Education Innovation

Doctorate Sweepstakes: Help Choose The Winner

The Education Innovation Doctorate Sweepstakes

I have deiced to get my doctorate and I want some help in making my choice. I have narrowed down the field to three finalists. The finalists were selected for their quality of program and their proximity to my home. Share your thoughts and opinions on the finalists. The three finalist are      (in no particular order)

The University of La Verne: Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership

Pepperdine: Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership

University of Southern California: Ed.D. in Education: Leadership in Urban School Settings

Help me make the choice and decide the winner of the Education Innovation Doctorate Sweepstakes. Your voice could change my fate!

Brain Rules

Yesterday I posted on the book Brain Rules by John Medina. Seems I am not the only one enjoying the book. One of my favorite blogs is The Engaging Brand by Anna Farmery. I have been reading her blog for over a year and I always find some interesting tidbits.

In her recent post, she pulled these points from the book... (I've added my own commentary)

• The brain on average is 2% of body weight but takes 20% of the energy that we consume.

           (One more reason we need to ensure our students' eat a good breakfast and lunch.)

• The learning performance is deeply affected by the emotional environment in which the learning takes place.

            (So, students don't learn if they are being screamed at, are afraid to fail, or worried.)

• We lose attention every 10 minutes.

             (Uh oh, teachers, make sure you change it up, or re-direct because you don't have long.)

• Emotional arousal focuses attention on the gist of an experience at the expense of the details.

            (So again, we don't learn well when we are afraid, nervous, worried, or mad.)

• We need to derive meaning from the words to recall the details

            (Teachers, make sure you connect vocabulary to meaning in memorable ways.)

• Interruptions cause a 50% increase in how long it takes to complete a task and will lead to 50% more errors

 (Principals, quit with the announcements over the P.A.)

• People usually forget 90% of what they learn within 30 days

             (Wow, state tests go back at least 8 months. That's a problem.)

• When presenting, the audience needs to be hooked in the first 3 minutes.

            (So, "Open your book to page..." is not a hook. Try something original please!)

• The brain can hold 7 pieces of information for less than 30 seconds.

    (Students need some think time to digest your instruction.)

• A 26 minute nap can increase performance by 34%

 (So kindergarten had it right all along.)

• People learn better from a combination of words and pictures

   (Teacher, quit talking so much. Use pictures and make it visual.)

• Vision takes up half of the brains resources

 (We like to look at things. Refer to above.)

Anna will be interviewing John Medina for an upcoming podcast. I recommend you check back into her blog for it. Thanks Anna.

Big Word Project: The Intersection of Education and the New Approach to Meaning

These words are mine. I bought them. Let me explain. I came across the Big Word Project from one of my favorite blogs Ugly Doggy. It is an interesting idea dreamt up by two creative thinkers in Northern Ireland. Their idea was to let people redefine a word by linking it to a particular website.

I chose Intersection and approach because for me they represent the philosophy of this blog. It is an intersection of many ideas and education. It is also about having a different approach to what we do in education. (Innovation and Education were already taken!) Ugly Doggy conducted an interview with the creators.

Here is one of the interview questions and answers...

Are the words pre-approved (you have a list and what is not there can't be used) and therefore finite? Or ANYTHING that is in a dictionary can go there?
- Lee: Not at all, anything that's a real word can be used. We're using the Oxford English Dictionary as reference. We have about 180,000 words on the site but we're missing loads so feel free to suggest more. We're not including places or names (unless the name is in the dictionary).

This got me thinking about its relation to education. If a word can take on multiple meanings and even take on locations on the world wide web, then what else could a word be connected with? A word could be connected with a picture, a sound, a smell, a country, a person, a movie, a song, a poem. If you think about it, this has some pretty powerful implications for education. We are moving from a "there is one right definition of a word" to a "a word can mean multiple things and those things will be specific to each individual." Word and meaning will take on many more meanings and concepts, and those can be individualized from a country, a culture, a group, or an individual.

One right answer for the question "What does approach mean?" or "What does Intersection mean?" is evaporating into links and tags meaning, unique to every person. This is getting very interesting.

This Just In...It's Confirmed, I Am A Genius!

I previously posted (Apple On The Rise) about being a committed Apple user. Seems many people in business are tired of being just a Mac user for everything but their work computers.

But as I was reading Keith Sawyers blog about creativity and innovation, he posted this...

"Apple’s corporate image is one of the creative iconoclast; their motto, “Think Different.” Their products look great. Artsy people like graphic designers, photographers, and film directors choose Apples."

"Does the ad campaign work?  Does the average person-in-the-street think of Apple computers as being more creative? A recent study done at Duke University’s Fuqua school of business provides some evidence that it does. This research has been all over the newspapers and even on NPR, so you may have already heard the take-home message: research subjects were shown an image of either Apple’s corporate logo or IBM’s corporate logo, and immediately afterwards they were given a creativity test. The subjects who’d seen the Apple logo scored higher on the creativity test."

So there you have it. Confirmation of what I have always known. I am a creativity genius. I think it is about time I get a little recognition. I would like to thank all the team back in Cupertino, CA who made this possible. ;-0