Reflecting on Wisdom

I began 2009 with a TED presentation that started a personal reflection on Wisdom. For some members of my family, 2009 has been a cross roads - a crucial time to move forward with integrity, dignity and a monumental amount of wisdom. It has been a time of confusion and has seemed like the days have been dragging through the mud.

Today I found this quote from the publisher of Guy Claxton's book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind - How intelligence increases when you think less" - and I just love it and it seems to fit. I also love that this is something we can bring to our classrooms...

"We assume that the quick-thinking " hare brain" will beat out the slower Intuition of the " tortoise mind." However, now research in cognitive science is changing this understanding of the human mind. It suggests that patience and confusion--rather than rigor and certainty--are the essential precursors of wisdom."

How often do we ask a question of a group of children. Instantly hands go up (sometimes before you have even asked the question) and we respond by randomly calling the name of a child. How much time have we given the group to think? The chosen child 'Uhmm's', bends their head, picks at their toes while the whole group wait. Then we pass them over, maybe even saying "if you don't know don't put your hand up", and choose the person who is high on their knees, pushing their arm into the sky, bursting with the desire to share what they KNOW....

...But what words of wisdom have we missed from the child, temporarily grappling with their bubble of confusion, trying to tap into their limited vocabulary, to express some profound revelation?


If anyone has read Claxton's book on "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind", I would love to hear some authentic reviews.

Best Blog Writing?

What is the best way to blog?
I have only just asked myself this question - and I am not sure I have any answers. At Manaia Kindergarten we blog as we would a daily diary - I guess you could call this the traditional way of blogging and it works well in a kindergarten setting, with the goals of informing parents about the daily/weekly learning experiences that take place at Kindergarten.
But what about professional blogs? As I have mentioned before I have a raft of unpublished (incomplete) blog posts. With a combination of writer's block followed by an onslaught of bloggable thoughts from various sources, I find my blog is feeling my blog posts are rather 'random'. It doesn't seem that my ideas are related or continue from one day to the next. Rather it seems like haphazardly inspired thoughts explored, analysed , written and abandoned. Followed by another random thought. Yes the thoughts may have something of value on their own - but is it best to have one's ideas following a logical pattern? Would that mean more to readers, would they read more posts, and therefor be more involved as a result of time spent on a blog? Or are today's readers more interested in one off blog posts, quick sources of information/discussion? Jumping from Google search to google search?

So - time to consider some organisation of this blog? limits to themes/ideas? a more narrowly defined thread?

Lest We Forget

Following on from "When Computers Go Down", I'd like to thank Naketa for her comment and more wholesome look at how we sometimes feel when technology lets us down. Check it out Stuck on an Escalator
- Man!, are we getting lazy?

This reminded me of a movie I watched with my niece at the weekend - Wall-E. After living for many many years on board a High Tech Space Station - the People discover they might be able to return to Earth. After so long without gravity, and in such a High Tech environment human bodies have evolved to such an extent it is doubtful that they could ever walk again... Can they ever live without lazily relying on the technology, that for so long has kept them alive... Just the very idea of taking that first step, of coming back down to earth seems... well to them its a dream come true.

Stanton (Wall-e producer) states "It (the movie) doesn't demonize technology. It only argues that technology if properly used can help humans cultivate their true nature..."

Lest We Forget - Ensure that technology works for the betterment of humanity - such as the character, Wall-e . And let us never forget the amazing abilities our brains and bodies possess on this truly remarkable planet.

When the computers go down!

The beginning of the 2009 year at Manaia Kindergarten, began at first with a bolt of fresh air. We had lovely sunny days and 8 new families at kindergarten. Our roll call topped 23 after a week or so of low numbers. It took just a day for new children to begin to explore the digital world. The cameras came out and newbies were recording their first few days through photography... photographing their first impressions of mat time, photographing the environment and new friends, photographing interests from home and sharing the photos at Kindergarten.

And then the computers went down...

Our two computers we use to create movies, upload to the blog, and email - just crashed.

I felt like we had lost a limb - In the light of our ICT project and new families excited by the possibilities, the lack of two vital computers seemed crippling.

Fortunately at Manaia we do have more than two computers and the laptops were shuffled around to accommodate. Some movies were uploaded on home computers, and we stumbled forward.

But the experience brought interesting reflections. I 'needed' to solve the problems that arose - loading photos so that we could access them again in a logical manner when the computers returned (this took a week), then re-downloading software such as Photostory and Comic Life, discovering, finding, reloading missing plug-ins, sorting codec's (which I still don't understand - never needed them on my mac)... As a problem solver I found it hard at first to move on. If you have ever watched somegreybloke, here he is expressing some of the frustration I felt.. "The Internets gone down" (warning: some inappropriate content - the first minute or two is quite relevant!! PS a new window/tab will open)

You'll be pleased to hear the children at Manaia Kindergarten continued to learn!! A downturn in technology did not equate to a downturn in learning. But it did occur to me - as education becomes more and more entwined in technology - what will happen when the computer/internet goes down? Will WE be able to switch off and learn/teach the old way? Is it even possible!! And can technology cause mass disruption in an education setting? Or is that just scare mongering?

Check out the possibilities via this news caste


- and how this may be played out for young professionals or not so professionals (ok - prehaps a little over the top! warning content may offend)
Certainly a far cry from beginning 2009 with Wisdom!!

These scenarios are good for a laugh - however have you experienced significant downtime with technology in your education setting? Are the above questions relevant? What are your thoughts?

Beginning 2009 with Wisdom

I have been waiting for inspiration to step into 2009 with a positive and meaningful post for the ECEICT blog . As mentioned before - I have a number of draft copies of posts yet to be published. They all seemed an inadequate start to the new year. Today, however, I have been visiting TED again. If you haven't joined TED - I highly recommend them.

Barry Schwartz, a professor of Social Theory, talks about wisdom. That elusive quality that is hard to teach, that crosses cultural communities, age, education - and yet without it even the most intelligent among us can struggle.

Wisdom can not be taught. However I do believe that wisdom can be role modeled. As Schwartz promotes, we need organisations both on the macro level (say Kindergarten Associations, Boards of Trustees, Committees) and the micro level (individual teaching teams, individual teachers) that value wisdom above rules...

Check out what Barry Schwartz has to say. At first I thought I would recommend that you at least listen to the first 5mins... then I listened further and if you have 10min to spare enjoy a cuppa and listen. However, I actually highly recommend that you sit down, enjoy and be inspired by the 20mins of wisdom.

Please observe there is a footnote about ECE below this video.

What is Early Childhood doing about Children and the development of Wisdom?

Te Whāriki (NZ Early Childhood Curriculum) has five essential strands - Wellbeing, Belonging, Communication, Contribution, and Exploration. These we hope are some foundational developments to wisdom. Within our everyday programme we value children's thoughts. We try to connect with individuals at the beginning of the day to get them thinking - "What is your plan for the day?". When disagreements between children occur, we try to step back, or stand beside if asked and support them as they try to think through solutions. When altercations have erupted we sit together to work out how things got so bad that someone felt they had to resort to fists, and consider other pathways that could have solved the problem.

I believe that although wisdom can not be taught, we as early childhood teachers should be valuing this quality in children, parents and teachers - by documenting and celebrating wise choices, thoughts, and negotiations and promoting wisdom by not always sticking to the rules - seeing beyond the (our) rules.

What other ideas do you have to cultivate wisdom in young and older children? How can we help to build a generation of adults who are motivated by practical wisdom.

Give the Gift of yourself this Christmas

Wordless Wednesday

100 Conversations - Part One

In true Web fashion - I have once again stumbled on inspirational blog posts that have encouraged my thinking and inspired another post.

100 Conversations is an initiative set up by Tony Karrer who maintains the eLearning Technology blog. Tony "is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower, a software, web and eLearning development firm based in Los Angeles, and is considered one of the top technologists in e-Learning. " (quote from Tony's blogger profile).

Within Tony's list of 100 Conversations - I believe there is a conversation for you. I have set up a draft post behind the scenes of the 25 of the 100 conversations that I feel inspired to participate in. This should keep me busy through the holidays. Thanks Tony for the ideas - it helps to keep me motivated.

The first conversation that seems relevant to me at present is number 31 on Tony's list of 100 Conversations. I address this for two reasons. One - it is relevant to my learning at present. Two - I hope to encourage other educators and students who are starting out in the blogging world or are wondering about their illusive audience.

31. How do I envision (envisage) my audience.

This has been an interesting revelation to me in recent weeks. Soon after my post "Generation C" on October 15th I began to feel very disillusioned about my image of my audience. Although I have a stat counter, I wasn't a very prolific observer of my stats nor did I really know how to explore my stats positively. As I belong to EntreCard - I envisaged my small audience to be EntreCard droppers (and I mean droppers not readers). I received minimum comments - and thus imagined I had no serious readers.

After blogging fairly noncommittally with little aim - on ICT in Early Learning - I was beginning to wonder what my motivations were for blogging and whether it was worth the space on the web. And then a light bulb moment encouraged by a conversation (a "verbal comment") I had with a member of the CORE Education team occurred. The CORE member had read my blog, enjoyed my blog and quoted my "C Generation" blog post in a recent job interview for CORE - a job she recently accepted. I was blown away and I was incredibly humbled. I had an audience I never envisaged. And what I had to say or highlight, was being noticed.

After this I decided to look more closely at my stats. I had recently loaded Feedjit widget to my site and when I explored this widget further - namely by clicking on the "Watch in Real Time" option - I began to take notice of who was looking at my blog, where they had arrived from, and what they were searching for. The thing I notice most was that there is a huge audience out there looking for information about technology and learning for young children. By observing readers search queries I have begun to target my post to address some of the queries educators have about technology in education.

I have realised that with the experience of introducing blogging to young children at Manaia Kindergarten, presenting with Tania Coutts at various conferences, and addressing queries that flow through our phone lines - Tania and I have some professional learning to offer on the world wide web as elearners and educators. And maybe this is something we need to take seriously and to post professionally as we become immersed in this ever growing global conversation.

I have also read that only approx 4% of readers ever comment. Thus one has to decide when beginning a blog, what is the purpose of the blog, what do I hope to achieve by blogging, and what do I want to get out of it. I have decided that although I LOVE COMMENTS - I will no longer write for comments. Now that I have some idea about who my audience really is, the aim of this blog is to advocate for young children, for their learning and elearning, their protection, and for their right to be considered competent contributors to everyday and global conversations and learning. The other aim is to encourage others to join this advocacy role.

So how do I envisage my audience now? Prehaps just the one, though I know of two others. And the rest? Well that is quite scary. I was the youngest in my family and my sisters had a lot to say at dinner table conversations. It took me until I was 21 before I realised that sometimes people listened to my contributions too. So I do worry that my contributions are sometimes that of the youngest sister and maybe not so well informed. Forgive me if that is the case. If blogging was truly an anonymous platform I'd feel better. However I want to be part of the conversation, to contribute, to learn, and to advocate.

I believe ones vision of ones audience does matter. It helps to get to know your audience through your stats if not your comments, and then to target your posts and provide a relevant message for those who really are your audience. And more importantly I believe the internet provides a platform we are privileged to have at our finger tips and to join the conversations as an educator and learner, either as a reader or blogger, is a privilege we should grab with both hands.

PS: Thanks Janine for being part of my audience. I have noticed and I do appreciate.

Do you have something to say about education? Can you contribute? Check out Technology for Teachers