(nb – NOV. 2024: This course will be offered via Cont. Ed., Antioch University (online) in the Spring session starting in early January. See my post of November 12th for more details. I will bring this message forward later in November. – MMaser) The real work of humanity at this time may be to awaken […]
In SelfDesign Learning Community – the innovative school I helped co-found in British Columbia in 2002 – our praxis is to support learning in all its shapes, forms and guises. And since we started we have come to recognize that learning is as varied as each learner. To educators and parents perhaps it comes as […]
Arising as regular as the whine of summer mosquitos are now annualized calls by school administrators and educators warning parents of the “summer slide“. The “summer slide” isn’t a fixture in the local playground but an imaginary bogey man that, allegedly, causes students to forget what they learned the previous spring in school. Believers in […]
Thanks to info pouring in from the frontiers of neuroscience, psychology and sociology, I’m increasingly aware of the opportunities we have – as parents, educators and advisors – to positively influence the directions of learning and wellness, and particularly among children and youth. To this end, new knowledge we have makes clearer the choices we […]
Self-Directed Learning expert Dr. Maurice Gibbons (emeritus professor, Simon Fraser University, Faculty of Education), has posted an essay of mine on his stellar website. Titled, “It’s Time to Support Personalized Learning,” (found here), the essay provides a sound and research-grounded basis for supporting PL in K-12 learning programs and schools. I’ve covered some of the […]
This is Social Innovation Week in Vancouver, with many events planned to stimulate thinking and collaborating about … social innovations (Find out more here). I have an innovative idea to share with SIW in mind, one I perceive as arising with starker irony given the province-wide teachers’ strikes that have also arisen this week. To […]
What do Einstein, Nobel prize-winning scientist Barbara McClintock and Sir Isaac Newton have in common, besides being extraordinary scientists? They were diligent daydreamers who intentionally dropped into a state of reverie to enhance their thinking and conceptualizing. And were they alive today, and attending a conventional school, they might be diagnosed with a newly-minted disorder: […]
Innovation must wonder why it is as cast as society’s bi-polar child. On the one hand it thrives in business, technology and health-care, domains to which we flock to see the latest gadgetry, invest in start-up opportunities, even volunteer to join beta-testing groups. This past week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a perfect […]
This week the community where I and my family live is mourning the loss of a vital woman, Robin Wheeler, who died recently from cancer. Inspiring mentor, dear friend and author (two books, New Society Publishers), Robin sparked at least six projects in the past dozen years that turned into major works of creation on […]
This week the world woke to the sad news that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple computers and visionary behind personal computers, iTunes, Iphones, Ipod and Ipads, has died at cancer at the age of 56. To me, Steve Jobs’ story reflects the path of a lifelong, enthusiastic “SelfDesigner” – that is, one who lives life […]
Michael’s book, Learn Your Way! SelfDesigning the Life You Really Want, Starting Now is an ERAC-approved middle and high school textbook for career planning and health education courses (British Columbia), and it has received many endorsements. Contact Michael directly to obtain a pdf copy of the book.
