jameswang.net » Education

Shift Happens 4.0

James Wang — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:34:56 +0000

Genius Machine

James Wang — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:52:13 +0000

I love playing with ideas. I’m definitely an idea guy. Unfortunately, though many of them do, many of them also don’t tend to ever see the light of day. I was reading Jason Curlee’s blog and saw this post recently talking about the book Genius Machine. Here’s quoting his analysis of it.

Ideas enter the process fuzzy, weak, and partially baked. Using the eleven steps–

Distinction (seeing something new),
Identity (knowing who you are and why you are driven to share your idea),
Implications (exploring every possible consequence of your idea),
Testing (find the breaking point),
Precedent (who else has done something like this),
Need (who will it be most valuable for / focus on your audience),
Foundation (discover the underlying principles or rules),
Completion (can your idea stand on its own),
Connecting (flattening the learning curve),
Impact (is the impact of your idea in alignment with your goals)
and Advocacy (you must champion your ideas)

You can check out his post here and while your at it, check out the rest of his site. I regularly find myself saving his stuff to think about and chew on for later.

TED Thursdays: Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other’s minds

James Wang — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:42:07 +0000

I really liked this video. Basically, she asks the question of what biologically helps us with judging other people’s actions. It is really amusing the experiment she runs with the pirate finger puppets and the children to show how child development of moral judgements of others develops over time. I think you’ll really like this, even if neuroscience is not your thing:

TED Thursdays: Dave Eggers’ wish: Once Upon a School

James Wang — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:34:11 +0000

Ok, I’ve been on a real education kick lately with videos, so here’s another. The main idea was starting a tutoring center for writing and homework. I love his idea of a pirate store that you have to walk through that leads to the tutoring area, and all the other crazy store examples showing that it isn’t school, its something completely different. I think the idea of tutoring is powerful and what he says about one on one time and how it transformed the life of the boy who was addicted to video games is a great story.

Here’s a link to the organization he talks about:
http://onceuponaschool.org/

They’ve also got a facebook page for this:
http://www.facebook.com/onceuponaschool

Like his talk? Buy his book:

TED Thursdays: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

James Wang — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:26:01 +0000

One of my favorite parts of this video is where he talks about the story of the little girl that couldn’t seem to sit still. I’m sure just reading that you are already thinking “yeah, another ADHD kid”, but its worth watching to see what they ended up doing and what she ended up becoming. Sobering to think about in how we deal with children and what we see in them.

Like his talk? Check out two of his books:

There’s more than one Ken Robinson on wikipedia so here’s his wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_(British_author)

The Future of Education

James Wang — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:54:21 +0000

I wonder if this group has a US sister organization. I love what they are envisioning and definiteyl want to check out some more of the resources on their site. Excellent ideas for any educator. It would be so cool to see some of this integrated into our Sunday School Program eventually. I think the keys are that the web and technology is leveraged to allow deeper participation and more any time anywhere learning and faster acquisition of knowledge. Fantastic stuff.