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OECD educationtoday: Are teachers really resistant to change?
Teachers are often accused of conservatism and resistance to change. Many education policy makers can list numerous examples of well-intentioned reforms that were opposed by the teaching profession and their union representatives in the past.
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What Are the Most Powerful Uses of Tech for Learning? | MindShift
When we talk about the digital divide in education, the discussions revolve mainly around two factors: lack of access to the internet and lack of knowing how to use that access in powerful ways that can fuel learning beyond consuming content.
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Should Kids Get A Trophy For Showing Up? : NPR Ed : NPR
Talk about a spirited debate ... I remember collecting a shelf full of participation trophies from years of playing YMCA soccer. Did they make me who I am ... or spoil me rotten?
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Teens top the tech-savvy chart while adults lag behind | Digital Trends
If you’re a parent to a teenager this may already be patently obvious, but a new survey has revealed that 14-15 year-olds are the most tech-savvy age group of our generation. The research also found that 6 year-olds had a better understanding of c...
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Growth mindset – the holy grail of education? | Gorilla Learning Company
I’m going to jump straight in – I think the theory of fixed vs growth mindset is genius. I use the word ‘genius’ very carefully ever since I exclaimed to a supermarket checkout assistant who packed my bags really well ‘ Wow! Genius packing’.
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37 Insanely Smart School Teacher Hacks
Because in order to be organized this year, you’ll need a foolproof labeling system. Follow the directions here. They’ve got tons of stylish templates to choose from that you can easily print out with a color printer and laminate as inexpensive wa...
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'Kids Are Different: There Are Lots of Different Ways to Educate Them' - The Atlantic
There are a dizzying number of theories out there about American education. Smaller classrooms are the solution one day, the next, iPads. Glenn Harlan Reynolds of Instapundit takes on these ideas and makes his own predictions in his new book, The ...
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How to Get the Most Out of Student-Owned Devices in Any Classroom | MindShift
Allowing students to bring their own devices to class can be a cost-effective way to quickly get access to the internet and to the many useful tools those devices carry. But students don’t always get the chance to use their devices, especially in ...
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What Students Remember Most About Teachers | Pursuit of a Joyful Life
I saw you as you rushed past me in the lunch room. Urgent. In a hurry to catch a bite before the final bell would ring calling all the students back inside. I noticed that your eyes showed tension. There were faint creases in your forehead. And I ...
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Tweeting For Schools | The Principal of Change
Awhile ago, I wrote a post entitled, “What Should A Networked Educational Leader Tweet About?“, which was meant to be a guide to administrators new to Twitter on tweeting and sharing information using this social media tool.
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Teachers as Technology Trailblazers: Ready, Fire, Aim - An Important Note About Leadership
"Ready, fire, aim" is the more fruitful sequence if we want to take a linear snapshot of an organization undergoing major reform.
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20 useful ways to use TodaysMeet in schools | Ditch That Textbook - Linkis.com
Well done! Now you can keep tweeting the way you usually do. All the boring job will be done for you by our service. This promo is not the same as you indicated in your settings. By deleting current promo you will leave the block blank. Are you sure?
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Why Tech Still Hasn't Solved Education's Problems - Atlantic Mobile
Remember MOOCs? Two years ago, massive open online courses seemed to be everywhere. The wave of Internet-enabled disruption that had swept through the post office and the book store had now arrived at the classroom, threatening the existence of Am...
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5 Strategies for Building a Powerful BYOD Classroom | Brilliant or Insane
Moving to a Bring Your Own Device school or classroom is a major transition. I’ve heard many horror stories of monumental failures from first-year BYOD teachers, and most could have been avoided with some simple planning. 1.
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5 higher-ed skills to teach K-12 students now | eSchool News | eSchool News
While the Common Core aims to teach students critical skills that can translate to college, career, and life (critical thinking, collaboration, and writing), a different set of skills can help prepare students to not just survive post-secondary ed...
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Carol Dweck's Attitude - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Carol S. Dweck says that her graduate students here at Stanford University are hard-working, creative, and resilient in the face of failure. But she wouldn't call them smart.
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The Conversation We Need To Have With Leadership : Teacher Reboot Camp
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Do you have a new school for next year? Or have you just been assigned to your first principalship? We asked the principals of the MetLife Foundation/NASSP 2013 Breakthrough Schools to respond to one or more of the three prompts below, suggesting ...
Sunday 31 August 2014
My Diigo Links of the Week (weekly)
Monday 25 August 2014
My Goals for the 2014-2015 School Year
I want to share my goals for the coming school year, in the hopes that others will do the same and these others will also take the time to help me reach these goals. These aren't our school goals, they are just my personal goals. Not SMART, Not necessarily measurable. But DOABLE! They are not in any order
- Continue to build relationships that will allow us all to achieve our goals.
- Help staff and students see that change does have its benefits.
- Successful integration of 21st Century skills for the entire school.
- Help our teachers and students adopt a Growth Mindset.
- Help staff adopt web 2.0 tools and a better understanding of new technology to their teaching and professional work.
- Help students and staff realize their awesomeness!
Friday 15 August 2014
Getting Comfortable with Change, I mean TRANSITIONS
I am just going to put it out there - Change is good! This is the perspective every modern leader needs to have.
As I look back over the last school year and a half, I have gone through:
In fact in the last year our staff moved our entire site from one location to another. These are just small examples of the amount of physical changes we go through as digital leaders.
Many say I should have fallen apart with all of the change, besides the fact that I had a great staff keeping it together and I more than loving and supportive wife at home, it was my use of technology schools as well that helped me stay on track and not loose focus. The use off technology remained as everything around me was changing. The apps that I used to help me lead through the change were indispensable in my success. Here is a brief list of them:
Evernote - notes from meetings, ideas, thoughts (@evernote)
Pocket - collected all the information and ideas I would need to be successful (@pocket)
Wunderlist - My second brain and essential task manager/to-do list (@wunderlist)
Twitter - connecting with other educators to seek advice through my PLN (@twitter)
Hootsuite - to manage all of the information as it was coming at me (@hootsuite)
The above apps were essential in managing the transitions that I have gone through, the many changes I was able to lead through. Our students are also going through change. Rapid change, but they have not be taught how to manage it. They have not had the opportunity to have change management modelled for them. We can show them how to manage the change with web tools.
Change is good. Our students do not always realize that. Think of when are students have the hardest time with things, the days leading up to holidays standout for me. Students have a hard time managing through change and we need to model this change for them.
The first thing that I like to do is switch the term from change to TRANSITION. A change is more like doing a u-turn on a highway or a complete stop. A transition is more like a lane change, a slight shift in direction. By modeling these transitions for students, and in fact staff as well, we are showing true leadership. Whether it is some of the physical school changes I mentioned above or a shift in pedagogical direction we can help students and staff though them by taking the first steps. We can show them that the more transitions we make the better we are at handling the transitions of life, such as moving houses, changing schools, or even changing friendships.
We also need to highlight how, over time, when you keep doing the same thing we wear a path into the ground where we have been. These paths in the grass may become deeper the more we walk over them and eventually become ruts. As we know people can get stuck in rut and have a harder time getting out. We need as leaders to model how we can stay out of ruts and stay in the groove. This groove is more of how we manage our daily lives a process rather than a track. We can show how to go with the flow and take control of our situations and better handle our transitions. The last thing we want our students and schools to become is stuck, embedded in the mud.
As I look back over the last school year and a half, I have gone through:
- 3 principals
- 3 Superintendents
- 3 Schools
- 6 vice principals.
- Sharepoint rollover
- Office365 Implementation
In fact in the last year our staff moved our entire site from one location to another. These are just small examples of the amount of physical changes we go through as digital leaders.
Many say I should have fallen apart with all of the change, besides the fact that I had a great staff keeping it together and I more than loving and supportive wife at home, it was my use of technology schools as well that helped me stay on track and not loose focus. The use off technology remained as everything around me was changing. The apps that I used to help me lead through the change were indispensable in my success. Here is a brief list of them:
Evernote - notes from meetings, ideas, thoughts (@evernote)
Pocket - collected all the information and ideas I would need to be successful (@pocket)
Wunderlist - My second brain and essential task manager/to-do list (@wunderlist)
Twitter - connecting with other educators to seek advice through my PLN (@twitter)
Hootsuite - to manage all of the information as it was coming at me (@hootsuite)
The above apps were essential in managing the transitions that I have gone through, the many changes I was able to lead through. Our students are also going through change. Rapid change, but they have not be taught how to manage it. They have not had the opportunity to have change management modelled for them. We can show them how to manage the change with web tools.
Change is good. Our students do not always realize that. Think of when are students have the hardest time with things, the days leading up to holidays standout for me. Students have a hard time managing through change and we need to model this change for them.
The first thing that I like to do is switch the term from change to TRANSITION. A change is more like doing a u-turn on a highway or a complete stop. A transition is more like a lane change, a slight shift in direction. By modeling these transitions for students, and in fact staff as well, we are showing true leadership. Whether it is some of the physical school changes I mentioned above or a shift in pedagogical direction we can help students and staff though them by taking the first steps. We can show them that the more transitions we make the better we are at handling the transitions of life, such as moving houses, changing schools, or even changing friendships.
We also need to highlight how, over time, when you keep doing the same thing we wear a path into the ground where we have been. These paths in the grass may become deeper the more we walk over them and eventually become ruts. As we know people can get stuck in rut and have a harder time getting out. We need as leaders to model how we can stay out of ruts and stay in the groove. This groove is more of how we manage our daily lives a process rather than a track. We can show how to go with the flow and take control of our situations and better handle our transitions. The last thing we want our students and schools to become is stuck, embedded in the mud.
As leaders in a modern world, it is important for us to model effective change management or transition control for our students.
Wednesday 6 August 2014
Nobody Said It Was Easy...
Today here is a soundtrack from my mind as a read a blog post, here are some lines from Coldplay's, "The Scientist":
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start.
This chorus came to mind after reading the blog post entitled, "The Rise of the Helicopter Teacher" by Steven Conn and posted on the Chronicle of Higher Education. Thanks for the great writing that caused me to reflect on my practice and the purpose for what I do. The following are my thoughts on point from Conn's post, so perhaps read it first.
Just some of my thoughts as I read the blog are below.
So you don't use rubrics, not at post secondary education? Now, not everything requires a rubric, but major assignments/tasks should at least be put forth with, at the very, very, very least a set of expectations so that students know how they will be evaluated. Scaffolding anything we do provides the structure for success and better student product. Even when we evaluate teachers it is an open conversation where we inform the teachers of the domains we are looking at. I even allow teachers to select several they would like me to pay particular attention to. Its not just about rubrics its about information and everyone knowing how they will be evaluated. I expect this for myself and I will ensure I give it to teachers and students.
As far as failing, there is nothing wrong with students struggling and failing, as long as they learn why they failed. If you do not provide them meaningful feedback then how will they improve. If they do not know how they are evaluated how will they learn? We need to ensure we nurture a growth mindset in our students, so they can see where they fell short when measured against criteria and how to improve for the future.
Yes technology has opened the lines of communication. However, we need to take control and set limits of when you are available on email, twitter, FB or a chat room in a LMS. We still have the control to set reasonable limits for students. Students need structure, they crave it. If you set ongoing communication framework for students, and have regularly scheduled hours for this communication to occur, then we can avoid the last minute rush of panicked emails, texts and DM's!
Face-to-face meetings with my prof? That was horrific time for me, I would have prefered to build my relationship first and then move towards face-to-face interactions. This is what technology allows us to do. It is an evolution not a de-evolution!
When I was a student in school I was ahead of most, not because of my intelligence, not because of my time management skills, not because of my prioritizing, but because I learned how to play the game. I was engaged only when I needed to be. I drove teachers nuts. Loads of potential but no motivation to play the game 24/7. I did what I had to do in order to get by, I wasn't engaged. I had figured out a framework for success without it being shown to me. I was luckily, all my classmates were not. By providing students with outlines of how they will be assessed or chunking larger tasks into parts we are providing a framework and structure for students who haven't figured out the game. We are merely leveling the playing field for all, not spoon feeding.
We can do all the above, while still challenging our students with intellectually stimulating tasks. All the while, providing rubrics in order showing them what to do and how to do it. This is our task. This is our job. This is what we signed up to do! Conn is right, we cannot drag them around the dance floor, it takes more than two to do the educational tango. However, engaging students in the learning process through rubrics, descriptive feedback, open communication, critically thoughtful assignments and providing frameworks for success are all steps in that dance. Remember, nobody said it was easy...
Feedback and thoughts please....
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start.
This chorus came to mind after reading the blog post entitled, "The Rise of the Helicopter Teacher" by Steven Conn and posted on the Chronicle of Higher Education. Thanks for the great writing that caused me to reflect on my practice and the purpose for what I do. The following are my thoughts on point from Conn's post, so perhaps read it first.
 |
| http://blake-douglass.com/fear-is-hard-work/ |
So you don't use rubrics, not at post secondary education? Now, not everything requires a rubric, but major assignments/tasks should at least be put forth with, at the very, very, very least a set of expectations so that students know how they will be evaluated. Scaffolding anything we do provides the structure for success and better student product. Even when we evaluate teachers it is an open conversation where we inform the teachers of the domains we are looking at. I even allow teachers to select several they would like me to pay particular attention to. Its not just about rubrics its about information and everyone knowing how they will be evaluated. I expect this for myself and I will ensure I give it to teachers and students.
As far as failing, there is nothing wrong with students struggling and failing, as long as they learn why they failed. If you do not provide them meaningful feedback then how will they improve. If they do not know how they are evaluated how will they learn? We need to ensure we nurture a growth mindset in our students, so they can see where they fell short when measured against criteria and how to improve for the future.
Yes technology has opened the lines of communication. However, we need to take control and set limits of when you are available on email, twitter, FB or a chat room in a LMS. We still have the control to set reasonable limits for students. Students need structure, they crave it. If you set ongoing communication framework for students, and have regularly scheduled hours for this communication to occur, then we can avoid the last minute rush of panicked emails, texts and DM's!
Face-to-face meetings with my prof? That was horrific time for me, I would have prefered to build my relationship first and then move towards face-to-face interactions. This is what technology allows us to do. It is an evolution not a de-evolution!
When I was a student in school I was ahead of most, not because of my intelligence, not because of my time management skills, not because of my prioritizing, but because I learned how to play the game. I was engaged only when I needed to be. I drove teachers nuts. Loads of potential but no motivation to play the game 24/7. I did what I had to do in order to get by, I wasn't engaged. I had figured out a framework for success without it being shown to me. I was luckily, all my classmates were not. By providing students with outlines of how they will be assessed or chunking larger tasks into parts we are providing a framework and structure for students who haven't figured out the game. We are merely leveling the playing field for all, not spoon feeding.
 |
http://www.covehurst.net/ddyte/brooklyn/scholastic.html
When Conn states, "I can teach in a meaningful way only if students are prepared to learn" I can agree. However that's where my agreement ends. It is our role, our job, our task, or moral imperative to ensure that students are prepared to learn and are ready to learn. Simply put in the words of Coldplay, nobody said it was easy. We cannot just throw our hands up and blame students, parents, government, technology or the education system. We must make all of these work together for student success.We can do all the above, while still challenging our students with intellectually stimulating tasks. All the while, providing rubrics in order showing them what to do and how to do it. This is our task. This is our job. This is what we signed up to do! Conn is right, we cannot drag them around the dance floor, it takes more than two to do the educational tango. However, engaging students in the learning process through rubrics, descriptive feedback, open communication, critically thoughtful assignments and providing frameworks for success are all steps in that dance. Remember, nobody said it was easy...
Feedback and thoughts please....
Sunday 3 August 2014
My Diigo Links of the Week (weekly)
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Yesterday, I blogged about schools in Finland and how they seem to be able to engage their students so much better than we do in the U.S. The students appear to enjoy the learning process, often do work with little or no adult supervision, and sco...
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Want to be a better leader? Try improving your vocabulary. No, I’m not talking adding the latest management and leadership buzzwords or jargon to your repertoire. If that’s what you’re looking for, try the Wall Street Journal’s Business Buzzwords ...
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The more I work and consult with schools regarding technology integration, the more I begin to focus on the transfer of current systems. By "systems," I mean the classroom procedures or workflows that educators currently have in place.
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With a new generation of teachers coming into the work force, there’s a discrepancy between what principals expect of teachers-in-training and what they’re actually learning in school.
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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world
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No description available.
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For over a decade Carol Dweck and her team studied the effects of praise on students. This study involved a series of experiments on over 400 5th graders from all over the country. The results will blow your mind. For more like this visit: ...
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Although high school students are regularly warned to avoid plagiarism and are often punished when they slip, a steady stream of high school administrators have come under fire lately for engaging in that very practice. In the same weeks that Sen....
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In today's high-speed digital world it is not unusual for business and project managers to have multiple email, social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook) and text messaging accounts -- for work and for personal use.
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We’re always looking for ways we can do a better job, well here are 10 tips for leaders that will improve your leadership today! Be Confiident When you’re confident it inspires confidence in others.
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This year’s “The Learning Curve” report from Pearson takes a look at education across the globe. One of the main things the report does is rank the world’s educational systems (which we’ll talk about in a different post).
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Why do some kids arrive at secondary school already motivated to work hard, while some arrive demotivated to exert much effort at all in lessons? Picture two students you’ve taught: one who works incredibly hard, and one who seems incredibly lackl...
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Alan November is an international leader in education technology. He began his career as an oceanography teacher and dorm counselor at an island reform school for boys in Boston Harbor. While Alan was a computer science teacher in Lexington, MA, h...
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Keeping the web safe for everyone is a shared responsibility. Learn what you can do to protect yourself and your family online. Learn about Google safety tools designed to help you manage the security and privacy of your personal data.
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A lot of kids are using social media these days, and even if that isn’t surprising to you, it may be surprising to you just how many of them are using it and just how much.
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Short interview with John Hattie. John discusses "What works most effectively in schools".
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Groove – moving in your zone, time passing by pleasantly, creativity in abundance, feel like you are not “working” or “doing” just being, momentum is smooth!
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Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized t...
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We have a romantic attachment to skills from the past which are no longer relevant on a curriculum for today's children Would a person with good handwriting, spelling and grammar and instant recall of multiplication tables be considered a better c...
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It’s a simple question: what will high school look like in 2030? The reality is that we don’t know. There isn’t a plan. Up until now there has been a tacit belief that education systems will evolve to meet the needs of the future.
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Teachers give homework. Mentors change lives. If schools replaced teachers with mentors, classrooms would be revolutionized forever. I learned this watching startups (scrappy young ventures usually starting in basements or garages).
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This is part 1 of the series “Responsive Teaching For A Changing World,” a 3-part series is sponsored by Adobe Presenter 9. They had nothing to do with the content–only asked that we include a link back to their platform, which you can see above.
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What does it mean to find your voice? Having the courage to speak up? Expressing your opinions more often? Having opinions in the first place? Or is it more than that? “We each have our own fingerprint; we each have our own voice,” says Kylie Mino...
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Upper elementary and middle school students in Olympia, Washington, help veteran and prospective educators include technology in their lessons to enhance learning as part of the national Generation YES program. Find... http://www.youtube.com/edutopia
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There’s a certain class of mistakes that all educators can eliminate with conscious effort, and in this post we outline 11 of them. They range from habits of practice to habits of thought, but all of them have one important thing in common: they m...
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This video is from Chris Lehmann and the Science Leadership Academy. I reposted it here form Google Video because of filtering situations and the ability to ...
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A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders.
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I recently wrote that Understanding by Design is agnostic about any specific method or pedagogy.
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This paper responds to a hypothetical scenario of a very old, well-renowned private school working to integrate technology. What is the role of an administrator in this scenario? The scenario is a compilation of my experiences at different schools...
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Gardner writes in his book ‘Five Minds for the Future’ that he is often asked about how to nurture creativity. He quotes corporate visionary John Seely Brown who quipped that in the world of tomorrow people will say “I create therefore I am”.
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A brilliant advertisement which promotes the "travelling" in groups idea! Great cartoon production!
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Rapid advances in technology and the liberalization of public policy have shaped a world in which large companies face increasing performance pressure amidst sinking return on assets, intense competition, and changing workforce dynamics.
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Mr. Young Leader gave his first update on an overseas project to the organization. It was OK. He’ll do better next time. There are two types of leaders, those who hold back and perfect before they go, and those who press forward and learn as they ...
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