Friday, January 29, 2010

Learn how to learn

I have been reading a blog called 'The Clever Sheep', and Rodd Lucier has a recent post about learning called 'Learning to Change: Changing to Learn'.  Wow - this is a powerful message  that resonates for me when I am thinking about my role as a Leader or Educator for the future. 

The brief video has a collection of international speakers who give us their view of the challenges for students and teachers.  One theme is that students today are so engaged in a rich social network of email, text messaging and instant messaging, yet these activities are all banned at school.  Students find a richer, more  stimulating environment outside the classroom, rather than at school.  Students learn in so many different ways now and we need to teach them  about creativity, working in the context of the situation, working in teams and environments that are multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual.

I believe that this applies for students, learners  and educators of all ages. Whether they are young people at school, university students, or people learning in the workplace we need to have less of a focus on memorising facts, and more focus on learning how to learn - how to find out information, how to validate it, communicate it, find solutions to problems.  If we do this - we can engage learners in learning how to learn.  What do you think?  How do you approach learning and teaching in your context?

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Conferences - where shall I go next??

It's that time of the year to start planning my activities for the year ahead.  I have been thinking about which conferences I would like to attend, and where I can afford to go.  I also think about the places I would like to visit and see if there is a conference on at a convenient time - unfortunately that hasn't worked out for me yet!

I have been accepted to present a paper at the Loddon Mallee Allied Health Network, which is a small regional conference that will be held in Echuca, Victoria in March 2010.  The theme of the conference is  'Emerging Realities of Allied Health Practice' and I am planning to talk about online tools that can support reflective practice. It sounds like a fun conference.

I have applied to a couple of other conferences.  I am really hoping to go to the International Federation of Social Work conference in Hong Kong in June 2010, but not sure if we will be accepted, and not sure if I can afford it.   Time will tell, and I have a few applications for funding in the pipeline at the moment.

Do you like to go to conferences ? or present at conferences?  Do you have any suggestions for funding?  How do you find out about conferences that are on?  I have found this great website called Conference Alerts and once you subscribe and  choose the topics you are interested in, it sends me a monthly list of conferences all around the world. Do you know of any others?   Now let me see... any conferences  in Hawaii??

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Are you feeling lucky?

                  I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want
            more luck, take more  chances.  Be more active.
            Show up more often.  Brian Tracy.


I had to read through this one a few times.  Can luck be predictable?  Are there people out there that are luckier than others?  Do people make their own good luck or bad luck?  Maybe it depends on your beliefs and your understanding of the world.

 I really like this quote  and it resonated for me.  If you want more luck - then take more chances...  but can it  really be that simple.  If you are more active and show up more often, you are going to be more involved, more engaged and more likely to be in the right place at the right time.  Which is luck  - right?

What do you think?  Is Brian right and is luck predictable?