Nellie and I met at a local cafe to do this interview on what self-directed learning skills meant to her and how this training has impacted her thinking and teaching. With a simple background videos like these can impact others.
21st Century Learning Skills
Steve Jobs Quote
Watched a documentary on Steve Jobs and want to remember this:
“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun, save a little money. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you.” – Steve Jobs
The Divided Brain
For some time now we have thought of the 2-sides of the brains, now British psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist looks at the evolution of Western Civilization through a neuropsychological prism. In his recent book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, is re-thinking this the left-brain right-brain concept.
McGilchrist is quick to point out that the old left-brain, right-brain clichés of the 1960s and 1970s were greatly oversimplified. Recent research has shown that both sides of the brain are deeply involved in functions such as reason and emotion. But the dichotomy is still useful, McGilchrist says, and should not be abandoned. Watch what RSA has done here and learn more about self-directed learning skills here.
We Need to Shake Things Up
Earlier in the year I posted this and I wonder how we are all doing with Seth Godin’s points?
Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.
Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around.
Now, from Seth Godin. Click here to view [in a larger format]: What Matters Now.
Self-directed Learning Skills
How do teachers, parents, paraprofessionals and other working with children help those students develop self-directed learning [SDL] skills? How can we help students plan for and reach their potential? I built and co-facilitate this course [within Moodle] to teach the skills necessary for developing 21st century habits of mind.
Participants learn to:
- Negotiate student learning contracts
- Teach independent thinking skills
- Motivate and empower students
- Become fabulous coaches
- Build an ePortfolio
There is so much more to learn by participating in this course. Come hear me and Meg Robbins give a one-hour presentation: Motivating students to becoming self-directed learners. MassCUE 2011.
Goodbye Visionary
We need more of what Steve had. He saw something that was simply better than what had preceded it, and he was willing to gamble based on that instinct. That required an ability to think first and foremost as someone who lives with technology rather than produces it.
Jobs is perhaps the greatest user of technology to every live. He was able to think first and foremost as someone who lives with technology rather than produces it.
