I am now teed up to lead a workshop and breakout session at the ‘Soul of Education‘ conference, scheduled for Sept. 19th – 21st at Southern Oregon University, Ashland, Oregon. Subtitled ‘Nourishing the Soul of Education‘, the conference promises to provide many exciting insights into Holistic Learning. You can find out more about the conference […]
RE – “Urban Legend” that Self-Directed Learning is Effective
Yikes, I just caught up to a paper published last year in Educational Psychologist, “Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban Legends in Education” (link here). In this paper the authors focus on three themes they mark out as “urban legends”: i, that there exists a new generation of “digital natives”, ii, that learners have specific […]
Beware the Jabberwock, ‘er Margaret Wente, on 21st C Learning
Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente doesn’t let the facts get in the way of a hyperbolic rant against 21st Century, Personalized Learning. In a column on June 28th (Brave New World of 21st Century Learning) Ms Wente cherry-picks criticism and PR bumpf to trump up her opposition to the long-overdue movements to remake approaches […]
“It’s time to Support Personalized Learning” (essay)
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 […]
SURPASS 2014 for teens, 13-17 years – check it out!
Registration for ‘SURPASS 2014’ is open for teens, 13-17 years. This will be our 6th SURPASS event, to be held again at Camp Byng, July 13th – 20th, on the Sunshine Coast of BC, nearby to the town of Gibsons (which also happens to be where I live). SURPASS is a week-long program in which […]
Daydreaming classed as new disorder – April Fools! (not)
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: […]
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 […]
Snakes on a Brain & other Neurological Evolutions to ponder!
This past week brought news from the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that specialized nerve cells in the brains of macaque monkeys respond to images of snakes. The lead researcher, Dr. Lynne Isbell of UC-Davis, surmised that natural selection has favoured primates that strongly respond to snake imagery. This makes good sense […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.