Thursday, June 30, 2011

avalon

talking on self-directed learning.
bravo guys.. love it..

nic askew




waiting for him to recognize his soul.
so there would be no doubt..





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dave debronkart




patients know what patients want to know

let patients help

joshua walters



just manic enough

maybe there's not such thing as crazy
maybe you're just more sensitive to what most people can't see or feel

how much depends on .... how lucky you are.


______________________________

good enough?

passion based learning
portfolio



partial freedom is no freedom... 
i'm pushing. i know. i can't not.


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derek sivers

via the domino project


I miss the mob from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.


isn't that enough?


maximization is an addiction
- from blessed unrest, hawken

________________________________________

ben grey

oh my.. this is very sweet.

Nikon D7000 Sample Videos from Ben Grey on Vimeo.


fav part -
you get to come get me.



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data infographic

via jhagel
mashable


________________

seth godin

interview with michael hyatt

Backstage with Seth Godin from Michael Hyatt on Vimeo.

how do you move away from making money off the old model.. to how do you make art, how do you make connections, how do you get off the couch

David Benjamin Kopp Love this: "Stress happens when you want to do two things at the same time. When you want to be there and you want to flee. We get stressed before we give a speech. Why? Because we want to give the speech but we also don't want to give a speech. Hence, stress. With something you REALLY want to do, like eat lunch? That's not stressful."

all you have to do is do things that people remember

a disrupter

goes across all areas

book publishing is based on scarcity
problem.. internet is not about scarcity, it's about spreading
the enemy is not piracy is obsurity


mindset - i can hold on long enough to retire


go to google and type - advice for authors
give away your first book, pdf, if your 20 closest friends don't pass it on, if that's the end, you don't have a good book
short is a benefit
longer books - you often are paying for the fluff needed to make it book worthy of $20




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bud hunt

via Ben Grey at iste

Engchat 2011 from Ben Grey on Vimeo.


p   a   u   s   e   .



this video found here - bud's engchat reflection
another post of bud's from iste



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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

krishnamurti

so far.. holy moly..
education and the significance of life. 

every word.
holy moly

non-compulsory - awakening doesn't happen through compulsion
partial freedom is not freedom
radical transformation will only come when adults uncondition themselves
regiment in any way,, destroys keen awareness
success can't be goal

course kit

course kit

via @dalejstephens via @aronsolomon

nik askew


IT from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

bringing people together, who are sure of themselves, and full of curiosity

sense of wonder isn't on a job description

is it what people are paying for or what they come back for...
the soul of an organisation... something intangible


again reminding of Hsieh's delivering happiness - culture is so key
______________________________________-

david bollier

the commons as a different engine for innovation
thanks to @ianchia for sending this our way


sound like Hsieh in delivering happiness:
When you have to “eat your own dog food,” as they say in Silicon Valley, then you make sure that it’s real tasty and wholesome – and not some marketable slop that you hoodwink some poor sucker into buying.  That’s why Linux is a better operating system than Windows.

and krishnamurti's education and the significance of life
some favs from the book so far:
  • a consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern, he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.
  • we may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent
  • of what value is it to be trained lawyers if we perpetuate litigation
  • the purpose of ed is not to produce mere scholars, technicians and job hunters, but integrated men and women who are free of fear; for only between such human beings can there be enduring peace. 
  • education is intimately related to the present world crisis, and the educator who sees the causes of this universal chaos should ask himself how to awaken intelligence in the student, thus helping the coming generation not to bring about further conflict and disaster.”
i think the more we focus on life… natural curiosities.. and pairing learners up per interest, we will be spending more energy on things that matter and a result will be intelligent people collaborating in peace.

emiliano salinas



via
Ethan Zuckerman

ethan zuckerman

4 questions about civic media:
moving to mit to seek answers
1) How do we map and understand media ecosystems?
2) How do we help marginal and rarely-heard voices find an audience?”
3) How do we encourage productive participation?
4) How do we help communities annotate physical spaces? How do we make civic maps? 

a video in his post.. pushing us past our sheltered thinking..



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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

jw griffiths


Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

thanks to tweet:
@globalvoices Video: Love Story, Short Film, Cellphone http://bit.ly/jskzh7

space

in sharing ideas here.
Mary Ann asks if the space has to be inside the high school as an exclusive thing, Community spaces make sense.

current thinking
.. although i think we knew it in our hearts, recent events here have nudged us into thinking, definition of space is much like definition of culture. or perhaps it's very key to keeping culture.

while it's harder to maybe do, harder for most of us to trust, because it is so different, we're now thinking that designated homebase space could play out better if it's small/modest. at least if we're going for city as floorplan.

comfort, like definitive objectives, curriculum, etc, often keep us from being mindful. often keep us from immersion into life - into our communities.

the hard part.. taking that jump from.. there is no one space..to finding/using best suited spaces that already exist, that already host expert mentors, personally for each learner.

we say it often, but living it, being vulnerable in context - making school life, or doing life and calling that school - that's the challenge. that's the opportunity.

bike

via @good - minneapolis's bike repair vending machine



___________________

mary ann reilly

some more glimpses of her wisdom.. on a convo about rhizomes:

@MaryAnnReilly @ianchia @monk51295 
Yes,  
the infinite middles matter in ways hierarchy cannot understand.

venessa miemis

emergent by design on ven


very interesting - i see a direct correlation here with this view of currency and what ed credentials will be. so you learned this.. exchange that into any system(s) that behooves your future..
transcript it, portfolio it, etc..

By 2020, I think it’s entirely possible that many people “in the real world” will earn their entire living from new digital currencies – accepting them as a payment in their own ecosystems then exchanging them to ‘cash’ for those who accept only more traditional currencies.  So yes, you’ll be able “to pay the rent”.


_____________________________

thomas j delong

recovering from the need to achieve 
by Kim Girard

post is about and from Delong's flying without a net
keen, keen, brilliantly keen advice:
At the end of the day what I'm suggesting is that vulnerability in context can be the most powerful behavior in initiating change.

via harvard business school's working knowledge

seth godin

are you wow blind?
Tony Hsieh's #1 of their 10 core values at Zappos:
deliver wow through service - random acts of wow



____________________

success

my daughter asks google to define success via her cell phone.
20 seconds and her phone spits out the following:



















perhaps we could take heed.
are we keeping from things that matter because we're afraid to allow for no definites? can we just acknowledge success is subjective. there is no standard, no normal.. nothing is for everyone.
if we could free the masses to follow this up... to realize their options..


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Monday, June 27, 2011

dan pink

 


rewards by their own nature narrow our focus

if then rewards work well for easy problems

as long as mechanical skills - higher reward better performance
even rudimentary critical thinking - rewards led to lower performance

mismatch between what science knows and what business (school) does

don't do more of the wrong things...
1) autonomy
2) mastery
3) purpose

notes from same talk over a year ago

in rowe - people don't have schedules.. don't have to show up at all, meetings are optional, productivity/engagement/mastery goes up, turnover goes down

science confirms what we already know in our hearts.

__________________________

city as school

3 week series from harvard review - 10 posts

from cities need to get smarter:
Budget cuts simply can't derail efforts to make our cities smarter.
Under the gun, many are proposing cuts that may produce short-term savings but could result in longer term costs.

ibm's smarter cities challenge - boulder is in it

city as school:
Gilberto Dimenstein is a senior Brazilian journalist 

why is capital afraid of cities:
While minuscule amounts of program money are trickling out to small-scaled community-development institutions, billions of dollars are sitting in endowment funds. Making the case for investments that produce social impact as well as market returns is not a discussion most executive directors want to have with their board — or their financial stewards on Wall Street.
Large corporations know more about opportunities in Chinese markets than they do about opportunities in US cities. Few CEOs realize that their companies' "supplier diversity programs" might be self-defense exercises for an urbanized future.
Institutions aren't stupid. They're not mean-spirited. They just tend to do what they know. It's easier to invest in a few big companies. It's easier to buy from a few big vendors. And it's easier to sell to a monolithic mass market than to the diverse and dynamic collection of markets that we call a city.

roger ridley

is where playing for change started.. Street Singer around the World www.playingforchange.com peace
 thanks to Mark Johnson meeting up with Roger Ridley

listening to their peace through music dvd  (thanks Barry)

seeking our 1 language - music, no?

it's not his or hers or theirs.. it's ours

bravo mark johnson.. thank  you all


one of my favs (besides all - love tula, etc..).. vusi on childhood memory  - good friend with mandela  8:34 on dvd

your neighbor's problem is also your problem
how much do we want to belong

know hope
music as a friendship between everybody   - famzi bishaba, khaled and ali sing - from israel

david broza - music is a good grounds for hurting souls to meet

anything will make us see, but art will make us look

nepal - tara bir tuladhar
food, clothing, house,... we need these things but they are not enough, we need more for our souls, we need peace. soul peace

did i say i love keb mo?
i love keb mo.

jose antonio vargas



don't let identity get in the way of common humanity

the paper is dead, but the news isn't

at the end of the day journalism is about story telling

advice:
tip: critical thinking
it's easy to be intimidated
know where your heart is.. make sure you know who you are and what you want to be... define your own success


interview about his imigration
66000 with bachelors degree or higher
in my heart - i'm an american

jackie gerstein

flipped classroom at iste


haven't read through it yet..

mary ann reilly

started this convo on city as floorplan
me and roberto

[playing with bettween]



david warlick

inspired sharing

A principal said that when he use to see pockets of unsupervised students, he’d thing, “Trouble,” and ask where their teacher was. Now, he’s accustomed to seeing students working together, unsupervised, and rather than reacting with alarm, he reacts with curiosity, “What are they learning right now?”

Saturday, June 25, 2011

robert greco

exploding school - cool jets dsmalgarden
via @MaryAnnReilly

what robert is working on 

who's Colin Ward?
thank you @rogre
the gradual anarchist - remembering Colin Ward via Stan Cohen
and robert's collection on ward

arianna huffington



what we value offline is increasingly what we value online
trust, etc
the internet is growing up

we want our engagement to be curated, civil and about giving back
opposite of success is not failure, failure is the stepping stones to success
montagne - there were many terrible things in my life but most of them never happened


aol ceo - tim armstrong



follow your heart - make big decisions with your heart and not your brain

everyone you meet in your life is worth meeting

pharrell williams

at cannes lions june 2011


great ideas come from human beings not architypes

we want to hear the stories behind the creativity - integral part

all brands can benefit from looking beyond their audience and who they are planning to serve

jonah lehrer

at cannes lions june 2011


meta ideas

let people relax - play ping pong,
let people interact - connect  [hsieh - only one entracne, pixar - only 2 bathrooms]

advice - if you're frustrated, failing, keep on - it's a sign you're onto something..

sir ken robinson

at Cannes Lions june 17-25, 2011


to be creative - you have to do something
1) feel confident that you can do it (lots of people feel they aren't creative)
reason they don't think they are creative - accumulative ideas and they haven't tried things
it's never too late
[youth = you to whatever degree you choose]

the role of a great leader is not to have creative ideas, it's to create space an opportunity for everyone to have creative ideas
the way a place sees itself has an affect

be authentic, trust yourself

cathy davidson


via @anya1anya 's post on fast company - life in beta: bold plan for change
We need to scrap the legacies of industrialism, everything from clock punching and rigid rules to SATs and HR departments. Instead, start celebrating "collaboration by difference" -- every team needs some people to count the passes and others to spot the gorilla.\

If you're that worried about distraction, something else is going on."




later reading:

tweet from dmlcentral: positive disruption 

another post on now you see it on higher ed
We now know there is no such thing as monotasking on a neurological level. Neurons are always firing and the brain is constantly chattering to itself, calling upon different areas at once to respond in ways we are only now beginning to understand
if the issue is that Americans are working too hard at our jobs -- and we’re now working more hours per year than our parents did or than their parents did (and more than anyone in the world except South Koreans), then we should be addressing that real problem. Work speed-up and overload has social, economic, political and indeed cognitive consequences. In this situation, multitasking is the smokescreen for a much larger societal problem. 

of course these new practices change our brains in some way - that's what learning is

First, it’s not the future. It’s the present that has changed. We have all gone through massive transformations of our work and social life in less than two decades and we’ve done an amazingly good job of it at one of humankind’s most dramatic moments. So the first thing we have to do is stop worrying so much.
The sociologists tell us that the cohort of students entering college this year are the least alienated, most family- and socially conscious, most politically engaged, friendliest, least drug- and alcohol-addicted, and least violent generation since World War II. Once we can breathe in and relax about that, 
 curious what this means..
In the workplace, let’s demand software that helps us sort out our personal life from our work life.
after reading Hsieh's delivering happiness - seems the culture zappos created there was no designation.. you were you.. work was life.
When we narrow the curriculum, we also make the realm in which kids can achieve even smaller, meaning fewer kids with diverse talents are likely to achieve

seth godin

show me the (meta) data


add on http://tinyurl.com/3ozzfqp
from co.dedsign

Friday, June 24, 2011

define american



via Karl's post: what would you do?


_______________________________

Thursday, June 23, 2011

brightstorm

wow - you go brightstorm..
find videos per your textbook



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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

onyx ashanti




love the advertisement video after..about being creative
creativity creates community..
nice one aol..

maya beiser



i esp love the 2nd song..
imagining an instrumental improv with ethan jackson's opticals

daniel tammet



perception

notebook of little noticings that other people miss - Czechov
different kinds of perceiving create different kinds of knowing and understanding

personal perceptions are at the heart of how we garner knowledge, judgment and reasoning guide this

the world is vaster, richer, than it too often seems to be

urban peak

planning to visit tomorrow


with Bryce Hach of homeward 2020
and Jerri Hower of the mathews house

carrie lethborg


there is not greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals. - Felix Franfurter

thank you @ianchia

mihalyi csikszentmihalyi

critical play - pdf

what play shows over and over again is the possibility of changing goals and therefore restructuring reality


found in Mary Flanagan's critical play - pdf
interesting SOBA - collective noodle party to mix places in a community.. and share in the culture of food

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

danah boyd

ethonographer



zephoria Video of me talking about teen privacy strategies at HyperPublic: http://bit.ly/jdU6mG (10 min version of this paper: http://bit.ly/ixbtHk)

just because kids want to work in a public doesn't mean they want to be public

our interactions are private by default and public by effort
you have to go out of your way to try to remember it - or record it and share it, etc
online, many ways - public by default and private by effort

ennamered by the startegies kids use for this

privacy - ability to control a social situation, the ability to have agency to assert control over that situation

shanika - deletes everything.. her thinking - anyone that wants to bring it back has to go through effort

hiding in plain sight


parents/adults don't know - and don't know if they're allowed to ask

lessig 1) market 2) law 3) code 4) social norms
young people are trying to remind us that social norms matter

feedback loops

are changing what people do

feedback loop: Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction.
  1. data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage
  2. information relayed to individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage.
  3. consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead. 
  4. action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.
giving speeders redundant information with no consequence would somehow compel them to do something few of us are inclined to do: slow down.
interesting concept in regard to Blessed Unrest's mention of Slow Movement, noted esp by Carlos Petrini's 1986 startup of slow food, encouraging to slow down and taste, going so far as to say that taste is evolution itself, that everyday your mouth connects to a place. combating our urges to do things fast and miss out - on life.

The true power of feedback loops is not to control people but to give them control. It’s like the difference between a speed trap and a speed feedback sign—one is a game of gotcha, the other is a gentle reminder of the rules of the road. The ideal feedback loop gives us an emotional connection to a rational goal.

We’re consuming so many things without thinking about them—energy, plastic, paper, calories.   
helps us to notice more

feedback taps into something core to the human experience, even to our biological origins. Like any organism, humans are self-regulating creatures, with a multitude of systems working to achieve homeostasis.

Feedback loops are how we learn, whether we call it trial and error or course correction. In so many areas of life, we succeed when we have some sense of where we stand and some evaluation of our progress. Indeed, we tend to crave this sort of information; it’s something we viscerally want to know, good or bad. As Stanford’s Bandura put it, “People are proactive, aspiring organisms.” Feedback taps into those aspirations.
how tests should be seen..

The Internet of Things isn’t about the things; it’s about us.
reminds of What Tech Wants, Kelly

ordered Pentland's Honest Signals

thanks for the convo Jim, Adam, Amy, Barry, and Everett
heading into year 3 - we're looking for more natural feedback loops. our latest thinking - a private video booth where kids go once a week to record what they notice, dream, connect, do (our detox-process of learning to learn) - possibly along the lines of Deb Roy's birth of a word.
[last year we gathered over 500 raw footage videos of kids talking and doing.. but we're seeking something more systematic, objective, consistent...]
thanks for the article Amy

jonah lehrer

cannes lions international festival of creativity
wrote how we decide

interesting as i'm reading dewey's how we think

new face  via @ariannahuff

dept of ed staff

i'm sure there's more - but look at these numbers:
dept of ed in washington dc: staff of 3600
another 1400 in regional offices

you can call them on the phone or snail mail them.

easy to not know that what you're doing is not working.
easy to stay at a distance from voices.

balance innovation and accountability

post from edweek

We have to create space and flexibility to have room to make mistakes and recover without overly penalizing schools."
James H. Shelton
Assistant
Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement
U.S. Department of Education
 
yes - and the most important aspect of that space is mental.. mental permission . focus on curriculum and standardized tests is compromising that.
the raise of an eyebrow, the knowledge that in the end, you'll be tested and compared... glaring into the sould that is longing to be... longing to be believed in.
if we want greatness... we need to abandon control.

will richardson

valuing change
comments closed - late to the game - my bad.

so here's mine:

perhaps we can take a look at what we mean by scrap the system.
we're thinking we don't need to scrap the system, if you're doing what you love you're good.
we're thinking we do need to scrap the essence (at least played out essence) of the system - the fact that it's compulsory. and if we did that - most likely much of what we're doing won't change.. what will change is who's together in a room, a space. [yes - we get that at first it will be a mess.. as most people don't know what to do when they are given space to be - but perhaps a mess we can no longer avoid if we want change.]

we're thinking we need to trust the curiosity of the human mind, find the curriculum in each person (papert) - because that is when authentic discipline is owned and practiced even when no one is around or expecting anything.
more from dewey on this

what if we trust the allure of the web. if we let the learner's curiosity drive, most of the things we think are so cool, so pushable, (even math), will show up. if not, maybe it wasn't so pushable - not so vital.
it's not the bells and whistles of tech that are so alluring to most people - esp kids. yes at first, but that usually dies off. as is evidenced in what kids (all of us) do on the weekends and over the summer. it's the allure of the web, the fact that it lets them drive, that keeps them hungry for more.

we're thinking the compulsory part is compromising a discipline we desire, but we perceive (the discipline and learning) won't exist without it (the compulsion).
we're thinking - the doing both - is precisely what is keeping us from seeing some of that owned discipline. (our findings in failings over the last 2 years)


if we're clear on what we want, and give heed to anticipated first failings, we can scrap the essence of the system

replying to stager here


*we - being mostly kid voice - kids longing for spaces of permission

__________________

ewan mcintosh

last 3 posts
1) who grades whom
who decides what is 'good' and, in the end, does it really matter for a true lifelong learner what they say at one given point of time anyway?
exactly...
emphasis on learning rather than performance goals by teachers
systematic review of summative assessments
does it really matter for a true lifelong learner what they say at one given point of time anyway?


2) robert murdoch on ed - a colossal failure of imagination


3) if you want it to stick you need a pic
reminds me of Ethan Zuckerman's imaginary cosmopolitanism
from Will and Gary Stager on Will's post
Papert asserts that progressive education has failed because of its inability to change the content of mathematics education.No amount of teacher trickery or social media connectivity can rescue a kid from noxious curricular content.

what if school was non-compulsory - esp math

Sunday, June 19, 2011

nic askew



recovering the diamonds... 

Perhaps with understanding, comes the falling away of judgment. And with the falling away of judgment, comes the ability to see with clarity.

And with such an ability to see, comes the opportunity to share a wealth beyond measure. Perhaps such opportunity exists between any two souls.

This is no ordinary tale of prison & the recovery of diamonds.


Ellen Langer - every actor has a reason

you discover the treasure of the person

michael wesch

and digital ethnography's latest release: visions of students today
what an incredible compilation... each picture in the collage goes to a video.. 
peter and cristian are even in it..

paul hawken

blessed unrest - recommend by @willrich45

favorite parts and things i want to reread:

wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; right is where the movement is

there have always been networks of powerful people, but unitl recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected.   (reminds of mary ann and dave and steven - rhizomes)
there is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive thatn the other  - Martha Braham
all human beings as an organism   (reminds of I Am, Shadyak)
scientific experiments repreatedly show that groups of educated, urbanized people pay no attention to unfamiliar objects directly in front of them if they focus too strongly on famiiar ones.   (reminds of Mindfulness, Langer)
collective social response  (reminds me of the dandelion effect) - the unity underlying the diversity - 
everyone is stronger being themself - everyone being themself unites us till self vanishes
indigenous culture possesses patience  (reminds me of Schooling the World)
we can no longer afford bigness
what constitutes meaning for human beings are events, memories, and small dignities - gifts that rarely emerge from institutions, and never from theory (reminds me of How We Think, Dewey)
universe-city (reminds me of Education Cities and city as floor plan)
i wish to learn this language, not that i may know a new grammar, but that i may read the great book which is written in that tongue  (reminds me of kids in the lab learning languages)

love love this:
we must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. - Emerson  (reminds me of Self-Reliance and detox and Knowing Knowledge, George Siemens)

Emerson to Thoreau - keep a journal  (reminds me of Jim Folkestad and grandpa wolf)
rights chapter and Thoreau's: democracies based on majority rule, because they allow the many to be manipulated by the few, negating justice and conscience in favor of expediency. (make me wonder what a focus on human rights really does)

What distinguishes one life from another is intention, the one thing that we can control.
while events were out of their control, their resolve was not
one sure way is through smallness, grace, and locality.

imagine if we had suffered the injustice and then were blamed for it - Paul Keating (reminds me of Sam's Isaiah 50:3 and watching the Passion of the Christ, and what Jacqueline Novogratz writes about of her experiences in The Blue Sweater)
also later:
to protect oneself but not respond, to see the person beating you as a friend, and not an enemy, is extraordinarily challenging  (also reminds me of Langer, every actor has a reason) this response is not passive or is it weak


what Darwin and no one knew at that time was that these "barbaric" savages dwelled in the spoken word and spent nights in their pit houses in animated and nuanced conversations.  (reminds me to notice the unlikely and to listen deeply, our perceptions guide us daily, but how often are they right, also - Shaw's - the problem with communication is believing that we have accomplished it)
language is nothing less than the living expression of a culture, part of what he calls an ethnosphere - Wade Davis (he's in Schooling the World, no? or I Am, or both?)
missionaries believe that if indigenous people could read, pray, and have jobs, they would be happier, a vision comparable to moving mountain meadows to make them in to lawns.  (so Schooling the World, but imagine it to the striping of the soul of a person, even a 4.0 person, with all the appearances of success..)

Because of these alliances and new communication technologies, a remarkable rebirth is taking place among native peoples, and is arising largely unnoticed.

if poor countries had more money and freedom, everyone would be better off; the greater flow of mateiral good would eventually improve everyone's life  (reminds me of Hans Rosling - and happiness Ted, gallop poll, over $60000 people aren't any happier)
the lives, culture, and skills of the workers are of no value because the work has been deskilled to the point of mindlessness  (again reminds me of Langer's Mindfulness, and according to Power of Pull, 80% of the people in the us? or world? can't remember)

WTO rules - civil rights for goods - what this means in practice is that child labor, prison labor, forced labor, substandard wages, and poor working conditions cannot be used as a basis to discriminate against imports.

on writing people off..
they were citizens. (reminds me this is a people agenda. period.)

people vote everyday with their pocketbooks
screechingly undemocratic - economic democracy
markets are not designed to be surrogates for ethics, values, and justice

on WTO - in other words, they are entitled to create meaningless rules  (reminds me of school, etc)

Bhutan has done a remarkable job in preserving culture, restrainging corruption, promoting the economy, and preserving the environment, using an approach it calls the gross national happiness


markets make great servants, but bad leaders and ridiculous relitions.... who sets the rules and who enforces them? there can be no sustainability when insitutions whow primary purpose is to create money are dictating the standards.
she believes the right to self-sufficiency is a human right (i'm wondering if that's the only one?)
she will not be quiet...
our immune systems, and only our immune systems, prevent us from becoming everyone else all at once. we are who we are only because we defend ourselves every moment of every day... Geral Callahan
getting to know potential adversaries was wiser than first-strike responses, that acheiving balance wa smore appropriate than eradication
connect adjacency?..
at the heart of all of this is not technology but relationships, tens of millions of people working toward restoration and social justice
then i thought i was trying to save the amazon rainforest, now i realize i was fighting for humanity
social entrepreneurship - skoll
the slow movement - carlo petrini - slow food, 1986
slow movements = pro localization
every day our mouth connects us to place
taste is social
the mouth can tell us much if only we will take the time to taste
the taste buds in our mouths are not to be toyed with; they are evolution itself, a teacher, a kindness, a guide

wikipedia - wisdom of many, rise of the amateur, not copyrighted
vaccinating the children of the developing world,..population reduction (families have fewer children if they are confident their children will survive) - (reminds of Hans Rosling)
karl marx had one view vs pluralism - comes from diversity, dialogue, collaboration
ideas are living things. they don't belong to anyone. they don't require approval.
if anything can offer us hope for the future it will be an assembly of humanity that is representative but not centralized, because no single ideology can ever heal the wounds of this world  (reminds of rhizomes)

from out connectedness - we fit into a larger whole:
it's me. don't hurt me. i am you.
hope = connectivity

gerald callahan, csu,
the brain is part of the immune system - the brain defends against risk that is too big for our natural immunity to handle




almost finished....

education

@gcouros: The right to ed | Probably one of the most powerful 30 seconds I have ever seen http://bit.ly/iQq6LF

cathy davidson

added to our slidedeck but not here..

slide 53 in city as floorplan:
Design/prototypes:
Cathy Davidson, John Hope Franklin
Humanities Institute at Duke,



Cathy as posted on Hastac and on Duke Today
Cathy has also been appointed by Obama to the National Council on the Humanities

seth godin

Seth's Blog: Coordination

1-1 local mentor per passion (vs just kindness) matching

Saturday, June 18, 2011

george siemens

knowing knowledge 
written nov 2006
can get it on ipod touch or ipad here

totally copied my fav parts or parts i want to reread:

a hierarchy imposes structure while networks reflect structure

simply put, life is learning.

we cannot stop the desire to know.

knowledge set free enables dynamic, adaptive, and personalized experiences.

while reading George's book - this tweet:
MichaelCharney Great quote RT @arlenetaveroff: A fellow who does things that count, doesn't usually stop to count them.- Albert Einstein

in order to understand beauty we kill it.
and in the process we understand more about our nature and less about beauty.

each definition of the landscape becomes valuable when it abandons pretences of being the only and acknowledges other perceptions

also catching @jonbecker 's public intellectualism meets the open web

p. 19 visuals..

we can no longer create our filters in advance. we must learn to dance (engage and interact) with knowledge in order to understand what it is
permit knowledge to emerge based on what it is

knowledge is organization. not structure.
what does that mean?
structure is the outgrowth of organization, not the pre-req to it
knowledge is not intended to fill minds it is intended to open them.

p. 21: diagram of components of knowledge dance

we have spent our history with hard codified knowledge as a product, we now need to learn to work with soft knowledge as a process

we do not live our lives in active cognition. we spend much of our time in containers that we have created. instead of thinking, we are merely sorting and filtering

test many diverse options. experiment, don't plan. - Meyer and Davis

connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, complexity, and self-organization theories
the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing

too often we bend our pedagogy to the tool
do the tools represent how the learners will be functioning in real life

learning in sync with life, really like figure 19  p. 47

we can no longer seek to possess all needed knowledge personally. we must store it in our friend or within technology.

we need to move beyond finding and evaluating relevance, to use and application.

serendipity requires people of diverse interests interacting in unstructured spaces
greater levels of diversity require individuals to communicate, share, and be transparent with each other

we have tried to do the wrong thing first with knowledge. we determine that we have a certification before we determine what it is that we want to certify. we need to enable the growth of connections and observe the structures that emerge

attempts to define who we are and why we do what we do, err in the assumption that there is an answer that exists by itself

individuals have more control, more capacity to create and to connect than in any other era in history

we are being remade by our connectivity. as everything becomes connected, everything becomes transparent. technology illuminates what was not discernable to the human eye

reflection (the act of thought on our actions, motivations, experiences, and world events) is becoming a lost art. deriving meaning no longer happens at a pause point. meaning is derived in real time.
does immediacy cause us to be driven not by principles but by current context?  p. 74

media develops conversations. conversations develop reality.
content is subservant to connections
learning is not content consumption. learning happens during some process of interaction and reflection. content then can be a lead into learning or it can be a by-product of the learning process.
connections on the other hand are a more direct lead into learning, simply because connections are more vibrant than content.
what is more important - what is currrently known (existing content/knowledge)? or capacity to continue to know more (connections)?
connection-form tools will always create content, but their value lies in our ability to reflect on, dialogue about, and internalize content in order to learn.

50 years ago, education prepared an individual for a life-long career in a particular field. formal ed created the person, the opportunity. now, life-long learning creates the opportunity.

we can no longer just work on hitting the target.. we now need to hit a moving target.

no longer is convergence the cry of knowledge. transvergence (the transfer and application of knowledge from one field to another) is the new reality. the world is connected. we are becoming aware of activities outside of our own spaces.

any living organism seeks two primary functions: replication and preservation.
what does this mean?

our corporate structure generate product-based affordances
instead of being designed and controlled through central means, a distributed structure generates outcomes through the act of self-organization
spaces themselves are agents for change. changed spaces will change practice

an ecology, a knowledge sharing environment should have: informal/not structured - perpetual redesign; tool rich; consistent activity; trust; simplicity; decentralized, fostered, connected; high tolerance for experimentation and failure
  • a space for gurus and beginners to connect
  • a space for self expression
  • a space for dialogue and debate
  • a space to search archived knowledge
  • a space to learn in a structured manner
  • a space to communicate new info and knowledge indicative of changing elements within a field
  • a space to nurture ideas, test new approaches, prep for new competition, pilot processes
innovation does not arise through hierarchies. as a function of creativity, innovation requires trust, openness, and a spirit of experimentation - where random ideas and thoughts can collide for re-creation
we seek certainty instead of opportunity

the decentralization of knowledge reverses the joining formed by others (experts, editors) and permits individuals the capacity to connect knowledge in a manner they find useful

we used to go to one source of info to get a thousand points of info. now we go to a thousand sources of info to create our one view

clear aims through decentralized means is THE challenge for organizations today
the assumption that control determines outcome is a mindset that was questionable in the industrial era.. and laughable in the knowledge era

community - connection forming space

the capacity for shared understanding today doesn't arise from being exposed to the same resources. it arises from being transparent with each other.  p. 114

it is not "not knowing" that is the problem. it is a lack of doing. doing is a form of knowing.

lack of structure is a consistent concern for participants in this space. we want to control, often forgetting that the new space is for conversations and connections.

alexandre borovik

webinar thanks to Maria Droujkova
Alexandre writes:

For 30+ years I taught mathematics and methodology of mathematical education at every level – from secondary school to foundation courses to mainstream undergraduate courses to supervision of MSc dissertations in mathematical education and PhD theses in mathematics. The last 15 years I worked at the University of Manchester, where I am a Professor of Pure Mathematics (since 1998). I am a member of the Council and of the Education Committee of the London Mathematical Society – the professional organisation of British mathematicians.

My concerns about the state of the British education system led me to organise a Discussion Meeting “Where will the next generation of UK mathematicians come from?” (Manchester, 2005). Since then, my activities in the area of education are to some degree informed by the grim findings of that meeting.

My page at Academia.com contains a few my texts on mathematics education -- have a look. Also, my views on education are partially reflected in a blog “Mathematics under the Microscope”.

Book: Mathematics under the Microscope: Amer. Math. Soc., 2010. Sample chapters are available at the AMS website.
Book in progress: Shadows of the Truth: Metamathematics of Elementary Mathematics













people who love music don't do it for the sake of economics
mathematics is useful for a society as a whole but not for individuals in a society

we have to change the role of mathematics in culture - from purely etalitarian purposes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1492933/Teaching-of-maths-in-spiral-of-decline-say-dons.html

people pay for the learning of music - for the love of music
but not many pay for the learning of mathematics - for the love of mathematics
young children have great mathematical curiosity - but throughout school few survive

the why is missing - because what we teach in school for math are not necessarily used skills

 On dividing into two, and dividing into one, see Vivian Gussin Paley, You Can't Say You Can't Play.
book - shadows of the truth - Alexandre's book

Mokurai: They found that the children discovered every essential issue in foundations of mathematics, which their teachers know  nothing about.
he said - i hate to use the term - math-able children - would rather say - has an inclination toward

Mokurai: Mokurai@sugarlabs.org

Alexandre's site: site http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~avb/
Moderator (Maria Droujkova): email borovik@manchester.ac.uk

Moderator (Maria Droujkova): http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/AlexandreBorovik


________________________________

venessa miemis

her post here   on the contact speakers

Patrick Meier:



Adam Fisk:
Social technologies can clearly strengthen the social fabric, particularly strengthening weak ties, but there’s a sexy and glamorous element to it I find misleading and distracting. E-mail, the cell phone, and television are probably still the most powerful “social technologies,” but no one talks about them because they don’t grab the headlines in the same way as Twitter and Facebook. Al Jazeera was far more important than Twitter and Facebook in helping spark the recent uprisings across the Near East in my view, and I’ve never seen an analysis of the role of the cell phone in organizing the protests. My guess is that it was orders of magnitude more important than Twitter. This is especially clear in countries like Yemen where around 2% of the population has access to the Internet.
What drives you to do this work?
I’ve always felt that many of the world’s problems are due to a lack of awareness — the result of miscommunication at a basic level. I also feel strongly that decentralized networks are generally more robust and healthier than centralized ones because they make it harder to constrain and control communication. To me, P2P is largely about removing concentrations of power and points of control, freeing data to flow more freely.

humane

humane [hjuːˈmeɪn]adj
characterized by kindness, mercy, sympathy, etc.
humaneadjective kind, compassionate, good, kindly, understanding, gentle, forgiving, tender, mild, sympathetic, charitable, benign, clement, benevolent, lenient, merciful, good-natured, forbearing, kind-hearted Their aim is for a more just and humane society.

com·mu·ni·ty  (k-myn-t)
Society as a whole; the public.



my question...
does focus on human rights compromise/limit a humane community - as in a society as a whole, the public?

i'm wondering if we get so focused on the rights part that we forget/neglect the humane part.
i'm wondering if we squelch the very culture we are seeking... that of trust....

do people's agendas get in the way.. everyone has a story.. and determining who's rights are more important or more vital seems to take over
ok so some people have an agenda and some dont but if rights are being restored does that matter

i'm thinking yes - if it becomes more about rights.. than trust
valuing people period

humane communities are such a no brainer.. i'm curious why they aren't taking hold




help me wonder..



_____________________

Friday, June 17, 2011

arianna huffington

the internet grows up

this thing we think of as a piece of technology or a series of machines -- is now at the stage where it's actually allowing us to tap into our full humanity.


Remember all those scary movies about how humans were going to become machines in the future? Well, as it turned out, the machines ended up enabling us to be more human instead.

denise pope

catching the after session via @SteveHargadon 's Future of Ed

Dr. Pope is quoted extensively in the movie Race to Nowhere, and in this book looks at the educational experience at a well-regarded California public high school from the students' point of view.  She "follows five highly-regarded students through a school year and discovers that these young people believe getting ahead requires manipulating the system, scheming, lying and cheating."  She writes:

These students explain that they are busy at what they call "doing school." They realize that they are caught in a system where achievement depends more on "doing" - going through the correct motions - than on learning and engaging with the curriculum. Instead of thinking deeply about the content of their courses and delving into projects and assignments, the students focus on managing the work load and honing strategies that will help them to achieve high grades.
Dr. Pope believes we need "a new vision of what it means to be successful in school" and that student voices are a key component of any conversation on school success.


her research was with 5 kids.. she got people all over the world saying - that's my school...

larry cuban and david hayek - city reform
linda darling hammond - national reform

hard to change a school culture and teacher behavior when there's not buy in from all the stake holders

fans of more local control
majority of schools need this..

palo alto unified finally just got finals to before time - but took 4 years
have helped 20 schools move to finals before break

pdf - play time, down time, family time


her site at stanford
challenge success

worries about innovation trying to scale it up, ie: kipp
there's not one way to do school right.. that's why school as community rocks.. :)

we are all natural learners and the school is shutting that off..

you have a kid who wants to write a model - is there really no way in our system to acknowledge that

kids need to feel like they belong to do anything worthwhile.. trust..
said she really likes democratic schools - but that that is hard to do on a large scale
not against homeschooling - just no way she could do it.. used to be no social outlet, just don't think it's a large scale answer
john dewey - finding the balance of the adult experience and student voice, within a prescribed tract

epfield - leading 2.0
we bubble wrap kids way to early, we take over and make their choices for them - teach parents how to let go

good models found here -for project based learning
coalition for essential schools
edutopia

john dewey

holy cow leedo...
reading the entire how we think
read just parts of it earlier this year - was blown away then.. why didn't i read more then? how do things like this happen.. putting things off that are this huge. was i not ready then? or was i just not focused? or now just fine..

i'm thinking now is fine.
thank you John Dewey


this makes the subject mechanical and thus restrictive to intellectual power..

click links below to read sections of Dewey on the following specifics.

for detox: 649 662 674      686 -detox  698 - detox   
for ratemyprof (includes teacher friendly): 722  734  761 - friendly 
for math: 773



______________________________________---

Thursday, June 16, 2011

chris guillebeau

just because it works.. doesn't mean it works..

Here’s what I propose as a better standard: when you go to bed at night, are you extremely excited about what you’ve done that day and what’s coming up the next day? Do people tell you about all the awesome things they are doing, in part because of something you’ve created?
Are you making art, whether you think of yourself as an artist or not?
Whatever your dream is, are you living it?

seth godin

on press pause play - sneak peak via seth godin


official trailer:

david mitchell

watching his livestream - as his kids share their love of blogging..  at #bmoble2011
ie: Roger - writing 5000 word stories... has them sectioned off for comments.. so people can comment per section..

Heathfield school - David is @DeputyMitchell

quad blooging

missed this - but they kept referring to @andyhutt - here's a presspauseplay of his

via @chickensaltash and @dughall

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

tacit

great post on tacit via Bonnie Bracey Sutton
tacit - formal vs informal

video via Adam @apcoyote

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

seymour papert



bravo - and spot on to Seymour and Alan..

in my ignorance, flavored with kids' insight and experiences... and my love for mathematics.. i think aloud - boldly...

is not mathland life?
is that not why we deem PISA so heavily.. our instincts tell us how mathematics is a universal language
(as i believe all languages are becoming moreso - kids craving more foreign language acquisition as they are becoming more global whether they travel physically or not, ie: frenchland is dispersing as well)

- yet

our busyness and drive to compete and improve and measure, keeps us from the essence of that universality. we are indeed measuring success per math not per mathematics, not per mathematical thinking. that is such a huge difference. success is defined, and hence, progress is achieved or more often not achieved, on completely different levels.
in my perception, that is why change hasn't happened since dewey and emmerson and all the other greats have written about self-directed, learner-owned learning. we are mentally, emotionally, ... blinded to that difference. it's as if it's so huge and so small all at once. because the words we choose to talk about a PISA-type success resonate with that instinct toward mathematically thinking, (and yet are indeed math), we succumb to the allure.

and because, so it seems, that will never get us to self-directed ownership, we continue in this perpetual frinzy of searching for the golden key.. the bullet answer.

when the answer is.. the answers are everywhere. the answers are in everyone. the answer is there is no one answer. nothing is for everyone. most answers today swim in inaccuracy.

if we're wanting to sustain in life, to thrive in life, the answers, or more accurately, the questions, have got to be found in a person.
Papert again - find the curriculum in each child.

so yeah - creating a mathland is certainly helping some.. but i'm wondering.. what if we used less of our resources to create a mathland, and freed up more of our valuable resources, the minds of youth, everywhere, to notice more.

trusting that learning and mathematical thinking and french are so huge that they will show up, is the first step in the change we seek.
trust that, if they are vital to us, meaningful to us, they will show up.
trust that.
notice that.
notice them.
notice the unlikely.
let's take a deep breath and start providing more free spaces for people to notice more.

we will be blown away by the results..

if ...

we can endure the very likely bouts of perceived waste/laziness/chaos as we detoxify old patterns of thinking/doing/being.

__________________