The Ken Robinson Channel

On divergent thinking and our outdated educational system (good)

On how schools kill creativity. (TED) (great)

On educating the heart and mind.  (awesome. long.)

I Have the Biggest Crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson

He's here on rookiemag.com talking about the Higgs-Boson, women in science, and embracing our own ignorance.

Just. Love.

Colbert, Tyson, and e=mc²

Neil de Grasse Tyson, that is. For an hour and twenty minutes. In one of the best interviews about anything I've ever seen, Stephen Colbert and the astrophysicist chat about the universe, our society, science education, and even James Cameron.

Some excerpts:

Colbert: Is knowledge always a good thing?
Tyson: I have to say yes.
Colbert: Why?
Tyson: Because it empowers you to react, and possibly even do something about it, if something needs to be done.

Tyson: Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

Also, The Most Amazing Fact Ever  (Tyson).

The Power of Positive Thinking Isn't Just Folklore

It's cold, hard, scientific fact. Or its the absence of it being untrue.  From The Atlantic.

Some thoughts about this from a layman's perspective:

1. The Scientific Method is cool.

2. How about an experiment in which people's optimism is measured, over time, at fixed points (pre-flop, and after the flop and turn) in a game of Texas Hold'em (after being told the % of the time they can expect to win by chance, they are asked to rate whether they believe this time their chances of winning to be higher, equal to, or less than the % they'd been instructed), across the following scenarios: they do this on the computer that plays fairly, or that will cheat either for or against them? Are they more optimistic after winning more than their fair share?  More pessimistic if less? Would it affect optimism levels if they're told they're winning more or less than their fair share, when those statements are true as well as when they're false? When told that the computer will cheat, and when directed that the computer is using a random shuffler? They rate their chances with a magician who is stacking the deck unbeknownst to them, both positively and negatively, they do this with an ordinary human shuffler, they do this having shuffled themselves. (Tangential prediction: gambling addicts would start off at median level of optimism, and would experience much greater swings from positive to negative depending on short-term results.) What about if the experimenter (or the computer) offers encouragement after losses and excitement after wins? What about if the experimenter offers the encouragement only after the result matches the guess and not the probability, or vice versa?

Has research like this been done? I imagine it has; if you happen to read this and you know of it please point me in its direction. Thanks.

Your Hippocampus Doesn't Look a Day Over 26.

Well, I have been running lately.

For Peak Production

1. Consolidate your work hours.

2. Work your good hours.

3. Stay on Task (How to Minimize On-Screen Distractions and Focus on Work).

From lifehacker.

This Is Your Brain at the Gym.

lifehacker on making yourself smarter, with practice.

10 Tips and Tricks to Train and Exercise Your Brain.

Harvard Tackles Teaching

Harvard kicked off its Initiative for Teaching and Learning with a daylong conference. Thanks Gustave M. and Rita E. Hauser, for the grant which financed the project.

12 Dozen Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free

You can learn anything you want on this wonderful series of tubes! From Marc and Angel Hack Life.

A Slow-Books Manifesto

by Maura Kelly. "Read Books. As often as you can. Mostly Classics."

This Is How You Settle Catan

Once and for all. According to Mark, that is, whose board-game-strategy blog takes an in-depth look at Settlers, and many other popular board games.

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

Dave Eggers offers simple and elegant advice for dealing with the decline in U.S. Education: make teaching a more attractive profession.

Stand and Deliver

More than 25 years after Jaime Escalante's Garfield H.S. students inspired a Hollywood script, Jay Matthews challenges teachers across the country to pick up where they left off, by encouraging all interested students to take AP exams.

Advanced Leadership Initiative

Harvard University's Third Stage education, taking adults at the top of their fields, and opening up its campus/resources to them as they develop a "social purpose project."

Performance, Feedback, Revision

Baba Brinkman performing an excerpt from "The Rap Guide to Evolution," live at the Hammersmith Apollo.