: If students need their GED’s, they probably weren’t successful in “school.” So how can we get them the  information (facts and concepts) they need to be successful on the GED without simply recreating “school”?

- We’re creating a comprehensive alternative education system for dropouts at the DropOut Zone. Comprehensive, alternative and education: 3 huge hills to climb in order to help a group of people who have self-selected out of “school.”

- We’re creating study games, ultimately with the idea of figuring out new ways to provide information that is currently bound up in textbooks (that nobody reads). We imagine a world where students “study” by playing games on their phones and iPods(R) and video game consoles.

- We provide distance learning program development and delivery to college, school and training clients. One of the big problems with higher education right now is the long cycles for developing new programs. We can develop programs in days – sometimes hours – that would be tied up in faculty committees and review boards for months – and even years – in the traditional model. Our clients hire us on an outsource basis; we haven’t done a lot of this yet, but watch for the trend. It’s going to get a lot bigger.

- We’re frankly struggling to define a couple of projects we’ve been working on for a long time: VirtualStudent.com started as a “get your degree using CLEP credit site;” and Virtrain.com started as “Virtual training for the career of your dreams.” Both have gotten a little long in the tooth. As we reframe them, I’ll post about it here. I’m sure you’ll be anxiously awaiting the news!

So that’s a quick intro to me and to the projects I love. In case you’re still reading and wondering, “great, but who IS this guy?” here’s a quick overview:

Former college professor and academic dean. Former seminar trainer. One time startup college president. Doctoral student. Thunderbird grad. Utterly stubborn entrepreneur. Huge motorsports fan and sometimes blogger. Very proud uncle. Recreational boater. Spencerian nonconformist. Would-be orphan project founder. Possessor of 11 toes (kidding, but you deserve SOME kind of reward for reading this far!).

I figure, if you’re going to hang around and take up space, might as well work on the most important problems of your time, right?