The end of July saw the wrap of another very successful Surpass workshop-camp for 26 teens, out of Camp Byng on BC’s Sunshine Coast. Surpass is a week-long experience of multiple activities designed to promote community and personal development. The sub-context to Surpass? Feeling good emotionally and physically; good enough to try out some new things […]
School’s Out! Bring on the school slide(s)
Well, it’s a wrap on another school year as of a few days ago. And with the end of school about a gazillion kids are suddenly ratting around poking their noses in all kinds of places and doing all kinds of nefarious activities. I’m being facetious but the start of summer holidays also brings alarms […]
“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 […]
Personalized Learning III – Resource Links
In my presentation and workshop last week at the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils spring conference, I provided the list below of Personalized Learning Resources. The list is aligned with the categories I provided in my previous two entries:• John Holt resources [unschooling] (johnholtgws.com)• Dr. Maurice Gibbons (selfdirectedlearning.com)• Reggio Emilia [child-centred] – see Wikipedia […]
Interpreting the “Personalized Learning” Landscape – A Zookeeper’s Guide
On May 5th, I am giving a keynote presentation at the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Groups (BCCPAC) Spring Conference and AGM (link here) on the theme of Personalized Learning or PL. I thought I’d take this opportunity to provide a brief overview of the PL landscape as it exists in education today. What’s most […]
Groundhog Day Redux: Standardized Testing casts long shadow over education
Each year Groundhog Day reflects to me equal parts optimism and ennui. Optimism because, well, a soothsaying celebrity rodent seems refreshingly naive and pagan. If only life could always be that simple. We could be taking our cues from gerbils and garden slugs, even the lowly paramecium. I figure we’d be off the hook for […]
Still Fresh & Compelling – The Children’s Machine by Seymour Papert
The Vancouver Sun is running an Op-Ed essay of mine (found here) today, a 20-year retrospective of Seymour Papert‘s visionary book, The Children’s Machine, Rethinking Schooling in the Age of the Computer. Sy Papert, an MIT professor who trained under Jean Piaget in France and then forged his own path developing LOGO computer language (for children) […]
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 […]
(Authentically) “Flipping” the Classroom
It’s all the rage: Teachers from coast to coast are “flipping classrooms“. To wit, they are directing student to complete core learning via online resources (e.g. videos) at home or outside of class time. What’s happening during class time? That’s for reviewing assignments and homework before teeing up the next “flipped” assignment. According to proponents, […]
Missing from “21st C Fluencies”: Self-Directed Learning
I attended the CUE-BC (Computer-Using Educators) conference a week ago on the occasion of a PD day. First up was keynote speaker Ian Jukes, a self-proclaimed evangelist for adapting schools to the “21st Century Fluencies”. You can learn more about the 21stC Fluencies here but suffice to say Jukes pitched them as “critical thinking skills […]
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.