Dave highly recommends several books and audio/video resources in this presentation. One is “Trombone Player Wanted” by Marcus Buckingham. The first two of the six included films are available FREE on iTunes. Dave wrote on his blog about Buckingham:

“A better definition of a strength,” said Buckingham, “is an activity that makes you feel strong. And a weakness is an activity that makes you feel weak. Even if you’re good at it, if it drains you, that’s a weakness.”

I’ve added the Kindle version of Marcus Buckingham’s book, “Go Put Your Strengths to Work” to my Amazon wish list.

Dave also recommended “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. In the book Collins focuses on the importance in EVERY organization for leaders to “get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, and get the people on the bus ‘in the right seats.”‘ I’VE JUST PURCHASED THE AUDIO VERSION OF THIS BOOK WITH MY MONTHLY AUDIBLE SUBSCRIPTION AND AM GOING TO LISTEN TO IT IN 2012.

Dave says “Most of the best jobs don’t get listed: They are ‘friend of a friend’ connections.”
- only 15% of jobs are listed in the newspaper

I’VE CERTAINLY FOUND THIS TO BE TRUE THE PAST 3 YEARS AS AN INDEPENDENT, DIGITAL LEARNING CONSULTANT. FINDING WORK IS ALMOST ALL ABOUT NETWORKING AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS.

Unsolicited resumes have a 10% success rate, newspaper classified ads have a 15% success rate

Dave spends a lot of time in the lecture describing and extolling the DISC Personality Profile. The four elements of DISC are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. This is the basis for Gary Smalley’s Personality Types Inventory which uses animals for each “temperament:’ Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, and Beaver. I SHOULD TAKE THIS AT SOME POINT, IT’S BEEN AWHILE SINCE I’VE DONE A MYERS-BRIGGS OR SIMILAR INVENTORY. I’M PRETTY SURE I’M MOSTLY LION, AND MY WIFE IS MOSTLY GOLDEN RETRIEVER.

Make a follow-up appointment after your job interview

Write a hand-written thank you note following every interview

Your career track is vital
- it’s not straight up, but it’s the key to your long term income plan

Dave recommends the book “48 Days to the Work You Love” by Dan Miller. The Kindle version of the book is available for just $3. Dave Ramsey wrote the forward. A revised version, “48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal” is $9.23 in paperback from Amazon but interestingly is not available yet for Kindle. THIS DEFINITELY IS WORTH CHECKING OUT, I ADDED IT TO MY AMAZON WISH LIST.

Dave closed with the following quotation about persistence from Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President in the United States.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

This was Dave’s final share, a poem by Dean Alfange, “I Do Not Choose to be a Common Man.”

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon— if I can. I seek opportunity not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”

Great ideas in this lesson from Dave Ramsey. Find an opportunity to enroll in “Financial Peace University” in your community in 2012, or offer to lead a class. You won’t regret it.

Thanks Dad.

Technorati Tags: learning, university, dave, ramsey, financial, peace, strength, strengths, job, jobs, entrepreneurship, lifelong, money

Dave Ramsey on Strengths, Jobs, Entrepreneurship, Lifelong Learning & Persistence originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 30, 2011.

This video is a great example of fair use and legal video remixing. Show this to your students and discuss it. Is this legal? Are the creators going to be sued by Lucasfilm? Why or why not? See copyright and fair use resources from the Media Education Lab at Temple University for more on this. I also have helpful links (and a free chapter of my eBook) on the copyright page of playingwithmedia.com.

Hat tip to Dawn Pearce for sharing this.

Technorati Tags: star, wars, vader, parody, video, youtube, starwars, luke

Vader Did You Know? [video] originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 20, 2011.

Doubtless the fact that children normally engage in play and work out of school has seemed to many educators a reason why they should concern themselves in school with things radically different. School time seemed too precious to spend in doing over again what children were sure to do any way. In some social conditions, this reason has weight. In pioneer times, for example, outside occupations gave a definite and valuable intellectual and moral training. Books and everything concerned with them were, on the other hand, rare and difficult of access; they were the only means of outlet from a narrow and crude environment. Wherever such conditions obtain, much may be said in favor of concentrating school activity upon books. The situation is very different, however, in most communities to-day. The kinds of work in which the young can engage, especially in cities, are largely anti-educational. That prevention of child labor is a social duty is evidence on this point. On the other hand, printed matter has been so cheapened and is in such universal circulation, and all the opportunities of intellectual culture have been so multiplied, that the older type of book work is far from having the force it used to possess.

And yet, in the words of Karl Fisch, many math teachers today are still “assigning one through thirty-one odd” and calling that education.

In the same chapter, Dewey reminds us about the importance of mistakes and fashioning learning opportunities for students which permit learning from mistakes. He wrote:

Moreover, opportunity for making mistakes is an incidental requirement. Not because mistakes are ever desirable, but because overzeal to select material and appliances which forbid a chance for mistakes to occur, restricts initiative, reduces judgment to a minimum, and compels the use of methods which are so remote from the complex situations of life that the power gained is of little availability.

This “requirement” pertains to digital as well as analog work, including digital writing / blogging. I resonate with Dewey’s reference to “the complex situations of life.” Too often in school we try to over-simplify reality. Attempts at simplification can be warranted in some cases, but frequently these attempts result in boring lessons and boring activities for students. Life IS complex, and many of the learning challenges we share with students should include elements of complexity. When they do, not only can we see their levels of interest and engagement go up, but also their opportunities to “make mistakes” and thereby learn valuable lessons they are unlikely to forget tomorrow.

Reading these passages today reminds me I need to “return to Dewey” and read his ideas more often. Project Gutenberg currently has seven of Dewey’s books available free in multiple formats.

Technorati Tags: education, learning, play, dewey, mistakes

Dewey on Book Work and Opportunities for Mistakes originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 14, 2011.

Leadership is a choice, not a position
- I define leadership differently than most people

Today I want to discuss leading your life, and being a leader for students

To be successful in today’s economy, you need a strong skill set, tool set, and mindset
- if you miss one of these, you feel pain
- without these we become obsolete and irrelevant
- not enough attention is being given today to MINDSET

Biggest changes in your life will come from changing your mindset, not your skill or tool sets
- who we are are is made up of many kinds of mindsets or paradigms
- these are temporary and change with our surroundings

I’ve spend almost my entire career identifying the mindsets we want to be long lasting

reactive people see themselves as products of their environment or genes
- blaming circumstances and outside factors, rather than taking responsibility for choices

people with proactive mindsets control the weather of their minds
- don’t let their past hold their future hostage
- realize the best ways to realize their future is create it

Story about a teacher in California who read the book, “The Leader in Me”
- stories of how teachers around the world are transforming their schools and school cultures

By focusing your mindset on things you CAN control, rather than things outside your control, you’ll make a bigger

you are the creative force of your own mind

habit 2: BEgin with the end in mind (Vision)
- especially applies to personal leadership

Personal model: Live life in crescendo

technology is a means, not an end
- some educators make technology an end, however (acquiring a SmartBoard, new software, new gadgets)
- that

Technology is meant to bless, not to impress

remember relationships are much more important than things

habit 3: put first things first (discipline)

- stay focused on what matters most

Principles drive the consequences of behavior

2 suggestions for helping prepare students for new jobs not yet invented

1- empower students with effective mindsets / paradigms
- skill and tool set improvements will just result in incremental changes
- lasting changes go with mindset changes

Principles will remain constant into the 31st century

In our effort to leave no child behind, we have limited our vision of what teachers are and and do
- if we reduce education to a test score, we will never help students reach their potential

Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools

Quotation and Mother

“This is what I want for my son. At home, he is so much more… [than a test score]”

I STOPPED TAKING NOTES AT THIS POINT IN THE KEYNOTE. THERE ARE GREAT IDEAS HERE TO BE SURE. THIS WASN’T THE KIND OF KEYNOTE I EXPECTED OR WANTED AT AN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, HOWEVER.

Technorati Tags:
iste, iste11

Steven Covey on Personal Leadership at #iste11 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 29, 2011.

I’m almost finished listing to Kevin Kelly’s thought provoking book, “What Technology Wants,” as an audio book via Audible. Many thanks are due to Bob Sprankle for encouraging me to read it. I’ve taken quite a few notes and have lots to reflect on, but this evening I want to briefly share a quotation and a thought relating to “convivial technologies.” The English Wiktionary defines “convivial” as:

Of or relating to a feast or entertainment, or to eating and drinking, with accompanying festivity; festive; social; gay; jovial.

In “What Technology Wants,” Kelly quotes Ivan Illich‘s book “Tools for Conviviality” and uses the definition, “compatible with life.” He argues “convivial tools enlarge autonomy for individuals and groups,” and therefore are technologies which we should both adopt and champion. In his closing chapter, Kelly argues that “convivial forms of technology can allow us to be better.”

I’m convinced the process of documenting life stories, creating them with media as digital stories, and sharing them together with others is a “highly convivial” use of technology. “Lillie and John” remains one of my favorite digital stories from Storychasers‘ “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” oral history project, and exemplifies well this idea of a “convivial story.”

I agree with many of the points Kelly makes in his book, and the idea of thoughtfully selecting the technologies we use based on their potential to serve convivial ends in our lives as well as enhance our autonomy and choices are right on target. Too often I think people consider “technology” as a monolithic concept, and want to embrace or reject it as a whole rather than take a more discriminating and thoughtful approach.

What technologies or technology uses strike you as most “convivial,” if we understand that term as Illich and Kelly do: As promoting a richer and fuller living of life? Are there technologies or technology uses you love which draw you closer to other people and make you more acutely aware of the REAL important things in life? Because “storychasing” an oral history interview with someone involves things like listening, wondering, and asking, I think these activities with technology actually “humanize” us as individuals and in groups more than they “distance and distract.” That’s a significant reason I’m passionate about promoting more Storychasing in our communities. Living in our high tech, digital world, we need more convivial technology uses.

Convivial Technologies, Storychasers and Digital Storytelling originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 16, 2011.

1. Book Summary
2. Guidelines for Philosophical Discussion
3. Questions for Philosophical Discussion

One example module is for a favorite book and movie of mine, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” by Roald Dahl.

The suggested questions to discuss how “Boggis, Bunce, and Bean vow to destroy Mr. Fox at all costs” are superb:

1. In the process of trying to kill Mr. Fox, the farmers destroy the entire hill he lives in. How does this harm others? Did the farmers mean to hurt others?
2. Is it wrong for the farmers to want to kill Mr. Fox? How about his family? How about all the others harmed, was it wrong to harm them? Why or why not?
3. Did the three farmers think about the consequences of their actions? What were the consequences? Make a list.
4. Do you think the farmers will ever catch Mr. Fox? Why or why not? Do you think that it would be good if Mr. Fox never got caught? Why?

We need more openly published and openly licensed instructional materials like these in our classrooms and homes! In addition to checking out Tom’s book, link to his Facebook website. The April 2010 New York Times article, “The Examined Life, Age 8” gives more background about the course, book, website, and idea of using children’s books to help kids learn about philosophy. In reference to a lesson about “The Giving Tree,” Tom stated in the article:

“We don’t actually try to convince them [the students] that trees deserve respect,” he says, “but ask them, ‘What do you think?’ We’re trying to get them engaged in the practice of doing philosophy, versus trying to teach them, say, what Descartes thought about something.

How refreshing is this? Educators working to help young students understand that philosophy is not simply a list of facts to be memorized, but rather an activity in which one can and should ENGAGE. This reminds me of the speech and debate tournament I attended as a volunteer judge a couple of weeks ago in Putnam City, Oklahoma. It can be invigorating to hear young people discuss and debate philosophic ideas!

Something tells me a lot of us, as adults, could learn a great deal more about philosophy through these guided studies Tom has prepared as well! Maybe these book modules could provide some fodder for discussions at your house in the upcoming holiday vacation time?

Hat Tip to Rachel Frank of UNT for sharing the link to Teaching Children Philosophy in her VoiceThread project. What a GREAT example of how important, beneficial, and powerful proper image attribution can be!

Technorati Tags:
debate, education, ideas, kids, learning, school, teach, teaching, philosophy

Learning about Philosophy with Younger Kids originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 25, 2010.

Carl is @anderscj on Twitter and writes the blog, Techno Constructivist.

My August 2006 post, “Doug Belshaw on John Holt and authentic learning” references some of these ideas about unschooling.

Technorati Tags:
learn, learning, school, video, youtube, educator, anderson, carl

Carl Anderson on Learning and the Purpose of School (video) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 13, 2010.

Every year I review thousands of free web-based resources on my own blog. Many are the times that I get emails or comments from readers telling me that they cannot use one of the resources I’ve reviewed because the resource is blocked by a filter. There’s not much that I can do about that from where I sit, but there is something that you can do about it (more on that in a minute). The other type of email or comment I get about resources I review comes from readers who can access a website, but are afraid that they might violate a policy if they have their students use it. This post is primarily for those people.

The first five seasons of the hit television series M.A.S.H. featured two characters that exemplify the two ways that teachers generally respond to school policies that don’t make good instructional sense. Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce (from a fictitious town in Maine) known as Hawkeye is a brash surgeon who often finds himself in hot water because of his “it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission” attitude.  The thing about Hawkeye is he’s good and he knows it! When he saw an Army policy that stood in the way of giving his patients the best possible care, he just ignored the policy so that he could give his patients the best possible care. The polar opposite of Hawkeye was his tent-mate Frank Burns. Burns was an Army man through and through. For Burns following Army policy was always job number one even if it meant that following policy stood in the way of giving his patients the best possible care.

Whenever I hear teachers say that they can’t do something because they’re afraid of breaking a policy, I think to myself “can’t you be just a bit more Hawkeyeish?” (Before we go any farther, I’m not advocating doing anything that will get you fired or doing anything illegal). When a policy is standing in the way of giving your students the best possible education, you just have to take a risk and go for it. Here’s an example from my own practice: Last fall my Civics class was having a discussion about a referendum question on the ballot. Just to continue the conversation, I asked the question “what do your parents think about this?” The response I got was a lot of shoulder shrugs and “I don’t know.” So I told the class to take out their cell phones and text their parents the question. Almost every parent responded to the question. The conversation grew by leaps and bounds because we had more opinions to work with. Now what I did broke the school policy of not allowing students to use cell phones during the day. Technically I could have been written-up for doing that, but I wasn’t because I went to my principal and explained what I did and how it benefited my students.

The issue of filters blocking your access to resources for teaching is not as easy to resolve as say a cell phone ban or a non-Internet problem. But there are some things you can do about it. First, don’t just sit back and accept it. Push your administrators to make a change. Show them the benefits of opening access to the web. Show them that the Internet offers more good to students than it does bad. Emphasize the point that teaching good web habits is a better long-term solution than blocking access. There are some excellent resources that can help you in this quest. The MacArthur Foundation has some reports on the benefits of the Internet to students. Unmasking Digital Truth, started by Wes Fryer, gives you many resources for addressing the questions of CIPA, COPPA, FERPA, e-discovery, bandwidth, and other “yeah but” arguments made by administrators to justify strict filtering policies. And if you’re a school administrator being told by your tech department that they can’t ease the filtering, remember they work for you. If they can’t figure out how to make it work, perhaps it’s time to look for staff that can make it work.

At the end of the day, ask yourself if following the policy standing in way of delivering the best possible learning experience to your students. If it is what are you going to do about it? Are you going to be Hawkeye or are you going to be Frank Burns?

We Need More Hawkeyes originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 11, 2010.

Reading and writing gave me skills to create with and to act on the world… through assignments like these I was learning how to marshal evidence and frame an argument. And I was also becoming more adept at handling a sentence, folding information onto it, making a complex point without losing the reader. These skills played out again and again on different topics and in different settings, leading to the ability to write a research article, a memo advocating a course of action, a newspaper opinion piece, an essay like the present one… All of the forgoing helped me develop a sense of myself as knowledgeable and capable of using what I know. This is a lovely and powerful quality– cognitive, emotional, and existential all in one. It has to do with identity and agency, with how we define ourselves, not only in matters academic but also in the way we interact with others and with institutions. It has to do with how we move through our economic and civic lives. Education gave me the competence and confidence to independently seek out information and make decisions, to advocate for myself and my parents and those I taught, to probe political issues, to resist simple answers to messy social problems, to assume that I could figure things out and act on what I learned. In a sense, this was the best training I could have gotten for vocation and citizenship.

photo credit: Etenil

Every student deserves opportunities to be empowered and equipped for citizenship in the ways Mike describes in these sentences. Some of my most ardent wishes for my own children are that they would define themselves, in their own identities, as readers, writers, communicators, and actors in the great play of life. Those abilities to research a topic, organize a written essay or oral presentation, and share it effectively with others are all skills I learned best on my college debate and forensics team. Mike Rose’s reflections on what a QUALITY education means inspires me to maintain my hope in educators and education amidst our dark days of misdirected educational policies. It also motivates me to continue developing our Storychasers projects. Many of the skills Mike describes are ones I think storychasers can and do develop. I think there is great potential for students to develop their senses of self and personal identity while refining their research, communication and literacy skills. The type of empowerment and equipping Mike describes here is exactly the sort of education I hope ALL students can experience.

The key to this is not a mandated policy or a rigorous curriculum, however. The key is a great teacher.

photo credit: torres21

Technorati Tags:
citizenship, education, literacy, student, teacher, write, writing, empower, empowerment, learner, capable, citizen

Education can empower us with skills to act upon the world originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 9, 2010.

photo credit: Troy Holden

These books are listed in the order I’d recommend you read them, with shorter, practical books first and more philosophical / theoretical stuff later.

The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith
- this is a short, quick read, but SO on target with how we learn and how we should teach as a result. This is one of my favorite books about teaching but also learning more generally.

The Power of Reading by Stephen Krashen
- Stephen Krashen is a noted USC researcher but also a very practical communicator. There are tons of books and research papers on literacy “out there,” Krashen has done a masterful job in this book looking at meta-analyses of reading and literacy research specifically and making recommendations for teachers that are very practical.

Working on the Work by Phillip Schlechty
- Schlechty is superb in his focus on “engagement” in the classroom and what that really means. This is practical and very applicable, I’d consider it “must reading” for any teacher.

Reading about John Dewey is a must for anyone in education, I think, but his original writings are pretty demanding/challenging to digest in their original forms. I don’t discourage this, but a text like the following can be great to get into his ideas and have good context/explanation around them. This is a book co-authored by one of my favorite doctoral professors at Texas Tech (Doug Simpson):
John Dewey and the Art of Teaching: Toward Reflective and Imaginative Practice by Simspon, Jackson and Aycock

Classroom Instruction That Works by Marzano, Pickering and Pollock is considered “must reading” by many since it identifies and explains research-supported learning strategies which can be employed in the classroom and for homework assignments.

The following are a bit less practical / more philosophical but none-the-less excellent reads I highly recommend.

Testing is Not Teaching: What Should Count in Education by Donald Graves
- A very short and quick read, this puts the accountability movement and high stakes testing partly in context from the perspective of learning.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman
- I like many of Postman’s books, some of which relate to technology specifically, but this is the best one focusing on teaching. Other books of his I really like include Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and The End of Education.

John Holt is a favorite author too. He was a former 5th grade elementary teacher, and eventually abandoned his drive to change public schools and focused on home schooling. I have two of his books but have read just one of them: “How Children Fail.” I also have his book, “How Children Learn.”

“Coloring Outside the Lines” by Roger Shank is also a very good book to read, although his focus is more parents educating their children rather than a classroom-focus. Shank has a new book out I have not read called, “Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training: Perspectives and Guidance for the Enlightened Trainer.” Shank is a professed educational revolutionary, and definitely has important things to say to us as educators as well as parents. His website that gives info about all his published books is:
http://www.socraticarts.com/schank/books.htm

One of the best courses I took in my doctoral program focused on Paulo Freire, who was from Brazil and whose ideas about education and learning have had an impact similar to those of Dewey. Freire’s books are, like Dewey’s, challenging to process and follow, but very good. One I’d suggest starting with is:
Teachers as Cultural Workers.
- Letters to Christina (which doesn’t appear to be available via Amazon now) is also a very accessible read, and I also liked the Pedagogy of Freedom, Freire was a leftist, and he focused on education for the very poor in Brazil as well as other parts of the developing world, so he certainly has a different perspective from the “traditional” school view. Very important ideas, though, about both teaching and learning.

Alfie Kohn is another VERY important author to read and learn from in the field of education. I have not finished his book “The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and ‘Tougher Standards‘” but want to later this spring. (I started it awhile back.)

Jonathan Kozal’s book “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” is also definitely worth reading.

[END OF RECOMMENDATIONS]

What books have I left off of this list you would definitely commend to a 2nd career “teacher to be,” who will most likely (but not definitely) teach elementary age students?

Technorati Tags:
book, education, books, recommendations, review, elementary, author, holt, freire, dewey, graves, simpson

Book recommendations for teachers to be (pre-service teachers) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 2, 2010.

Savor and bask in the sunshine the day may offer.

Martin’s website is “The Digital Narrative.”

Technorati Tags:
life, philosophy, dad, father, hero

A touching story about Dad, the hero originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 21, 2009.

From Tracy Rosen via a blog comment:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This reminds me of Stephen Curtis Chapman’s outstanding song, “Burn the Ships.” We can find lots of legitimate reasons to criticize Hernán Cortés, but I think everyone has to agree he led with passion.

From Dr. Syb via a tweet:

Passion can’t be taught, either you have it or it’s caught.

One of the most important things we can share with our students, and all of those with whom we have contact each day, is our PASSION. If you are passionate about history, digital storytelling, science, exercise, writing, public speaking, teamwork, intercultural understanding, respect, integrity, or good listening skills… whatever it is that gets you fired up and motivated… SHARE it with others. Yes we must teach the curriculum, yes we must help students master mandated standards in various content areas… but we SHOULD teach, lead and learn every day with PASSION.

Connect with those areas of your life about which you are most passionate. Find ways to invest time DOING and SHARING that passion with others. You can’t put a price on passion, but you can SHARE it and INSPIRE it with and in others.

Passion is a BIG reason why I’m a storychaser.

Technorati Tags:
leadership, passion, quote, quotation

Two worthy quotations on leadership and passion originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 18, 2009.

1. Have you had an “oh, wow!” digital communication moment?
2. Why are you on or not on Facebook?
3. Why are online collaborations important?
4. Are your “virtual” connections and communications “real” in the same way face-to-face interactions are?
5. What is real learning?

Dan did a GREAT job with this video, both from a content and a technical perspective. I think he edited everything together with Final Cut Pro. He recorded our interview over Skype video using Ecamm’s CallRecorder. I was actually in Wichita, Kansas, when we did the interview. Great work Dan! (He did get an A in the course, BTW, for which this was his final project!)

Technorati Tags:
communication, facebook, learning, real, virtual, luddite

Are virtual interactions REAL? A video answer from @danlovejoy originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 11, 2009.

H/T to Carol Broos for this link.

In his May 9, 2009, post “Failure Should Always Be an Option,” Jim Klein wrote:

What we must never forget, no matter what circumstances are forced upon us, is that without failure, there is no success. We learn when we fail. We grow when we fall. Science is all about learning from failure, and failure is a key component of innovation, without which nothing would ever be tried.

This is especially true when it comes to technology. While we may pretend that there is truly such a thing as a “digital native”, the reality is that kids are not more familiar with or better with technology as a result of their proximity to it. What they possess is a complete lack of fear, a willingness to try, fail, and try again – to innovate, explore, and discover. Often they achieve their goals, sometimes, they don’t, but that’s OK because the value of the exercise is in the process, not the result. There is more critical thinking and problem solving in one failed experiment than a thousand standardized tests.

Jim also shared the video “Famous Failures” in that post as well. As the video author says, “life = risk. If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.”

I remember at the Air Force Academy we had to memorize something called “the five dynamics of goal setting.” I don’t remember all of them, and I may not be remembering these word for word, but the ones I can still remember are:

1. Set high but achievable goals.
2. Be realistic.
3. Expect frustration *
4. Persevere despite frustration.

I think it is important as we think about failure, success, creativity, schools, our own lives and the leadership we provide for others in our schools and communities, we should remember to also focus on DISCIPLINE as well as PERSEVERANCE. It’s not enough to point out that people like Michael Jordan failed a lot. It’s critical to see and understand they chose to live with discipline and persevere despite the frustrations in their lives, and that the lives which they have lived are therefore as much a result of their CHOICES as they are their genetic gifts or environment.

Life is hard. It is filled with frustration. Yet for those who persevere and choose to remain disciplined in the face of a world that may seem at times set against them, s/he can realize “success” unexpected in common hours. My verbiage here comes from a favorite philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, who wrote:

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Our definitions of “success” may evolve and change over our lifetimes, but our need to regard failure as a necessary, critical part of our learning journey will persist. Sharing videos like those above with our students can help them understand these ideas about success and failure. Encouraging others to persist in the pursuit of their dreams, despite the obstacles which stand in their way, is one of the most important roles we can play in the lives of our students as their teachers.

* Thanks to Mark McEahern for reminding me (via email) of “Expect frustration” in the USAFA-taught dynamics of goal setting. If you remember the others, please let me know!

Technorati Tags:
creative, creativity, education, inspiration, school, technology, video, youtube, failure, jordan, michael

To succeed we must fail – a LOT originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 1, 2009.

I found this juxtaposition of the high-tech digital and the low-tech analog quite hilarious last week. Here’s a friend’s iPhone with a sticky note prominently attached!

This is the first local homeowner’s association I’ve seen which has put its neighborhood news online. Very progressive! They’re even using WordPress for their site. Woo Hoo!

Radio Shack is now selling a wireless lapel microphone and receiver for $50, but it only has one antenna and I’ve been advised it’s not very good if you have a speaker/presenter (who is wearing the lav mic) that moves around very much. I’ve been counseled that Nady has a $150 “true diversity wireless system” with a lapel mic that might meet my needs well for an inexpensive lapel mic system I can use for mobile Ustreaming. I might look for one in Austin when I’m down there later this week for COSN. I found this Nady on Musciansfriend.com for $80. Wow. That model is on clearance, they have another model for $99. If you’ve used this or have advice for relatively inexpensive, wireless, lav mics I’d love to read your thoughts and advice as comments here!

Radio Shack wants to help our kids start using digital cameras early. This is a VTech $40 digital camera on clearance:

This Little Tikes digital camera at Radio Shack is just $25.

Just think. An entire generation of kids is growing up now who have no idea what a “film camera” is or what it’s like to photograph with the limitations imposed by film. Amazing.

Churches everywhere here in central Oklahoma seem to be registering and using “.tv” domains. This is a billboard advertisement in downtown OKC for Victory Church at vc.tv. Their byline: “Hope is just a click away.” Refreshing.

This was an advertisement for people to join the Oklahoma National Guard which I saw at the Oklahoma City Public Schools’ central office this week when I registered my son for a transfer so he can attend Classen SAS next year.

The ad suggests people should join the National Guard to “have fun, make new friends, and make money.” Significantly the ad does not say anything about “deploy for 6 to 12 months at a time to the near East and leave your family behind.” So much for full disclosure. Interesting marketing strategy. Perhaps it’s working well for them. I’d think it would be good to include “Serve your country and your state” in the marketing pitch too, but perhaps I’m overly idealistic.

Last of all, here’s an office sign a friend of mine who works in the Oklahoma State Department of Education has in her office which I just love.

In case you’re reading this without images being visible, I’ll transcribe it for you. The sign says:

Dance like no one is looking.
Sing like no one can hear you.
Love like you can’t be hurt.

For a creative and passionate soul like me, that sounds like some great advice. It’s certainly not “safe” advice, but it is good advice for people who want to truly LIVE their lives and not, as Meg Ryan aply reflects to Tom Hanks in one of my favorite movies, “Joe Versus the Volcano,” go through their life asleep.

Let’s LIVE people! We need to do more dancing, singing, and loving EVERY day!

Some recent notable pics and reflections originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 9, 2009.

I resonate with his passion for the 50×15 project, which seeks:

…to enable affordable, accessible Internet connectivity and computing capabilities for 50 percent of the world’s population by the year 2015.

Yesterday at our monthly Oklahoma Creativity Project education committee meeting, we discussed the role which rural electric cooperatives (RECs) could potentially play in bringing high speed connectivity (via fiber) to every part of our largely rural state using power line communication (PLC) or broadband over Power Line (BPL) technologies. These possibilities are very exciting as well as practical.

What I found most compelling in Hector’s talk, however, was the story he told about his father reminding him of his generational responsibility to do better. To be a better student and scholar than his parents had been or been able to be. (Hector was the first person in his family to graduate from college. All his sisters followed his example.) To be a better father than his own dad. To leave the world a better place each day, because of the actions he made, the conversations he had, and the people’s lives he influenced. What a fantastic challenge, and a great reminder of the perspective we should all not only have but also pass on to our own children and students.

Our focus must not JUST be on connectivity as we advocate for the thoughtful uses of digital technologies to support learning. What we choose to DO with the connectivity we have is also critical. In our committee discussions yesterday, I was reminded of Dr. Larry Cuban’s studies of schools in Silicon Valley about 10 years ago. You would think those schools, with the latest in connectivity and computer technologies, would have been doing (at the time of his studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s) just amazing, transformational things with the technologies at their fingertips. Not so. On pages 178-179 of “Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom,” Cuban wrote:

As for enhanced efficiency in learning and teaching, there have been no advances (measured by higher academic achievement of urban, suburban, or rural students) over the last decade that can be confidently attributed to broader access to computers. No surprise here, as the debate over whether new technologies have increased overall American economic productivity also has had no clear answers. The link between test score improvements and computer availability and use is even more contested.

Nor has a technological revolution in teaching and learning occurred in the vast majority of American classrooms. Teachers have been infrequent and limited users of the new technologies for classroom instruction. If anything, in the midst of the swift spread of computers and the Internet to all facets of American life, “e-learning” in public schools has turned out to be word processing and Internet searches. As important supplements as these have become to many teachers’ repertoires, they are far from the project-based teaching and learning that some techno-promoters have sought. Teachers at all levels of schooling have used the new technology basically to continue what they have always done: communciate with parents and administrators, prepare syllabi and lectures, record grades, assign research papers. These unintended effects must be disappointing to those who advocate more computers in schools.

I would add to Hector Ruiz’ impassioned call to connect the world together and specifically the students of the world together with connectivity an equally passionate plea to seek TRANSFORMATIONAL uses of digital technologies rather than simply accommodating uses. Transformational changes to our predominant paradigm of teaching and learning are needed, shifting our focus away from instruction and instead on learning. Accommodating uses of technologies to replicate traditional practices with newer, perhaps fancier gadgets are a waste of money and time. We don’t need more digital bells and whistles in our classrooms. What we need are passionate educators, focused on inspiring students to be creative and curious. We need school administrators who understand that EVERY DAY, students should be creating, communicating, and collaborating. Digital technologies wedded to the high speed connectivity available to us today can only transform education and our world if we choose to use these tools in constructive, transformative ways. In this process, our personal learning journeys are critical. To change the world, I must first change myself.

This is the learning revolution. We are not merely the soldiers, we are the strategists as well as the tacticians. Our tools are far more powerful than weapons designed to injure and kill. Our tools are our ideas, and their power to transform far outstrips the abilities of our limited minds to imagine and predict. Marx was wrong, historical progress is not inevitable. Change requires leadership, not just the kind occupying formal positions of power and authority.

Never before in the course of human history have we had the tools we have today to connect us and focus us. To connect to each other, and to bring our ideas together. At the speed of light, with the tap of a finger, to send one-to-many (broadcast) messages to a global audience. To send specific, targeted messages to single individuals or smaller groups. To be inspired by the thoughts and actions of others to think bigger at a global scale, yet continue to act locally in our unique contexts were we live and work. To organize and conduct a free, two week conference about web 2.0 tools and learning strategies, and invite the world to participate. To keep in touch with microblogging tools like Twitter and Facebook. To videoconference with others across town or across the planet. These are just some of the tools and capabilities on “this side” of the digital divide.

We are living amidst titanic changes in communication and information. Our prospects for meeting the challenge shared by Hector Ruiz’ father: to make the world a better place, have never been brighter than they are today. We have more possibilities and potential before us than ever before. But who can open these doors of opportunity for our students? Teachers. Mentors. Parents. Co-learners. We all have a role to play, but our part has not yet been written. As my friend Miguel Guhlin likes to say, ours is the responsibility, challenge, and opportunity to “write the future.”

You and I change the world one conversation at a time.

If you haven’t already, take 20 minutes and listen to Hector’s message. Be inspired. Then go share your inspiration with someone else.

And have a marvelous weekend, wherever you happen to reside on our blue planet.

photo credit: Aaron Escobar

Technorati Tags:
hector, ruiz, ted, tedtalk, bandwidth, connectivity, rec, regional, electrical, cooperative, plc, communication, blc, broadband, rural

Connecting our world and our generational responsibility to do better originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 10, 2008.

I’m utilizing some of the slides from Jeff Brenman’s outstanding remix of Karl Fisch’s well known “Did You Know/Shift Happens presentation.” (Thanks to Karl for his post last May about this “stylized version.”)

My presentation slides are available as a PDF. I’m hoping to utilize polleverywhere to conduct an impromptu SMS message survey during the address to get audience input about social networking. I’m just supposed to talk for 20 minutes, and this is my first commencement address to share. It should be fun!

My top 10 list of “advice for seniors” includes:

1. only 1 chance for a 1st impression
2. don’t be afraid to fail
3. seek out yodas
4. be a critical thinker
5. be an entrepreneur
6. seek innovation
7. change the world 1 conversation at a time
8. talk with pictures
9. private profiles (make your social networking profiles private)
10. dream big dreams

Anything else you would add or substitute in this list?

Technorati Tags:
commencement, speech, graduation, oklahoma, howe, seniors, advice

Advice for graduating seniors originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 23, 2008.

The March 2008 issue of Smithsonian magazine includes a fascinating interview with journalist Doug Fine, who lives off the grid in southwestern New Mexico. According to Doug’s website and blog:

Adventure journalist, NPR contributor and Cosmos-nudger Doug Fine speaks several languages, including suburban American, rural American and Alaskan American. He has reported and sent panicky emails from Rwanda to the Arctic Ocean. At last sighting he was living in New Mexico with too much livestock and just the right smear of stars.

In the article, Doug explains his motivation for wanting to live off the grid in as a public experiment. He relates:

I wanted to see if I could reduce my oil and carbon footprint but still enjoy the amenities that we expect as Americans. In other words, to continue driving a motorized vehicle and have power at my house—not live like a total Grizzly Adams. Can I enjoy Netflix and the Internet without fossil fuels?

Solar energy and a diesel automobile converted to run on waste vegetable oil from restaurants provide the energy Doug’s lifestyle requires. He raises and grows his own food, offering the following advice for those of us who might respond with a comment like, “I’m just too busy to do all of that:”

Growing your own food takes an hour or two a day. But I would suggest that if one doesn’t have an hour or two to work on one’s life, one might be too busy.

Too busy. That’s an affliction I think is all too common these days. It’s refreshing to learn about Doug’s journey and the real possibility of living off the grid. The following five minute YouTube video summarizes much of Doug’s adventure living off the grid, which he has also documented in a new book “Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living.”

Certainly many people might read this entry and view this video with a noticeable air of doubt and even distain. “I could never do something like that.” “That’s just not realistic.” “How could our family ever take such a radical move?” There certainly are folks who take an even more extreme approach to green living than Doug, but personally, I like his approach. He hasn’t given up Netflix or Internet access! Are these life choices sustainable over the long term? Time will tell. I think, however, that technologies SHOULD provide us with options in our lives rather than dictate we live a prescripted existence. Doug Fine certainly is demonstrating that this ideal is not merely theoretical, it can be a lived reality.

Additional video interview segments from Doug are available in the YouTube video, “Farewell, My Subaru – Stories & Soundbytes,” which includes footage not used in the “main” five minute video segment linked above.

Technorati Tags:
dougfine, newmexico, solar, energy, grid, offthegrid, green, vegetableoil, environment

Tales from an adventurer living off the grid originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 24, 2008.

Tour guides are people who see depth and texture and connections where others don’t. That is why the best teachers are masters of the obvious. They see the same things that we do, but they are aware of so much more. And when they point it out, it changes the way we see everything.

I love this analogy, and think this can be a powerful way to frame and structure learning tasks for students. Don’t just tell me about your topic. Become the tour guide. Show me what I could not easily see, identify, or discern for myself. Uncover the stories underneath the surface, the details and connections which weave a tapestry of greater meaning and understanding for listeners and viewers.

When I taught a week-long course for university instructors and professors in the Dominican Republic several years ago about online learning strategies, my wife and I had a delightful opportunity to spend an entire day with the director of the university’s department of travel and tourism who led us around Santo Domingo.

I was struck at the time by what a challenging but rewarding job he had, and helped others learn to do effectively. A good tour guide has broad knowledge about the history, culture, economics, social dynamics, and other aspects of a particular place and the individuals who live there. Spending time with an excellent tour guide is a delight, not because they are simply filled with a multitude of facts, but because they have the ability to stitch and weave those details together in a larger tapestry of understanding.

Perhaps we can benefit from framing our roles as learners, whether we are formally defined as teachers or students, as “tour guides” for others? I think the demonstration of higher order thinking is a required job skill for effective tour guides.

Technorati Tags:
learning, education, theory, tour, guide, tourguide, dominicanrepublic, tourism

Learners and teachers as tour guides originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 15, 2008.

2. I Love Learning. I Hate Schooliness.
3. So what is “schooliness”?
4. The Birth of Schooliness
5. Schooly Student Leadership
6. Schooly Ethics
7. Schooly Imagination and Curiosity
8. Schooly Critical Thinking: An Oxymoron
9. Schooly (Anti-)Science
10. Schooly Writing Lessons
11. Open Thread Invitation to Play: Your Definitions of Schooliness?

I Love Learning. I Hate Schooliness.

–this is my motto. It’s one of the reasons I wrote (in a post, “On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher,” with about 70 comments now),

I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for schools. I’d so much rather teach.

So what is “schooliness”?

I have no idea. But that’s not a problem:  I’m a teacher.  I’m quite comfortable speaking with confidence on subjects I know next to nothing about.

Fans of Stephen Colbert will note that “schooliness” riffs on Colbert’s “truthiness,” which won the Word of the Year awards from the American Dialect Society in 2005, and from Merriam-Webster in 2006.

Colbert, in a serious interview as himself, instead of as his Bill O’Reilly satire persona, had this to say about “truthiness”:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word…

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…

Truthiness is ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

I’ve never tried to define “schooliness,” but so many people are quoting it as “Clay’s idea,” I feel it’s time to try – and to ask for your help in the Open Thread invitation at the end of this post.

The Birth of Schooliness

I first used the word “schooliness” in March 2007 – my third month of blogging – in one of a series of posts on “how to save blogging from teachers.” (I still worry about that danger, and still think-aloud about that challenge a year later.) I was envisioning a future in which all the edtech evangelists got what they wanted: schools full of teachers in every classroom using blogging with their students. But rather than seeing a utopia to celebrate, I saw a bleak dystopia: Blogging as “just another way to turn in homework.” Blogging, like thinking, creativity, and other joys, turned into an aversive horror by the forces of schooliness:

. . . . what reader will ever return to a blog that’s full of homework posts? If Stephen Colbert were here, he’d say such a blog smelled of this: “Schooliness.”

Like Colbert’s “truthiness,” “schooliness” stuck with me. It was a word without a dictionary definition that still seemed to identify something we all know, all too well.

Schooly Student Leadership

The next time I used the term was this past September. With a few other teachers around the world, I’ve started a Green Schools movement called Project Global Cooling. The project’s purpose is for student members to research waste-reduction measures, and their cost benefits for the school, and then present them for adoption in a formal proposal to the school administration – and to have, ideally, an Earth Day concert in cities around the world, student-promoted, on the same day, which will be filmed and uploaded to the Project Global Cooling website (it’s ugly right now, but it’s starting, finally, to grow legs – see my blog for future focus on this as it nears its April 19 climax).

One of the PGC students, a student council member, was ordered by the student council teacher-leaders to drop our club. It conflicted with the student council meeting times. That sent me into my second rage against the schooly in my post, “Student Council: Creating Tomorrow’s Followers (or, “Smells Like School Spirit”)“:

Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so important she’s forcing you to drop all other activities?”

Student: “The Haunted House for Halloween. And the next Student Assembly.”

Me: “The Haunted House….so, like, getting the pumpkins and doing some Halloween thing in the gym?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “And the Student Assembly: what are you planning for that?”

Student: “Introducing the Sports teams. And raising school spirit.”

Me: “And how many people do you have meeting twice a week to plan a Haunted House and a 40-minute assembly to introduce the basketball players and give a few speeches and such?”

Student: “Seventeen.”

Me: “Seventeen?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “Seventeen people meeting twice a week for the next 20 weeks to plan a haunted house in the gym, and an assembly to introduce sports teams? How long can it take to come up with a plan to introduce sports teams?”

Student: “I know.”

Me: “I hate school. Look at how trivial it makes you, even when you want to make a difference in the real world.”

Student: “I don’t have any choice. The Student Council teachers won’t let me out.”

Me: “And look how powerless you suddenly are. You’re 17. You’re a young adult. You know physics, calculus, and history far more than most of your teachers, but have zero power in school despite that. ‘They won’t let me.’ I hate school.”

* * *

So, your advice: I want to suggest he quit Student Council, since it’s clearly one very school-blindered, trivial waste of time for all these poor students seeking election in order to show they can handle power effectively – like adults do.

Another idea is to instead advise him to wage a bit of a rebellion inside the Student Council, by asking the very sensible question – “Is this the best we can do? Jack-o-lanterns and basketballs? Can we give the StuCo some teeth? Extend it into the real world? Isn’t it pathetically fay right now? Trivial? Irrelevant? Infantile?”

The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers – the whole school culture – treat the Student Council like it’s an honorable thing. In reality, it limits the horizons of the 17 most motivated leaders from each grade level to the paltry world of the schoolhouse. It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.

I don’t know if it’s “consensus trance,” blind traditionalism, or winking condescension (”Let the kids play like they have power”), but it smells really bad to me.

Schooly Ethics

Schooliness raised its ugly head again when I considered the moral “offenses” schools choose to punish at school. Drive a gas-guzzler? Promote the bloody diamond trade with your flashy jewelry? Enjoy murder in video games or on your favorite movies? No worries. No punishment.

But use certain taboo vowel-consonant combinations, or look at the human form with certain taboo portions visible? We’ll throw the book at you, in our duty to teach you the difference between right and wrong. Schooly morality seems to have been held back since the mid-Victorian era. That was a fun post: “To Curse or Not to Curse: On Teaching the F-Bomb and Other Colorful Words.” Read it before you judge it. It’s about Shakespeare’s mastery of cursing, as an art form. Here’s a snippet:

Lear curses with style and grace, as befits a king. But Kent, his chief knight – Lear’s “Army Chief of Staff,” as it were – curses, as befits a career soldier, with much more salt and directness. Check out his classic “cussing out” of the slimy Oswald, servant of Goneril –

OSWALD:
What dost thou know me for?

KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of they addition. (Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 14-24)

If your Elizabethan English is rusty, and you don’t hear the vulgarity and sexual insult sloshing in practically every line, download the free “Answers” Firefox addon, and click the unknown words while holding down “alt” on your Mac for an instant popup definition and more (PC users, you’re on your own – maybe “ctrl”?). Kent calls Oswald a pimp, son of a bitch, bastard, son of a whore, “wussy,” a suck-up, and more, and then says, in today’s language, “Deny one word, and I’ll kick your disgusting little donkey” (substitute the King James Bible word for donkey here).

It’s depressing, isn’t it, how the art of cursing has degenerated in our own modern age? Our four-letter words are so unimaginative and artless by comparison.

So if you were me, how would you guide students to translate these curses? Having Kent abuse Oswald by hissing,

You bad person, I’m going to kick your bottom.
You son of a bad woman, you sissy, you person born out of wedlock,
You big meanie, etc

just doesn’t strike me as a faithful literary adaptation. (It does strike me as schooliness, though. Some teachers, like Wilde’s classic Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, would give such a bowdlerizing an “A,” I’ve no doubt.)

Schooly Imagination and Curiosity

I’m battling with schooliness now, most distressingly, in the very people I thought would battle it with me: my high school seniors. It seems they are so unfamiliar with having their own ideas, and writing about them, that they simply cannot do it with any engagement. Their free-choice blogs are, overall, schooly imitations of authenticity. Pretending to have ideas they pretend to care about. Thank Goodness, there are exceptions. But the rule is so distressing, it’s led me to believe that, by high school, it’s too late to unlock the creativity and engagement Wes so often champions. Twelve years of schooliness seems to have beaten the desire to learn – the pleasure of learning – completely out of most seniors. It seems to me now that, if we’re going to feed fires for learning, we have to do it before they’re snuffed out. And that means, to be clear, focus on school reform in primary and middle years. (How to reform secondary school, so in the grips of the SAT and AP and College Admissions – not to mention high school teachers living out college professor fantasies – is beyond me.)

Here’s a snippet from, “From the Classroom Blogging Doldrums: What Would Teacher 2.0 Do?“:

The problem? Little vision, little connective writing.

It’s partly senioritis, I think. College applications, SAT’s, too many commitments to too many extra-curricular activities (got to have those bullets for the college application, even if they come at the cost of destroying both my learning and my GPA), too many week-long sports trips, too many AP classes that were chosen not for interest but again for careerist reasons.

It’s partly Korean culture: parents sending students to night and weekend schools for SAT prep, AP prep, tutors. Students confusing memorization skills with academic excellence, trained to “be instructed” rather than to “construct” meaning themselves. Having no time to be, reflect, explore, wonder (or having no energy, rather).

And it’s partly my own fault: all the macho posturing of Advanced Placement courses as “college-level, rigorous,” etc – and Wes Fryer’s etymolological connection, in Shanghai back in September, of “rigor” with “rigid” and “rigor mortis” echoes here – led me to buy in to what now seems a sadistic and pedagogically pathetic imperative to overload AP students with A Mountain Of Homework.

Schooly Critical Thinking: An Oxymoron

This is from, “Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education“:

So: the problem with me, as a teacher, is that I design units that don’t address anything important. I’ve been trained to think that my job is to stuff the headpieces of the next generation with such irrelevant things as the definition of litotes and onomatopoeia, to write cute little stories about nothing, to know Stratford-upon-Avon. To be able, paradoxically, to think critically about safe subjects. And above all, not to think about anything that might, god forbid, rankle the status quo. And let’s not even start to think about taking any sort of action.

Again, so: As soon as I stop thinking like a teacher, designing units derived from an institutional culture that defines me as a teacher, and subconsciously makes me far more traditional in my teaching than my progressively-posing ego likes to acknowledge….as soon as I re-define myself as a community leader – as that once-upon-a-time American thing called a citizen – instead, maybe the young adults of my community might have an opportunity to learn how to function in the world they’ll inherit from and manage for us all-too-soon.

Schooly (Anti-)Science

When Bulgaria is, per capita, more scientifically literate than America about biology, geology, and genetics – and when even science teachers are afraid of the “e-word” – little more needs to be said. I say it anyway, in this post that got 1,000 hits in 8 hours (a record for me): Truly Critical: On Science, Religion, and Goodness.

Schooly Writing Lessons

Under the influence of Oscar Wilde’s aphorisms and Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, and in order to battle evil with wit and thus smile a bit more in hell, I’ve decided to slowly compile twitter-like definitions of all things schooly. Here’s my first effort, from a post last week:

Schooly writing (noun): Assignments by teachers who don’t want to read them, to students who don’t want to write them; a perpetual and unnecessary misery upon which hinges the student’s future, and the teacher’s present, livelihood; an oxymoron.

Open Thread Invitation to Play: Your Definitions of Schooliness?

Readers of my blog will know about the Open Thread idea. It’s simple: A topic or question is proposed in an Open Thread post, and all readers are encouraged to write comments as long as they would like, to copy them to their own blogs if desired, and to converse with each other in the thread. It’s fun.

I’d like to do an Open Thread here: Questions:

1. List the topics that come to your mind when you think of “Schooliness.”

2. Write your own “Devil’s Definition” and give us all a wicked laugh. I’ll carry them over to Beyond School and add them to a page there.

We know what schooliness is. We teachers live it daily. Let’s have some fun with it.

(Other comments are fine too, of course.)

–

Photo Credits:

• Colbert Motivational Poster by Louisville Joe
• Oscar Wilde Action Figure by -sel

“What is Schooliness?” – Discursus and Open Thread (Clay Burell guest-post 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 1, 2008.

Do you understand where you are right now? You are in a place, a time, and a set of circumstances toward which you’ve been moving your entire life.
Do you realize the enormous opportunity that now exists? You are more experienced and better prepared than ever before.

Each past failure is now a positive and valuable lesson that you’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t. All the disappointments you’ve ever known have now combined together to create a powerful and meaningful determination that permeates your life.

By this point in your life, your dreams and desires are more in line with who you truly are than they’ve ever been before. And now you’re perfectly positioned to actually achieve them.

Do you realize how truly unique and powerful this very moment is? This is the moment when you can begin to fulfill your greatest possibilities.

This is the moment you’ve been working your way toward for a long time. You are here at last, so fill your world with the lifetime of richness that you’re able to give.

In a world filled with people who say “sometime I hope,” “maybe next year I can,” “if only I could,” and “yeah but I can’t because” these words speak to my heart.

Seize the day! You’ve likely never been better prepared to face and leverage both the challenges as well as the opportunities of this day.

Thanks for the inspirational words, Dad!

Seize the moment and make the most of NOW originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 14, 2007.

1. delete (or archive)
2. delegate
3. respond
4. defer
5. do

The key is getting into the mindset of converting email data into actions. Merlin uses the software OmniFocus to keep “ticklers” of things he has delegated and needs to follow-up on later.Merlin contends “your inbox should be for emails you haven’t read yet.” Simple, straightforward, but probably a concept many of us are not applying.”Liberate activities out of your inbox.” Merlin exhorts his audience to use a software application to serve as a task manager / task list.”If you keep your email box tidy, you will respect it more.” Merlin contends keeping your email box clean is a way of showing your own respect for your time and attention.Merlin summarizes “life hacking” as overriding the things the dumb part of your brain wants to do, and instead doing the things the smart part of your brain tells you to do.The key to all of this is regularly processing email according to a set of sharp edged rules. Merlin suggests turning off your email for periods of time while you go and work on something else. Merlin suggests scheduling “email dashes” when you check email on a periodic basis, maybe 10 minutes every hour. As much as you can, try to “shut off” email and then periodically check in with it.Merlin encourages us to periodically consider, throughout the day, whether or not we are spending our time and attention on things that map to our priorities. If there are ways we can make email “less noisy” and still remain productive, then we should do those things. We need to recognize the negative, disruptive function of email and limit or remove entirely its attention-demanding tyrannical nature from our daily lives. This dovetails nicely with thoughts I’ve written about previously relating to “digital discipline.”The dynamics of “access” to people, their ideas, and their attention have shifted with email, and Merlin addresses this in the Q&A time following his presentation. As he observes, email somehow conveys an idea to people that they have unlimited access to your time and attention. Where people would not likely call you after 9 pm on the phone to ask a question, they have no problem sending you an email about it. These are important issues to consider, and then decide how to “process” and handle with those “sharp edges” Merlin discussed earlier in the presentation.Managing people’s expectations of your response time to email is also important. Merlin relates his own history of learning how “over-delivering” in advance of deadlines can create negative feedback loops. I resonate with this as well. It’s as if being highly responsive and highly skilled creates a negative feedback loop of ever-increasing expectations for ridiculously short time suspense responses that require an enormous quantity and quality of work. That feedback loop is not sustainable for knowledge workers. Here is my attempt at a visual of this dynamic:Having boundaries with sharp edges is an essential skill. Perhaps this has always been true, but the near-ubiquitous access many knowledge workers now enjoy (?) or experience has likely multiplied the importance of this skill in the last ten years. I am writing about these ideas not because I have mastered them or found a “solution” to all these issues, but because I am actively working on them and seeking solutions.I think both David Allen and Merlin Mann have a lot to offer in the elusive quest for “inbox zero” and the larger goal of living a life characterized by peaceful effectiveness, despite the chaotic cauldron of information and attention demands which is constantly storming the gates of individual consciousness.Technorati Tags:merlinmann, attention, email, inbox, gtd, davidallen, gettingthingsdone, organization, overload

Seeking the elusive “inbox zero” originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 24, 2007.

The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time. Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated potential failure, because you can’t do them both at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pinpointed.

As I’ve noted before, I think we often over-estimate the ability of young people to multi-task cognitive challenges and accomplish them with high levels of quality. Just because a young person is carrying on instant message conversations with six different people, watching the television, listening to an iPod, playing a GameBoy, and attempting to read a chapter in a school textbook does not mean that s/he is accomplishing anything which is cognitively challenging with a high degree of intellectual quality. The fact that a clown can juggle three balls while spinning a hula hoop around his/her waist and another one around his/her foot does not mean s/he is capable of simultaneously thinking original thoughts that might win them the Nobel Prize, or composing an original musical composition that will win a Grammy award next year. I think at many educational technology conferences, the apparent “awe” with which attendees are invited to regard the young for their abilities at multi-tasking is misplaced. Being able to be simultaneously distracted by six different sensory inputs does not necessarily mean thoughts or ideas of quality or lasting value have been conceived or communicated.Those thoughts on multi-tasking aside, I think David Allen’s point about stress being related to the number of “open loops” which your brain is trying to track at once is an excellent one. The solution he proposes to this challenge is a system which permits people to “take control of their lives” with a five-stage workflow model: collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing, and doing. I’m really enjoying his book, and think his ideas may have a great impact on my immediate as well as future “productivity” both professionally and personally. The July 2007 issue of MacWorld included a favorable review (on page 42) of the software program Midnight Inbox, a software implementation of David’s GTD (Getting Things Done) principles. I’ve downloaded a copy and will give it a spin.If you know of other GTD-based software programs you’d recommend, please let me (and others) know about them by commenting here and sharing a link.Technorati Tags:organization, gtd, gettingthingsdone, davidallen, information, overload, informationoverload, stress, solution

Understanding stress originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 8, 2007.

We are marinated the culture of speed today, our “roadrunner form of life” takes a high toll on our lives, our relationships, our communities, and our world.

We often need a wakeup call

Are we hurrying through life rather than living it? Are we living the fast life rather than the good life?

How do we think if time itself in our culture?
- in the east many view time in a cyclical way
- in the west we generally view time as linear, “use it or lose it,” time is money,” etc.
- that creates an equation where we try to speed everything up, make everything into a race to the finish line
- is it possible to break free from this mindset?

By slowing down at the right moments, people find that they can do many things better
- the international slow movement
- the slow food movement
- the slow cities movement (rethink how the urban landscape is organized, to encourage connections and slowing down)

Working hours have come down in some workplaces, and in some cases are finding higher levels of productivity without people being workaholics
- value of employees unplugging at times: turning off black, letting the brain recharge and enter a creative mode

Children are overworked now
- I am amazed how kids race around now with more homework, more activities, etc
- I get emails on my website from adolescents on the border of burnout
- some communities have declared days where all extracurriculars are banned

there are homework bans springing up in the developed world
- people discovering less can be more
- Scottish school banned homework for children under 13

Elite universities are noticing that caliber of students is falling in some ways, kids don’t know how to dream, they have lost their “spark”
- Harvard is sending a letter out to freshmen to encourage them to slow down, and do less, letter is called “Slow Down”

Message is the same: less is often more, slower is often better

That said, it is not easy to slow down: It is hard!

Speed is fun, sexy, it has adrenaline appeal
- there is a metaphysical level to this psychology
- slow is a byword for lazy, slacker, it has bad cultural baggage

Purpose of the slow movement is to tackle that taboo
- there is a “bad slow”
- but the new idea, the revolutionary idea, is that there is a “good slow” – eating a meal with your family with the TV turned off, tackling a problem at work from all angles with a team

just slowing down and taking time to savor your life

Many are starting to realize there is too much speed in the system, too much business
- this is not just in the developed world, also in the developing world
- many are looking at certain aspects of “The West” and liking some of what they see there, but not everything, especially not liking the high costs of all the speed

Is it possible to slow down?
- yes, the answer is a resounding “YES”
- I still love speed, I work as a journalist, I love to play squash and ice hockey
- over the last few years, however, I have gotten in touch with my “inner tortoise”
- my default mode is no longer to be a rush-a-holic

Upshot: I feel much happier, healthier, and productive
- I feel I am living my life and not just rushing through it
- most important: I feel my relationships are stronger and deeper
- litmus test: bedtime story time with my own children, not rushed

Children don’t do ‘quality time’
- they need you to move at their rhythm
- I find that when I move at that tempo, sharing opportunities open up
- bedtime stories have become my reward at the end of the day, rather than just something I must do or I dread

For more, check out Carl’s website “In Praise of Slow.”

Technorati Tags: qualityoflife, slowmovement, speed

Good thoughts from Carl Honore originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 25, 2007.

Lynell’s website: www.educatebetter.org

All of us know that just because you fail one test you are not a failure, right?!
Hopefully we’ll have some laughs and some serious moments today
- also we will talk about some tools we can use to deal with stress

Book “Enlighten Up! An Educator’s Guide to Stress-Free Living”
- there may be a few of you who don’t need to be here, so if you need to give me a walking ovation that is no problem

Cartoon: teacher at the front: No talking, smiling, wearing weird clothes, more….

One rule: “If you’re having fun, you’re not learning”
- motto from the Disney movie, “Mathilda”

Surveys have showed that when we are stressed, 9 out of 10 times stress complaints have to do with TIME
- putting your schedule on a palm won’t solve your problems
- picture of someone’s hand with appointments written all over it!

To Do: Can Do. Will Do. Must Do and Deep Do list

Cartoon: “Due to airline cost-cutting, this is your dinner, pillow and air sickness bag”

Advertisements have us convinced “we are entitled” to everything money can buy
- images of diamonds, real estate, Porsche cars, etc.
- and entitlement of a place to keep it
- conflict between these messages and our paychecks

I used to work at at California’s service center
- image of huge house
- now: picture of a house on the back of a truck
- computers and phones situated in the bathroom, with a padded toilet seat

Testing, testing
- another area of great stress for
- reducing our kids to #2 pencils

Gary Stager had a movement at one point called “Pencils Down”

When you are stressed, the cortisol shrinks the
- their brains are 14% smaller (literally) and physiologically
- so we are literally making kids more stupid with all this stress

Techno Trauma: sometimes it can drive you nuts

Image of a computer monitor thrown out of a high rise building

Cartoon asking expecting parents if they want to email their zygote!

Technology is there at all the major events of your life
- groom leaving the church, saying to another woman dressed in a wedding gown: “Didn’t you get my email?”

Cartoon of console with login and username at the gates of heaven!

This technology was supposed to save us time
- how many of us spend 8 hours a day at a computer
- my record was 22 hours one day

Dogs on the computer: “Let’s see if we can’t scatter the trash all over his desktop”
- image of a desktop filled with files

Kids have no stress with technology or angst
- using the Pearson knowledge box in Southern California: kids lining up to use the computer during their recess time

You can use technology to make things more visual, that can be much less stressful for many learners
- for me math didn’t make as much sense when it was just numbers, but when you can

the “figure this” math site does things visually
- company “mind institute” in the exhibit hall is focused on visual math

Activity you can replicate: Progressive Story
- make a PPT slideshow with fullscreen images, and pass the kush ball and have people tell a story light you would tell a flashlight story
- example
- this can be used to test prior knowledge, to review, can even be used as the test
- I love this creative idea!!!
- this progresive story idea and

those who put the toilet paper over rather than under make an average of $32,000 more per year

Serious definition of stress: “stress is not the presence of something, it is the ABSENCE of something”

[THIS IS AN INTERESTING DEFINITION. ACCORDING TO THE FLOW AUTHOR STRESS IS A PERCEPTION.]

Stress is the absence of resourcefulness
- continuums of dark — light, stress — resourcefulness
- stress is a guage of PERCEIVED personal resources

[GOOD, I'M GLAD THIS INCLUDES THE IDEA OF PERCEPTION]

In WWII orgpanages, they would give kids a piece of bread at dinner and the kids would squirrel it away
- the psychologists learned if they gave them 2 pieces, they would eat one and save one
- they were perceiving that there wouldn’t be bread in the morning

The Dell Booth yesterday had bubbles
- a bubble bath is good for stress relief
- there are times when medication is called for, certain situations (I don’t want to make light of that, but if that becomes a lifestyle that can be a problem)

Cartoon: “The St. John’s Wort seems to be working, but be carful on the dosage”
Cartoon of dog with his feet in a jacuzzi tub
Snickers bars: there are as many fat calories are there are in 100 apples, so that’s a no brainer: Who has time to eat 100 apples?

Will Smith: “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people the don’t like.”

Closet organizing ads
- you just have 4 or 5 choices tops
- somewhere between that level of organization and where we are now would be good

I have a new rule: if I buy one new thing, I have to donate five things I have now

Image of a backpacker with a loaded pack, and a TV on top

“What you aren’t willing to give away OWNS you”

Chronic overcrowding in the standards
- Even Robert Marzano who has made a fortune talking and writing about the standards admits we would need a K-22 system to teach them all
- Power Standards” book: says let’s get them down to the ones we really need

“Ask 3 before you ask me” is a good motto in the computer lab
- this empowered the kids, and freed him up
- the kids who are “the three” end up being teachers, we prepare the next generation

Image of Michael Jordan and the passion of making the shot
- he said: “Once the ball leaves my hands, it’s out of my hands” (he didn’t have to watch the basket)
- the ultimate “let it go”

Goeth: “Nothing shows a man’s character than what he laughs at”

humore: the juxtaposition of the unexpected (John Cleese)

Cartoon of a parent mouse in a robe talking to kids: “You were turned into white horses and forced to drive a pumpkin? out after midnight, and that’s the best story you could come up with?!”

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people: Victor Borge
- if you have an enemy or you want someone to help you, get them laughing

Kids laugh an average of 400 times per day
- by the time we are adults, we laugh around 15 times per day on average

Hopefully you’ll leave here and work on boosting your average

Tip: if you stick a number 2 pencil… in your mouth, it forces the corners of your mouth up a little so whatever you say will likely make you smile or laugh because your mouth is prepped
- you can also find a pencil when you need it
- this can also address disruption issues

Cartoon: farmer who made a scarecrow of his wife in the field

When you do cruel humor, you get an energy spike but then you dive
- you get briefly juiced but a bad aftertaste
- so use humor that isn’t cruel

The birthday card that says: On they day you were born the angels got together and said:
- Who messed up on quality control?

Between the lion’s series: a BB King series on the letter Y
- great show

Chateau MeddyBemps great website, whimsical humor
- great website esp for younger kids, up to 4th or 5th grade, esp good for

www.amazing-kids.org

Kid cartoon: “I’m never having kids. I hear they take nine months to download.”

I’ve given up on good internet joke sites, because most are ta

ahajokes.com

Clips from TV shows
- the old Cosby shows, the humor was always so sweet
- Bill and his wife on the show discussing if he remembers what he said when he proposed, and what was on the car radio

Shows the power of music
- what you remember, esp in highly emotional moments
- music can be used as a carrier of information to learners

The music of the spheres defined by Pythagoras: the music of the sun and the wind through the trees

Video clip of dramatizing “entrianment” – “toe tapping,” what happens when music plays and rhythm takes over our bodies

having a pet can lower your blood pressure
- a teacher’s smiling face can change the whole day for a child
- having friends you teach with can make such a difference

First connection in life: mother-child
- chemical oxy-tocin (the love hormone)
- that is the last to go in human life

“The heart of the matter”
- physiologically we have a brain in the heart, that sends messages to the brain
- stress or panic, and love / caring / compassion / appreciation
- when you are feeling those positive emotions
- you can only feel 1 kind of emotion at the same time

the fastest way of stress is to think of something you are deeply thankful for, because you can’t think about that and maintain your stressful thought
- think of something that brings tears to your eyes, something really deep
- that will flood your heart and move to your brain, and then you’ll realize you do have a couple resources
- shift your focus really fast from that stressful thing to something you’re thankful for

solution to the whole problem is to shift emphasis

Verse: in all things be thankful
- not “for” all things, that is saying no matter what happens, find the thankfulness in your heart and you’ll be able to rise above the circumstances

Have your kids write a thank you note if they are stressed out

THANK YOU is the big key
- this shows up scientifically, their are salivia tests and PET scans

If you have love, compassion in your heart, it can be felt within a 15 foot radius
- your students can feel what you are feeling
- do you want your students to

Your attitude is always key: you can always choose that
- you can choose who you want to be

cartoon: Moses as a kid, parting the milk

Steve CAse, founder of AOL had multiple paper routes because he knew there were many

Helping kids figure out what they want to be is very exciting

book “what color is your parachute” author says when you are in your highest calling, that is where your greatest passion and the world’s greatest need come together

Lifting kids with humor is hopefull

www.drewtretick.com music
- watch his face as he performs in this video
- playing with passion

My prayer for all of you, that you find this sense of mission and purpose

Technorati Tags: burmark, stress, tcea, tcea07, tcea2007

They laughed when I told them how I beat stress! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 9, 2007.

• …a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing.
• Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.
• Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.
• An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous.

For me, I think reading, writing, blogging and podcasting have often come to constitute a “flow experience.” For that reason, it has been very difficult to embark on a 40 day fast of evening technology use! This experience is proving to be worthwhile, but certainly challenging.

The following graph of page 74 of Csikszentmihalyi’s book communicates a great deal about the conditions required for a flow experience and the dynamical nature of flow:

As we think about the need to engage students in authentic learning experiences inside and outside of school and the conditions of “engagement,” I think this graph and these ideas about “flow” are helpful. As a learner, I am intrinsically motivated to seek conditiions of flow. Csikszentmihalyi identifies “skills” and “challenges” as the two key variables in the flow experience, placing them on the respective X and Y axes of this graph. As my skills (and knowledge) in a particular area grow, I will naturally move out of the flow channel if the level of challenge I am facing remains static. This is shown on the graph by the movement from position A1 to A2. This condition leads to boredom.

If I do not increase my knowledge and skills but the challenges I face increase, I will experience anxiety: This is shown on the graph as the movement from A1 to A3. When we have students in our classrooms facing anxiety, I think this graph may be descriptive of their psychological experience.

As classroom teacher-leaders, I think it is helpful to think about the PERCEPTIONS of skills and challenges that the learners in our care have in given contexts. I think as teacher-leaders, one of our educational objectives should be helping students experience and maintain conditions of “flow” in their own learning. Is this idealistic? Of course. But I think the ideas Csikszentmihalyi is highlighting here in terms of “optimal experience” relate directly to the sort of authentic, meaningful learning experiences that both cannot be faked and are likely to be recorded in LONG TERM memory which we should actively promote inside and outside our classrooms.

Everything we do in school or outside of school may not be able to constitute a “flow” experience, but it is interesting to note that our perceptions of events and contexts are of primary importance in the flow experience. As learners, we can learn to shape our perceptions of consciousness and thereby shape with greater levels of control our own experiences inside “the flow channel.” This may sound like psychological mumbo-jumbo to some, but I think there is a GREAT deal of validity in these ideas. I have not finished the book yet (I’m just about one-fourth of the way through it) but I’m sure I’ll continue to see more connections to the learning process as I read more. Csikszentmihalyi’s view of learning seems to fit well with my own conceptions of “dynamical learning” that I’ve written and presented about previously.

Writing and blogging about what I am reading is an important part of my own effort to “own” these ideas and keep them within my own consiousness– both consciously and subconsciously. It’s amazing how the more we read, talk about, and write about ideas– our minds continue to process and develop those thoughts into new syntheses.

It’s Thanksgiving, and I’m thankful for MANY things– but one thing I’m very thankful for is the opportunity to have access to such rich texts and ideas both in book and electronic form, to think, talk and write about those ideas, and the chance to publish my thoughts here and elsewhere to invite your feedback and ideas! Thoughts like these from Csikszentmihalyi continue to increase my perceived level of “challenges” on the flow graph, and provide incentive to improve my cognitive skill set to understand and apply those ideas within my own worldview. I’m guessing this may explain (at least in part) the reason you’re here, reading this blog post!

Happy Thanksgiving!

(And for more info on “flow” if you don’t have one of Csikszentmihalyi’s books, you can check out the WikiPedia entry on this topic!)

Flow, curiosity, and engaging education originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 23, 2006.

Courage is not the absence of fear…It is the active management of fear.

Quoted by D D Ganguly.

Courage defined originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 30, 2006.

Dictionary.com defines fasting as:

The act or practice of abstaining from or eating very little food. A period of such abstention or self-denial.

The last week and a half, I have been on a spouse-requested vacation “blog fast,” and the experience was actually quite wonderful. I haven’t posted in my “luddite” blog category in awhile, but I remain a huge fan of digital discipline… a skill set which I think includes intentionally choosing when to plug and unplug from digital content. (I actually hope to write a book with that title someday and have even reserved the domain name, but for now I’m occupied with other endeavors.) Check out my post from from February 2005 titled “Snow Days are the Best Days” for more on this.

So, our family reunion and vacation to Wyoming the last week and a half was WONDERFUL. Yes, we had technology on the drive up and back in the form of cell phones, an iPod mini for music and iPod shuffle for podcasts– and a laptop for evening DVD movies for the kids… but after we got there, cell phones didn’t even work– and that imposed technological disconnection combined with my wife’s insistence that I take the time off from blogging led to a very relaxing and enjoyable vacation. I admit I felt a bit like a long haul truck driver– my one way driving distance from Edmond to Cooke City, Montana (close to Hunter’s Peak, we actually went through there several times as we went in and out of Yellowstone) was over 1500 miles!

Thankfully, iPods and podcasts make such a journey potentially much more intellectually stimulating than it might be otherwise… and the chance to just think and talk, without many other distractions, make the drive to and from the destination a very enjoyable part of the journey, rather than just a hassle that must be survived to “get there.”

Last night as I enjoyed the excellent lemonade and food at the Cracker Barrel in Amarillo on my way back home (as I usually do now driving between Lubbock and Edmond), I brainstormed many of the things which for me today, define an “excellent vacation.” Here is what I came up with:

1. Low stress.
2. Lots of time to relax and unwind.
3. Many opportunities to laugh.
4. Few time requirements.
5. Full nights of sleep.
6. Great meals.
7. Star filled skies filled with minimal light pollution.
8. Opportunities for novel, exciting, challenging or unusual experiences.
9. The presence of loved family and friends.
10. Lots of readily available cold beverages.
11. Large, hearty breakfasts.
12. Time to get bored! (idle.)
13. Kids saying, “There’s nothing to do!” (In a natural environment, with a little or a lot of imagination and creativity there are actually 100s of things to do, of course!)
14. No email or IM.
15. No phone service, cell or otherwise.
16. No television.
17. No DVD movies.
18. No work requirements or deadlines.
19. Lots of face to face (F2F) conversations.
20. More time than usual to be alone and be quiet.

Anything else you’d add to this list?

For me, disconnecting from technology has increasingly defined a great, relaxing vacation. That is probably why my family and I have enjoyed camping so much– we have an old popup trailer that is essentially a floored tent… No working electrical or even water connections, just a nicer tent to crash in at night.

So, it’s great to be back at work– I am loving my new job, and looking forward to meeting lots of Kansas educators as well as visiting again with Will Richardson later this week at the 2006 Mid-America Technology Institute in Winfield. The hosts are going to archive both my spotlight presentations on Kan-Ed Live, and I’ll likely podcast as well, so look for more content later this week and weekend!

If you’re interested, I posted a bunch of photos from our time at Hunter’s Peak on my Flickr site. I’ll close my post with an image of Pilot and Index mountains, as seen from the Sunlight Basin on the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway near the turn to Hunters Peak:

I love living in Oklahoma, but I will always remain ready to return to the mountains! Wyoming is definitely God’s country!

Blog fasting and vacations defined originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 24, 2006.

Program Length: 31 min, 35 sec
File size: 15.2 MB

(Click here to listen to this podcast)

Show notes for this podcast include:

1. “The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress” by Virginia Postrel
2. “Wagging the Dog in Instructional Technology: Elevating ‘IT’ Into the Classroom” (a TechEdge article from 1998-99)
3. The “IT Guy” column for Technology and Learning
4. Creative Commons “Get Creative” movie/animation
5. Yerkes-Dodson Curve of Stress versus Performance
6. “How Children Fail” by John Holt

Subscribe to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” weekly podcasts!

Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!

Technorati Tags: creativity, education, podcasting, puppy

Podcast62: Cultures of Control and Creativity in Schools originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 20, 2006.

Intro by TTU President Smith:
For 9 years of my life I worked for the CIA, keeping secrets
- one joke: if you have 3 members of the Hell’s angels, they can keep a secret forever only if 2 of them are dead
- other joke was: if you have 3 CIA agents, they can keep a secret forever if none of them are dead
- think about that

Lynn’s comments:

Went from being asked to overlook to told what was OK for the CEOs was not OK for me
- realized these guys were buying up power in one place and shipping it different places
- California said they needed “decongestion” of power
- Enron was making more off decongesting fees than trading power

I went to the head of public relations

Edgar is electronic reporting system all public companies use
- to violate security on SES
- offered letter or resignation, instead gave her a promotion to NW for Enron Broadband Services
- money was no object, this was technology and we were in the bubble

Enron kept getting into these businesses because they could create these forward price curves
- we had lots of people look at
- we were falsifying the future likely value of things
- if the markets don’t produce what you are predicting, then you have to…

There were no switches, and were going to create a new internet so you could stream MTV
- there were just 2 competitors
- both were going out of business: 1 was laying off lots of employees, the other

To have liquidity in a market, you have to trade
- I told my boss his predications about $40 more per share was not accurate, his response was

I realized this went all the way up to the top, so I did what
- I called the employee assistance program
- I said I have evidence of bank fraud and espionage on the part of Enron ….
- the women said: ma’am, because our fees our paid by Enron I can’t take your call, you’ll have to get a private lawyer

So I submitted my letter of resignation
Left
Heard some stuff on the radio, so I sent an email
Then a syndicated radio talk show called, and I confessed my sins
The radio person said to go to the gov’t

Called a Senator, his staffers said

Enron was bankrupt 3 years before it filed for protection
- this is a 2 part story about those who refused to tell the truth, and also those who refused to listen

Picture of iceberg
- look at corporations and organizations differently
- Enron is the extreme example
- organizations really have 2 parts: the above the waterline
- 2/3rds of what is moving that organization forward or backward are the people who are below the waterline

As a new organizational employee you will be below the waterline for some time

Some COEs
- we had values! (respect, integrity, communication, excellence)
- from leadership, tone was set by Ken Lay (CEO) as integrity
- Jeff Skilling: said don’t cut corners

Average age of employees at enron was 33, tenure in 3 years, you would have 4 positions generally during that time, there was a lot of churning

Enron lost $90 billion in 30 days

Grad students at Cornell: May 5, 1988
- report recommending sell on Enron’s stock
- said Enron may be manipulating their stock value and earnings
- there is no gaining back when you lose value

From that point Enron stock would go up 1400%

I say Enron employees are not victims
- they chose to invest 100% of their retirement in Enron as employees

Jeff said in 2000 annual report
- company reached a record $1.3 billion in 2000
- READ THE annual report written by the CEO for any company you are going to work for or are considering buying, etc.
- Nothing indicated the discrepancy between that figure and….

Below the Bottom Line
- you have a culture in the organization
- you either define it, or it will define you, it is a living, breathing organism based on the values of the employees that make it up

Lynn founded “Integrity Institute”
- attached a CYA memo to the email
- I know that it went on, and I didn’t do

What did the board of directors do?
= Enron’s internal hotline incident reports
- there were thousands of people in this organization blowing the whistle, and 30% of them alleged criminal activities, 40% were fraud

A measure of of success is the measure of your risk!
- 2001: 6,400 whistleblowing reports made every month to the SEC the year Enron imploded

I say young people are more likely to go to work for an Enron or not

Today in 2004: There are 40,000 whistleblowing reports made every month to the SEC
- number of companies is going down, number of whistleblowing reports is going up

[MY THOUGHT: THIS IS VERY SCARY]

You are more likely today to find out that things are wrong in your company from the SEC than your own employees
- these stats tell me that employees don’t trust their leadership

Right and Wrong are Not Black and White
- most of us are and were pretty good people
- we didn’t go to work to defraud people
- they didn’t say: “cook the books” they said “find me the revenue” or we’ll find someone to replace you

Over time in companies, culture changes people
- so over time, I was becoming someone I didn’t like in Enron

If enough people who are positive, trustworthy, and have integrity leave the organization, all you have left are the dark people
- they didn’t want the people who would stand up for injustice

As you go through life, decisions are not about black and white
- they are really about the grey between black and white
- as you begin to see things happening in organizations, you begin to play tricks with yourself and rationalize things

We are moving at such a fast pace in our society, deals of Enron were closed at the 11th hour before attorneys could do the research they needed to do
- the majority of people in corporations are people

Short clip from “Vertical Limit”
- father and children faced with a dilemma
- cut the rope and kill the dad, or not?

the way we describe risk is as something you dont’ expect but you have to plan for
- in Enron, they would do the deals and then manage the risks later

Tulane professors: Art B.
” Good people do horrendous things in the workplace because the don’t see the situation as an ethical dilemma. They see it as a business problem to be solved.”

At Enron, where we couldn’t change the rules we broke them

This next clip is from Friends

If you don’t know the answer, just admit you don’t know the answer and then work to find the answer
- most of these cases are about THE COVERUP
- not about the wrong that was done, about what

Change in federal sentencing guidelines, this 38 year old married and with a baby
- did a structured finance deal with Enron, but there was no legitmate business purpose for doing that deal except boosting revenue
- for that he was sentenced for 24 years in prison with no chance of parole

Andy pled guilty before new sentencing guidelines went in

From Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, successor to Jack Welch: “Our concern that keeps me up at night is that among the 300,000-plus GE employees worldwide, there are a handful who choose to ignore our code of ethics. I would be naive to assume a few bad apples don’t exist in our midst.”

Do not assume that innovation is a good thing, regulation in some cases protects us from ourselves

There is some sort of fraud, more than likely, going on in every organization
- generally you have about 6% of employees reporting wrongdoing, if you have more or less than you should be really concerned

Now clip from “The Apprentice”
- this was very much like being inside Enron
- every day in the board room of Enron was like this

understand this stuff is going on all around us

Beliefs, Behaviors and Boundaries
- we have boundaries in our lives: medians in the middle of the road, etc
- we are supposed to drive down the middle of the lane
- we have mandated speeding laws, etc.

we have VOLUNTARY boundaries as well as MANDATED boundaries
- we have found that for young people, their brains develop more slowly

Beliefs and Behaviors, and objectives
- obstacles come up (we call them “market forces” in business)

First thing that goes is your value system (you are a little drunk but decide to still drive home)
- you know you aren’t doing well driving but you keep going
- regulation is there to save you from yourself

Without accountants, good boards of directors, etc– things can become corrupt
- they can go off course

Short film clip showing how fast things can go bad

showed graph of companies that lost billions in a short number of days

Don’t go to work for a company that has a 63 page vision statement
- don’t just go to work for the most money
- most of these were not startups, these are the companies we invest our futures in
- we have to ask ourselves, “Is there a little bit of Enron in all of us?”

absolutely, the only thing that keeps us on the straight and narrow is that which keeps us is the voice inside us
- I love to call it my GPS

closing analogy: JFK Jr.
- certified licensed pilot
- got warning on way up to a wedding about an incoming storm
- does not pay heed to that, begins to fly
- at some point in time had instruments that would tell him if he was upside down or not, and he decided he knew better– then 3 people were dead

we do have internal instrumentation
- that is the only thing that will keep you out of prison

suggestion: create a new reality for yourself, if there are not great things going on in that company, then leave that company
- most of the misdeeds that happen are a result of shame

Either we are too ashamed to admit we made a mistake, or someone will shame us into doing something we should not

Lynn Brewer on Enron and Ethics originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 6, 2006.

He become CEO at age 39, served in that capacity for 20+ years. Regards himself as a “professional board member” now. He currently serves on 5 boards. They have retired here in Lubbock, and he is now a “gentleman rancher.”

He believes the companies that operate with a strong code of ethics are and will be most successful.

Contrary to popular perceptions that all CEOs are crooks

My 3 points and a case history of an ethical public corporation.
If you are a leader of any organization, from a family to a major public company, there are 3 points you need to walk away from

1- honesty and integrity are good ethics, it is not 1 way to conduct business, it is the only way (esp for the long term)

2- good ethics in an organization (even the smallest) takes generally all the people acting together (in my case it took at least 5 years to make it work
- takes a long time to put ethics
- 1 person cannot do it, you need the help of everyone

3- even good, honest, ethical people need checks and balances to keep them honest

Good example: speeding, driving too fast
- it is a law

Let me ask you: are you an honest man/woman? Do you willingly break a law, by speeding

30 years ago I was an industrial engineer, trained as a petroleum engineer by Amoco
- little human resource training
- had big problems when I become COE of a NYSE public company
- I turned the job down the first time
- I didn’t think I was ready, I was promoted over 4 older and more experienced senior officers

Company was Mountain Fuel Supply and desperately needed to be restructured
- headquarters was in Salt Lake, were 4 different organizations
- had some problems: people using business resources for personal uses
- there were rumors floating around
- that was the lay of the land

at 39 I was relatively young, I knew for the next 20-25 years I was hopefully going to run this organizations
- I knew I needed to do the right thing, because I was going to pay for my mistakes
- many people move jobs so often they don’t have to face the consequences of their own mistakes
- public utility in any state is going to have diverse constituents
- I needed something to motivate employees so they would help the restructuring process, a mission and vision statement along with a strategy
- I needed a competitive edge, one that would last a long time

1 and only thing that would please the officers, employees, investors, public, and politicians: Honesty and integrity (good ethics)

WE completely restructured the company
- formed Questar corporation as a holding company, currently on the NYSE
- said the quest (progress and growth) of the company continues
- went to all debt holders and restructured the debt

If you have an ethical organization, you don’t need a lot of regulation
- results after we finished: drastically increased stock price of the company

Everything was on the table during restructuring except honesty and integrity
- people got tired of listening to it
- before it was fashionable, we developed a business ethics and compliance policy
- made each employee read the policy and sign they AND THEIR FELLOW EMPLOYEES did not have any violations

Ethics policy of a bank in Utah Don serves on the board of
1- be honest
2- respect others
3- avoid conflicts of interest
4- comply with laws, policies, and regulations
5- speak up

About 10 years ago, I appointed a VP for monitoring and ethics
- called people up and followed up on points people wrote down
- we setup a hotline so employees could call anonymously
- setup compensation so officers and employees were being rewarded for the same parameters
– that is very important if want people

We said officers had no more special benefits than employees, but their time was more valuable so they were paid more
- cut out first class travel, country clubs, spouse travel, company cars, special retirement benefits

Now on checks and balances
- this is VERY important
- “if you have your own way long enough, you will end up screwing yourself”

I believe that statement is true
- you have to work every day at being a person of integrity and honesty
- think about your kids watching you speeding when you are driving in the car
- ethics in the family means this: setting a good example for your family
- you are the ethical leader of your family: if you don’t practice good ethics, your children won’t either

accountants and legal resources know what is going on
- we had dual reporting chain
- you always need 2 avenues so you have a way for things to be reported

I was paid a good compliment by a former employee who said that after 5 years of having to put ethics, honesty and integrity into everything it become internalized, a source of pride
- hardest problem: was told we had a mailroom employee dealing amphetamines to other employees, and were challenged to do something about it
- I did one of the best and worst things I’ve ever done: I put a part time undercover agent working in my organization, and we found out what was going on and we fired some people
- I lost a lot of sleep over that
- that is fallout: you are going to fire some of your friends for doing the wrong thing, or your employees won’t stay behind you.

Once you know about something wrong that is going on, you have to do something about it

Officers and managers are watched very closely by the employees
- you start preaching, the preacher gets watched very closely
- employees would say: prove it by walking the talk, if you will I will

I had a bird dog, a check and balance on me, who was a lawyer
- officers and managers were no different from other employees but they were paid more

I believe this program made me and the other officers/managers better and more ethical people than we really were
- think about that a little bit
- once you start walking the talk, you can’t quit

When auditing requirements changed, we had to have some more meetings
- stocks have doubled and tripled over past years

Bad ethics is profitable only for a short period of time
- good ethics can be profitable both in the short and the long term
- it is not IF you are going to be caught– there are no secrets in a public corporation or any large organization
- it is only a matter of time till you get caught, and those repercussions today are serious: money, jail time, or both

Good ethics are the only way to go if you are a business, esp in a publicly traded company

Worldcom, Tyco, and Enron? What happened?
- we used to do a lot of work with Enron
- we didn’t understand how they were heavily leveraged
- I don’t know if those accused or guilty or not

3 things
1- they promoted an environment where new ideas, innovation and growth over good ethics
2- ignored checks and balances in their corporation: no one came forward with problems until it was too late
3- in business what we search for is respect: they lost the respect of others, including investors, so lost a multi-billion dollar company

Was in top 4 or 5 companies in the US at one time
- it all came down to bad ethics

Bad ethics: 1 little mistake, can ruin your life forever
- penalties are severe, they can stay with you forever

Bad ethics, people making a lot of money through dishonest things doesn’t pay
- there are no secrets
- eventually, it is only a matter of time till someone finds out what you did
- you still gotta pay, even if it is 30 years later

Arthur Anderson as an accounting firm is gone
- checks and balances are key
- they didn’t have real equity to support their “vehicles,” they were using company stock
- so then those went defunct and it came back on Enron’s books

Crime does not pay, maybe all you lost is reputation
- when they close your coffin, you have your reputation, your integrity, and some people believe your faith when you die

Don Cash on Business Ethics originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 6, 2006.

In times of crisis, pace comes to my aid. Another of Petzoldt’s lessons was when faced with an emergency, sit down, collect yourself, make a plan. When needs seem most urgent — even life-threatening — the practice of slowing down offers calm and clarity.

Also:

There is magic in any faith. Every once in a while, rushing about, my belief in pace rises up, slows me down and grants me a view of a sunset, a smile from a stranger or a conversation with a child. I owe these moments to what I learned from an old mountain climber and have practiced ever since.

The pace of the world today, moving as much of it is “at the speed of creativity,” is much faster than our natural, biological pace. We need to slow down. We need to pace ourselves. We need to remember “the rest step” that Paul Petzoldt taught Phil as a young 19 year old. I am reminded of the book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv. I want my own children to grow up in a natural environment like Phil did, where they can explore and have frequent times of free, unstructured play in that world.

At Philmont Scout Ranch as a teenager climbing Baldy Mountain, I remember being taught the rest step by my Scoutmaster, Ray Hightower. Later in life, as a ranger for 2 summers at Philmont, I passed this lesson on to the scouts and adults in the crews I worked with. The rest step is vital in climbing mountains, and in walking through the journey of life.

Thanks to Phil for sharing this story, and thanks to the Scout mentors and others in my life who have encouraged me to strive for tall peaks– while maintaining a “rest step.” It’s a lesson I want to pass on to my own children, and need to be reminded of regularly in the frenetic pace of our “modern” culture.

Value of Slowing Down originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 5, 2006.

I think this observation is right on the money in many 21st century contexts. Too many people in life today suffer from a “deficit of joy.” We are often too hurried, too stressed, too busy to enjoy the sunset, too task-oriented to experience the simple pleasure of sharing a cup of coffee with a friend. I have posted these thoughts in my “Luddite” blog category, because they go right along with other ideas I have shared before relating to our need to critically question technology and its impact on our lives (as well as specifically on our classrooms.)

Dr. Orr questions whether or not this deficit is endemic to large organizations, but suggests it is not– and I agree with him. It is based more on the choices individuals make rather than a culture which is unavoidably imposed.

He also speaks to the “clockspeed issue” of contemporary civilization relative to the innate clockspeed of human beings. He tells the story of taking his students from Oberlin to Klein’s farm, which is Amish. The Amish judge technologies based on their potential or actual impact on their community. I love this quotation from the end of Dr. Orr’s presentation (1:16:01 of the podcast):

The clockspeed of contemporary civilization is now incredibly fast, but the clockspeed internal to everyone in this room is the clockspeed that was set fifty or a hundred thousand years go. We were programmed, basically, to tell each other stories around campfires. That’s our internal programming. And we’re about the same as Neanderthal folks were… Our clockspeed is still that of fifty or a hundred or two hundred thousand years ago, but our technology now is this staccato technology, and it is the disharmony between these two [that we need to address].

He goes on to offer some practical suggestions for people to slow down the pace of their life, make their eating habits more environmentally sensitive, etc.

I think the environmental doomsday theme of Dr. Orr’s presentation, particularly early in the podcast, is probably over the top– but who really does know? He talks about the delta graph of global consumption tied to the availability and use of fossil fuels, and contends we either are already or soon will be on the downward side of that delta graph. I tend to think that renewable energy sources are available and will become commercially viable when there is sufficient market incentive for that paradigm shift. The pace of change certainly has a dark side, but I think ultimately we will benefit from advances in technology which will help us live (as a human race) in more ecologically sensitive and sustainable ways. I agree with Dr. Orr’s core message that this is a CHOICE, not an inevitability, and we need to reorient conversations we have in educational and other contexts to consider environmental aspects.

I agreed with Dr. Orr’s observation early on that formal education is not necessarily equivalent to real learning. His observation that the root of the word “education” is “to educe,” which means “to draw out” rather than “to stuff in” was enlightening.

His discussion midway through the lecture about the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, who applied Freudian psychology to mass marketing, was also thought provoking. The BBC aired a documentary in 2002 entitled “The Rise of the All-Consuming Self and the Influence of the Freud Dynasty – from Sigmund to Matthew.” In the description of that program, the BBC editor wrote:

Bernays invented the profession of public relations in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses.

Dr. Orr quoted Bernays in his presentation as saying:

The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process.

Lots of good material to think about here and study with students on the subjects of media literacy and critical thinking. I think Orr’s postulates that U.S. kids are being dumbed down since they get almost all their information about current events from television sources is a bit outdated: Access to the Internet has certainly changed this for many, and will continue to do so as Internet access and 1:1 computing becomes more ubiquitous.

Overall this was a thought provoking presentation. Again, thanks to the technological power of podcasts, I am thrilled to have been able to listen to this message here in Lubbock, Texas that was shared with a Canadian audience fifteen days ago. It inspires me to read the book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv, which my wife read last summer but I have not taken time to read yet. Dr. Orr referenced and recommended the book in his presentation. Thanks for the podcasts UBC!

Deficits of Joy & Human Clockspeed originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 28, 2006.

Tonight for fun (and in preparation for my continuing Sunday school teaching series about the theology of C.S. Lewis) I spent about an hour and fifteen minutes listening to Dr. Elaine Pagel’s lecture at the University of Nebraska from September 15, 2005, entitled “Beyond Disbelief: A Different View of Christianity.” This is included as podcast 2 on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s podcast channel. (In the iTunes podcast directory, search for “University of Nebraska-Lincoln”– I couldn’t find a direct URL link to it to include here.) More info about the E.N Thompson Forum, for which Dr Pagels was the September speaker, is available.

Back in November 2003, I shared a lesson with my Friday morning men’s fellowship group entitled “Gnosticism and Blasphemy: An Analysis of “Beyond Belief: by Elaine Pagels.” I subtitled this, “Gnosticism and Blasphemy: Old Ideas with a New Cover.”

Pagels still appears to be one of the most formally, academically distinguished advocates for the gnostic worldview in the early 21st century. 2 years ago before I shared the above presentation, I had read Pagel’s book “Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas.” I do NOT actually recommend this book to anyone. Instead I would recommend reading the Bible itself, or as a secondary source related to my current Sunday school study, “Mere Christianity” by C. S. Lewis.

Why would I, a much less hallowed academic with far fewer credentials than Pagels, offer such advice? Well, let’s take a look at several of the core beliefs of Pagels which come through after reading “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,” and are further reinforced after listening to her September lecture in Lincoln, Nebraska:

1. Pagels believes there is more than one path to God / ultimate salvation (this is a gnostic and relativistic view)
2. Pagels denies the unique deity of Jesus, that Jesus was God (she claims we all are divine / have God within us, again another gnostic tenet)
3. In the podcast lecture Pagels admits that both the gospels of Mark and Matthew state the divinity of Jesus, but in her book she claims that the gospel writer John was the only one to make this claim.
4. Pagels encourages readers and listeners to her lecture to regard as equally valid the writings included in the Bible as well as the apocryphal writings like the “gospel of Thomas” (as I note below, she “asserts to show how all the the gospels (both those in the NT and the “others” discovered after 1945) were socially constructed by the authors of the gospels after the death of Jesus)
5. Pagels comes across agreeing with the author of the gospel of Thomas, that all people can discover/find God within themselves (i.e. no one needs Jesus, he does not play a unique role in connecting us to God or ultimate salvation)

There are 2 more contentions Pagels makes in her book that are included in my presentation from November 2003. I think what I have written here is sufficient to make my initial point, however: Pagels is clearly a heretic from both Christian orthodox and reformed perspectives, because she denies the unique deity of Christ and his pivotal role in the salvation of the human race.

Pagels’ message has doubtless resonance with many in the postmodern, relativistic culture in which we live, because she is the evangelist of the new-gnostics who proclaim there is not “one way” to salvation. The gnostic view is that there are many ways. And who are we to judge? Accept, embrace and love: God is in the rocks and the wood just like he is inside you and me. (She literally says this in her lecture when explaining the gospel of Thomas.) On page 29 of her book “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,” Pagels reveals her gnostic belief system and rejection of the idea of “one way to salvation.” I don’t think I have written anything contentious in this post so far in terms of representing what Pagels’ message and actual theological position is: She is a gnostic and a relativist.

A friend of mine who was the youth pastor at our church, Matt Mitchell, is completing his final year of seminary at Princeton, where Pagels is the “Harrington Spear Pain Professor of Religion.” It will be quite interesting to compare notes with Matt (whose theology I would characterize as firmly “reformed” when compared to Pagels) at some point in the not too distant future.

It is sobering to both read and hear (via podcast no less) how vibrantly alive gnostic faith is today in 2005, as we are almost into 2006. This should not be a surprise, however. Gnosticism is quite old, even predating Christianity. Pagels, in her podcast lecture, states how exciting and insightful it is that we can read the gospel of Thomas alongside the Gospel of John, and get an insiders view to an argument between two factions in the early Christian church.

Gnosticism existed in the early church and offered a formidable challenge to the teachings of Christ. No kidding. This is not a surprise or a revelation to anyone who has studied the Bible. Why did the apostle Paul have to write so many letters to the early churches? In large part because many were straying from the GOSPEL, and one of the ways they strayed was by listening to gnostics like the followers of Thomas.

I did find Pagels’ points about how the author of the Gospel of John uniquely made Thomas into a “character” to be interesting, and I did find her point that the Gospel of John was a response to the gnostic teachings embedded within the gospel of Thomas to be fairly convincing. I fail, however, to agree with her position that the gospel of Thomas should be regarded with equal authority to the other gospels of the NT, including the Gospel of John. I actually reject all of Pagels’ seven contentions, which I examined and discussed in my November 2003 presentation.

So why is this relevant today in 2005? Well, the question is a very basic one. Who do you say Jesus was and is? This is a key issue discussed by C.S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”. Let me quote from pages 40-41 of my copy, at the end of the chapter entitled, “The Shocking Alternative,” which I also quoted in my post from December 5th entitled, “Theology of C.S. Lewis.”

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus]: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic– on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg– or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon: or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But lets us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Clearly, Pagels’ view of Jesus Christ is quite different from that of C.S. Lewis and myself. Don’t make the mistake Pagels has apparently made up to this point, along with many other gnostics throughout the millenia. Jesus was not “just another man” with the divine spark inside him, like a rock laying out on your driveway or a stick in your backyard. He was the Son of God.

Here are my notes I typed up listening to Pagels’ podcast lecture tonight. It is certainly interesting to listen to her views and hear about apocryphal “secret writings.” It is even more important, however, to understand the gnostic worldview which Pagels is advancing here– to “unmask” it, if it you will, not as an inconsequential difference of opinions among academics, but rather as a fundamental challenge to the underlying basis of orthodox and reformed Christianity. That is what gnosticism is, and what it has always been. That is why I titled my November 2003 presentation, “Gnosticism and Blasphemy: Old Ideas with a New Cover.”

You shouldn’t believe everything you read and hear, you know– whether it is in a book, on the Internet, or in a podcast!

—-notes follow—-

Pagels contends all the gospels (those included in the NT and the apocryphal ones) were socially constructed by their indeterminate authors after the death of Jesus

says gospels of John and Thomas show “advanced teachings” of Jesus

good news is different in gospel of Mark (the good news is the kingdom of God is coming soon, so repent and believe) versus gospel of John (kingdom of God is also here and now)

she is portraying first of all that the gospels are equivalent

She immediately discredits Ireneus and makes fun of him, basically calling him stupid by indicating he said there were only 4 gospels because there are just 4 directions and 4 winds

Sayings in gospel of Thomas indicate that knowing God is a state of being and knowing who you are, knowing you are children of God and you live in God’s presence
- also says there is not a “coming kingdom of God” / revelation

asserts the equivalence of all the writings from the early Christian period

says that initial publishers of gospel of Thomas in 1959 did not find the heresy that Ireneus contended was there

gospel of Thomas suggests the divine energy of God is within each human and within all objects: wood, rocks, etc.
- you can find the light in Jesus, also in yourself
- the Good news is about Jesus but also about you and me

My thought: the “good news” according to Pagels is that Jesus was not anyone special, you don’t really need Jesus, because the divine light of God is in everything: in us, in rocks, in sticks, etc.

For Pagels: practical question is “how do you find the light”
- John offers a very different answer to this than Thomas, even though there are many similarities between gospels of John and Thomas
- Pagels recommends you read both gospels side by side to listen in on a contentious argument happening between the early followers of Jesus
- these show opposite sides of an argument
- author of John wrote his own gospel to set people straight, he believed the gospel of Thomas was taking people in the wrong direction (to correct people he wrote this gospel)
– John says even though there was divine light in the beginning, he wants to say the light of God never penetrated the deep darkness of the world until Jesus came
– John’s favorite word for Jesus is “God’s only son”
- Gospel of Thomas suggests that both you and I are children of God

in Gospel of John there is not the story of the prodigal son or the sermon on the mount
- what Jesus teaches in the gospel of John are the “I am” sayings
- I am the vine, the door, the good shepherd, the way, etc.
- I am all that you need, the divine in person
- John says you must believe that I am he (“somehow God” in the Words of Pagels)
- John wants to show that Jesus is equal to God: God in human form
- interestingly at the end of the Gospel of John, the person who “gets the point” (that Jesus is God) is Thomas
- Pagels: “the bad news of gospel of John is that the rest of us are not like Jesus”

See minute/second 42:44 of the podcast for Pagel’s big critique of John’s main issue of Jesus’ deity
- in the other gospels, there are not any “episodes” with Thomas
- John turns Thomas into a character, he gets his reputation through only John’s gospel
– Ch 11: story of Jesus hearing story of Lazarus (Thomas doesn’t believe Jesus can raise the dead)
– Ch 14: Thomas says, “we don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way” (apparently this is aimed against the teaching of the Thomas following Christians)
– Ch 21: “Jesus comes back from the dead specifically to chastize Thomas”
— Matthew and Luke both say Jesus appeared to the 11 (no Judas)
— major point is to show who receives Jesus’ authority and power, this is a very important point
— John in Ch 21 says the disciples are my apostles/ representatives, he breathed on them the power of the Holy Spirit, he gave them his authority
—- the next line is “Thomas was not with them at the meeting”
—– this means Thomas is not authorized, not one of them, not delegated the power
—– John’s story of doubting Thomas is a parody of the focus in the gospel of Thomas on experiential learning
- he is making the point that you are not supposed to seek, you are supposed to believe

The Thomas Christians think there are other ways

“Thomas and John take a common body of teachings….”

50:30 story of declaring “heresy” writings like those of Thomas

Nicene Creed is the eventual result of historical discussions about who Jesus is
- it basically accepts all the writings of John
- these creeds essentially say that “Jesus is the same as God”
- “this strand of Christianity becomes orthodox”
- “with the discovery of these other texts we can see that there were other options which were not taken into this movement and now enormously change the way we see the beginnings of Christianity”

No doubt the gnostics were there in the beginning and they are with us today
- Pagels is one of the gnostics’ primary modern day evangelists

She contends there was not “an early Christian church” but there were many
- implication is that there are many equally valid truths and paths to ultimate salvation

“This goes back to Jewish mystical tradition, Cabal tradition, idea that you find in the Gospel of Thomas: God created us in the divine image and we can find access to God by finding that deep source within us that we may have buried within us, our primordial being, that is what we have to recognize in ourselves and in our universe”
- in accord with mystical tradition

“idea is not that Jesus is not divine, it is that mystical presence is in all of us”

“There are so many possible ways to interpret the gospel of John, which are not at all narrow”

we should read “I am the way, the truth and the life” in a much more inclusive way, as a “contemplative monk” Pagels talked to did

—-end of notes—-

Modern day gnosticism originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 25, 2005.

His discussion of “learning no longer in advance of need” reminds me of Jonathan Levy’s discussion of “just in time” versus “just in case” education from eLearn2005 last week in Vancouver. I love George’s concept that “I am not the network, I am a node on the network and am my own network.” This fits with thinking I have been doing about social networks and the importance of structuring learning experiences which acknowledge the need to let learners scaffold and connect real experiences to their own perspectives. We need to challenge students to engage as active learners in the read/write web environment of the 21st century.

George talks about the need to “extend the neural networks of our learners,” and ties this in with chaos theory and systems thinking. I love these ideas, and really appreciate the diverse philosophies, perspectives, and theories which George ties together in this presentation.

I had not heard of Snowden’s Four Ontologies of Sense Making previously– I certainly resonate with George’s contention that “we are close to chaos” in many educational learning contexts, and we need to pay attention to this disconnect between formal learning environments and the world in which we live. George’s discussion on learning theories and learning domains (slide 10 of the preso) is a terrific breakdown of learning theories of transmission, emergence, acquisition, and connectivism. I actually may use this preso by George in my upcoming winter class on desktop publishing. Our ability to access and utilize presentations like this one, as well as many others that are part of the MIT Open Courseware initiative, is just amazing.

I like the idea George discusses about a “microcontent view of learning”– with which we no longer have to have a “course model of information acquisition.” I thoroughly agree with George’s statement that we can no longer have an exclusive “consumer mentality” when it comes to education. George exhorts us to understand the “different relationship which now exists between content producers and content consumers,” and I think he is right on target.

His observation that we are NOT being impeded in our transformation of educational paradigms by an “absence of tools,” but rather by our unwillingness / inability to construct a new view of learning, is insightful. George accurately contends that the importance of developing skills in identifying the quality and validity of information is absolutely critical in our new, digital knowledge environment.

I have thought and heard about this problem before, but had not previously known about the term “echo chamber.” This refers to the idea that our new knowledge environment is prospectively problematic if learners self-segregate themselves into intellectually homogenous groups. If people are not being exposed to contrary positions or opinions– they are choosing to just read/listen/be exposed to opinions that they basically agree with– then this can be conceived of as a problematic “echo chamber.” As digital educators we need to recognize and address this potential problem.

On slide 19 of the presentation, George characterizes our current educational paradigm as one in which we “still view content and courses as the starting point of learning.” I agree with George that we should “focus on connection-forming tools as the starting point of learning.” Rather than just giving students one-shot content, like having them read a book, it is much more powerful to expose people to a reflective and insightful blog which can lead to continued learning into the future, if that person chooses to follow the blog. I think teachers can do both, providing students with a great book written by an author who maintains a dynamic and related blog. This is what I did with David Warlick’s books and blog in my “Advanced Integration of Technology into the Curriculum” course this summer.

I had not heard of Scott Wilson’s “future virtual learning environment” model either, before listening and watching George’s presentation on Connectivism. I concur with George’s observation that in many contexts, “our capacity to know more is more critical than what is known now.

George’s discussion on the starting point of learning is also right on target. He observes “content is often the byproduct of the learning process, not the starting point.” How contrary and upside down is that perspective, when we think about “traditional learning models!” George exhorts educators to “start with connections, not content, for twenty-first century learning.” He contends that the ability to see connections (pattern recognition) between ideas and concepts is critical to learning. What George is talking about here is the vital importance of teachers to engage students at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, at the synthesis/evaluation levels, which is also a theme of Chris Moersch.

Lastly, George’s observation that “decision making is in itself a learning process” is right on the money. Rather than think of content, courses, and curriculum as the starting point for learning– I agree that we should look at connections and authentic problem solving situations (which involve problem solving) as better starting points and contexts for learning. At least for education that matters. And aren’t we all in this business to provide those types of opportunities for students? Teachers who are not need to find a new profession.

George made this presentation with Articulate Presenter created by Articulate, a company with the slogan “your knowledge at the speed of change.” Sounds a lot like “Moving at the Speed of Creativity,” doesn’t it? The software description for Articulate Presenter from the official website is:

Eliminate all the time, complexity and cost of creating professional-quality Flash presentations and e-learning courses. Articulate Presenter lets non-technical users create e-learning courses by adding narration and interactivity to a standard PowerPoint file. At the press of the button, your presentation is transformed into a compelling Flash-based course.

This is a very powerful eLearning technology for teacher-centered content delivery. The major bummer is that like Camtasia studio, the Articulate Presenter authoring software is Windows-only. Once you create content, however, it is available for a cross-platform audience via Flash player.

If anyone knows of a tool like this that is Mac compatible please let me know.

If you have feedback for George on this excellent presentation, you can email him directly– his blog post for this preso does not allow commenting.

Connectivism presentation and Articulate Presenter originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 5, 2005.

I have an admission to make. I love physics. I did not major in science in college– but some of my favorite courses in high school were Engineering Physics, Atmosphere & Space Science, and Physical Geology. I didn’t care much for chemistry, mainly because in high school my teacher should have retired about 10 years before I took his class– and in college I knew enough about the subject to qualify for the “one year in one semester” version of chemistry that was too much content too fast for me at the time– but the ideas of special relativity and quantum mechanics have still always intrigued me. Later in college I read most of both “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra and “The Dancing Wu Li Masters : An Overview of the New Physics” by Gary Zukav. These ideas were and are complex and BIG, but very exciting and intriguing to me, despite my status as a declared “fuzzy major” in academe.

This film is based on Brian Green’s book “The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory,” which I have not read yet. I may pick up a copy.

The film does a superb job of helping viewers understand the life work of Albert Einstein in context. I knew a bit about both relativity and quantum mechanics, but did not know how relativity relates to “space-time” or how later in life, Einstein basically ignored the work of the quantum mechanics physicists who were painting a picture of the world much less “elegant” and simply probabilistic which Einstein did not want to accept.

String theory is something I had heard about before watching “The Elegant Universe,” but not really understood. And I still just understand a bit– but references from past physics courses to multi-dimensions and space-time make a lot more sense now. From what I perceive so far, it sounds like string theory is not testable by observations and experimentation. So the line between philosophy and physics is very thin here.

Great stuff! I highly commend this film to anyone interested in better understanding theories about the ultimate nature of the universe.

The PBS website for “The Elegant Universe” actually includes all 3 hours of the show video online for viewing. Very cool. The interactive animations and demonstrations are also superb.

The Elegant Universe originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 9, 2005.

Program Length: 35 min, 10 sec
File size: 16.1 MB

(Click here to listen to this podcast)

Show notes for this podcast include:

1. My Podcast Resources
2. Lowell Monke’s article “Charlotte’s Webpage: Why Children Shouldn’t Have the World at Their Fingertips”
3. My reflections and thoughts on Monke’s article
4. “Natural Ethical Facts : Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition (Bradford Books) by William D. Casebeer
5. The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience by MIT Press
6. Valerie Gray Hardcastle – The MIT Press
7. “Principles of Neural Science” by Eric R. Kandel MD, James H. Schwatz MD PhD, Thomas M. Jessell PhD

Subscribe to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” weekly podcasts!

Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!

Podcast11: Storytelling and Cognitive Neuroscience originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 6, 2005.

J.K. Rowling again spins a marvelous yarn, which thankfully ties up a lot of loose ends and makes previous stories fit together much more coherently.

I am really wondering who the initials on the inside of the locket correspond to. Exciting foreshadowing there: someone else knows about horcruxes and has already been actively destroying them! So maybe Harry does not have 4 more to destroy before facing Voldemort in Book 7.

I predict that early in book 7, Harry will meet up with the destroyer of the Slytherin locket horcrux, and learn details about which remain to be found and destroyed.

I predict that Hogwarts will NOT close, as many of the students fear at the end of Book 6, and that Harry will return to finish out his last year. I suspect that summertime spent with the Weasley family will help convince him of this.

How sad that one of my favorite characters has died…. for HP fans who have not yet read the book, I won’t spoil your surprise by revealing who that is…. but it is truly sad. Why did it happen? I suspect he made an altogether mortal mistake of misjudging character. A mistake we can all make, sadly.

Who will emerge as the next professor of the DA? Certainly Harry will need more direct instruction before facing Snape again– a showdown which is sure to come in book 7, along with the climatic finale battle between Harry and Voldemort.

I was struck by similarities between George Lucas’ last epic and this one by J.K. Rowling. “The Chosen One.” Conceptions of destiny and prophesied conflicts have a near-universal resonance with us all, I think. I must say I did like and appreciate Rowling’s free will theology / philosophy in book 6. Voldemort as well as Harry have and still have choices. Life is not fated predestination. We choose, we act, and respond, as do others.

Destiny is not simply for works of fiction, however. Each one of us is called according to a purpose. Our task is to slow down enough in our lives so that we can accurately perceive and understand that purpose, and then act in accordance with its directive. Tall order, especially in the busy culture in which we are immersed.

I think meeting the challenge of that order effectively increasingly requires saying “no” to much of the busyness in our lives, and making time to spend more time on those things which really matter.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 14, 2005.

As a geographer, I especially like the dynamic map the 43 places site creates, coloring the countries you have visited or want to visit different colors. Very cool.

These websites are fun! They represent yet more examples of the read/write web in action!

Fun with 43 places, 43 things originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 17, 2005.

Make no mistake: Christianity is not equivalent to Islam originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 18, 2005.

Thoughts on “The Crusade Against Evolution” originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 12, 2004.

Why have science and print culture secularized us? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 1, 2004.

Reflections on interruptions, stress, and craziness originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 1, 2004.

Thoughts on Moral Relativism originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 16, 2004.