Homo sapiens, homo faber: man as thinker, man as maker

It's really a great way to put it - learning as moving away from spoon feeding to play.  Connects right into Werbach's gamification theories.


There is another read about learning as being Thinkers (visible)  and doers (reflective): http://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/user%2F11983355272208248882%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fstarred

Gamification

Gamification

The use of game mechanics in a lot of mundane tasks esp. enhancing learning.

Here we see the badges, a way to structure a task that promotes achievement.

Anatomy of Fun

RELEVANCE TO EDUCATION (Learning)

Feedback

Here's a good way to get feedback.



http://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fweprincipal.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault%3Falt%3Drss

Teacher Feedback Input Survey

If you are working on improving a specific area of your craft or trying something different this year let me know! What do you want to focus on in your feedback conversation?

* Required

Your name *

I would like feedback on.......... *Check all that apply

•  Classroom management
•  Classroom design
•  Wait time
•  Questioning
•  Organization
•  Lesson plans and lesson planning
•  Transition time
•  Writing instruction
•  math
•  Daily 5
•  Guided Reading
•  Technology
•  Procedures
•  Student behavior
•  Engagement
•  Other: 

Powered by Google DocsReport Abuse - Terms of Service - Additional Terms

Great Teachers

Learning is an intensely sensory experience – three dimensionality in learning - it’s about greatly interactive experience.  They’re related to tastes and sound, great teachers understand that.

They don’t just plan and deliver lessons, they create  learning experiences.

Test score is the mark of the good teacher, but not of the great teacher. Greatness is something that transpire beyond the classroom. 

Great teachers teach students what they can do instead of what they cannot.

Two poles

Opposing views and difficult divergent assumptions.


This is how I am situated right now, on one end of the cliff.

They say that when you build a bridge, you always have to start with one side.  The problem I suppose is when the other side diverts the direction constantly, a sort of sifting bank that moves to another direction.

Example.

The assumption that people have good intentions as diametrically opposed to assuming that people will take advantage or manipulate.  How do you weave these.

My being seems to seek a better climate.

Plants need the right climate to grow, people all the more do so.

Love (written on the wall)

I can still remember it clearly.

Niko, by now a flying friend (he works as a pilot), told me he saw my grafitti in one classroom.

Well it was actually a response to a myopic anti-communist comment written on a wall beside my assigned chair in college.  What I remember best was when I wrote Corinthinians 13 or some parts of it mingled with dialectical jargon.

Anyway, chanced upon the same passage now... beautifully relevant as ever.

"If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:1-7)"

Being brilliant every single day.

Dr. Watkins connects to what I have read in Brain Rules - stress affects learning.  Our physiology, the pressure it perceives, affect our ability to process information and our thinking.  He says its a DIY lobotomy of the frontal cortex - much closer to evolutionary adaptation when the brain becomes binary in its function - fight/flight or play dead when confronted with threat.

A 200,000 year old software but we did not get the upgrade.  200k years after, our brains still function the way it perceives threat in the environment, the necessity for survival.

Breathe Rhythmically And Through the Heart Everyday - to get to the mid point but have to stay on the positive side and move people towards it.

So it's not just whether one has adrenaline (psyched) or ach-acetylecholine (relaxed) but also whether one is positive (DHEA-dihydroendeansterum--the elixir of youth) or negative emotional state (hormone cortisol).  see 23.35 of video (wonderful schema of performance).

Really brilliant insights.

How much is required of oneself - the challenge of leadership

One blogger wrote, "the work of a ... is as challenging as you want it to be.  If you want just to "maintain" then the load can just be normal and time required would just be much less.  However, if you want to do great things, it will have to take more time."

Aptly describes most situations I find myself in.  Once the vision and the passion merge, the challenges mount, and... I'm back to being the old man in the ugly mountain.

Nonetheless, they do not flatten mountain these days.  China, where the story came from, in fact showed the way by converting mountains into resorts.  Hotels at the summit of the world.  If the Himalayas were in China, they would have already built a hotel on it's peak.

The way to fire up self esteem is to have only yourself as benchmark or goal to beat-- what i was compared what i am.

measurable goals.

take up a challenge and succeed in it. then compare yourself, then and now, as a result of that achievement.

whew. August 3 is such a day!  it seems doing or accomplishing a lot of work means getting more work or new tasks unaccomplished.

Children are such images of innocence.  i got duped by jules just a while ago.  he said he'd buy a watch and asked for a hundred peso only to return with a baller band. huhum.

INFOwhelm

overwhelmed by information.

we just have so much information and so easy access to it. 500 exabytes of digital output! 500 billion gigabytes in all. wow!

What skills would we need in this kind of world we now live in?  What skills should education impart on students?

Punishment for mistakes in the exercise of Political power

Recently, we saw the film "singham", bollywood of course.  What was funny in the film is the punishment given to people who are in power who, in this case, singham's superior officer, did not exercise power according to what is just and honest.  Well, the idea stands a lot of relevance in this country where political power is used to enhance economic power, an endemic habit of the ruling class.  Singham kicked his superior in the butt, literally kick! The other personnel, singham's colleagues in the police force, also had their chance at kicking the bosses butt.

Consequence served well, I should say.  Had this been done to Gloria Arroyo, it would have made a good statement to political leaders. Arroyo admitted to at least the mistake of having called Garcillano during her election into power, she said sorry in national tv! But then, that was it.  There was no closure to it, so the sincerity remained questioned. That means she just said it in order to appeal to sympathy.

If she was really truly sorry for that mistake, she could have volunteered herself for butt kicking by anyone in Comelec. Sounds good di ba?  When people see that, then her sincerity is believable!

Any other political leader who follows would then be wary about making abuses of public trust, right?

Roanne Red.aim. Chubby faced girl, now on her second year and active. 

The Learning Captain: 2012 National Regular, Non-Working and Special Holidays

The Learning Captain: 2012 National Regular, Non-Working and Special Holidays