Background to the 4E's — Digisim - A Flipped Academic A highly experienced mentor once told me that there are 3 main groups of staff with regards to influencing change around technology use. These are the evangelists, those who will naturally be inquisitive and try new technology; the resistors, those to whom the change model applies (there is a sliding scale for resistors as some will resist for longer than others) and finally the naysayers, those who just don't want to change and are excessive complainers. (This final group I have renamed as C.A.V.E.s - Colleagues Against Virtually Everything.) My mentor also suggested that it's a waste of time and effort to focus attention on the "naysayers" as they very rarely change their minds. So what's all this got to do with the 4E Framework? I began to realise that as part of the change process staff had to take ownership for the rationale behind the use of technology.
Warren Buffett's Strategy for Success -- The Motley Fool Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates have all said that focus was the most important factor in their success. While it's easy to say that focus is important, a story by Scott Dinsmore of Live Your Legend shows how Buffett put this into practice in his own life. Read on for how you can as well. Warren Buffett's strategy for successWe haven't been able to independently confirm the story, but it goes like this: Scott met a friend of one of Warren Buffett's pilots, who claimed the following was Warren Buffett's process for pursuing success: Write down the top 25 things you want to accomplish in the next few years or your lifetime.Choose the five that are most important to you. Focus in lifeIt's hard enough to accomplish the top five things you want to do in your lifetime. One of my favorite reminders of this comes from Warren Buffett's business partner Charlie Munger, who said, "A majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do."
Todos los niños son científicos / Reportajes Según un estudio de la Universidad de California, los niños piensan de forma muy similar a la que se emplea en la ciencia. / Fotolia Showing image 1 of 1 Cuenta el divulgador Bill Bryson en su obra Una breve historia de casi todo que, cuando era niño, en los años 50, contempló con asombro una ilustración de su libro de ciencias, un libro “maltratado, detestado, un mamotreto deprimente”. La imagen era una representación de la Tierra con un corte transversal que permitía diferenciar las distintas capas del planeta y la esfera central de hierro y níquel, “tan caliente como la superficie del Sol”, tal y como indicaba el pie del diagrama. La pregunta que se hizo Bryson al ver eso, según él mismo relata, fue: “¿Y cómo saben eso?”. El libro de texto, sin embargo, tan solo le mostraba el resultado, le contaba el final de la historia, le llevaba al destino sin permitirle disfrutar del viaje. Es habitual que la ciencia se enseñe dando respuestas en lugar de estimular la formulación de preguntas
A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned The following account comes from a veteran HS teacher who just became a Coach in her building. Because her experience is so vivid and sobering I have kept her identity anonymous. But nothing she describes is any different than my own experience in sitting in HS classes for long periods of time. And this report of course accords fully with the results of our student surveys. I have made a terrible mistake. I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching my own classes; I am the High School Learning Coach, a new position for the school this year. As part of getting my feet wet, my principal suggested I “be” a student for two days: I was to shadow and complete all the work of a 10th grade student on one day and to do the same for a 12th grade student on another day. The schedule that day for the 10th grade student: 7:45 – 9:15: Geometry 10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
Franc, European shares soar after Swiss currency cap lifted | Business | Reuters By Herbert Lash NEW YORK (Reuters) - Switzerland's move to jettison a three-year-old cap on the franc threw global markets into turmoil on Thursday, sending the currency and most European shares soaring while bond yields and Swiss equities tumbled. U.S. stocks closed lower, marking a fifth straight session of losses, as bank results disappointed and investors fretted over the potential impact of global economic weakness on U.S. corporate earnings. In Europe, the franc jumped almost 30 percent in the chaotic minutes after the Swiss National Bank stunned markets by lifting a 1.20-per-euro cap that was created in 2011 to avert deflation at the height of the euro zone crisis. The Swiss currency surged as high as 0.8500 franc per euro before paring gains to trade 16 percent higher at 1.01010. Switzerland's main share index fell 8.7 percent in its biggest single-day percentage loss in 25 years, wiping about $100 billion of market value off Swiss companies.
AEDA - La narración oral como factor social Detalles Publicado el Domingo, 31 Agosto 2014 11:58 Visto: 72 La narración oral puede llegar a convertirse en un formidable vector para el restablecimiento de la democracia y ello por tres razones principales: 1.- POR SU CONTENIDO, ya que las historias hablan de lo humano: Los cuentos tradicionales abordan todas las cuestiones que tienen que ver con el individuo como parte de la sociedad. Seamos narradores o seamos oyentes, podemos, y debemos, desarrollar una visión de la vida basada en la solidaridad, el coraje y con visión de futuro. 2. La construcción narrativa, escénica y dramatúrgica es una formidable palanca de proyección del espectador que sigue los esfuerzos y pruebas del héroe de manera catártica, manteniendo una distancia cómplice y humorística en la dramatización. La narración oral responde a una construcción simple y eficaz, de una problemática enunciada claramente, seguida de consecuencias en cadena, que conducen a una transformación.... Director y Narrador Oral.
“18th-c studies” meets “digital humanities” | The Long Eighteenth This post by George Williams. The CFP for ASECS 2010 is out, and I can’t help but notice that several of the panel proposals (including one being organized by Lisa Maruca and me) deal explicitly with digital humanities topics. Details regarding these panels are available after the jump, but before you make that jump, dear reader, please indulge me for a few sentences. Does it seem to you that the various academic disciplines concerned with the humanities are at a turning point with regard to integrating digital tools into their research and teaching methodologies? It certainly seems that way to me: And yet, does it perhaps also feel to you that the benefits of these developments have not yet filtered down to our day-to-day academic lives? This is not meant to be a list of complaints, mind you. Is this new phase a good thing? ASECS 2010 and the Digital Humanities Below are the CFPs for ASECS 2010 panels that explicitly deal with the digital humanities. George H. Like this: Like Loading...
Bank of Canada expected to slash outlook most since 2008 as oil rout plunges economy into ‘another era’ | Financial Post Canada’s central bank will make some of the deepest cuts to its economic and inflation outlooks since the 2008 financial crisis, economists said, as the drop in oil prices raises the prospect of lower interest rates this year. Governor Stephen Poloz will release the bank’s quarterly monetary policy report at 10 a.m. today in Ottawa, along with the January rate decision. The Bank of Canada is expected to keep its main rate at 1%, where it’s been since 2010, according to a Bloomberg survey of 21 economists. The Canadian dollar fell to its weakest in five years Tuesday on speculation the more than 50% drop in oil prices since June will lead to sharp economic revisions by the central bank. “We expect the bank to be quite dovish tomorrow,” said Charles St-Arnaud, senior economist at Nomura Securities Inc. in London Tuesday. In its October MPR, the bank assumed West Texas Intermediate would be trading at about $85 a barrel, instead of the $46.39 price today. Oil Impact Off Table Less Pressure
Practices A collection of Good Practices from European projects and classrooms Editor's pick Virtual Guide for Entrepreneurial learning and teaching at school Practice29.01.2015 00 The “sense of initiative and entrepreneurship” is one of eight key competences for lifelong learning promoted in the European Union, and teachers need to be prepared to introduce it into their classes. Read Report highlights 10 trends set to shake up education Massive open social learning and dynamic assessment on the Open University’s list The Open University has published the Innovating Pedagogy 2014 report, which explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment. It proposes 10 innovations that, although already established to some extent, have not yet had what it describes as “a profound influence” on education. To produce the report, academics at the university’s Institute of Educational Technology proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories and practices, which were then boiled down to 10 that it deems to “have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice”. 1. This is all about bringing the benefits of social networks to massive open online courses (Moocs). “Possible solutions include linking conversations with learning content, creating short-duration discussion groups made up of learners who are currently online, and enabling learners to review each other’s assignments,” the report says. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Why North American producers will blink first in the global oil war | Financial Post CALGARY – The standoff currently playing out between oil companies in North America and OPEC will end with Canadian and American producers likely to blink first, and that will happen this year, a number of senior oil price forecasters said Tuesday. “It’s been Canada, to some degree, and the U.S. that have contributed to the oversupply,” Martin King, vice-president of institutional research at FirstEnergy Capital Corp., said in a speech to the Calgary Petroleum Club Tuesday morning, adding “there’s still pretty solid supply-side growth.” Mr. King had been asked if, in the face of lower prices, Canadian producers should “blink first” and cut their production in the face of OPEC’s decision to continue pumping 30.5 million barrels of oil into the world market. Mr. On Tuesday, the West Texas Intermediate oil price benchmark fell US$2.30 to US$46.39 per barrel, less than half the price WTI traded for in June. Slightly more than 10 years ago, Mr.
Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment? Building on research of individuals’ modes of engagement with the web (Visitors and Residents4), and the JISC-funded Digital Information Seeker report5, this project is exploring what motivates different types of engagement with the digital environment for learning. The investigation focuses on the sources learners turn to in order to gather information, and which ‘spaces’ (on and offline) they choose to interact in as part of the learning process. It is using the Visitors and Residents6 framework to map learner’s modes of engagement in both personal and institutional contexts. The project is assessing whether individual’s approaches shift according to the learners’ educational stage or whether they develop practices/literacies in early stages that remain largely unchanged as they progress through their educational career. The pilot phase focused on the ‘Emerging’ educational stage which spans late stage secondary school and first year undergraduates. Objectives Reports Video: Blog posts:
As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes | Public Leaders Network | The Guardian With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said. Johnson, who heads the Institute of New Economic Thinking and was previously managing director at Soros, said societies can tolerate income inequality if the income floor is high enough. But with an existing system encouraging chief executives to take decisions solely on their profitability, even in the richest countries inequality is increasing. Johnson added: “People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else.