Quotable Quotes – Amazing Grace (Movie)

Wilberforce: “No one of our age has taken power.”
Pitt: “Which is why we’re too young to realize certain things are impossible! So we will do them anyway.”

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Newton: “I try to pretend that I am a monk, but I do not have the will power. I am a monk Mondays….Wednesdays….”

- Amazing Grace (the movie)

Attacks On Social Networks Rising

Even with all the advancements in social networking and security, we still need to be careful. The increasing number of attacks is dismaying. To borrow a line from Lemony Snicket, “The world is not a nice place.”

clipped from www.webuser.co.uk Social networks such as Facebook were one of the main targets of cybercriminals this year, according to security experts. According to MessageLabs, sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo present rich pickings for cybercriminals as many people give away a lot of personal information in their profiles. “The rapid adoption rate of social networking sites such as Facebook has inevitably been exploited by cybercriminals intent on adding the content in these sites to their portfolio of tools,” said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs. “As we have seen in the past, mass adoption of new communication or web-based tools is often followed by a rise in the number of threats against it and the ‘Facebook’ effect will present new challenges to corporate and personal online security,” Sunner said. MessageLabs’ assessment comes on the same day a Russian-made bot that has infiltrated online dating sites.

Profile In Creative Learning Games – Timez Attack

By E. Brown

From Big Brainz comes acclaimed edutainment game, Timez Attack. Where else can you see response like this to a Math game:

My son actually paid for half of the program himself! Do you think any kid would do THAT for a set of flashcards?!
Nancy Salacinski, Montana

I am a second grade teacher… My daughter in fourth grade begs to play this the moment we get home. My older middle school daughter also wants to play because it looks so cool. My teenager who is 17 had friends over the other day. It even spellbound them!!!
Nicole Schmidt

Big Brainz has created a game that engages learners on multiple levels. Timez Attack is fun to play and explore:

• It is a high-end video game, not unlike what you’d see on a PlayStation.
• There is a competitive aspect to the game that keeps you coming back for more.
• There are repetitive sequences set up to reinforce learning and retention.
• There are changing environments to keep the learner engaged.

This game has an excellent blend of teaching and game play. Some edutainment titles lean too heavily on the entertainment side and consequently, the learning is lost in light of the storyline.

If you have never seen or played Timez Attack, you can download a free version (without changing environments) or you can purchase the full version for $40 which will give you the dungeon, Mechanized World, and Lava World.

While Timez Attack is for learning the multiplication tables only, I sure hope Big Brainz has more topics they are exploring. This is fun learning done right!

Related Links
- Profile In Creative Learning – Bert Smets, Hopla
- Stop Putting Your Class To Sleep And Engage The Learner
- Entertainment’s Educational Impact

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Stop Putting Your Class To Sleep And Engage The Learner

By E. Brown

Edutainment. In some circles this is a dirty word. Some teachers may respond, “I am not in class (or online) to entertain, I am there to teach!” Well, let me ask you, have you ever looked out over your class and seen people asleep? Have you ever felt like you were the only one interested in the topic you were teaching?

Unfortunately, many teaching lectures and classes fail to engage the learner. I vividly remember experiences in Elementary School, High School, and College where the difference between teachers that showed up for class and teachers that engaged the class stood out in glaring contrast.

Elementary School Comparison
One teacher was a “screamer”. She called all her students by their last name (which is typically a sign of contempt). I honestly cannot think of a thing I learned while in her class. Contrast her with a teacher I had the year before and it was night and day difference. This teacher was much more compassionate. Called all her students by their first names and made sure to say “hello” and “good bye” to every student each day with a hug. She was creative and energetic in her approach to teaching. Did I learn in her class? You bet I did. I listened to everything she taught me. Why? Because she engaged me and each of her students on a personal level.

High School Comparison
Granted, High School is not the easiest season of life to try and engage students in learning. Many students would rather be hanging out with their friends. Many of my teachers were good. But good can be the enemy of great. I remember one great teacher who engaged his classes. This man would take time out of his day if he saw you needed help. He had the kind of creativity and character that you wanted to aspire to and kids wanted to hang around him. Not because he was their “buddy”, but because he cared about what he taught, who he taught to, and how he taught it.

See a pattern emerging?

College
Similar situations — professors who were excited about their subjects passed that enthusiasm onto their classes in entertaining ways. Other prof’s that were more interested in their own research/grants seemed to see classes as interruptions in their personal schedules.

Know The Audience
So, what does all this have to do with edutainment? In order to engage the learner you need to know who they are — know your audience. Do your homework. Listen to focus groups, students, and customers.

Also, ask yourself if you enjoy what you do? Maybe teaching is not for you. It could be you have more interest in research. If you are not genuinely excited about what you’re teaching then it will be obvious to everyone — but you.

Tips

• Be yourself – use humor if that comes naturally to you.
• Be honest and open – when you’re transparent your class can better relate to you and will listen to what you have to say.
• Use props – strong visual reminders can do wonders for cementing concepts in the minds of your class/audience.
• Activities – to be used only when it makes sense and reinforces.
• Participation – engage members in participating what you are teaching.
• Remove distractions – whether in the room or any annoying habits you have picked up, remove them.

Edutainment is not a dirty word. We need to engage the learner. We need to engage them on a personal level and academic level. We need to help them understand why the knowledge and information we are conveying is relevant. If not, we have lost their attention and, consequently, lost any opportunity to truly teach.

If you have others ideas let me know in the comments section below.

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Is Knowledge Management Dead?

By E. Brown

One of the buzz-words of the 90′s was knowledge management or KM. In this age of what Peter Drucker called the Knowledge Worker, has the practice of KM taken a backseat? Are we all too busy to worry about it?

In their book, If Only We Knew What We Know, O’Dell and Grayson say, a few organizations are learning to mine knowledge…

…They are tapping into this hidden asset, capturing it, organizing it, transferring it, and using it to create customer value, operational excellence, and product innovation–all the while increasing profits and effectiveness.

Yet,

…Some of the most intellectually curious, performance-oriented organizations in the world…[do] not even know about [best] practices hidden, untouched and undocumented, inside the walls of their own organizations.

Why is this?

Sharpening The Axe
Stephen Covey talks about the principle of Sharpening The Axe — sharpening your knowledge, skills, and expertise.
Read this brief parable, from the Story Bin, and see if you can relate:

A young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job.

“That depends,” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fell this tree.”

The young man stepped forward, and skillfully felled a great tree.

Impressed, the foreman exclaimed, “You can start Monday.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by — and Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.”

Startled, the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”

“Normally we do,” said the foreman. “But we’re letting you go today because you’ve fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you’ve dropped from first place on Monday to last place today.”

“But I’m a hard worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks!”

The foreman, sensing the young man’s integrity, thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you been sharpening your axe?”

The young man replied, “No sir, I’ve been working too hard to take time for that!”

No Time
I had lunch with a friend yesterday. He is in training and was telling me about a series of software classes he teaches. The days are long and the information covered is enormous.

“Why do you try to cover so much in such a short period of time?” I asked.

“Because, companies do not want to let their people go for more than a couple days. They feel it loses productivity.”

Now, in light of the story above, how much sense does that make?

Productivity
I remember the mantra of early computing: We’ll be able to get more done in less time and have more recreational opportunities. To which Dr. Phil McGraw would say, “How’s that working for you?”

Because of the increase in information and knowledge to share, personal productivity gurus like David Allen have become very popular. We have increased the rate of information transfer yet we do not know how to process all the information. We either end up getting bogged down or we only use a fraction of our potential.

So, is KM dead? I do not think so.

Many organizations are using their intellectual capital to make a difference. The new buzz-words are things like, Business Intelligence (BI), Collaborative Networks, and Collective Intelligence. Still, it is all the same. We are capturing, managing, and transferring knowledge. Those organizations that make a commitment to practice training, equipping, and sharing will survive and thrive, those that neglect this practice do so at their own risk.

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Teacher Tribute

Be thankful for all those in your life who have taken the time to share their gifts and knowledge.

I once had a teacher who taught me to read
and how to spell words that I someday would need.
How could she have known where that someday would lead
when she shared her gift with me?

I once had a teacher who taught me to sing.
A song in your heart is a wonderful thing.
I wonder if she knew how much joy that would bring
when she shared her gift with me?

I once had a teacher who taught me to draw.
She opened my eyes to the beauty I saw.
She taught me to see there is beauty in us all
when she shared her gift with me.

I once had a teacher who taught me to play
as part of a team – not always my way.
He taught me a lesson on sharing that day
when he shared his gift with me.

All of these teachers shared gifts that were free.
What I do with these lessons is all up to me.
If I share them with others how thankful they will be
that they shared their gifts with me.

- Author Unknown

NOTE: If you know the author please let me know so I can give credit.

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Quotable Quote – Emerson

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

NEW Speed Racer Movie Trailer

 

Now the trailer is online for all to get a first glimpse of next Summer’s anticipated hit movie, Speed Racer. Featuring all the characters you loved: Pops, Trixie, Spritle, Chim Chim, and Racer X. Check it out today and let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

What Is Art – Reloaded?

In light of the “What Is Art?” clip, here is another from BoingBoing. Be careful where you step or what you smash — it might be a famous artist!

clipped from www.boingboing.net Gareth says: “Hey, elephants and chimps (and children) can do a pretty good job of abstract painting, so why not bugs? Artist Steven R. Kutcher dips the creepy crawlers in (watercolor) paint, or has them traipse through it, and then he lets them scurry across the canvas (watercolor paper).” Link

Quotable Quote – Henry Bergson

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

- Henry Bergson 

What Is Art?

By E. Brown

I remember the question from Art School. Students and professors alike went round and round about the topic. What is Art? For a long time Art used to be considered inspirational, edifying, and in some cases awe inspiring. What is Art? Art has always been a communicative medium either in transmitting information or emotion. No doubt, artists see the world from unique perspectives. From marveling at the beauty and intricacies of a flower petal to admiring the disrupted patterns of a tire tread on a street — created things and the admiration of them are part of human DNA.

In 1955, Robert Rauschenberg caused a storm of controversy after he found a stuffed goat, stuck a tire around it body and mounted it on top of a painting for display (see image). People either loved it or hated it. And, the debate ensued: what is Art?

Today, two year old Freddie Linsky is bringing up the issue again (with a little help from his mother). Freddie has been creating art with condiments and more recently paint. His mother assisted him by posting them on Charles Saachi’s online gallery and added some provocative captions (props for mom’s copy writing!).

She claimed her son was an art critic and and a familiar face at major exhibitions, and added ludicrously overblown captions to his offerings.

One creation of random red and green splodges called Sunrise was captioned: “A bold use of colour. Inspired by the ‘plein air’ habit of painting by Monet, drawing on the natural world that surrounds us all.”

And his black scrawlings in a work entitled The Best Loved Elephant are captioned:

“The striking use of oriental calligraphy has the kanji-like characters stampeding from the page, showing the new ascent of the East. It is one of Linsky’s most experimental works.”

- From The Daily Mail

Freddie’s mom, a lecturer and art critic, claims she never thought people would take seriously the “over-the-top” descriptions of her son’s paintings. Yet, a gallery in Berlin has asked to show the toddler’s work. Not bad.

So what is art? For many, the debate still rages on.

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Quotable Quote – Francis Bacon

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else and still unknown to himself.

- Francis Bacon (from the movie, Amazing Grace)

Quotable Quote – Amazing Grace (movie)

Single men wither away and die in rooms that smell of feet and arm pits.

- Henry Thornton, Amazing Grace (the movie)

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When I first heard this at the theater I thought, “What a great line!”  It was one of those lines in a movie that catches you off guard and has a visceral quality. It was also kind of humorous because it reminded me of being single and a few (very few) of the other single guys I knew — their apartments smelled like feet and arm pits — yuck! Anyways, had to share this.

How Being Quiet Pays Off In Business

By E. Brown

USA Today recently published an interview with controversial Q1 Group CEO, Vijay Eswaran, extolling the virtues of silence. Vijay spends an hour at the beginning of most every day in silent contemplation. He attributes this to being a big part of his successes. Vijay’s new book, In The Sphere of Silence, outlines a regimen of silence:

• Best time is early in the morning or when convenient. Consistency is the key.
• Maintain silence for one hour. If you’re distracted, start at the beginning.
• Evaluate yesterday. Note your progress and identify reasons for failures.
• Set goals for today, tomorrow, and next week.
• Plan long-term goals and prioritize. Do this daily.
• Review your notes from the previous day.
• Seek knowledge by reading non-fiction or listening to something educational for ten minutes, then make note of what you learned.
• Commune with the Lord for the last ten minutes – asking questions that need answers. Write it all down.

At first, the interviewer seemed to think Vijay’s exercise was “new-age goobledy-gook” and later in the article proposed the practice of silence as a recent “secret” discovery. The fact is for thousands of years, men and women have made a habit of spending time in quiet reflection gaining introspection and wisdom.

Like King Solomon of old once said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”