hans rosling

plus



plus

= social change.

being good to each other is clever...
how can we not?
______________________________

carol dweck

on growth mindset:


via post by Jorge Barba.

________________________

sir ken robinson

hour long interview (conversations from penn state) on creativity and innovation



life is not linear.
your own true north - not a well-known path - but you know the direction you're going in.
most people don't know their real talents. and most doubt they have any.
as many people say they are not creative as much as people say they're not good at math.
the element - the journey people have taken to find their talents and what difference it made in their lives.
it's different for everybody.
the book is about encouraging people to take that journey.
find what your children/students are naturally drawn to.

why are the arts at the bottom in ed:
mass ed was a function of mass industrialism - very linear, about conformity
so while arts have been on the back burner, math & science in the front, math & science have also lost out on this - because it's crowding everyone into a field that is an art itself

the problem is not the teachers or the people, it's the system - the obsession with standardized testing.
there's a diff between children and cars. people can tell if they are part of conformity - they turn off.
Jillian isn't sick, she's a dancer.
a lot of kids are being pathologized because they are being kids.
just sit still and stop it.

Singapore wants to be the hub of creativity. we are falling behind.
more free time, less supervision, more clubs, societies, ...
now - tight, competitive pressure.
even on stem disciplines, americans are falling further down. funny - because america has been built on the creative spirit, can-do mentality, sense of innovation and possibility. this generation is the one we will depend on and they are the ones drowning in activity that is stripping creativity.
pop of earth double in past 30 years.

singapore is like comparing us to a city.
in america the best we're doing is nclb which is an irony because it's leaving many behind.
in many places math and science scores are up, some because they are working the system to raise scores... doesn't matter, either way stifling kids.
kids do better when they are engaged.

this is stripping teachers as well. turning them into machines.
usually what you remember about school is the teachers.


________________________________

play report

via David Truss' site:



_________________________________________

syamant

article via @futurescape
just talk to me:
I never look at grades from university. I look at what they’ve done, but I look very much at what they’ve done outside work. How do they spend their time? Who do they relate to? Have they moved? Have they been put in situations in their personal and professional lives that were not very straightforward?
I’m concerned about people who have come through their career with “A” grades throughout their entire life, and have never really had any setbacks and have always been in environments where they knew the environment.

_________________________________________

dave cormier

great post on standards testing and creativity. 

thank you @davecormier

fav parts:

“Why are we educating students?”

Over the last few years I’ve come around to what i think I want 

Oscar and Josephine to get from the education system in order of importance.

1. The desire to engage with ideas, combine them and make new ones
2. The belief that they are allowed to do this
3. The skills and literacies they need to do it.

I say in order of importance, because with the first can come the second and with the first two the third is pretty much inevitable. 

Those first two are tricky however, and they are easily confused with ‘knowing things’.  

I lay NO stock in knowing 

a particular thing.  

This is tricky, because I happen to think that knowing a great many things can be very valuable… I’m just not terribly fussed about the knowing of any given thing.

just the tip of the iceberg though - you should take a listen..

_____________________________________

________________________________________

i can't breathe

used to be -  i can't sleep.
now - i can't breathe.

ed - we need to be the vehicle for social change.
we need to have confidence in our beliefs and gracefully question all the assumptions we currently call school. all the assumptions we currently call success.

_____________________________________

adam burk

my friend Adam is doing some fundraising for very worthy causes via his bike...

here's some info if you care to support him..

I am riding in three charity bike rides this fall beginning with the Pedal for Peace, which begins and ends at our beloved Frontier. After that I ride in the Loon Echo Land Trust Hike n' Bike Trek and then the 

Dempsey Challenge. I will be biking 50 miles each time.

If you are drawn to support me in fundraising for any of these causes I would greatly appreciate your help. If you want to support me but are unsure of where to give, my greatest fundraising need is the Pedal for Peace, which is in two weeks. 

The Ride Info

The Pedal for Peace benefits the Business Council for Peace, which supports woman entrepreneurs in Afghanistan, Rwanda and El Salvador to bolster their businesses and provide more jobs. My goal is to raise $250 for this effort. If you'd like to donate to support me in this ride please click here.

I am riding in the Dempsey Challenge with a team of colleagues and friends from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. My goal is to raise $150. All donations will support The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing in Lewiston, Maine. You can get to my Dempsey Challenge fundraising page here to make an online donation:

Adam

Donations for the Hike n' Bike Trek will support land conservation in western Maine. Here is my fundraising page:

Adam

Thank you for your support-be it financial or moral.

With gratitude,

Adam

 

__________________________________________________

dan tapscott

from his book, grown up digital, 

find here 

a summary of the norms 

he lays out for this generation of students 

via the digiteen (a flat classroom) project and wiki
the digiteen ning
the flat classroom ning
the netgen ed project
the eracism project
flat classroom via Thomas Friedmans' the world is flat

_________________________________________________

basti hirsch

5 week ed expedition across the us


Provo, Utah — p5edu day 34 from Basti Hirsch on Vimeo.

____________________________________

4 chord song

via @simonsinek If you don't believe there is a consistent formula for success, then you should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

warning - use of the f-bomb



ok - so what about a 4 chord consistent formula for success in learning... at least until we get back to our natural state of curiosity...?

_____________________________________________

the learning lab, palomar5, & knowmads

wow @noamkos
this is excellent from the learning lab (click the movie) - - Dr. Thieu Besselink, founder

and this from palomar 5
4 min trailer for 60 min movie:

Palomar5 "The Movie" - Trailer from Palomar5 on Vimeo.

part 1 of 60 min movie:

Palomar5 - The Movie - Part 1 from Palomar5 on Vimeo.
great ideas:

• the graveyard - letting go of ideas that take away focus - even if they're good,
• palometer - mtg at 6pm each night to report progress to group 

part 2:

Palomar5 - The Movie - Part 2 from Palomar5 on Vimeo.

from 2nd movie:
only 25.6% of the world has internet access, only 4.6%  (over 256 kilobits per sec) of the world has broadband access  - spacecamp - build a network that everyone has minimal speed
holy cow - at 5:45 for idea  and 16:27 for Kosta presenting ahumanright.org
Kosta Grammatics - oh yay
ahumanright.org

and check out these students from knowmads - Kwela Hermanns -co-founder

and yes there's more.

____________________________

john t spencer

found a cool blog site today..

@johntspencer had posted this on homework... great insight, great model

____________________________________

college

interesting that 50% don't graduate

and college debt exceeds credit card debt

and college drives k-12

inquiry - inquiry as stance... why do we keep accepting this?

the future is today. let's change it.
_________________________________________

japiz raisdana

quotes via @intrepidteacher within this post: soul force

Our enemy is never 

another person; 

our enemy is the 

wrong perception and 

suffering within him, within her. 

Violence is not inevitable. 

Peace is there for us 

in every moment. 

It is our choice. 

then dang - there's more.

______________________________________________

harold jarche

working smarter

_______________________________

craig robinson

how did i get so lucky.
lately i've been saying a lot - i can't believe i'm me. i keep meeting incredible people who teach me so much.
Craig Robinson is no exception. Craig is a local expert - volunteering his time in the lab. what a gem.
he's helping kids not interested in math connect via skateboarding and music and soccer and.....
he's creating videos of math in real life.
he's patiently teaching me how to listen better - how to read people better - how to evaluate things that matter.

today we talked about matching students to school. he sketched a diagram - then went home and spiffed it up a bit. check it out...

this is a combo (combo made by @cocreatr) of a couple charts we had made... just wanting them in the same post for comparisons

____________________________________________________________

george siemens

Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/event/90719

George Siemens is Founder and President of Complexive Systems Inc., a research lab assisting organizations to develop integrated learning structures for global strategy execution. In 2006 he authored a book - Knowing Knowledge (.pdf version available here)- an exploration of how the context and characteristics of knowledge have changed, and what it means to organizations today. In 2009, he published the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (.pdf version available here) with Peter Tittenberger.

George is currently affiliated with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University. His role as a social media strategist involves planning, researching, and implementing social networked technologies, with focus on systemic impact and institutional change.

Prior to TEKRI, he was the Associate Director, Research and Development with the Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba.




connectivism: his history on it - late 90's everyone had laptops but nothing really changed, some started to blog, social media would change how i would relate to students, years of playing w/blogs/wikis, found that his capacity to be intelligent depended on his relation to other people, meta level provided insight into what ed should be, stephen downes writing on same things, connective knowledge
assertion that knowledge is essentially networked, and we learn by growing our networks, the process of ed/learning can best be understood and changed by understanding how connections/ideas are formed, nation complexity - the solutions require a distributed approach - too complex to be handled by one person, at the end of the day - tech creates problems that only tech can solve. ie: the improvement in health that permitted humans to live longer, because of that increase of lifespan, we have problems with overpop, require greater fossil fuels, etc.
not providing kids/educators with a mindset - of working together
we might not value the process of working together, but we do value the bi-product of working together
steve asks - does this leave a shift in power (alzheimers study)
if you want the optimal amount of innovation and creativity you have to provide for the optimal amount for connectedness
social media tools - we have the appearance of power - but until we see those better integrated in ed systems, we aren't really cutting it
what needs to happen for the integration to take place (asked by steve) - pressing concern that approach of ed has to resolve, if we say ed system is broken, we need to define what will fix it, if you want to involve people - there has to be a trust in place... problem is - educators have different values than say parents.
we have to create a compelling story for what we need to fix.. no one is communicating that to the community with a sufficient degree of trust
his views - not tied to buzzwords, but we have to look at our ed system,
1) what is it that we can now do better with tech that we couldn't do 10 years ago (content broadcast - lecture once)
2) what will tech do in the future that it doesn't do now

content generation scales
1-1 interaction with student doesn't scale
(personally couldn't care if it's disruption or revolution or radical...)
what are the ideologies that still exist in classrooms, that tech does
what do we need to preserve

sees a dramatically different structure in the next 10 years

is it an effort in futility
at a certain level the grass roots falls - because of policy
while we are making an influence at a local level - but make sure that it can translate to individuals above this policy line
fighting revolutions don't work - find champions in admin/policy

business structure of web 2.0 is intriguing, but what are we smuggling in the back door
web 3.0
vicki davis video

we need to start thinking in connections not in networks
we have control in connections (with people and info)



will's post on linda darling not talking about tech

tech is not neutral, it determines your actions
personal learning networks and knowledge
any contrarian thinker - rather than highlight an author - let's highlight a mindset

(question about synergy) - resonance - when things fire off in my head - one piece of info literally lights up a ton of new connections
what causes one speaker/author to resonate with me

andrew hargadon - very interested in innovation

the problem isn't is this possible in hs
the real problem is - why isn't the system taking advantage of the distributed identity?
there's a lot of junk embedded in it... but this distributed means

making sense of info of distributed systems hasn't been brought into ed

how do we achieve an intended outcome through a distributed system

how do we do that in something that we no longer have control 

learning analytics

rethinking relationships with learners that tech enables

is there any value in strategic disconnection - ?
if you wish to grow in knowledge add something everyday
if you wish to grow in wisdom delete something everyday
all learning is elimination
not just about growing out networks but pruning them

had to leave 5 min early.. so missed end.
bravo and thanks steve and george

_____________________________________________________________

laugh a little

swahili via noble
ugandan via paul

_____________________________________

simon sinek - the low road

his post today is a poem... 
take a listen.

_______________________________

dan meyer

Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/node/94967

Dan Meyer taught high school mathematics from 2004 to 2010 and currently sudies at Standord University on a doctoral fellowship. His professional interests are curriculum design and teacher education. His personal interests are graphic design, filmmaking, and infographics. He keeps a steady eye out for collisions between the two. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife. Dan blogs as dy/dan at http://blog.mrmeyer.com.

 math with no words

dan myer rocks.. i want to go to one of his dimdim sessions..





___________________________________________

mark harvoth

invisiblepeople.tv day

you go Mark - bravo man...




_______________________________

kathleen kushman

the practice project
what does it take to get really good at something...
that central question  brings up 2 issues:
1) student motivation to take on challenging learning
2) what/how do teachers need to do to develop mastery
all ideas via metlife foundation
in october will bring a student panel
http://www.whatkidscando.org/
deliberate practice is geared to the individual... only in school to we force everyone to do the same for practice

find her 5 day curriculum for this process here

motivation isn't something you have at the start - it comes after value and expectation

to be good at getting good

Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/event/90716

From Kathleen Kushman's Website:

"I write clear, accessible, lively prose on a wide range of subjects, most of which concern youth and their learning. Most of my time goes to What Kids Can Do (WKCD), the nonprofit I co-founded with Barbara Cervone in 2001, but I also regularly speak, consult, and write for organizations around the country.

"Starting as a printer’s devil in my high school years, over four decades I’ve worn every hat in publishing: writer, editor, and publisher for newspapers, magazines, and books in many fields. Reporting on national high school change from 1988 to 2001 gave me a solid grasp of educational issues and an active network of people in the forefront of that field. Teaching first-year writing at Harvard trained me to coach young people to think deeply and to free up and discipline their voices. Helping to start a progressive public secondary school in Massachusetts in 1995 gave me hands-on experience in setting the bar high for all students.

"In recent years, for WKCD, I have traveled the U.S. and abroad collecting the voices of youth, then bringing their words into print and mixed-media forms. Grounded in the rough and subtle realities of adolescence, these voices cut close to the bone — illuminating “best practices” in education, and revealing the fault lines that divide students along lines of class, color, and money. I aim to bring young people’s vivid experiences and insights to an even wider audience, by speaking, writing, and collaborating with you who share a commitment to equity, opportunity, and powerful learning for all."

_______________________________

inquiry as stance

reading this book by marilyn cochran-smith and susan l. lytle

p. 146

now - knowledge & skills 

must be invented 

*on the fly 

funny how on the fly conjures up flightiness and yet - 

i believe that very act is what can change the world.

no more scripted schools, learning (memorizing) 

what they are supposed to learn/produce.

but school as real life.

where everyone is learning - 

continuously - 

on the fly.

swimming in it.

*on the fly - are my words - they had - by working on the problem at hand 


____________________________________________________________

noble kelly teaches us swahili

@noblekelly
_________________________________

my ed declaration

@stevehargadon is calling out for  
ed declarations...

good reads... check them out.

i just posted mine last night:

curiosity is natural.
knowledge deemed as opportunity 
now binds us.
the web allows access to anything.
most need detox to get back to what matters.
nclb = absolutely
achievement gap = misnomer


we're working on a detox here.

_______________________________________

dan meyer rocks

we should all thank @ddmeyer by loving math.. 

algebra: the supplement

geometry: the supplement
______________________________________

simon sinek - service

the following from his post on customer service:

Though we think we want 

answers and immediate attention,

in reality we just 

want to be acknowledged.   

We just want someone to show us,

in some way, that

they recognize that we exist.

_______________________________________________

carol dweck

From Wikipedia:  "Professor Dweck has primary research interests in motivation, personality, and development. She teaches courses in Personality and Social Development as well as Motivation. Her key contribution to social psychology relates to implicit theories of intelligence. This is present in her book entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success which was published in 2006. According to Dweck, individuals can be placed on a continuum according to their implicit views of where ability comes from. Some believe their success is based on innate ability; these are said to have a 'fixed' theory of intelligence. Others, who believe their success is based on hard work and learning, are said to have a 'growth' or an 'incremental' theory of intelligence. Individuals may not necessarily be aware of their own mindset, but their mindset can still be discerned based on their behavior. It is especially evident in their reaction to failure. Fixed-mindset individuals dread failure because it is a negative statement on their basic abilities, while growth mindset individuals don't mind failure as much because they realize their performance can be improved. These two mindsets play an important role in all aspects of a person's life. Dweck argues that the growth mindset will allow a person to live a less stressful and more successful life.

"This is important because (1) individuals with a 'growth' theory are more likely to continue working hard despite setbacks and (2) individuals' theories of intelligence can be affected by subtle environmental cues. For example, children given praise such as 'good job, you're very smart' are much more likely to develop an fixed mindset, whereas if given compliments like 'good job, you worked very hard' they are likely to develop a growth mindset. In other words, it is possible to encourage students, for example, to persist despite failure by encouraging them to think about learning in a certain way."

brainology
alfie kohn - 5 reasons to stop saying good job

Joe Bower: David Shenk's book The Genius in All of Us is fantastic too.

drawing on the right side of the brain. = book she read

Megan Howard (@mmhoward): Love this quote from "Your Child's Strengths" about adolescence...In their adolescent years, kids become aware of themselves as separate and powerful people who have choices in their development. This can be exhilarating at times and overwhelming at others. Hormones awaken and release for the first time the deeply encoded messages about life and death, purpose and meaning, love and rage. "Adolescents live in a state of heightened awareness, searching for something bigger than they are to mirror their yearning for significance. They look to adults to be that something bigger, to grab hold of them and pull them up out of the general clamor. They long to know that the world wants them and that life has, in fact, been waiting for their arrival. This is not a rebellion, but a strengths awakening." (p. 63)

Corey Boettiger: while perseverance is one of the greatest traits a person can posses i dont believe it should nor even could be integrated into our curriculum because i believe perseverance is something that each person has to discover on their own and is not something that can be taught directly if thats what you were meaning

then he responded with a cool example of his perseverance with medical problems where his friends could care less -
(yes - that was our Corey Boettiger at an elluminate session... joining right in - bravo man)

Peggy George: these are Angela's habitudes: Habitude 1: Imagination .............................................................................. 15
Habitude 2: Curiosity .................................................................................. 31
Habitude 3: Self-Awareness ........................................................................ 49
Habitude 4: Perseverance .......................................................................... 63
Habitude 5: Courage .................................................................................. 79
Habitude 6: Adaptability ............................................................


Peggy George: definitely parallel these comments now


__________________________________

linda darling-hammond

teaching not really being a profession

1) teachers don't get access to the knowledge that exists that they need

2) teachers are so politically managed. teachers can be asked to do things that are actually mal practice

3) get very little opportunity to take control

change in business in 1980s - to problem solving teams 

a post from her on teacher prep

if government was running businesses like they are running schools - they would be in the same boat.

Radney: I don't think we really address the problems in education by pointing out shortcomings of teachers and teacher training. I think that is the wrong focus.

Jefferson county in kentucky

Terry Smith: Seymour Papert put it this way - whatever good ideas come into a public school system are quickly deformed into what the school wants. Good ideas and good training dies when it walks into the public schoolhouse door.

check out zhoa's book - a lot of people are referencing it

 

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity. From 1994-2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation's ten most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. She recently served as the leader of President Barack Obama's education policy transition team.

Among Darling-Hammond's more than 300 publications are The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future(Teachers College Press, 2010); Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs (Jossey-Bass, 2006); Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do (with John Bransford; Jossey-Bass, 2005), winner of the AACTE Pomeroy Award; Teaching as the Learning Profession (co-edited with Gary Sykes; Jossey-Bass, 1999), which received the National Staff Development Council's Outstanding Book Award for 2000; and The Right to Learn (Jossey-Bass, 1st edition, 1997), recipient of the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award for 1998.

anya kamenetz on ted

ted rocks..


reactions
i love this:
My contention is that many of the cool things that TED does spread more widely than the cool things that Harvard does, because of its  
attitude toward 
openness 
and its use of 
social media.



__________________________________________

where is africa

great video i found on ict champs




the map blew me away. africa is empty
________________________________

neri oxman

her talk at bif 5 2009

By letting materials tell their own stories, the form-finding (not form-making) artist, architect and material ecologist shares a few brilliant examples of her work.

Neri Oxman is a designer and researcher whose work establishes a new approach to design at the interface of computer science, material engineering and ecology. Her research promotes the aesthetics of material formation and behavior as a scientific contribution to ecological activism. She is the founder of an interdisciplinary design initiative, MATERIALECOLOGY and is currently pursuing her PhD at MIT as a Presidential Fellow. In June, 2009, she appeared on the cover of Fast Company magazine featured as one of the 100 most creative people in business.

i love what she says in regard to relationships as seen in nature...

1) more things are integrated than separated

2) more things are similar than we think - fractal-ish 

understand processes of materials, letting material tell its own story

schizofrenia between physical domain and the digital domain

incorporate parameters that are related... art/business/nature/etc

the bone fabricates itself as it.....    (key - as it...)

instead of thinking of the form i want to achieve i think of the form of thinking

________________________________

mark harvoth

post today on the need for id clinics - invisiblepeople.tv

_____________________________________

barry schwartz

maximize individual freedom - 2007 ted

about his book - paradox of choice

the way to max freedom is to max choice.

everywhere life is choice

toys

health

identity - every morning - what kind of person do you want to be

work

diy - is it good news or bad news?

 yes

all the choice has 2 effects

1) it produces paralysis rather than liberation
2) even if we make a choice we end up less satisfied than if there were less choices (grass is greener - imagined alternative increases regret)

i want the kind that used to be the only kind - jeans

all the choice gave him better jeans... wrote a whole book to try to explain it to himself - why did he feel worse? expectations went up

everything was better back when everything was worse

it was possible to have things that were a pleasant surprise

now - you will never be pleasantly surprised - because with all choices - we expect perfection

with one choice - and bad result - who's responsible - the world

with many choices - and bad result - who's respsonsible - you - why depression is so rampant

we do better and feel worse

some choice is better than none

but more choice is not better than some choice

what enables all this choice is material affluence

steve levit - ted - child seats are waste of money

what barry is saying - is that these expensive choices - don't just not help - they actually hurt, they make society worse

so - spreading the wealth (economists - operado improving move - income redistribution) - would improve both sides of economics

if you shadder the fish bowl - you don't have freedom - you have paralysis

everybody needs a fishbowl

impoverished imagination 

if everything is possible - you decrease satisfaction

___________________________

i cry too much.
___________________________

barry schwartz

all the following thanks to @gcouros 's post

nothing involves other human beings... janitors job could just as well be done in a mortuary.

kindness care and empathy are essential... 

moral will to do right by others and the moral skill to figure out what doing right means

aristotle - practival wisdom = moral will and moral skill

wise person knows when they should break the rules, knows when to improvise, like a jazz musician - using notes on page, but dancing around them, 

a wise person is made, not born

you don't need to be brilliant to be wise, without wisdom, brilliance can be dangerous.

lemonade story - we hate to do it - but we have to follow procedure

when things go wrong - we reach for 2 things to try to fix them

1) rules

2) incentives

for both - better ones and more of them

the truth - neither are enough to do the job.

how could you get people to care.. proposterous

rules and incentives may make them better in the short run.. but the destroy in the long run.

they destroy our desire to do the right thing.

engaging in a war on wisdom

american ed - scripted curriculum

scripts are insurance policies against disaster,... but what they put in its place - mediocrity

too many rules make people (musicians) lose their gifts or stop playing all together

we must ask, not just is it profitable, but is it right. -obama

we need to try to re-moralize work.

how not to do it:

1) teach more morality

instead - celebrate moral exemplars, 

ray anderson's ted - turned evil empire into a 0 footprint business - bonus - he'll make even more money

willy smith's ted - reforesting in indonesia, took a lot of intelligence, but more so - needed to know the people in the community

janitors

practitioners

any work that you do with other people involves moral work and any moral work requires wisdom

teachers - we are always teaching, someone is always watching, ...

most important thing kids to need learn is character

respect others, respect learning.

we need to embody that every hour of every day.

and

__________________________________________