Global revolution...ing

How many times in your life can you say that you've been part of a global revolution? Not many, I would assume, or perhaps a lot, depending on which revolution you think i'm writing about. There are indeed many revolutions happening right now. Some can be summed up in Technology (Information, Communication), others in Science (Biology, Medicine), but all of them should have a commanding force: Education.

I read news, reports, journals and so on about Biology, Education, Technology and Culture in general, and every single day I get enough adrenaline to continue form one more year.

I regularly watch TED lectures, and there are two speakers that are my favorites: Sir Ken Robinson and Juan Enriquez, not only because they tell us the stories and things we must listen to and work on, but also because they speak from their hearts and minds with passion and humor.

This morning I watched 2007's Juan Enriquez wants to grow Energy, and agriculture was the centralized topic.

I have just finished watching 2010 Sir Ken Robinson's Bring on the learning revolution!, and again there was a central reference to agriculture, and this reference was metaphorically essential. We need to grow education, water students with appropriate learning environments, and harvest life-long learners eager to act on their and our world's problems to arise.

I dream about doing things better in my life, family and work, the beauty of being an educator is that even though we can make mistakes, we can offer knowledge and opportunities to students, and have a larger impact in other people's lives.

I am in the middle of revolutionary times, and so are you, I'll try my best, but if you are a student you have to at least match that effort. And yes, you can do it.

Global Warming…or, Global Raining?

I’ve been hearing about the issues of Global Warming for years. Causes and consequences have shifted in some way over the years. Many are the reasons for that, certainly the world’s needs are sometimes a drive force to modify some of these issues. Carbon dioxide, greenhouse effect, oil, methane, and other terms have been in our mouths for years. Nothing has been significantly done government-wide in the US, more than separate actions that have have little or no effect nationwide, not a good move considering that the US populations represents 4% of the world population but contributes with 25% of the World Carbon dioxide emissions.

I’m talking about this because I woke up at 5 am with water dripping from the roof of my apartment due to “intense” rain for Lima, PERU. Since I came back to my home country, I have witnessed more rain in the last 3 years than during my first 25 years here.

Click here for the news report.

I call it “intense” because 3-4 cm in the city of Lima is a significant problem, the city is not prepared for rain. In fact, floods all over the city were registered yesterday, disrupting transportation and bringing down mud and houses.

How can an old bureaucratic city with a corrupt government prepare for mother nature’s fluctuating weather conditions? That is something that must be answered not only in my country but everywhere. The difference with northern or european countries is that they have had more extreme weather regularly and they are prepared, but we’re not.

If problems come from extreme weather and unpredictability, what’s better than mother nature to help us solve those problems. I review TED talks constantly, and these two lectures might be of interest for this topic:

www.asknature.org

Creativity

I've been working in education all my life, and I didn't notice it until I became a teacher. A few months ago, I heard something that gave me professional peace, I felt selfish until that moment, benefiting from educating others while I was learning in the process. "Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track", is the title of a book written by Russell Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg, I haven't read the book yet, but I listened to a synopsis via podcast. The book is in my wish list in Amazon, so the next relative coming from the US will bring me a copy of it.
What I rescue more of it is the motto: "The Objective of Education is Learning, not Teaching". no I don't feel as selfish for learning as much, or more, than my own students through my process of teaching.

Open publication - Free publishing - More teaching

I've been preparing a lecture on creativity and Joy Paul Guilford's work on the Structure of Intellect and his 3 layered cube, and while preparing it, I've learned a great deal of expertise, creativity is incredible and so magnificent that we must turn to mother nature before we can do something creative.
I found a countless number of extraordinary TED talks about Creativity, here are some of the few ones that made me feel that I want to create something:

Missing them.....

It sounds ironic when you say that you miss work. Especially when you are a few days from your time off work, enjoying the holidays. However, as much as I want to rest and have fun with my family, can I stop working? Or, at least, can I stop searching for resources and new things to offer in and out of the classroom?
Yes! Vacations all summer, woohoo!!!........not really. I guess that's the fine print when you sign the professional contract to become an educator (working 8 hours at school and several more at home). I didn't leave for vacation time and I can't stop working about the curricular challenges for 2009. My country's academic year runs from march to december. So the holidays mark the end of the academic year too.
I tried to stay away from my tools of research: twitter, ning, monitter, etc. But, even though disconnected for a while, I know I can't get too far from from it. The rest of the world is learning and teaching at all times.
I use lots of videos in my classes, I found the next video from daibarnes at twitter. The US spends thousands of dollars per student every year, my country barely spends tens of dollars per student every year, and I think bioth have similar results in primary and secondary schools. This is no irony, it is a reality. Something that we have to face and that we must change.
The world says technology is the solution. I'm a huge fan of technology, I use it in all my classes, but I think technology alone is not the solution. We must not rely solely on that. The contribution that parents bring to students' performance when they get involved in their education is incomparable.
Get involved in your children's education and you'll see that education and many other areas of interest in their lives will improve.

Table got SMARTer - October 29th

I'm a big fan of using technology and web 2.0 resources in the classroom. The tool that allows me to do that in an interactive way is the Interactive White Board, or IWB. Since I started using it early this year, I embraced the countless resources it comes with, but best of all, it's the canvas I use to paint my classes with my originality and self-expression to present Science concepts and ideas.
Even though the goods of the IWB, one of the little flaws was the fact that only one user could interact with the board at the same time. However, it appears that it is not a problem anymore. Last thursday, Octobder 23rd Smart Tech (the manufacturer of the brand I use) released to the media the new version of the Smart family, The Smart Table. Customized for the little ones, primary students, those that get more enthusiastic when using it, the Smart Table allows several kids to touch the board at the same time, with a whole new set of ready-made activities and fully customizable. I'm certainly eager to try it, and I'm sure that all my students feel the same way too.

World Wide Web 2.0 - June 24th, 2008

There has been an explosion followed by a snowball coming to us at all times, it is called flow of information. The resources derived from and to handle all sorts of information generated from the ever-expanding knowledge, but most of all by the practically unlimited availability of it, is astounding. Proof of that is the exponential amount of blogs and wikis that have been in the last few years. This is certainly a new generation of interaction between user, interface and the powerful feedback.

There are several websites that promote the use of the new types of tools available: cool, fresh, dynamic and friendly web 2.0 tools. Pages such as Go2Web2.0, and Mosaic are good examples of that.

the best of all is that a new way to interact and present information is available in Education. Generating contents with new approaches, visions and levelsof interactivity. Let's celebrate the web 2.0 and the possibilities it brings us for our social, academic, business and personal life.

Quality in Education - June 16th, 2008

Education is a very clear concept, obtaining knowledge and experiences to enlighten one's background. The education has been around us for thousands of years, in one way or another.
Education, as well as any other part of the human expression, has suffered "revolutions" along time.
It wasn't until a few decades ago that the use of a green board with dusty chalks (white at the beginning, coloured later) was the gold standard. Time after, year after year, the evolution of technology and the implementation of it around the sociocultural environment has marked distinct changes in education.
State-sponsored education, still very popular in many countries around the world, is no longer the prime source of knowledge production. Private institutions, with a significant presence in forming renowned scientists and thinkers are probably the leading machinery of knowledge production nowadays.
However, Education has entered into a new era. Knowledge is no longer reserved for the elite families or people with lots of financial resources. Money is not the primary obstacle for a person to be educated. Willingness and progress desire is the main ingredient, but technology and its open and immensely vast of available resources, not only of educational material but also in the current ways to creating, communicating, disseminating, and sharing information.
Perhaps the "obstacle" nowadays is to decide what to study, where to study and when. Age is not a problem, many universities in different countries have older adult programs.
It is the amount of information that is unstoppable what sets people in jeopardy if good education is not part of its resume.
Finally, developing countries like Peru are used to form and educate people with lots and lots of skills to compensate for the lack of resources (books, equipment, technology, etc) that are perfect for facing the first world working markets as well as postgraduate studies.
Even though my country has been placed in one of the last positions in educational achievements of our region, there is a lot valuable people trying to revert this uncomfortable truth. Unfortunately, usually the ones in charge of taking the decisions are the first blockers of progress, here and anywhere.