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 […]
Help Make 2014 a ‘Year of Learning Dangerously’ – and how
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 […]
STOP THE PRESSES: Activity and Exercise are good for learning!
Unless you’ve been living in a cave the last month, you’ve heard or seen an outpouring of news stories linking exercise and activity to wellness, which in turn is linked to increased workplace productivity and improved cognitive functioning. While this strikes me as a memo from the “Blindingly Obvious Dept.”, I’m going to suspend my […]
Child-Centred Learning & Planetary Health
When I ponder the question: What kind of education system will best support a future characterized by the most robust and vital learning? I find the answer in the natural world. Check out any healthy ecosystem on our planet and you’ll see life sustained by rich, robust biodiversity and complex interactivity. This diversity helps systems […]
Personalized Learning in the news for valid reasons
The first week of September means back to school for millions of kids and young adults in North America. What happens this first week will largely presage the events of students’ learning lives in the coming school year. I’m not talking about what classroom seat is chosen or whether a new math textbook is handed […]
“Eight Ways of Intelligence” speech deepens our understanding
The subject of human intelligence has become overtaken by too-many wooly headed and cloistered researchers who have reduced it to a series of reproducible tests in a narrow range of competencies. By contrast, I highly commend Annie Murphy Paul‘s recent speech, Eight Ways of Looking at Intelligence (found here) in which she concisely, and appropriately serves […]
“Entrepreneurial Learning” Facing Challenges
To organizational researcher John Seely Brown (co-author: ‘A New Culture of Learning‘, 2011), the “entrepreneurial learner” is one who seizes opportunities to learn anywhere, anytime. With a disposition characterized by questioning, communicating, reflecting, and playing, such learners are increasingly valued in a job-world characterized by rapid and constant change. It’s also a disposition that is […]
Dr. Daniel Siegel, Interpersonal Neurobiology & SelfDesign
I recently completed four (online) “Mindsight” courses with Dr. Daniel Siegel, the pioneering psychiatrist who helped launch the UCLA-based Mindsight Insight with colleagues several years ago. Daniel is a leading researcher in the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) through which he is helping remake Psychiatry as a therapeutic profession with far less emphasis on the prescription pad than that for […]
Grateful for Diversity of BC Education System
Thanksgiving has come and gone. But in its wake I’ve given myself some time to reflect on an important, fundamental aspect of BC’s K-12 education system for which I feel grateful though you aren’t likely to hear the pundits speak to this. At the same time I am a committed advocate for innovation and […]
“Generation Flux” report: Youth need more help
I just finished reading “Generation Flux” a report on youth (15-24 years) produced by the Community Foundations of Canada as part of their annual “Vital Signs” report series. Well worth the read, the report (found here) highlights many trends though I consider the following most pertinent: – youth are quick adapters to our changing world […]
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.