The link below will connect to a paper of mine recently published in the Holistic Education Review, Fall 2021 issue. The paper, Evaluating Personal Ecolography surveying to help personalize learning – is based on a 2020 – 2021 MITACS-sponsored research project I completed. This research was helped along by 18 participants – all professional, practising […]
We live in a remarkably exciting time, when leading scientific research has verified the existence of Neuroplasticity, identified as a natural potential for our neurological or mental lives to change over time, and lifelong. This is a breakthrough because until recently it was believed that our neurology – our brains – were ‘hard-wired’ by the […]
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 […]
It’s amazing what a good look in the mirror and a fresh coat of paint can do to revive almost-forgotten projects. On January 29th, the BC Ministry of Education convened a remarkable forum at the Wosk Centre with headline speakers and a gallery of people from business, educational and social interests. The forum was staged […]
This has been a super-busy fall for me – beginning with helping launch another learning year – our 13th! – in SelfDesign, and extending to attending the Holistic Learning conference in Ashland Oregon, leading a couple of SelfDesign retreat-workshops for learners and families and giving various presentations. Whew! This coming week I’m excited to be […]
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 […]
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: […]
For those of us working to stoke Personalized Learning in education, we can take heart that the personalization movement is alive and well and growing in two other fundamental segments of society: Business and Healthcare. In business, the personalization movement has arisen in almost stealth fashion to surround us. Look about and you’ll see evidence […]
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 […]
Memo from the “Creating Our Best Future” Dept.: As a learning innovator I see widely divergent gestures toward the nurturing of learning across education, gestures that have significant implications throughout society. And in scanning the education landscape my emotions in the past year swung from arm-pumping enthusiasm to head-shaking discouragement. With this in mind and […]
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 numerous endorsements: “Learn Your Way is terrific.” – Dr. Maurice Gibbons, author, The Self-Directed Learning Handbook
