Article: Doing Good or Finding Good?
Focusing directly on problems or needs tends to create clumsy, imposed, temporary patches. Starting with available assets means people will take direct responsibility and will be empowered in the process. They will build elegant, powerful, and cost-effective solutions, and they will have a firm stake in their success. Consider the problem of world hunger: The governments of the developed world spent about $2.2 billion to solve the problem in 2008i, but in 2009 the number of malnourished people swelled to over a billion — an...
Article: Participatory Learning: The Adaptive Challenge of Education
Yesterday, I had the privileged to sit in on a professional development workshop for Assistant Principals provided by CARPE-DIEM, a partnership between the NYCDOE and with the Office of Collaborative Programs of New York City College of Technology CUNY. The workshop was taught by Mathematic Professor Estela Rojas who has been piloting "learning communities" as a key strategy to improving student retention and outcomes. The early results of her work with City Tech freshman has been promising, improving continuance by 11% in the first two cohorts. {sa 0262513595} One the train to the workshop, I read...
Article: Steve Rae's Four Gravitational Forces
I've been doing a bit of research about informal learning for the Story Clarification resource I've been working on. (I used a story about Toyota in the original version that -- in light of the company's current PR storm -- must be replaced.) I came across the following quote that I thought described well the criteria by which informal learning is judged (think learning webs, wikis, social networks, and communities of practice):{sa 0787981699} IBM's Steve Rae posits three gravitational forces for informal learning. The first force is access. The learner has to know the opportunity exists, the costs are reasonable, and it fits her...