Life Lessons from C&H

http://www.policymic.com/articles/42731/10-life-lessons-from-calvin-hobbes

Now, this is something I wish *I* had written! :-)
Some of these lessons are bang on target...

PS: Hat tip - FB Friend. 

Trends in Collaborative Education/Learning

Thanks to Ferina Santos - @ferinasantos - for sharing this excellent article on trends in Education. I think it is a wonderful overview of what the future of education is going to be like. No prizes for guessing that the emphasis is on collective and collaborative learning techniques and mechanisms! 

Read the full article here: The author is: Miriam Clifford - @miriamoclifford on Twitter

http://newsroom.opencolleges.edu.au/features/facilitating-collaborative-learning-20-things-you-need-to-know-from-the-pros/ 

Here are some excerpts that appealed to my mind:

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Groups tend to learn through “discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other’s ideas”.  Perhaps information that is discussed is retained in long term memory.  Research by Webb suggests that students who worked collaboratively on math computational problems earned significantly higher scores than those who worked alone.  Plus, students who demonstrated lower levels of achievement improved when working in diverse groups. 

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Many studies such as those by Robert Slavin at Johns Hopkins have considered how cooperative learning helps children develop social and interpersonal skills.  Experts have argued that the social and psychological effect on self-esteem and personal development are just as important as the learning itself. 

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The quality of discussions is a predictor of the achievement of the group.  Instructors should provide a model of how a successful group functions.  Shared leadership is best.  Students should work together on the task and maintenance functions of a group.  Roles are important in group development. Task functions include:

• Initiating Discussions
• Clarifying points
• Summarizing
• Challenging assumptions/devil’s advocate
• Providing or researching information
• Reaching a consensus.

Maintenance involves the harmony and emotional well-being of a group.  Maintenance includes roles such as:

• Sensing group feelings
• Harmonizing
• Compromising and encouraging
• Time-keeping
• Relieving tension
• Bringing people into discussion

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Focus on enhancing problem-solving and critical thinking skills.  Design assignments that allow room for varied interpretations.  Different types of problems might focus on categorizing, planning, taking multiple perspectives, or forming solutions

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The article winds up by reminding us about the criticisms of collaboration (it may not allow for individual thinking) and asks us to beware of group-think (groups may end up going by the views of a few confident and dominant people and may not really reach a consensus) 

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I am passionate about how we can reinvent education and learning methods so children are more engaged, excited and enthusiastic to be life-long learners. Of course, the other dimension is that they must be able to apply what they learn in their lives and, furthermore, use it to determine what their lives must be like (find their passion and gift and share it with the world.) I hope we are on the verge of a revolution! :-)

Internet and a Child's Brain

Informal Learning

Why content and formal training is not everything!

The Dawn of Realization

(C) - Bill Watterson

Knowledge is indeed paralyzing. You know anything that can change will change and that means you can rarely declare anything in a dead-sure way. You know there is no single truth and that means you can rarely anything in a dead-sure way. You know people can change their minds any minute with or without reason and that means you can rarely declare anything in a dead-sure way. You know what is meat for one man is poison for another and that means you can rarely declare anything in a dead-sure way.

If you zoom out for a bit and catch the world's compressed timeline, I guarantee (paradox, eh?) that you'll discover a clear pattern of people swinging from one extreme to the other at irregular intervals. What is inevitable change for some is annoying inconsistency for others because each of us thinks and operates at a different level and is in a different context. At any given point of time, there is a school of thought that believes deeply in something and another school of thought that dismisses the very same idea as absurd and impossible to accept. This holds good for almost every idea out there, be it religious, psychological, political, economical, commercial, social, medical and even the so-called scientific and mathematical ones.

In the last few days, for example, I have seen different people argue passionately for and against the same ideas. A leading business publication has two contradictory articles in the same edition, one that proposes leadership is replaceable and another that says it may be indispensable. With a lot of people arguing in favor of leading passionate lives, someone suddenly pops up and says passion may be dangerous. While many people believe that meditation is good for the mind and body, out comes someone, with data, to prove it can be dangerous. A scientific research proves that a particular food is good for health and another research says the same food can have harmful effects. A section of people believes a man is determined by his thoughts and another section believes it is better to just be.

For those holding on to both sides and playing a confusing tug-of-war on themselves, things are likely to be stressful after a while, unless they are crystal clear about the criteria to use for eventually adopting one of the views. Picking up one view and using it in moderation is a good strategy. Individual experimentation and openness to what emerges is a good strategy.

If you are a leader, being able to communicate your moderated approach and criteria may be critical. Not categorically declaring things means people may not take you seriously or may believe you are clueless. Therefore, they may not align themselves with what you need them to contribute to. However, let's not forget that these are dilemmas that arise only when talking about a certain category of perceptions, ideas and approaches. A leader would be expected, at the same time, to provide invariable and dependable support and commitment to a well-considered goal or value.

PS: I, honestly, did not start out with the intention of making this a dizzy-sounding article. I planned to stop after the first paragraph and look for something humorous to end it with. Look what I ended up writing! I'd rather settle for some ignorance and action.....for it is a blissful combination, uh? ;-)

Learning

Collective Learning

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to change the way children learn into a more collaborative experience. At the end of the decade, for them to grow up and be good members of the society and achieve something meaningful, they must learn to listen deeply, appreciate others' views and let each person express himself while still arriving at independent conclusions. Eventually, though, it is about posing the right questions as a collective, putting everything together and filtering the noise. 


Update: So, why do you think this is funny? :-P Because it sounds contradictory and paradoxical? However, I do think I have not articulated what's in my head well enough.... 

I am not saying we must not think independently. Just saying we must learn the art of arriving at independent conclusions and at the same time learn to appreciate that others may have different views due to their own perceptions, experiences and background. We need to be able to see why they think the way they think! 

If we can then put various ideas together and filter out what the collective thinks is noise, it may lead to a good decision in corporate environments. Lone artists or innovators can still go ahead and do their own thing without checking with anyone ;-)

Individual Destiny

The world is full of wonder. There are endless opportunities. There is a lot more we can do if only we don't focus so much on financial safety (or is it mostly greed?) all the time. Parents & teachers must try hard not to narrow their child's vision and lead him/her to where *they* think the treasure is. There's so much yet to be discovered. There's so much yet to be done. There are so many new and unexplored ideas and paths. 


Why create an unnecessarily competitive world that focuses on what everybody else wants to focus on, loses track of true humanity, chases something blindly and knows not what meaning there is to life? Why can't we each choose our own niche areas and complement and collaborate with each other to build a rich, meaningful, creative, cooperative, happy and sustainable world? 


Enough of the 'mass production' of individuals who think and work alike and chase the same things without believing in it. We need to preserve the uniqueness in each of us and celebrate that for life. We need to seek what fits us as individuals and learn to ignore many of the things that the world, for some strange reason, thinks is essential to lead a good life. 


Is the urban man who eats exotic and exquisite food once a week and commutes in an expensive car necessarily happier than the rural man who eats a simple meal of rice and vegetable all through the year and spends time relaxing in the natural breeze from the magnificent trees he has planted? Aren't they both happy as long as they leverage on their skills and ideas, identify and pursue a cause and vision that is important and meaningful to them and continuously expand their capacity to think, learn and act?

Thoughtful Moments

A few of my own thoughtful twitter moments today 


How can love & forgiveness exist where there is a tendency to constantly observe, analyze, assume & judge?


Sharing is the Mother and Curiosity the Father of Serendipity. #inspired_moment


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An inspiring post by Sudhir Krishnan that I came across this morning (and this post happens to be somewhat related to my first thought)

Inspirations by Sudhir Krishnan

However noble your thoughts and actions, there will be some people who will not be pleased. Even Jesus and Buddha faced opposition. While one needs to take care not to deliberately hurt others, there is always the possibility of falling short of some people's expectations. As long as you have given your best, move on and do not blame yourself. Detach yourself from what is essentially the other person's karma.

Leadership

Found this in an internal blog. Sharing it here. Credit to - Wayne Hays 


Extract:

Research conducted by Zenger & Folkman and published in their book "The Extraordinary Leader" revealed some interesting results. They found that leaders who were perceived as having at least one strength were rated significantly higher in their overall leadership effectiveness.  Leaders with no strengths but no clear weaknesses were rated lower than leaders with weaknesses but a few clear strengths.

Why were leaders with no weaknesses but no clear strengths perceived to be less effective?  The authors suggest they lack a redeeming quality, skill, or ability.  They may not be ineffective at anything, but they are also not terribly effective at anything.  A focus on building strengths will help improve overall effectiveness and as most of us have heard, individual development plans should include optimizing strengths.

That leads to the natural next question, "how do I develop an existing strength?"  Peterson & Hicks (Development First, Strategies for Self-Development) offer some suggestions.

• Seek experience in new, complex situations.  Force yourself to face challenges that push your limits.
• Spend time with experts.  Benchmark yourself against others you feel are experts in the area.  Watch what they do and continue to push your own performance.
• Cross-train.  Pursue learning in related areas and search for synergies, connections, and parallel ideas.
• Share the wealth by teaching others.  Others will benefit from your expertise and teaching requires that you deepen or stay sharp in your expertise.

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Needless to say, three of these points are things that KMers and KM tools attempt to enable! ;-)

Ken Robinson on Education & Creativity

Learning and The Dangers of Expertise

This talk provides good food for thought. Do watch it if you're interested in KM, Collaboration or Learning. The speaker warns us about the dangers of blindly believing so-called experts and not questioning them enough and about societies having to feel more comfortable about managing dissent. 


Someone from the audience asks a very valid question - About the impact that this might have on how we teach children. Here's what methinks:


Maybe this points to a clear need for collective learning amongst children? Rather than a teacher standing up in front of the class and preaching? And of course, the need for education to accommodate questions from students, Montessori style.


And, finally, consider this post in juxtaposition with the previous C&H strip. See the joke? :-)

Vivekananda Jayathi

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced.” - Swami Vivekananda


Not only spiritual giants, I might add! 


"We want that education, by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded and by which one can stand on one's own feet" - Swami Vivekananda 

Happy National Youth Day! Swami Vivekananda (12 Jan 1863 - 4 July 1902)

Hole in the Wall

Emergence. Self-Organizing Learning Systems. Children. Education. Knowledge. Collaboration. Plenty of lessons in there!

The Arrival of Aha!

"Learning, creating strategy, and innovation are parts of a single long journey. The journey is iterative, interactive, and full of small steps. Nobody gets a big aha one day. Instead, there is searching; there are missteps, experiments, and doubt." - CK Prahalad

Sir Ken Robinson - One More Wonderful Talk

Sir Ken Robinson in his inimitable style and on his pet topic - The need for reforming education. Points to ponder: A three-year-old is not half a six-year-old. Life is organic, not linear. Education needs to adopt the principles of agriculture and not that of industrial production. Education is not fast food...

2.5.1 = 10 on 10

I think this is really clever and extremely effective. Ingenious and intuitive are other words that come to my mind. The 2-5-1 method of storytelling. An idea from the Singapore Armed Forces' Learning and Development team. I give it a 10 on 10 = 2*5*1 :-)

Quote:

• 2
  • Who you are
  • Summary of your experience
• 5 fingers
  • Little finger – what parts of the effort did not get enough attention
  • Ring finger – What relationships were formed, what you learned about relationship building
  • Middle finger – what you disliked, what/who made you frustrated
  • Pointer finger – what you would do better next time around, what you want to tell those who were “in charge” about what they could do better
  • Thumb (up) – what went well. What was good.
• 1 – the most important takeaway from the effort
  

Aha, Eureka, Eurekaha

Nice discussion going on out here. Dive in if you are curious about Aha moments or Aa..ha! moments as I might refer to them :-)

The Curious Incident of the Lazy Blog-Reader in the Afternoon Time

I rarely use this blog to rant about things. I generally manage to avoid such posts except under extreme circumstances. The idea is to use the blog to share useful, nice and profound things that I discover and, of course, ideas - flash in the pan - that occur to me, provided they are worthwhile. But there are certain experiences that deserve to be ranted about. Especially if one is quite bewildered and can't get over it easily. This is one such post. Writing, as I must have mentioned before, is anyway cathartic. So, I am going to do this. Please don't read the rest of this blog post in case you're not the kind who is interested in human psychology and behaviour! ;-)

A regular reader of this blog who generally asks fundamental questions has always received my appreciation for his inquisitive nature and also my responses - however silly, ignorant or mortalish they might have been (what else can you expect from an ordinary mortal like me in response to questions like "Does God decide man's fate or does man decide his own fate?" etc). To set the context, in fact, there was one such discussion that happened on this blog some time back wherein I could only suppose certain things based on my mortal experiences but I finally decided to cut off the discussion because I was not able to give him the answer he expected and nor was I able to convince him about the reasons for my own perceptions. To my credit, he seemed stubborn and prejudiced and anyway you can't expect a debate on God/Fate/Free Will to come to an easy or quick conclusion.

This person decided to follow me on Twitter recently and bombarded me with one too many questions this afternoon but I decided to respond to them despite the fact that I was unwell and had to also balance it with some work. I did not have the heart to cut off the discussion despite the fact that I suspected we would only go around in circles given that he came into the discussion already convinced about something. As the conversation progressed, it became clearer to me that the queries or the arguments were just superficial and he either wanted a radical answer that he would not be able to cross-question or he wanted me to concede ignorance and then gloat over it (he makes "profound" statements like "I am the winner and the loser" if someone tells him they do not know the answer). If this wasn't clear before, let it be known now that I am human. I have no insight into how the Universe functions for me to give him a radical answer with proof that he will not be able to deny. I can only have a normal human conversation wherein I express my thoughts and experiences and try to reason around them or maybe sometimes use my intuition. And yes, I get angry too - when I have to face unreasonable and insensitive blokes.

More than everything else, all his arguments were shocking to me which was probably where the problem began. He said he did not believe in reading books and only believed in real-life experiences - now that is a highly provocative statement for a book-lover like me. Who said books don't talk about real-life experiences? Who said you can't learn from others' experiences and learnings via books? He finally conceded that he did not have the patience to read books! Then why say he does not "believe" in reading books, in the first place? Sample some more: He wants a Guru who knows everything under the sun and tells me he cannot call anyone who does not know everything a Guru! What can I do if his definition of Guru is different from that of the world? Am I supposed to be the martyr bridge between him and the rest of the world? He imagines that I am a preacher (God knows who told him that) and I should have a handle on my temper while he himself is apparently a "dreamer" and deserves to be lazy (like not wanting to read books and expecting people to drop all their work and health and answer all his confounded queries forever!) Oh....I could go on but I think I should try to keep this post short - ok, as short as possible ;-) - for your benefit. [Remember....the idea is to not present a fact file or a case in the court or to even defend myself but for this post to act as a mechanism to get my frustration out of my system! :-)]

Coming back to the story, after a lot of meaningless messages on Twitter he moved to email and started asking me more questions despite my telling him that I did not have any more time to answer his queries for the time being and that he must approach someone local or look up guides via Google for certain questions like how to use Twitter. Honestly speaking, I guess I had quite lost my patience by this time and was in no mood or state of health to explain things via mail to a person who anyway seemed to understand very little beyond what he already believed in and needed to be spoon-fed everything.

The last straw on the camel's back was this final email exchange. His 23287382973th question (ok....it was more like the 30th question) was "How to increase blog traffic?" as he wants to make a living writing a blog or something. I gave him an honest - and, actually, the only answer - I know. "Write extremely well" and the traffic will naturally increase. I also told him that I myself care a damn for blog traffic because I blog/write to share and learn. I finished it off by telling him that he could also tweet his blog posts in case he wants more people to look at them. I have heard of some more techniques to increase blog traffic but I have NEVER paid attention to them because that does not interest me in the least. I do not blog for the traffic. I told him as much in as many words. What does he do? Come back with the same question and insist that I answer it in a different manner since I am from the software industry! I actually did not get annoyed even after this! I simply went back to him and told him to search Google for "how to increase blog traffic" as a) I now knew him to be lazy and suspected that he would have not tried this approach in order to avoid the hard work of sifting through the results and b) I couldn't care less about learning the answer myself. And guess how our exceptional friend responds? He starts his response as follows: "Irritating." What an extraordinary display of courtesy to someone who spent hours responding to questions that in retrospect were not probably genuine! He goes on to say he knows how to do a Google search and I need not tell him about it! Wow! Bless his soul, people!

Do you think I made a mistake asking him not to write to me again after reading this? Honestly. Go ahead, tell me. I feel immature putting this out on my blog....but I seriously will leave this post intact for two reasons. 1) It really is cathartic to write about such a horrendous experience and get it out of my mind. 2) I would be interested to know if I made any mistakes apart from the fact that I lost my patience somewhere in the middle and gave him undiplomatic answers or, well, maybe I actually put up with him for too long? Give me your piece of mind!

PS: I did post a few messages about this experience on Twitter a while back and someone came back and told me to suggest that this person look up "the blog zone". In case you - you know who you are - happen to be reading this post, you might be able to appreciate this suggestion - provided your laziness does not prevent you from looking up this portal and reading through it. There is no substitute for hard-work. Wait! Does that make me sound like a preacher? Maybe! OK, consider that sentence removed if so! ;-) God bless. Whew!

I can't believe that this kind of a thing can happen to someone who actually loves being asked questions, like yours truly! I seriously like being asked questions and engaging in stimulating conversations but only if the intention of the other party is to truly learn or discover something through the conversation and not just prove his own point or prove that there is no answer to his questions (!)...and only if it is a topic that I can actually comment on and only if I am not expected to drop all my other priorities and health and squeeze out the last drop of blood in my body to answer questions that appear lame to me! Enough. And, finally, at the risk of sounding very holy, apologies if this post seems to be written in bad taste and has contaminated the blogosphere...

Preserving India's Knowledge

Almost three years ago, I posted about my discovery of the Bangalore-based FRLHT – Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions - and remember vividly that I was quite excited about it at that time. Now, three years of evolution or rotting (depending on the way you look at it ;-)) later, I followed the Twitter profile of a person (Mani) who happened to retweet one of my tweets (this is a distraction, nevertheless, in case you are curious what my retweeted tweet was about and are lazy to click on the link, let me tell you. It was about a KM product company – Trampoline Systems, if you want the name as well - that is adopting a crowdfunding approach to finance its future) and found something there that rang a huge bell in my mind and brought back memories of my spotting the FRLHT office bus. When I glanced through Mani’s recent Twitter updates, I was lucky enough to spot one of his tweets about the existence of an organization called CIKS - Centre of Indian Knowledge Systems! One look at the organization’s home page and I was mighty impressed by their projects, vision and achievements. Not surprisingly, as I glanced through the Trustees page, I realized that the key person behind FRLHT is one of the members of CIKS as well. That bell in my mind was spot on! Ding Dong! :-)

CIKS seems to focus on preserving India’s agricultural knowledge amongst other things and speaks of some inspiring and admirable project areas to help India’s rural population through well-designed programs. Most of the projects revolve around organic farming methods but I guess the scope and potential for expanding this concept is immense! Not many weeks ago, I was having a conversation with two of my friends about the possibility of using KM in non-profit ventures and for social benefits and we’d touched upon areas like Education, Agriculture, Health-Care and Infrastructure. CIKS is a brilliant example of what can be done in the agricultural arena. More so because of the rich agricultural history that India has. Even though the focus at present seems to be only on preserving conventional agricultural knowledge, it would be quite easy to extend it to facilitate sharing of knowledge across farmers, providing them with the platforms and practices to network, collaborate and innovate! If proven to be a success here, I can’t think of any reason why it can’t be replicated in the Education and Health-Care sectors as well. Speaking of Education, I am reminded of India’s traditional and inspiring Gurukul system.

There is an urge to come back and look into this at length and expand on the ideas…..but what do you think?