Education system design issue

Research says the top quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class by over 10% in one single year. Awesome! What are, then, the characteristics of this top quartile?

Very senior teachers? No. Once somebody has taught for 3 years, their teaching quality does not change thereafter.

Maybe teachers with masters degrees? No. According to research, masters degrees have no effect at all in teaching quality.

You might be thinking: the way the pay system works in most countries rewards these two things: seniority and master degrees. What really matters, though, is not any of those. What makes the difference is past performance. Doesn't that make sense? If someone continuously proves s/he is competent at engaging students to learn, s/he will probably have a good performance engaging more students in the future.

Well, classic example of a unintelligent design, which does not see the whole system, does not reinforce desired behaviours and does not naturally create conditions for improvement, i.e. increasing whole classes' performance by 10% every year.

More on Education? Check the provocative TED talk which inspired this post.

What if I were a fairy...

In my post grad studies, the other day, the professor proposed an exercise for us to reflect about how the same thing can have a bright and a dark side, depending on what we do with it.

In my turn, I picked a card saying: What if I were a fairy...

Well, at the light, I guess would be Ishmael, the gorilla from Daniel Quinn's famous book. Ishmael communicates telepathically and inspires special people to reflect deeply about the world and themselves, so to sharpen their perception and act the right direction.

If I were a fairy in the shadow, I would be a genius of the lamp, conceiving desires to whoever crosses my way. The people would feel successful and happy and I would have delivered something considered important. However, the realizations would often be superficial and therefore none of us could possibly feel truly fulfilled.

I guess this simple exercise not only served to introduce complex thinking, but to get us reflecting about our characteristics and actions.

Sustainability: simple and fun

At work, we just produced a simple and fun video about sustainability, which intends to bring essential contents about personal responsibility and world issues to everybody.

It is part of a 3 chapters' online course and stars Roberto, a black Brazilian guy who has a typical big city routine.

To see it, click here and turn on the English subtitles. Please comment with your feedback.

In Plain English

Today I had the opportunity to listen to Lee Lefever through wikiducacao.

Lee and his wife are the authors of the "In Plain English" videos, which explain complex subjects like money investments and wikis through short simple videos.

Check the video about social media, for example.




Where does all that creativity come from? Well, Lee works from home, chooses his projects and makes sure his company remain small, i.e., he and his wife.

The animals save the planet

Because of work, I have been involved in a lot of baby talk recently. Let me explain: 4 out of 9 people in my team are either pregnant or had a baby in the last 3 months.

On top of that, there are 2 Mums and 2 Dads of kids up to 4 years old.

As they exchange experiences, ask advice to each other and comment on the latest cartoons, I learn interesting lessons for the future :-)

The series of short cartoons I want to share is 2 year-old Isabelle's hit. Using a simple and funny language, it talks about some of the most important environmental issues.

Here comes Isabelle's favourite:



And this is the one I really like:



You can find all the others at http://www.animalssavetheplanet.com. Engage the kids you know, too!

Meaning, collaboration and wishes for 2009

In the last couple of days I spent a few hours completely hooked onto the internet, learning more about Professor Michael Wesch's work around education, meaning and collaboration. As an anthropologist and teacher, he realised school and learning were not the same thing (watch the video "vision of students today" for some insight). So he created spaces where his students could be protagonists, building valuable knowledge about subjects they cared about, also using digital tools.

One of his projects is exactly studying the anthropology behind You Tube. Take a look in two popular samples:





As this is my last post in 2009, I'd like to use some of the messages expressed in these videos and uncountable others. Although we often act differently, it seems to me there are some feelings and wishes that we, as humanity, tend to share

contagious GOODNESS

less prohibition

colourblind fairness

more creativity

less criminalization

less war

CONSCIOUSNESS

better future

LOVE

more connections

less authority

TRUTH

collaboration

more engagement

the value of (bio)diversity

various peoples, being able to bring along their uniqueness for an unity

one world, our home


May we be our true wishes in 2009!
Carpe Diem!!!