The Gold Program - Introducing Kids To Their Unique Strengths

As a strengths advocate I lean heavily toward helping people grow in their understanding of strengths by moving toward more granular strengths based assessments. Marcus Buckingham offers StandOut which has 9 different themes or talent groupings. Myers-Briggs offers 16 ways of understanding the uniqueness of individuals. Strengthsfinder, which Buckingham helped build during his time at Gallup offers 34 different themes and perhaps serval hundred threads.

But DISC is still a great strengths assessment. It begins with 4 very easy to understand groupings. The "Gold" Program, introduced below is specifically designed DISC for kids. If you are a parent or work with children, check it out!

Play, Passion and Purpose with Harvard's Tony Wagner

Tony Wagner recently accepted a position as the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Prior to this, he was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade. Tony consults widely to schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally. His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.

The Finland Phenomenon

Finland now consistently leads the world in education including international test score results. The students start at a later age (about age 7), have shorter school days than there U.S. counterparts and have almost no homework.

What's Up With That?

A Harvard University Professor takes a look.

How Do You Help Your Students Develop A Head For Business?

If you wanted a child to grow and develop a head for business, what type of classes would you encourage him to take? Math? Science? Accounting? Surely you could make a case for each of these choices. But in an article for Inc. Magazine, Kevin Daum makes a pretty good case for the arts, specifically theater arts.

Daum argues, "Performing arts students must create a concept from scratch, refine it so they can articulate a compelling vision, recruit skilled labor, and manage everyone to completion on time and on budget, since moving opening night is never an option. They also get to sell their product and collect immediate customer response in the form of ticket sales and applause. This process is completed by millions of students several times a year, all over the world."

Of course, from a strengths perspective, we want kids to find the marketplace that leverages their passions and talents. If that happens to be math and science, that's wonderful. If that happens to be shop class, that's wonderful as well.

I maintain that I learned more about business from my high school baseball coach than any class I took. Ironically, he was also my high school business teacher and a very good one. But it was on the baseball field where I learned to compete, to win and lose, to understand the importance of both natural talent and developed skill and to cooperate with teammates toward a common goal.

Yet sports programs have been dropped, arts programs have been canceled and auto shop has been eliminated from the curriculum. I fully support science, technology, engineering and math or STEM classes. But they're not more important than theater arts, baseball or auto shop.

One would think that math and accounting are irreplaceable components of running any successful business. And maybe they are. But Richard Branson was already a full-fledge billionaire that had successfully started hundreds of businesses before his accountant was able to help him fully understand the difference between gross sales and net profit.

To read Kevin Daum's full article in Inc. click here

The One Thing Your Child Needs by Jenifer Fox

Sugata Mitra's New School System Idea Wins 1 Million Dollar TED Prize

A professor of educational technology recently won the $1m TED Prize for his innovative approach to education. Sugata Mitra's schools let kids use computers to organize their own learning with retired, mostly female, schoolteachers (the "grannies") beaming in via Skype to answer their questions.



To learn more, here is an article in Wired Magazine.

How To Graduate From College With A Job You Love - Jullien Gordon

"Breakaway" - Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

This terrific video short was produced and distributed by Farmers Insurance. It's worth watching several times. Your second time through, pay attention to the lyrics from the song "Breakaway", performed by Kelly Clarkson. It was written by Avril Lavigne, Bridget Benenate and Mathew Gerrard.

Perfect!

Neurons to Networks: The Science Behind Your STRENGTHSPATH

There is solid science behind the STRENGTHSPATH principle. This short video, From Neurons to Networks is a good short explanation of the science supporting what I teach. Your STRENGTHSPATH is really a metaphor for neural pathways in the brain. Although I'm also a firm believer in the concept of lifelong nueroplasticity, or the ability to learn and grow throughout life, this video establishes that our hard-wiring begins before birth and is fairly complete early in life. The STRENGTHSPATH Philosophy is geared for the most part toward nurturing your students's nature, rather than attempting to completely re-wire what some might label as a weakness. Of course weaknesses must sometimes be addressed and managed, but the emphasis should always be on reinforcing what your student naturally does well.

Tom Peters On Education

Warren Buffett's Advice to Kids

Warren Buffett has a program for kids called "Warren Buffett's Secret Millionaire's Club". Each segment has great financial advice. But if you weren't aware, Buffett is a huge promoter and terrific example of the strengths message I communicate regularly on this blog. Check out this short clip titled, "Gotta Dance".

High Value Recess

Recess is a powerful tool. Too better understand how and why, watch this video clip.



To read a full article go to edutopia.org

"Great Minds" - A Message to Teachers

Math & Science Are Inextricably Linked???... Or Are They?

Maybe you have been led to believe what I've been led to believe, namely, "that math & science are inextricably linked. That is, if you want to be good at science, you'll need to be good at math.

Hmmmm...Well, not according to Harvard professor emeritus Dr. E.O. Wilson. In his article, "Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math", Wilson writes:

"For many young people who aspire to be scientists, the great bugbear is mathematics. Without advanced math, how can you do serious work in the sciences? Well, I have a professional secret to share: Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.

During my decades of teaching biology at Harvard, I watched sadly as bright undergraduates turned away from the possibility of a scientific career, fearing that, without strong math skills they would fail. This mistaken assumption has deprived science of an immeasurable amount of sorely needed talent. It has created a hemorrhage of brain power we need to stanch."

Wilson continues, "I speak as an authority on the subject because I myself am an extreme case. Having spent my precollege years in relatively poor Southern schools, I didn't take algebra until my freshman year at the University of Alabama. I finally got around to Calculus as a 32 year old tenured professor at Harvard, where I sat uncomfortably in classes with undergraduate students only a bit more than half my age. A couple of them were students in a course on evolutionary biology I was teaching. I swallowed my pride and learned calculus."

Wilson shares that Charles Darwin himself had little or no mathematical ability. When Wilson needs math for his science work, he collaborates with mathematicians.

Wilson's advice to aspiring young scientists?... "A key first step is to find a subject that interests them deeply and focus on it"

And that's a pretty good summary of the strengths message!

Brandon Busteed from Gallup

Resource For Teaching A Unit On Creativity and Innovation

On the left hand column of this blog, you will see a new link called "On Innovation". This connects to a resource with over 500 high quality video interviews and lessons with and about some of America's most innovative people. You can listen to amazing thinkers and visionaries like Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Dean Kamen and others. It also comes with printable resources and lesson plans. For an overview of this resource, watch the short clip below.

Innovation - The Flipped Classroom

Ken Robinson on Multiple Intelligences

I love Sir Ken Robinson and I absolutely love this clip. Make sure you listen all the way to the end and hear the Gillian Lynne story.

The Teacher As Gardener

In this short clip, Sir Ken Robinson suggests that the main metaphor for teaching is moving from an industrial one back to something more like gardening.

Pay Attention To What Children Love Doing As They Are Growing Up

Gretchen Rubin explores a terrific strength discovery tool in the short video below. She asks the question, What did you love doing when you were 10 years old?" It really is a great question. Don't get hung up on the precise age. Maybe the key clue will come at age 14. Maybe it will come much younger.

Consider this amazing memory from physicist Freeman Dyson. He writes, "I've never remembered a time when I wasn't in love with calculating. One of the first memories I have was when I was being put down for a nap in the afternoons. I was in the crib and not able to climb out, and I was calculating the infinite series, 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1 + 1/16...and discovered that it came out to 2... I just loved calculating. It's something your born with...

Math Games

For children who find math difficult or frustrating, or who just like to be challenged, there are many cool math games online to play for free. But are they useful? Research shows that the brain’s systems for math and language are different, and some people are wired to be better at one or the other. That doesn't mean any student should give up on math, though it does suggest some students may need alternative methods to reach their potential.

Math games can be an effective way to learn. A study in 2010 found that the action-packed video game Dimension M beat traditional lessons in teaching linear algebra to seventh- and eighth-graders. Another option to boost skills and math confidence in kids is to buy math software, which allows for greater parental control than turning a child loose on the Internet.

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One Math Skill You Need to Succeed at Work

David Geary, a Missouri professor and the study's lead author, said the research made a connection between child psychology and labor economics in order to examine the roots of America's shortage of mathematically proficient workers. Data from the United States Center for Educational Statistics revealed that one in five adults lacks the math competency expected of an eighth-grader.

"We isolated a specific skill that has real-world importance in employability and observed how that skill related to grade-school mathematical performance," Geary said. "By identifying a specific numerical skill as a target, we can focus education efforts on helping deficient students as early as kindergarten and thereby give them a better chance at career success in adulthood."

The math skill researchers identified was "number system knowledge," which is the ability to conceptualize a numeral as a symbol for a quantity and understand systematic relationships between numbers. The study found that having this knowledge at the beginning of first grade predicted better functional mathematical ability in adolescence.

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Coursera Get's Free Online Courses Approved for College Credit

In a continuing trend toward on-line education accreditation, Coursera had five of it's on-line courses approved for college credit today by the American Council on Education.

Coursera, which offers massive online open courses, also known as MOOCs, is one of several efforts to bring higher education online. It now has a lineup of more than 200 classes, organized and taught by professors at 33 universities.

Watch for this trend to continue...and if it does, colleges across the country will have to further alter their business modal or risk going out of business.

For more details, Click Here

The Neuroscience of Personality - UCLA's Dario Nardi

This is a great session by UCLA professor Dario Nardi speaking at Google. I recommend watching it in 20 minute segments.

Dilbert's "The Knack" - An Introduction to Natural Talent

Jennifer Fox - Introduction to Strengths Based Education

Interview with Educator Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson: A Brief History of Mass Education from imagine it project on Vimeo.

Child Driven Education - Sugata Mitra

Changing Education Paradigms - Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson - Bring On The Learning Revolution