As I mentioned yesterday many things are on a continuum.  This continuum doesn’t have to be negative and positive, just that there is a difference.  I certainly believe the in the possibilities that the Ipad brings, but as an author I am convinced of the place of the book!

A little bit of fun to end the week, enjoy.

Could I be more pleased with the iPad? While it’s still missing a few things such as a camera and the ability to see flash video, all in all, it’s hot!

I swore I was not going to get one of the first releases. I was intent on delaying gratification! Then I went to get my hair done and my hair dresser was scheduling appointments over the phone onto his iPad calendar. “You mean you don’t have one,” he quietly admonished. “I thought you were the Apple techie nerd!”

OMG, could he be so unabashed? It was an open challenge to my rightful position as the female Apple nerd of the community.  It was over.  To delay gratification was to lose my role as being ahead of the curve.  Immediately after the hair do, I went to the Apple store and bought my iPad.

I’ve been lost in iPad heaven for the past six weeks.  It’s an unending source of learning and expansion.  I’ve become a student again.  I discover something new every single day… from note taking in an executive meeting to playing with storyboard picture mats…

I’ve re-read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and Ben Franklin’s Autobiography. Now I’m onto Grimm’s Fairy Tales and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  All of these classics are free from the Project Gutenberg archives.

And then there’s Scrabble, Bejeweled, mind-mapping, photo editing, the BBC News and more.  Just when you think you’re stymied, along comes another app that will help you do exactly what you need!

My dear friend, Doug, the #1 tech nerd in my universe, said that he had only turned his laptop on twice since he started using his iPad.  And he got his two weeks earlier than did!

And what’s the point?

Why am I waxing so eloquent?

Because I believe that the iPad is about to revolutionize education! It would do well in every classroom in the world!

It’s fast, half the price of a computer, lighter than the net book and the look and feel is smooth!

I’m sure the kids who have one already, love it… you can surf the net, get onto Facebook, play games with others in distant places and more.

Soon textbooks will be coming out on it, moving us closer to a paperless world where trees get to live and we get to read, write, draw, and play without a paper footprint!

If you haven’t already done so, check it out!

And all of this being said the day after the new iPhone was released to the world!  Kudos to you and your team, Steve Jobs, a job (no pun intended) well done!  Education and learning has never been so fun and it’s getting better all the time!!

You might link it to an activity in which they are asked to be aware of certain new things in the canteen.  Or you might do a walk-about on campus to notice the things they had not seen before.

Then link this lesson to social awareness.  How many times do we overlook the cues that others send us during our communication with them.  Many students don’t recognise the facial expressions or body language of other people around them.  These students tend to oblivious to the EQ and SQ aspects of their relationships and this little exercise should create awareness as a starting point.

Intervention on rumors… intervention on isolation and bullying… intervention on taunting… intervention on internet harassment… intervention on ‘sexting’…

Why are our students so dissatisfied that they are taking out their angst on other students?

I believe it is because we have somehow missed the point.  And what’s the point?

The point is P3 – purposeful prevention programs. These are programs based on and directed towards the whole child.  These are programs that inspire the mind and heart, increase curiosity, and involve students in the solutions.  These are programs that balance IQ training with emotional and social skill training.  These are programs that deliver methods and strategies so that students can achieve their dreams.

Many of the professions our students will be engaging in during their careers do not exist today.  We cannot fit our students for a time and a set of trades that we don’t even know about nor understand.

But we can encourage their intellectual endeavors, model and teach emotional well-being and self-control.  We can help them increase their awareness of who they are.  We can help them discover their gifts and talents.

It’s about time, don’t you think?

Maybe someday intervention programs will become an historical relic.

Whilst watching Sir Ken I was reminded about one of my early years in the classroom.  I was teaching the 5th Grade at the time.  During that year I decided that the class would start a program focused on the students developing their own goals.  Being a young and somewhat naive new teacher I thought I had discovered a method of each student engaging in the academic process and personally setting their own academic goals.

So I allocated some time each week for the students to write their personal goals. After the first session, I asked the students if they would mind if I read their goals.  In my mind my students would be setting goals for academic improvement and I would help them by coaching them for academic improvement.

So that night with my students’ permission I took their files home and read their entries. I already had the lessons planned in my mind on how to deal with some of the academic problems my students were facing.

To my shock the students had written approximately 4 or 5 goals each, yet there was only one academic goal in all of the entries.

Most of the goals were emotional and social self-management goals.  One student wanted to get along better with his younger brother.  He wanted to know how to not get frustrated at his baby brother when the younger sibling took his stuff.  My student had realised that when he gets frustrated with his younger brother his natural reaction was to snatch his own stuff back.  The younger boy would then cry, Mom would then get angry with him and impose a punishment.

I had not prepared a set of lessons on how to deal with younger brothers taking stuff!

My planned academic excellence program had just morphed at light speed into a Mentoring and Coaching program.

I developed new lesson plans over the next few months working on patience, respect and communication in short 10 minutes sessions.  Basically we worked on things from the EQ and SQ domains and nothing from the IQ realm.

As the sessions continued more and more students asked for help with their specific challenges.  Without exception my students had laid down their dreams before me.  I had the choice to focus on the academic or to tread softly amongst their dreams and see where I could add value.

Thank you Sir Ken Robinson, I too believe that our Education System is broken and in need of a revolution!  I hope that I bring a small revolution to the teachers, principals and classrooms that I personally touch.

Yea and Congratulations… what an honor!

As schools and organizations take on the goal of transformation it is wonderful to learn of organizations who have gone through the process of change and renewal.

Organizational transformation is based on individual transformation. And it takes a high level of emotional and social awareness or ’literacy’ on the part of leaders and their teams to make the work environment a safe and exciting place for everyone. This requires a willingness on the part of leaders to improve their communication skills, coaching skills, and their all around IQ, EQ, SQ competencies.

I spent 4 years working with different departments and teams within HSFCU. The goal was to move the organization from the traditional or mechanical model of business to the New Paradigm or the Human Side of Enterprise. The arrow represents the changes that were achieved during that time.

I have been and still am engaged with leaders in various industries including the educational sector, to transform their organizations. This means dissolving silos, engaging teams in cross functional projects and assisting leaders in increasing their Emotional and social skill sets.

The neuro-science research is research invaluable in accelerating the changes that leaders are capable of making. If leaders want to change, what used to take 4 years, might take 2 1/2 today. I look forward to sharing some of the latest research in my coming blogs.

For now, congratulations HSFCU… a job well done!

I’m still getting my day and night switched back to U.S. time. The International Dateline switch is always a test when I return to my home and today I’m feeling it!

Let me get my land legs again and I have much more to share!

Study after study of education systems show us that girls perform better than boys.  The recent PISA 2006 study shows that girls are outperforming boys on almost every academic trait measured in that year.  Anecdotal evidence from the teachers that I meet around the world tells me that boys are not as engaged as girls.

I personally know that EQ and SQ are essential to success.  I don’t have the empirical research, but my gut tells me that girls have stronger EQ and SQ skills than boys whilst at school.

So what happens to the brightest, most talented cohort between the ages of 15 years and 35 years that ends up with so few less women in senior corporate ranks than men?

Maybe I am using the wrong measure.  Maybe I should be comparing the brightest 15 year olds to the happiest 35 year olds, or the 40 year old with the most friends…

Just maybe I have the measure wrong, just maybe the Governments that are testing and testing and testing students IQ’s have the wrong measure.  Maybe we need to measure the balance of a student across IQ, EQ, SQ.

Maybe the success, satisfaction and happiness of anyone individual is not based on their personal IQ, EQ, SQ but that of their family, their teacher, their principal and their school community.

It is hard to add all three domains into the picture of school success.  But are the measures of school success without them really relevant?

The Grid is my classroom activity to have students experience the challenges inherent in trying to achieve a goal and to break through the barriers that might keep them from succeeding.  The Grid is meant to replace theory with practice, students should feel directly the frustration and barriers during this activity.

This is an EQ activity because students will feel the frustration, boredom, angst, and wanting to give up that they feel in real life when the blocks and barriers arise.  It is also an SQ activity because students must work together to accomplish the task and no team member can be left out. One wins when all win.

The grid is best used in conjunction with a goal setting activity as part of a process:

1. Draw the comfort zone and show students how leaving their comfort zone can create a state of angst, frustration, fear etc
2. Draw a star way outside of their comfort zone to represent their goals anddreams
3. Explain that when they leave their comfort zone to achieve their goals, feelings of fear, boredom, frustration and wanting to quit may come up – Use examples – How many of you quit guitar lessons, piano lessons, etc.  What are some other goals you have given up on?
4. Have students set short-term goals (1-6 month goals)
5. Finally, students do the Grid

The Grid will bring feelings of frustration, wanting to give up, anger, boredom, blaming teammates for a mistake to the surface so that students can experience them.  This gives you an opportunity to coach students about how to deal with negative emotions that arise on the way to the goal.  It makes theory palpable and real so that students walk away with a real experience rather than a theoretical lesson.

One of the students at Farrington High, Mel, said to her Principal at the end of the day after doing the grid, “I will never be the same.  I now know what it will take to achieve my goals.  This was a life-changing experience for me.”

The lesson plan is here for you to download and use in your classroom

The Grid

You can share this classroom activity with your colleagues, but please ask them to come download it from my site.

Today’s students are tomorrow’s citizens.  We need to help them develop the thinking skills that will help them navigate the seas of tomorrows’ storms.

I have come to rename IQ as the Quality of Thinking – How we use our minds and how we think. This includes problem solving. decision-making and meta-cognition.

These are:

1. Problem Solving:
   1. Accessing the problem
   2. Analyzing the components of the problem
   3. Clarifying the goal
   4. Establishing strategies to achieve the goal
   5. Developing procedures to measure success
   6. Measuring success
2. Decision Making:
   1. Gathering information
   2. Making distinctions
   3. Sorting and synthesizing
   4. Integrating information
3. Meta-cognition:
   1. Self-reflection
   2. Thinking about thinking
   3. Developing an awareness of feelings and intuition
   4. Monitoring and managing my thoughts and feelings

The shift from Quotient to Quality is all about the movement from linear comparisons of people to one in which we acknowledge the multidimensional nature of human beings.  In fact the ability to use data and apply that to problems is the true nature of thinking.  Where thinking is the interaction between Problem Solving, Decision Making and the Meta Cognition skills we have.  Trying to define this interaction on a linear scale seems too simplistic.

This is the reason that I expound the need to focus on the quality of a person’s interactions and not simply the quotient.  Because as teachers we have the ability to improve the thinking of our students.  We can explicitly teach students problem solving, decision making and the meta cognitive skills, I don’t think this should be measured on a linear scale.