Building Understanding

The Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai, China is later this week. Continuing ISB’s dedication to always improving learning, we are sending a large group of teachers to the conference.

Awesome.

Keynote and other presenters include (does this look like a who’s who of blogrolls or what?!):

• Brian Crosby
• Clarence Fisher
• David Jakes
• Alan Levine
• Ewan McIntosh
• Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
• David Warlick
• Jeff Utecht
• Kim Cofino
  

Just to name a few.

In addition to thought-provoking sessions, one key element to the event are the “un-conferences” where conversations develop in pre-determined time blocks about anything.  The conference will monitor Twitter tweets to determine what unconference sessions will occur and then people will just “join the conversation”.

This year, I won’t be presenting – which I did do at last year’s Learning 2.0 with colleague Justin – so my focus is really going to be on learning from others.  This conference is always a tough one because there are always 3 or 4 sessions you want to go to in the same time slot!

I have quite a few former colleagues in Shanghai as well, so it’ll be great to catch up with them and to continue the great networking that this conference brings face2face.  Looking forward to meeting Brian Lockwood and Jenny Luca (all the way from NZ) who are a big part of my Personal Learning Network.

See you in China!

(man, this international education gig is good!)

Technorati Tags: learn2cn, learn2008cn

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Okay, so I concede right off the bat that by posting this link, I am cementing my status as a geek.  I guess the good thing is that among this crowd, that ain’t such a bad thing.

From Wired’s GeekDad section, I came across this post citing a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee study write up on PhysOrg.com that links instilling confidence in young girls with success in math and science.  No surprise there, of course, but certainly nice to have the hard data.  The three year study looked at the barriers and supports for girls in learning and pursuing math and science.

While interest is certainly a factor in getting older girls to study and pursue a career in these disciplines, more attention should be given to building confidence in their abilities early in their education, says UWM Distinguished Professor Nadya Fouad. She is one of the authors of a three-year study aimed at identifying supports and barriers that steer girls toward or away from science and math during their education.

“The relationship between confidence and interest is close,” says Fouad. “If they feel they can do it, it feeds their interest.”

Do our teachers and parents get this?

Are they not only providing opportunities for ALL students to learn, but also help them become confident young people?

If kids, as GeekDad’s Vincent Janoski suggests (and most of us believe), that a secure child does better in all things, then how much of what educators do is directed at this part of the child?

If we KNOW this works, why isn’t making kids confident and secure a bigger part of our curriculum and the needs of a 21st Century Learner?

I’ve recently returned to my RSS reader (anyone else incredibly frustrated with Netvibes right now?) and as expected, rememberd why I loved subscribing to all these writers in the first place.

One in particular that I want to get out there quickly since it could be a powerful start to your year, is a video that NCS-Tech shared with the tag line:

Every. Educator. Must. Watch. This. Now.

So I did.

Fifth grader, Dalton Sherman of Dallas, TX delivers the keynote address -  just 2 days ago – to 20,000 educators.  Not to be missed.

A great inspirational speech to start your year.

He’s in fifth grade!

It’s making the rounds now and since it’s so new there isn’t much about this kid out there.  Here’s an article I found.

Also a little shout out to Tracy for reminding me to get back on the blog and start writing again…this hardly counts, but the first step is just getting on.

Put me in coach.  I’m ready to play.

Thanks to my sister-in-law for passing this one along.

A little “fun with flash”.

My wife recently passed on to me an International Herald Tribune issue. Long story, but essentially, I was ‘unplugged’ somewhere and needed something to pass the time. It was a random day, with a random issue. I love the IHT, but don’t find much occasion to read it anymore (read that as time to read it) and get most of my news via RSS anyway. But here’s the thing…via RSS, sometimes, you miss the random gem, which you only come across if you either a) subscribe to everything, or b) get a hold of a newspaper.

On this particular day, the IHT re-ran a NYTimes Op-Ed piece by David Brooks called “Lord of the Memes”, which I’ve since also found online here.

In it, Brooks – with tongue in cheek – discusses the changes in what it takes to be psuedo-intellectual:

It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.

You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.

He writes of a change in times for what it takes to impress people. It’s a great article, read it.

He takes us from the period in which:

status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.

To one currently, where “media displaced culture.”

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.

Pretty funny and poignant stuff.

His main point, nowadays, being cool means keeping up with new technologies and gadgets so much so that “you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.”

Good stuff.

Anyway, I could quote the whole thing really…so I won’t. I’ll just suggest again, that you read it.

Enjoy.

Have the Paul Simon Anthology playing in the car and song 1 of disc 2 is the classic Graceland song, “Boy in the Bubble.”  In it, he juxtaposes the hard times humanity was facing alongside the wonder and amazement of technological advances.  In the chorus, he sings,

These are the days of miracle of wonder
This is the long distance call.
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo.
The way we look to a song, oh yeah.

The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in the corner of the sky.
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry.

Great song.

Hearing that song a lot lately – I don’t change the CD’s in the car that often – I am struck by how much you could add now.  The Internet, video skype, everybody writing, medical advances, the way the camera follows us from outer space, the way we pause live TV, and so much more.

We continue to live in “the days of miracle and wonder” (while still immersed in world conflict, tragedy and hate), but at what time will our education system change to embrace this?

How much longer can schools/administrators/teachers/parents resist acknowledging these amazing changes in technology and make the way our children learn reflect and tap into this?

I love it when music makes me think.

Enjoy.

We continue to live in days for miracle and wonder.  What new items should we include in a new verse for this song?

What are the new “miracles and wonders”?

The Brain Rules video has been making the rounds.  Justin shared it last week in his welcome return to the blogosphere.

It’s it the viral edu-video du jour and for good reason.

Then today I came across this intriguing article by Jeanna Bryner from LiveScience.com.  You may have come across it in the Yahoo! Featured headlines.

The brain is simply amazing.

The article describes Foresight Theory and the work of Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.  His research and theory offer an explanation for why optical illusions do what they do to our minds.  But it also throws out there, that people can “ get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur.”

We can see the future.

According to the article, scientists have long known about the one-tenth of a second delay between when light hits the retina in the eye and when the brain is able to make meaning of the image.  Early explanations theorized that our motor systems compensated.  

Changizi now says it’s our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd.

How cool is that?

The brain always amazes me and the potential of it seems limitless – listen to some of Medina’s examples in the Brain Rules video.  

Reading this article, my thoughts drifted back to the movie Phenomenon with John Travolta.  In the movie, Travolta’s character, George sees a blinding light and then gains incredible thinking skills, eventually leading to the fantastic telekinesis.

(SPOILER ALERT – com’on the movie is 12 years old!)  

For most of the movie everyone believes it was some alien force that gave him this power.  Eventually, they discover that George has a massive tumor that while killing him has also created completely new pathways and neural connections in his brain.

Okay, to my point – I loved George’s response, knowing he was dying.  He said, that he would choose the tumor explanation over the alien one, because it spoke to the potential of humanity.

“I’ll tell you what I think I am…. I’m what everybody can be.” — George Malley (JOHN TRAVOLTA) (found here)

Maybe the Foresight theory is a desperate stretch, or maybe Changizi is on to something.  

Either way, the brain continues to amaze.  

And we need to keep trying to tap that potential.

Image: “UNICEF//Potential“, by Paul Hollingworth, found at Flickr Creative Commons

What kids can get out of sports can’t be described any better than this story.

Thanks to my brother who writes a sports blog in Richmond, Virginia for sharing this story.

Man, I love sports.