Box of delight

Creative ideas can help you drive your business to success. Brian Tracy discusses how to run a brainstorming session and encourage creative thinking.

The aim of the brainstorming session should be to generate the most ideas possible within a specific period of time.

===> An effective brainstorming session will last anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, and 30 minutes is usually ideal. <===

Darling-Hammond: The reform impulse that gave rise to construction of new learning standards and assessments will only work if we invest in the capacity of educators to work together effectively.

The reform impulse that gave rise to construction of new learning standards and assessments will only work if we invest in the capacity of educators to work together effectively. Where educators are challenged and supported to get off the hamster wheel of “covering” ever more material and work together on important questions driven by what they actually observe, student learning thrives.

It’s time to clear away non-essential demands and build capacity in our schools for smarter teaching and learning—educators are ready for it, students deserve it, and our future prosperity and security require it.

The world is awash with people and groups wishing to reform education.  Some want to go “back to basics” while others want to go “forward to the future”.       

Amongst the more progressive groups there is a surprising degree of similarity in what they propose. Thus, the RSA “Opening Minds” project in the UK or the US based P21 or the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow Today all have a high degree of overlap - indeed a Venn diagram of their views would be almost a single circle.  

You turn on your computer and a message appears to tell you to update your Adobe Reader or iTunes or any software you have installed on your computer. You can’t be bothered right now, so click the option to remind you later – it’s a habit with these irritating messages, right? Then you have just opened yourself up to cybercriminals the world over.

Congratulations!

No piece of software is perfect or can ever be perfect. These imperfections within the code can be exploited by hackers to gain access to your computer. Once an exploit is found, it is patched by the software company which then sends an update to its users. This is the update that you keep ignoring. Until you take the time to click ‘Update’, you are vulnerable to attack. Your apathy is what the hackers are counting on.

TED is awesome…  I recently watched a TED talk by Eddie Obeng  who spoke about our fast changing world.  His central focus was the idea that the pace at which the world is advancing is exponential 

whereas the pace of learning and education is and has been consistent.  Schools are improving – we just can’t keep up.

Consequently, educators are feverishly looking for ways to make schools once-again interesting for kids.

One of my favorite progressive educational leaders and thinkers is Sir Ken Robinson@SirKenRobinson.  He gave a TED talk in 2006 that has since been viewed by over 16 million people. 

He is an advocate for fostering creativity in children because in the end, it will be creativity that solves the problems of tomorrow. 

His concern (shared by many) is that our school systems and institutions are designed around conformity, greatly reducing the ability of educators to foster creativity.

You've heard us use the phrase 'lifelong learner' often enough to know that we believe it to be a necessity for today's digital students.

This is especially true in a world that's changing with the rapidity of our own, thanks to the influx digital culture. But how does lifelong learning apply to the profession of teaching? More and more educators are discovering and embracing the changes happening in their profession, and realizing that their own learning journeys are still progressing on exciting new pathways.

The aspects of this kind of learning can now be identified, and you'll see them by reading this article by Sister Geralyn Schmidt, featured recently on the PLP Network. And it all started for her with one little book ....”