Dismantling Status…
Across diverse industries, such as health, finance, retail and marketing, a movement is taking shape to bring game mechanics and fun to everyday work.(via Work While You Whistle | Gamification Blog)
Decades late, but we’ll take it!
“The Modern Educator Is Not a Teacher”: Updating Learning for the 21st Century
Why do classrooms and schools operate almost the same way they did 100 years ago? A group of middle schoolers from the Dallas-Fort Worth area began asking themselves this question during a class discussion of Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novel Ender’s Game. More importantly, they began to wonder, “Could children, using the internet, have a dramatic impact on the world around them? Could they influence public opinion, and make a mark on their world?” Thus began “Education Evolution,” a class video project that brings a student perspective to what’s going wrong in the modern classroom, and offers up ideas of how it can be fixed.
» via Good
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
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Friends near and far, a little help?
I am offering the new Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, improv training for Chicago city employees of all levels - free of charge.
Follow me on Twitter @jay_olson and please also Tweet Mayor @rahmemanuel telling him what a great idea it is to empower Chicago with new ideas about teamwork, creativity and flexibilty.
What if he says yes? And then other cities follow his lead? And states?
I believe in the power of our homegrown artform, improvisation. I believe in Chicago. I want the whole world to be better for my sweet baby boy.
NEW MAYOR. NEW CHALLENGES. NEW ERA.
Thanks,
- Jay
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
“
| — | Chauncey Depew |
Wake up, America. The real threat to the United States’s continued superpower status isn’t from an arsenal of weapons—it’s from the lack of an arsenal of the mind.
“
| — | Play Power: How to Turn Around Our Creativity Crisis – an excellent read by Lara Seargeant Richardson in The Atlantic (via curiositycounts) |
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
“
| — | John Keats |
Two Quote Tuesday / What do the 3rd Earl Russell and Sean Penn have in common?
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are so confident while the intelligent are full of doubt “
“The world is out its mind with stupidity and the worship of stupidity.”
- Sean Penn
Cool is so fucking overrated.
fare una bella figura - In Italian, “to cut a good figure.”
I learned this phrase long after I visited Italy. But, man-oh-man, from Cinqua Terra to Rome and beyond did I see it in practice the entire time I was there. From the way Italians walk, talk, and dress to the mesmerizingly polite and stylish way they cut in line in front of you when they know you’re a tourist*.
I, however, am finished with “cool.” Pretense, artifice, all of it. My fashion sense has been headed down this road for quite a while, despite my wife’s best efforts. I am a Dad, after all. (High-waisted jeans, anyone? Black socks with shorts, perhaps?) But mostly I am done with trying to be slick in my interactions with others. And other’s interactions with me. Just say how you feel, apologize when you’re wrong, let me know when I’ve hurt you - and I’ll do the same, okay? Cool is so fucking overrated.
I coach my improv students to abandon being coy or obtuse when they begin to create a scene. Get your scene partner and the audience on the same page as quickly and directly as possible, even if it’s awkward, and then play! That’s the fun part!
Fare una bella figura is multifaceted and extends beyond dressing well and looking good. It encompasses poise, manners, and grace. Admirable to the last and never to be abandoned. And I enjoy pretty things and pretty people anyway. But let us please dispense with the guarded “cool” by which we often interact. If I enjoy your work, want to be your friend, or just think you fare una bella figura - I want you to know. Even if I’m awkward**. Then we can move on to the fun part. Cool is so fucking overrated.
- Jay
*I was wearing cargo shorts.
**I am.
