When my son was little, I was going through a lot of turmoil at King, and I did not feel like doing much of anything when I got home. One day, I just decided that whatever he wanted to do, I would do -- play ball, eat ice cream, and so on. I realized the power of yes. It changed our relationship. The only progress you will ever make involves risk:
Ideas that teachers have may seem a little unsafe and crazy. Try to think, "How can I make this request into a yes?"
working on ways to monitor progress of learning...
visuals and focus thanks to our expert expert tutor - Craig...@csr_wildwood
verbiage thanks to @noamkos and @jamesmarcusbach and students
concept and soon to be hatched activity systems mapping comparing expert tutor with student thanks to @jimfolk
all above from research of tons of other really smart people.. tons (you are probably one of them)
(sharing just now esp for for @prettylikedeer who keeps me sane)
let's talk about this (update)when we talk about achievement and success...
our bad:
1) we're basing all our data on tests that measure things we really don't believe in
2) the data is biased.. leaving out info that would completely mess up the pretty numbers
this.
this is what's urgent.
people feeling like they matter..
we keep overwhelming ourselves with possible solutions
we keep throwing tons of money at possible solutions
we keep writing more rules and blaming more people in search of possible solutions
we can't stop long enough to realize we're running the wrong way
life is really simple
detox to get back to simplicity:
1) notice - be mindful of what's going on around you
2) dream - imagine yourself solving/curing/doing/creating
3) connect - to people and content to make your dream/passion/project a reality
4) do - play offense - just do it
the one skill everyone needs - knowing what to do when you don't know what to do - being usefully ignorant (erica mcwilliams) - those four steps - that's it. practice those four steps with anything you want to learn - and then - like breathing - you will always know what to do when you don't know what to do.
let's get on with...
cognitive surplus - via shirky - where generosity takes over
digital equity - via grammatis - ahumanright.org
leveling out the playing field - via rosling
community as curriculum - via cormier
= people matter most
diversity=sustainability
every human is their own cultural ecology
examples: ted, childsi
infectious vision in an unstructured environment
angela lussier
cartwheel - everything after that will be less embarrassing your creativity is an issue - our stories are what are going to change other people's stories
business for people who feel locked up at work
time to stop waiting for the future to change and time to start creating it
i'm thinking.... sugata mitra is incredible... he had to leave the country...
as i see it now -
it used to be that content was king... and we (expert tutors) did our best to deliver.
now.. there's too much (and morphing) content... but there are more ways to connect to expert tutors.
so facilitating connections (to people and content) where a standard process of learning how to learn can be practiced in more personalized ways is.... well - it's a delightful breath of fresh air.
we should be swimming in it. if we could just...
on ted: where good ideas comes from - what is the space of creativity:
shared patterns of creativity and innovation.
have to steer away from which our content and metaphor and verbiage describe this now..
now = an idea is a single thing.
but in fact - and idea is a network on the most elemental level.
how do you get your brain into environments where these networks can perform.
infant mortality rates - tech is there.
problem - it will work for 2 yrs then break - because you don't have the systerm and 40000 dollars to fix it.
what are the abundant resources in these developing companies
seem to have expertise to keep cars working.
so - could we build an incubator built from car parts.
all you need are spare parts and ability to fix a headlight.
the spaces that have tended to lead to innovation.. look very chaotic... filled with people with many different backgrounds.
people are notoriously unreliable when they report on where they have had their best ideas.
dunbar - video taped everyone when doing jobs and tried to figure out where most important ideas happened.
most break through ideas happened at the conference table when they shared their ideas - mostly their mistakes... led to innovation.
people want to tell the story of the eureka moment.
a lot of important ideas have very long incubation periods.. sometimes for decades.
interesting ideas but not tools yet... or one piece missing.. darwin - natural selection.
howard gruver - found darwin's full theory months and months before he claimed his eureka moment.
fade into view over a long period of time.
so how do you create space for these ideas to ferment..
allow those hunches to connect with other people's hunches.
we should spend at least as much time if not more valuing the connecting of ideas rather than protecting them.
The internet has governances and the government tries to share with us the way it can work. There is a committee and there is a citizen's group as well as open meetings. The law of the land is that the FCC
provides guidance. To get the train and highways back in the day on the same size track, same time zone ( trains) groups were set up to create commmissions that represent all of the states to make a decision. When the interstate highways came along it was the same thing. The Internet is the latest of the connecting state iniitatives.
I guess that each state could do its own thing, but for national security and governance the FCC is the provider and the decider. Sort of.
talent isn't born it's grown
when we practice in certain ways we are actually improving our brain
deep practice can increase skill ability 10 times more
we could check ability simply by asking - how do you practice
removes mystery to talent - gives you access to the mechanisms to get you their
mayleigh on deep practice:
look at those eyes....
myelin development:
ray montagne held himself up in a room for 2 years.. p. 81 in talent code
getting into the zone..
p. 80ish
rule 1 - chunk it up
take in the whole thing: stare at or listen to until you can imagine yourself doing it, we're pre-wired to imitate
break into chunks: learn each chunk then piece back together
slow down: allows you to attend to errors, can embrace internal blueprint
rule 2 - repeat it
but not like we know practice, deep practice requires energy, passion, commitment, all most experts can handle is 3-5 hours a day p. 89 for even less hours
rule 3 - learn to feel it
get a balance point where you can sense errors when they come, to avoid mistakes - 1st you have to feel them immediately, what you're really practicing is -- concentration
i believe innovation = learning. and innovation is not invention.
we don't need to invent anything more in ed.
we need to rework what we already have in time/money/resources.
we need to listen to global voices and become more resourceful.
all anyone needs is access to resources (and probably a bit of detox)
not managers/owners.... use Sugata as an example.
those all around us are our emotion and ignition and passion...
from reading talent code to and from... wondering how incredible if we could free ourselves up (the land of the free - right?) to let kids choose their topic and then facilitate/model deep practice, a keen process of learning how to learn...
[i can't convince myself that we all need ie: algebra... please help]
on pseudocontext
esp note carloann's comment:
I think there are four ways to approach maths with students, and I make the four ways obvious by encouraging discussion:
1. What is the maths here? (abstract)
2. Is there any REAL occasion when we might do this naturally
3: Is there any obvious job-related occasion when this is used on real life ( engineer; psychologist; physicist; statistician etc etc)
4: What is a national exam question on this topic likely to look like? (pseudocontext)
@jasonfried was at #bif6 - wow to that.
i quote Rework daily. (fyi to the people who can't hear me)
on the plane to and from Providence (which i fell in love with) -
i read Daniel Coyle's Talent Code.
[which @kessampanthar recommended to me like a year ago. he recommended that and Carol Dweck's Mindset. the 2 books i put off till last on my then current list. silly me.]
so - my take...
Coyle's deep practice bleeds of Fried's rework.
it was like - that's how you do it.
the mash-up for me:
before reading talent code - rework was my play book for making days matter. like i would focus on orchestrating better time slots. (i'm sure a disservice to rework's intent.)
after reading talent code - rework is the bi-product (as i'm assuming was it's intent) of my inner emotion (@nabilharfoush) and ignition.
so to me - right now - rework is part of the detox (critique requested) most of us need.
which as you can see below - ridiculously resembles keith's site.
a piece:
Again, in 'real-life' does anyone actually get a thrill out of answering canned questions? Yet there are bookclubs everywhere. And why is that? It's because people love to talk about what they are reading. They don't love to be graded on how they answer questions, they just love to talk. And in talking and discussing, they learn.
And in this social media rich environment, it's downright backwards to refrain from tapping in to that.
also just caught this on twitter: google for students
haven't read through much, but i'm guessing perusing that could be great use of time
web taught dancers dancing at the oscars
evolution of dance
cycles of improvement by people watching web videos
crowd excelerated innovation
the bigger the crowd the more potential
find the crowd, light in the light, dial up the desire
on the web - all 3 dials are ratcheted right up, esp the desire level
hardest part - light - you have to open up -it's by giving a way your deepest secret, in order to improve it
at ted - radical openness works
we're a social species, we spark off each other
what is underreported - is the significance of the rise of online video, this is the tech that is going to allow the rest of the world's talents to share their talents, which launches a whole new brand of innovation
1st few yrs of web, video free, because so large, but bandwidth has exploded
video packs a huge amount of data and our brains are uniquely wired to decode it
unicycle - can't communicate in words - but through video, global community unites
the primal medium that your brain was wired for, just went global
1st time in human history, students can sit in front of the world's finest
change in ed will take many educators, but they are out there, in the crowd, and the crowd is switching on lights and we can see them for the first time
chris has always been an inspiring guy - but now, we get to see them
i love this, ted's now immersed with video of others talking as well.
my response... can't get it to post there.. so here:
Postman - 40 years ago.. Asimov - 22 years ago - http://tinyurl.com/279hhgz as well.... to me it just verifies we should. not - dang we'll never get there.
the difference... now we have a means to do what Postman and Asimov and Mitra and Papert.... and so many others could just talk about.
Shirky's cognitive surplus isn't just generosity... it's tech and generosity. Mitra didn't his experiments without tech. Papert's standard of individualization can't scale without web access.
i read an article today - about how stupid the web is making us. that's silly. anything can make you stupid if you let it. and the web certainly will if we do ed like we have in the past. the overwhelming web + teaching a set curriculum + mandating a set time = ridiculous. i'd want to disengage if the web was available and people made me disconnect - to learn.
instead - let's look at the potential of the web. Mitra says, with self-supervised access to the web we could change. self- supervised... that's the key. we need to learn the ways of the pro-amateurs, like James Bach. his Buccaneer-Scholar is a gold mine.
so we spend a few years in detox... learning how to self-learn. and that's it. learning what you want to learn doesn't need to be marketed... there's natural hunger there. exponentiation of networks will scale. if we let people self-impose.
let's focus on the sort of people who don't want to power down.. who crave doing something that matters.. not the ones that keep telling us we can’t. http://tinyurl.com/297j7gz
diplomacy like business is a way for solving problems and yet it doesn't allow for innovation.
personal lesson: falling off a cliff is a good thing and i recommend it - at least once in your life
bigger lesson: we are all intimately connected... instead of asking your politicians to do things you have to look to yourself to do things
he gave up on the higher ups to take care of things and took it upon himself to be an independent diplomat.
he's bringing the people together for a conversation.
of course you think this is incredibly difficult - but it will never happen if we don't try.
what about the fact that computers dehumanize people..
isaac - just the reverse
in old days had live individual tutors, hired, but not everyone could afford it...
but wanted more educated - so only way was to have one teacher for many...
either 1 to 1 for very few
or 1 to 1 for many
but now - we can have 1 to 1 for many....
dang - 22 years ago... what have we been doing?
ie: the kids in sugata's video - wanted to be football players until they watched teds - and now want to be picasso...
this is a way for every kid to create their own class
and to make it so school isn't a thing kids do
i woke up 30 min early - for no apparent reason...
aw... here's why...
thank you once again Seth Godin... for sharing things that matter..
The Double Bottom Line from Alex Godin on Vimeo.
as he says... can watch video and post separate of each other...
but should do both.
it's that important.
going to get better but here's a start on my tsdil journal:
this first 3 weeks of school has been more incredible than any of my other 20 as an educator. because kids are taking over. i am learning tons.
huge lesson #1:
on the term homeless - doesn't say houseless... so not so much about the shelter.. but about fitting in. we have many homeless in our classrooms.
huge lesson #2:
on best way to help the homeless... we can't force someone to care about changing or improving themselves. we can however.. offer free resources. many cities do that for homeless people. the invisible homeless, the majority of homeless - women and children, can take advantage of that. (needless to say - we need more.)
and as for the homeless in education - we could have the opportunity to offer free resources to anyone, anywhere, means to whatever they want to be. there are so many resources out there already.... enough to save the world even. we just need the pipeline to every individual.
i met up with Kosta Grammatis just this last week.. he started ahumanright.org about a year ago. he is seeking global wifi as well. we need Kosta and about 9 other true innovators.... http://itssaulconnected.com/archives/2010/06/focus-on-customer-experience/
i believe we could have a solution to global wifi pounded out within a year.
i would love any support you have to offer to this end.
it's like - now we are the kids, we are the learners... we need to own what we see as the solution. we need to be the solution. we need to model - owning the solution.
Bill Strickland's look like the solution... not the problem.
convos on homelessness and resources these last couple of weeks reminded me of teachers/students and force feeding tech.. which made me revisit our summer plans to have
done..
still working on it.. help if you can.
_______________________________
We are working with Dr. James Folkestad at CSU via participatory action research, in order to create/document a cohesive structure to validate and scale/share our findings.
Think Tutorial is a database of simple, easy to follow tutorials covering all aspects of popular computing. Technology is fantastic, but it can be difficult to keep up with at times. Think Tutorial's strength resides in its very intuitive approach and design. Every inch of web estate is used wisely keeping everything simple and organized.
_______________________
you blog holds my latest (obviously not latest find those on be you site links below) finds/thoughts/ramblings. not intended for normal edu-blogger consumption or modeling. lookdirectly below for our collection of more orderly-random (chaordic) thinking... if you are so inclined...
