jose baldaia - embrace the absurd

Jose Baldaia (@Jabaldaia) 8/20/12 6:21 AM Connections apparently absurd and decision-making bit.ly/RAY6Sk This work includes the need for immersion in the problem space, through research, observation and reflection with a willingness to deliberately touch apparently absurd connections.

maria popova

indeed - brilliant.. well worth a listen.. bravo Maria..

on curation - vacant of meaning

what if we have a universal language for attribution - esp in terms of attribution of discovery, vs attribution of source 

Karen Steffensen (@kstef2) 8/19/12 7:44 AM Brilliant thinking shared in this interview: Maria Popova @brainpicker & clarity regarding "attribution of discovery" sciencefriday.com/playlist/#

play…

jr - perpetual change

Inside Out (@InsideOutProj)
8/19/12 11:25 PM
The beauty of street art is that it is in a state of perpetual change, from one moment to the next. The process... fb.me/15rw33pZp

lisa nielsen - class dismissed

I was recently interviewed for “Class Dismissed,” the first full-length documentary devoted to exploring homeschooling as a viable alternative to the industrial school model. Class Dismissed will challenge its viewers to take a fresh look at what it means to be educated, the difference between education and schooling and speak to the many misconceptions that surround homeschooling, while offering up a radical new way of thinking about the process of education.

via

Mark Barnes (@markbarnes19)
8/20/12 6:31 AM
New tech stuff: Why going to school to learn is no longer necessaryow.ly/1m380F

sleep

regulates negative emotions

Scanning depressed patients while they sleep has shown that the emotion areas of the brain, the limbic and paralimbic systems, are activated at a higher level in REM than when these patients are awake. High activity in these areas is also common in REM sleep in nondepressed sleepers, but the depressed have even higher activity in these areas than do healthy control subjects. This might be expected — after all, while in REM these individuals also show higher activity in the executive cortex areas, those associated with rational thought and decision making. Nondepressed controls do not exhibit this activity in their REM brain imaging studies. This finding has been tentatively interpreted… as perhaps a response to the excessive activity in the areas responsible for emotions.

curious - what happens if depressed people sleep less?....

i propose that when some disturbing waking experience is reactivated in sleep and carried forward into REM, where it is matched by similarity in feeling to earlier memories, a network of older associations is stimulated and is displayed as a sequence of compound images that we experience as dreams. This melding of new and old memory fragments modifies the network of emotional self-defining memories, and thus updates the organizational picture we hold of ‘who I am and what is good for me and what is not.’ In this way, dreaming diffuses the emotional charge of the event and so prepares the sleeper to wake ready to see things in a more positive light, to make a fresh start. 

Sleep is a busy time, interweaving streams of thought with emotional values attached, as they fit or challenge the organizational structure that represents our identity. One function of all this action, I believe, is to regulate disturbing emotion in order to keep it from disrupting our sleep and subsequent waking functioning. 

rgbwaves & fourier & crickets

love the site graphic

http://rgbwaves.wordpress.com/

2012/08/10/problems-
landscapes-habits-leadership-in-the-21st-century/

the only wherewithal we might have to rely on is the quality of our feelings and thinking brought together through the habit of ‘practice and serendipity’ or simply having a ‘prepared attentive mind’ since the need is to adapt moment to moment. Or simply stated, our contextual intelligence can come to our rescue to maintain balance.

perpetual beta...

Nemetics is a flexible thought model that allows us to synthesize mathematical thinking, subjective insights and feelings to re-design our lives for the better. The objective of the flexible thought model is to make sense of complex adaptive systems and to act upon them. It may be effectively applied to various fields like organizations, manufacturing systems, engineering, organizational sociology, economics, design, system design, system reliability and even to psychology and a host of others fields.

In short Nemetics can be best described as a study of origins of the various complex phenomena within which we exist. Or in other words it is the ontological inquiry in general that seeks the transcendental truths operating behind everyday phenomenon.

Since the aim of Nemetics is to gain direct knowledge of the transcendental the fundamental premise is praxis for the simple reason that the theory of such complex emergence (a term which we shall deal with later) simply might not exist. It has to be worked out. The idea is to move from practice to theory and then to practice again. 

http://rgbwaves.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/how-to-embrace-uncertainty-of-complex-systems-with-a-smile/

when many oscillators couple together they form a general group pattern. Appearance of such a group pattern is what is known as ‘emergence’. Thus our task perhaps simplifies to understanding and interpreting such patterns exhibited by group behavior, which are simply known as emergence.

Hence faced with an issue on ‘interdependence’ we have two tasks ahead of us. First is to understand and interpret the group behavior and patterns that emerge. There are several ways of going about it. One of my favorite is to see the wave patterns generated. The idea is to identify the type of wave and the type of attractor that it might be associated with. 

Maria Popova (@brainpicker)
8/18/12 3:01 PM
"Our ability to cope with uncertainty is one of the most important requirements for success in life." Risk Intelligence j.mp/OZIpkh

-faster-fourier-transform/

A faster transform means that less computer power is required to process a given amount of information—a boon to energy-conscious mobile multimedia devices such as smart phones. Or with the same amount of power, engineers can contemplate doing things that the computing demands of the original FFT made impractical. For example, Internet backbones and routers today can actually read or process only a tiny trickle of the river of bits they pass between them. The SFT could allow researchers to study the flow of this traffic in much greater detail as bits shoot by billions of times a second.

More-intelligent-species-on-Earth-than-Humans  - crickets

The wave based communication of Humans is far more limited than crickets, seen in places like dance clubs, prices in stock markets (less total stocks than neurons in a small number of crickets brains), body language, etc, but these wave based communications of Humans do not tend to spread to other Humans nearly as well as oscillating sounds spread in large groups of crickets. Humans communicate mostly in words. Crickets communicate mostly in waves. There are waves of words as ideas flow through society, which we call memes, but at the brainwave level we are still communicating between brain cells like crickets communicate with sound.

unschooling

is unschooling elitist?

What needs to change, what is already changing, is what as a society we give value to. Education to further consumption or education to further contribution?

thanks Amy for sending me the above.. written by Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko - when someone responded to her post- why i unschool

They call me a radical and I laugh because I am about as radical as butter. On reflection, what I’ve tried to do over the years, in the belief that humans are natural born learners, is to safeguard those characteristics which are catalysts to learning and living: curiosity, a sense of wonder, humour, creativity, the welcoming of challenge and surprise.

That to me is not radical. Seen from this perspective, what is radical is school as we know it: compulsory curriculum dictated, 9 to 3, five days a week, 10 months a year, for 12 years. It’s only been that way for about 150 years, which on the scale of human history, is pretty recent. Me thinks this could be the ‘great experiment!’ 

imagine we redefine nclb - to be:
let's create an unschooling family situation for every learner (that's all ages) no? that would be a true democratic society/culture/community. is everyone known by someone.. someone that, because of that knowing, now strew/facilitate your curiosity on a daily basis.

here's how that might look today, if we were brave enough to change things up. [starting 2 min in at pods - Littky style]
1.5 hours each day with an advisory group.. in our town, 15,000 kids in district, that's 1 to 8.
say we have spaces like this for pods/advisory groups to meet.

redefining public ed:
1) be known by someone (taken care of with above daily groups - thinking even if groups not self-selected in the beginning people will know each other better than the 1 to 100+ we have now, that changes every year]
2) talk to yourself daily (app idea shows where that can lead)

rework to betterness

i'm hearing Jason Fried in this tweet via Umair

umair haque (@umairh)
8/19/12 7:34 AM
I don't have strong opinions on Assange. But I will say: imagine this much time and energy devoted to bringing "bankers" to justice.



but about all the defense and policy we play out daily.

imagine if we woke up everyday and asked what mattered most.. and did that.

and we were connected like crickets even - communication wise (or so i hear.. new to me), so that we really got to experience the thing we were made for.. the thing beyond any one of us.

connecting. co-creating. communicating beyond GB Shaw's poignant description of how we do it now..

instead of taking on our normal stance of defense/ego/whatever, we realize life is perpetual beta, and we start listening more deeply for the many stories that exist in people.
so instead of defending, we start playing together and off each other.


imagine us deciding what matter and then connecting like that.
betterness. (haque's book) no?
let's rework it. (fried's book)




see where the other route gets us...? no end.
perfect timing.. thanks amy.




yeah. this really fits too. 
Wall Street Journal (@WSJ)
8/19/12 6:56 AM
Rising tuitions and crushing student debt force colleges to hire advisers to land top students.on.wsj.com/QJXhTn

Seth's Blog: What if your slogan is true?

Seth's Blog: What if your slogan is true?

greg satell - revolution

Greg Satell (@Digitaltonto) 8/17/12 6:36 AM How Viral Ideas Lead the Revolutionp.ost.im/p/eEMuBE

  No amount of strategizing can top thousands of people synchronously acting in concert

twitter - platform

Curtis Faith (@inflector) 8/18/12 5:46 AM "This morning Twitter feels like your favourite band that has sold out to a major record label," wrote Ewan Spence. nyti.ms/Rq8zTn

Mr. Colburn, Mr. Arment and others took issue with the company's new user cap, which limits Twitter's third-party apps from accommodating more than 100,000 users, or growing beyond 200 percent of their current user base. Another point of contention was a rule that forbids third-party apps from weaving chronological tweets with content from other networks - a big headache for apps like Flipboard, which mix tweets with content from Facebook, blogs and publications and other sources.

imagine we start to believe:

philippe petit

Deb Mills-Scofield (@bluelobsternets)
8/18/12 11:47 AM
Persevere! Cheating the #Impossible: Wire-Walker Philippe Petit on #Education, #Creativity & Patience v @brainpickings buff.ly/M3nDD7

10 min in - the wire is waiting

how can you top that? i didn't have that problem.. i wasn't looking for a record

since the impossible is always unknown it is possible to cheat it - it's improv 

Ultimately, Petit’s message is one of self-empowerment:

I make a dream come true via the dual conviction that life is not worth living if I do not dedicate it to the making of the dream and, simultaneously, that I would choose death over not working on making the dream come true!

17 min in - for one moment the crowd forgot their differences

when you see mtns - remember mtns can be moved 

 

joi ito - scratch conf

Joi Ito (@Joi)
8/10/12 6:39 AM
MIT Media Lab: Learning Through Connectingblog.media.mit.edu/2012/08/
learni…

Much of the discussion about educational technology these days focuses on new ways to deliver instruction, through online videos and online courses. In our Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the Media Lab, we have a very different approach to education and learning, developing technologies not to deliver instruction but to open opportunities for people to create, collaborate, experiment, and express themselves. 

lewarks were there
:)

jose baldaia - curiosity

Jose Baldaia (@Jabaldaia) 8/18/12 5:46 AM Curiosity helps to reduce uncertainty in business integrationbit.ly/NpVG66

this is huge:

a European vacation in 1892, J.C. Fargo, the president of American Express, had a hard time translating his letters of credit into cash

we are today, having a hard time translating credentials (this currency we hold so dear) into something that matters.
we are going to school to get into uni to get a job to make money.
it's not working for many.. many have a degree with no job and a huge debt.
many have a degree for something the no longer (or perhaps never) love
many feel like a failure because they dont' have a piece of paper to tell them they are ok/educated
many are worried about places accepting the proof they have (diploma/degree from uni/no diploma/et al) in order for them to get in.

wonder if we worry less about translating.. credentialing into what matters.. and focus instead on what matters..

again - what we hope to create with this idea...
a world of people waking up every day to do what matters, rather than to seek more proof/credentialing



so more good from Jose..
Jose Baldaia (@Jabaldaia)
8/18/12 5:46 AM
We can fail a lot and quickly, if it is with logicbit.ly/NpVCDp

will reflect more later..

yong zhao - creativity&testing?

doublethink-the-creativity-testing-conflict

But test scores are not measures of entrepreneurship or creativity. Not even scores on the intensely watched and universally worshiped Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, are good indicators of a nation’s capacity for entrepreneurship and creativity.

In doing research for my book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, I found a significant negative relationship between PISA performance and indicators of entrepreneurship.

Comparing the two sets of data shows clearly countries that score high on PISA do not have levels of entrepreneurship that match their stellar scores. More importantly, it seems that countries with higher PISA scores have fewer people confident in their entrepreneurial capabilities.

this part reminds me of blikstein (fablab at stanford) reported on steve hargadon's interview, aug 16, he noted kids from poorer schools claimed they weren't inventors/creators, yet in reality, they fix more things at home in more creative ways than kids from richer schools that have all the tech they need, but also tend to follow rules rather than invent/innovate/create new ways to do things, and who also claim to be inventors/creators.
we tell those kids from poor schools that suck at math, our pisa, ..they feel inadequate.
we tell those kids from richer schools they are good at math, our pisa, ..their abilities don't match the stellar scores we give them.
this isn't about going into any camps/sectors/labels here.. this is noting that no one is winning. we are all poor.

Kim analyzed performance of adults and children on a commonly used creativity measure known as the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The results indicate a creativity decrease in the last 20 years in all categories. This decline coincided with the movement toward more curriculum standardization and standardized testing in American schools exemplified by the No Child Left Behind Act. “NCLB has stifled any interest in developing individual differences, creative and innovative thinking, or individual potential,

A narrow and uniform curriculum deprives children of opportunities to explore and experiment with their interest and passion, which is the foundation of entrepreneurship. Constantly testing children and telling them they are not good enough depletes their confidence, which is the fuel of innovation. So, by any account, what policymakers have put in place in American schools is precisely what is needed to cancel out their desire for creative and entrepreneurial talents. 

both research and common sense recognize as contradictory … 

another of Yong's posts on pisa here 

 

phil cullen - pisa

a-humanity-biased-educator-in-australia-blasts-pisa/

Measurers are people who dwell on the outskirts of educational activities and who  greatly exaggerate the power of number scores. They should get back in their box with their childish toys.  Number is number. When its hieroglyphics are used for descriptive purposes, scores and marks and numbers are inappropriate. Used for serious evaluation of education’s human effort as they are during the present testing pandemic, the use is satanic.

phil's site 


one from Yong Zhao - find more on his site

yong zhao - people agenda

is-education-a-national-security-issue-a-critique-of-the-rice-klein-report/

a people agenda.. for the people, by the people. time to wake up.

Global action to avoid social or planetary tipping points will require the active participation of the U.S., in rethinking K-12 education to make schools more equitable and just, and to reconnect children with the natural world.

Even so, the high numbers of U.S. casualties in the armed forces, many experiencing brain injuries, limb amputation, and other crippling body conditions, combined with the deaths and casualties of  military personnel in Afghanistan, makes the Task Force report on the preparation of K-12 children for armed service seem more life ending than mind bending.

not to mention the suicide rate of war vets.. what is it for every one that dies in war, 28 (can't remember the number) take their lives

 Public schools by definition belong to the people, and cannot be owned by private sector. The extremely rich cannot own the extremely poor, nor can they use the poor to increase corporate profits. 

youth

perhaps i'm senile
perhaps they're jeuvenile
perhaps what we're seeking is freedom from mediocre-nile


people kept telling/asking us...
so - who's your audience, who are you doing this for, because it waters things down if you say  
e v e r y on e.


so. i guess we're finding out how very much we like

.we've spend the last four years creating just that.. something for e v e r y on e.
a people agenda.a thumbprint agenda.for 

eureka public school

http://blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2012/08/two-oustanding-schools.html?site=northcoast&program=north_coast_mornings#.UC-kKUEGLeg.facebook

community focused principal

via

Rohit Sood on fb

A story of a beautiful learning community...Here's the interview Jo did with 13 year old Toby King and Green School Head of Communications, Ben Macrory :)

Something old, something new.....

blogs.abc.net.au

By Rachel Bending We featured two outstanding schools this week..... Eureka Public School, the oldest small school in our region, will be celebrating this year as it reaches the ripe old age 

Seth's Blog: How to run a problem-solving meeting

Seth's Blog: How to run a problem-solving meeting