Shortest Poem?

I watched this clip this morning and really enjoyed the analysis, so hope you do as well.

how to get out of the educational “death valley”

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

Maybe it is my fault

In this outstanding video Michael Jordan explains that you don't succeed unless you work hard and learn from failure.



"Maybe it's my fault.
Maybe I led you to believe it was easy, when it wasn't.
Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not at the gym.
Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner.
That my game was built on flash, and not fire.
Maybe it's my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength, that my pain was my motivation.
Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life.
Maybe I destroyed the game.
Or maybe you're just making excuses."

Great Crowdbreaker

I read this on Mark Oestreicher's blog [link here] which I thought that I could use sometime, so here it is...

 

• Get about 5 or 8 teenagers up front
• Tell them they have to say a tongue-twister as fast as possible, five times, and that there will be a prize for the two or three who can say the whole thing without messing up at all.
• The tongue-twister is: One smart fella and he felt smart
• To say it five times, though, it becomes: 

One smart fella and he felt smart

Two smart fellas and they felt smart

Three smart fellas and they felt smart

Four smart fellas and they felt smart

Five smart fellas and they felt smart

 

What inevitably happens is that many of them end up saying something like, “One fart smeller and…"


Wonderfully immature.and hilarious.

Walking meetings / lessons?

taken from Jessica Gross (TED)

Nilofer Merchant gives a startling statistic: we’re sitting, on average, for 9.3 hours per day—far more than the 7.7 hours we spend sleeping. “Sitting is so incredibly prevalent, we don’t even question how much we’re doing it.” Merchant says, "Got a meeting? Take a walk, in that way, sitting has become the smoking of our generation.” But there are consequences. Physical inactivity, Merchant says, leads to upticks in our risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart disease, and type II diabetes. Merchant’s own habits changed when a colleague couldn’t fit a meeting into her schedule and asked if Merchant could come along on a dog walk instead. Now, she says, “I’ve taken that idea and made it my own.” Instead of meeting in conference rooms, she asks people to go on walking meetings—20 to 30 miles’ worth a week. “It’s changed my life,” she says. Merchant is carrying on a long tradition of frequent, even ritualistic, walking.

Here are some other fans of the amble. Some are walk-and-talkers; others simply stroll for its own sake.

Aristotle allegedly instructed students while strolling about—which fits with his students’ being called “Peripatetics.” .

In August 1910, Sigmund Freud took a four-hour walk with the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, who had requested an “urgent consultation” via telegraph, according to the BBC. Mahler’s marriage was disintegrating, and he was about to have a breakdown—hence the emergency walk-and-talk with the founder of psychoanalysis. In fact, Freud conducted a number of walking analyses, according to Freud: A Life for Our Time. Another significant example: Freud conducted his first training analysis on Max Eitingon in 1907 through a series of evening walks. Eitingon went to become president of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Steve Jobs made a habit of the walking meeting, especially for first encounters, according to CNNMoney, which quotes from Jobs’ biography: “taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation.”

Harry S. Truman was a routine-oriented man, and walking was a fundamental part of that routine. According to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Truman woke up at five in the morning for a “vigorous” walk of a mile or two, “wearing a business suit and tie!” (This in addition to his frequent midday swimming session in the White House pool, “with his eyeglasses on.”)

Charles Dickens “was from childhood an avid, even compulsive, walker,” Sports Illustrated wrote in 1988. (Apparently, the mid-1800s was “the golden age of professional foot racing, or ‘pedestrianism.’” Who knew?) Dickens frequently walked around 20 miles a day—one night in 1857, he logged 30 miles—and often did so at night. Walking was a means of both observing the cities around him and de-stressing. “Dickens found composition to be hard, painful work,” SI writes. “The hours he spent at his desk agitated him tremendously, and walking served as a kind of safety valve.”

So the questions then begs, should I not be using more of this technique for teaching and learning. In the summer months, the pupils are always asking to work outside, so maybe I need to introduce "walking lessons". I know that we have the campus for it, so that would not be a problem, but I would have to consider the content, which does not require a desktop / laptop, but rather a smart phone or tablet.

The Death of Brennan Manning: A Tribute Cartoon

This article was written by David Hayward [link here]

“Tribute Cartoon to Brennan Manning”
I received an email from a friend informing me that Brennan Manning died yesterday. I can find no news articles confirming this, but his Wikipedia page dates his death as yesterday and his official website announces his passing.
Manning was an American author, friar, priest, contemplative and speaker best known for his book Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out. As an advocate for the marginalized, he’s my kind of people. His voice for the church-abused and the marginalized was not only fueled by his take on the gospel of Jesus, but by his own personal experiences. He got married, marginalizing himself from his own home, the Roman Catholic church. Many of his friends urged him to seek accommodation from the church, but he refused to do so. He didn’t want to be a silent conspirator in what he considered a “corrupt and corrupting process”.
One of his most famous quotes:

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle… That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Whether you agree or not that this is the greatest single cause of atheism, it certainly does illuminate the hypocrisy so much religion is justifiably accused of.
He believed Jesus was the human face of God. According to Saint Paul, now he is face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Read the kind words people are leaving on his Facebook page.
Rest in peace Brennan Manning

Amazing Grace as you have not heard it before...

I came across this clip from the Chapman University Choir in SoCal. Their "signature song", Amazing Grace is unforgettable. Listen through to the end!