It’s a matter of trust When Billy Joel wrote the lyrics to It’s a Matter of Trust, he probably wasn’t thinking about the Finnish education system. Yet the more I read the literature on high performing systems, I am convinced that trust is at the core of the cultural change needed to reshape schooling. It’s not new nor is it rocket science. Michael Fullan says that you build trust through behaviour. John Hattie tells us that the ability for teachers to develop trust within the classroom is key to making students feel OK about making mistakes and asking questions. In Visible Learning, the highest “effect sizes within teacher student relationship came from empathy, warmth and encouragement of higher order thinking.” As noble a calling as teaching is, the profession has been tarnished by a lack of trust, suspicion of teachers’ work and a top down approach to school improvement. What differentiates high performing systems from others is trust. We trust our teachers. Where does trust begin?
ARE WE DOOMED? - 300.org The World is facing a climate emergency due to global warming from man-derived greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. The atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is now 394 parts per million (ppm) and increasing at 2.4 ppm per year. Until recently the atmospheric CO2 concentration was in the range of 180-300 ppm for the last 800,000 years, fluctuations in this range giving rise to successive glacial and inter-glacial periods that imposed selection pressures upon evolving humanity. The average surface temperature is now +0.8C above that in 1900 and this has already been associated with major climate, weather and biological disruptions. Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that only about 0.5 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming. To achieve 300 ppm CO2 we must achieve the following [4]: 1. 2. 3.
How schools stifle creativity Habit Hack: The Science Behind How A Habit Is Formed “Starting next month, I will run three times a week” “After Christmas, I will only eat ice cream once a week maximum” How many of you have tried to start a new habit and failed? Forming a new habit is not an easy task, yet we all know that in order to improve ourselves, creating a new habit (or breaking a bad one) is crucial and unavoidable. As people who love to learn new ways to “hack” our lives, i believe that we need to break down the mechanic of how a habit is created in order to successfully create a new habit. Charles Duhigg (a Pulifzer-prize winning reporter) wrote a very good book that breaks down the mechanics of habit creation, it is titled “The Power of Habit” (Published in 2012). He argues that habit creation involves three components: 1. The cue is the trigger behind the behavior. What do you do next? The reward is, you get a feeling of relief / satisfaction (and no more anxiety), because you are no longer curious who send the email and what is the email about. A. B.
Impossible Photography by Martin De Pasquale Jun 16, 2014 Martin De Pasquale is an artist and photographer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Martin is currently an art director for an advertising agency but is best known online for his incredible photo manipulations and surreal digital artworks. Using programs like Photoshop, Poser and 3DS Max, De Pasquale creates amazing images that distort the lines between reality and fantasy. To see more of Martin’s amazing artworks, check him out on Facebook and Behance. [via Sploid]
Terese Weinstein Katz, PhD - The Self-Compassion Diet: Gentleness, Not Self-Flagellation How we beat ourselves up for that brownie or pizza slice! Once we’ve lost control or overdone it, forget about self-care and serenity. But research keeps confirming some ancient wisdom when it comes to eating better. Gentleness, being kind to oneself, paves a better path to success than self-flagellation. One study asked dieters to go easy on themselves in the face of eating preferred candy. Eaters first rated as “highly restrictive” ate less after hearing a self-compassion message than those who did not. While those of us interested in mindfulness and eating behavior may have found this work striking, it didn’t venture far beyond the mindfulness literature. How could we have gotten this so wrong? Consider what might really be happening, though. Also, those negative thoughts and feelings do clutter the mind. Dr. , notes that self-compassion increases motivation, contrary to the idea that we’ll whip ourselves into shape with self-criticism.
Printing tricks Printing tricks R2O CMS Water Based Screen Printing Ink Mixing System - SaveDeo.com Description:Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil to receive a desired image. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A fill blade or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink through the mesh openings to wet the substrate during the squeegee stroke. Vulnerability Hangovers, Brené Brown & Finding Our Courage. “The vulnerability paradox: It’s the first thing I look for in you, and the last thing I want you to see in me.” ~ Brené Brown Once so powerless, it has become one of the most powerful words in the dictionary—and to my own life. For me, vulnerability used to be petrifying, and to this day it still has control over me. I get what Brené Brown calls the “vulnerability hangover” almost on the daily. Did I say too much at that party last night? Did I really just share all of that about myself on the internet? Luckily enough, I also find myself absorbed in vulnerable people. I love to watch the wave of relief wash over them when they realize that, I too, am feeling just as exposed as they are. Because I travel so much, I’m constantly in awe of finding delicate humans like this in all corners of the world and realizing I am not alone. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. They project this fake persona out into the world to avoid being rejected. And that is what I live for.
SenseWall: Open, Free Platform for Multi-Touch, More; Wants Your Work SenseWall (preliminary) from Tiago Serra on Vimeo. Multi-touch walls have been a closely-guarded novelty, but they’re evolving into something else: a real, usable platform that focuses on content and not just gimmicks. In the process, a hard-working community is building richer, standards-based, cross-platform, free and open source tools. The result: faster iteration, broader access of artists to the technology, and soon, hopefully, better and better work. Tiago Serra writes with his latest project, based on the Community Core Vision project. SenseBloom recently developed a multitouch wall called SenseWall, located at a Computer Science and Design university in Portugal.In terms of hardware, the display has an area of 2.8m x 1.05m and it consists of 2 XGA ultra short-throw projectors amounting to a total resolution of 2048×768.
6 Ways Emotionally Intelligent People Deal With Toxic People Life can be pretty stressful at times. We have bills, appointments, overfilled schedules, and random unfortunate events which we have no control over. Then there’s the icing on the cake…toxic people. For many of us, we deal with toxic people on a daily basis and they can be difficult to avoid. Navigating around a toxic person or their conversations is a tedious skill, but a few people have mastered it. They are known as emotionally intelligent. Of course, it is never easy to deal with a toxic person. If you want to know how to have the upper hand when dealing with a toxic person, take it from someone who has experience. Here are 6 ways emotionally intelligent people deal with toxic people: 1. The most important thing you can do for yourself, is not participate in the madness. 2. It is essential to set boundaries. Emotionally intelligent people know that it is impossible to please everyone, and that it is okay to say ‘no.’ 3. 4. 5. 6. By Raven Fon