Fishbowl Live Blogging Participants
12:14-1:12 pm MST
12:14-1:12 pm MST
Gary Stager:Gary is an internationally recognized educator and consultant who has spent twenty-five years helping teachers on six continents make sense of their roles in the age of personal computing and schools more constructive places for children.
Read Stager's review of A Whole New Mind.
Christian Long:
Christian is a high school English teacher and coach working at a college-prep, preK-12, independent school in Ft. Worth, TX. In addition to working in schools as a teacher and coach for over ten years (prior to his return in the fall of 07), he spent several years working with architects/planners, educational and technology leaders, policy makers, and communities to design and build schools from pre-K through the university level. This work took place throughout the United States and around the world.
Judy O’Connell:
Judy writes, speaks, and consults on school technology and library issues. She is an educator and information professional. Currently, Judy is the Head of Library and Information Services at St. Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Christian Long:
Christian is a high school English teacher and coach working at a college-prep, preK-12, independent school in Ft. Worth, TX. In addition to working in schools as a teacher and coach for over ten years (prior to his return in the fall of 07), he spent several years working with architects/planners, educational and technology leaders, policy makers, and communities to design and build schools from pre-K through the university level. This work took place throughout the United States and around the world.
Judy O’Connell:
Judy writes, speaks, and consults on school technology and library issues. She is an educator and information professional. Currently, Judy is the Head of Library and Information Services at St. Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
241 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 241 of 241Tyler G~
True! But, could you possible give me an example of what a solely right or left brained job is?
How does learning in school work effectively if as Pink says on p139 "many of us are crunched for time, delughed for information, and paralyzed by the weight of too many choices"
Gary - I like the way you think! We need more people who aren't afraid to voice their true opinions so I applaud you
Gary- well, that's good in a way. Like Katy said, it's often good to hear the other side so you can see both sides and know all the facts before you make a decision or whatever.
Alexf- I DO NOT agree with Pink that abundance is a good thing. On my Wikispace, I talk about this. It is not good that abundance is taking over. I do agree that outsourcing is taking away our jobs. I think that automation is very bad because humans cannot sustain themselves without machines any more. This is NOT good.
melissaz- I've worried about that too. I think that people are becoming so worried about findinga "creative" job, or to "express themselves", that they are becomeing too lazy.
Mac-
I feel that we can't simply abandon l-directed jobs though as Pink has said they may become automated many jobs already have and it's only getting worse. But I think this is really only a problem in major 21st Century countries. The other areas are still behind. Do you think this idea is true of left and right brain? The right brain was left behind and the left plowed ahead and become numbers?
Ms. O'Connell-
I agree that "learn with our whole new minds" is a great statement. If this is Mr. Pink's main idea, then why did he put "Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future" on the cover? Once again this is hypocritical. He uses "r-directed" and "l-directed" because he wants them to be integrated, but he uses right-brainers ruling the future on the cover! Why?
Gary,
I agree that just by going to school doesnt ensure students will learn, but I think teachers should do everything in their ability to make learning as relevent and interesting as possible. I have had teachers Ive learned a ton from and others who just don't touch me. I don't mean teachers are supposed to make class fun or easy, but I think if they make it relevent, students will be more willing to learn.
Next year, I'd be happy to suggest a well-written book or two about learning that are more thoughtful than Pink.
I have long wanted to create a learning theory course for kids in which they develop a language for understanding how they think so they can then say, "I don't learn like that," with confidence.
The adult who just spoke used "symphony" when I think she really wanted to say "management" or "teamwork."
I second LaurenC's notion!!!
melissaz- the answer is that is going to happen. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. history will repeat it self over and over. look at the rennaisance. that was EXTREMELY right brained. then we go to the 1700's. that was ALL science. that continued until late 1800's where inventions started to occur. also right brained. soon, left brains will be valued again.
Melissaz-
Wow. That's a scary thought. that is why it is so important to have a whole mind, instead of having either one or the other side hyped up at one time.
Another great comment "educated for the world".
Mrs. O'Connell- that is when we all get caught up in the details. If we focus on the big picture and what we need to do and then just take the details one at a time always keeping the big picture in mind, that can help us maybe getting what we need to do done.
I don't know if that answers your question...
Gary - that is a very good point. Just because people show up to class doesnt mean that they learn. For example on wednesday i had a biology test. I go to biology every time it meets and so i knew the material and didnt study for the test. The kid who sits behind me shows up to and he didnt study either. But today when we got our tests back i had a 97 and he had a 76. I am not saying that studying is bad i am saying that he came to class but he didnt learn.
yes, Alexf a brain surgeon or a surgeon. If you work in the ER you need to follow steps, and make very quick desicions. Right brain take in the steps and think about the outcome and you dont have that much time.
Alexf- Yes. Math, for me, is very left brained. Sometimes I need to use right brained thinking to solve a difficult problem in a new way, but the act of solving equations, which is what I usually do in math, is very systematic and left brained,. This class,on the other hand, while discussing Lord Of The Flies, or Macbeth, or Fahrenheit 451, creating connections between them is more right brained. Finding metaphors for phrases in Lord Of The Flies is more right brained. But, sometimes I use left brained thinking to make sure a connection make sense.
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Yes, the book is very contradictory. The title is a Whole New Mind, but the further into the book you get, the more focus there is on right brains.
Becky- I believe that Ms. Smith said that that quote was put on the cover by the publisher, not Mr. Pink.
Perhaps school will succeed best when it prepares you to solve the problems that it hasn't taught you how to solve.
That doesn't require a crystal ball for predicting the future.
Please ask Daniel Pink if he would like his child to spend several months reading and discussing "A Whole New Mind?"
What would he sacrifice in order to accommodate the book into an overcrowded school schedule?
ryanm-thank you for responding to my question! YOU MADE ME THINK,in the book Ferinheit 451 Beatty talks about how we are so scared of hurting the Gays or Catholics, that we dont openly think or let others think, I should get that Quote.
This was enormously fun!!!! Thank you everyone.
I give you all an A+ (teachers too)
On the inner circle: I think that often teachers in school don't see the big picture of school. Most teachers focus solely on their subjects. They tend to forget that there are other subjects and think that their subject is the most important.
Gary - How much a student learns does depend on the effort they put forth. There are students come to school because they are required by law. Some of these students put forth the effort to get A's and some don't care. As students we need to have a desire to learn for our own purposes.
Morgan can email me for her scholarship.
Morgan can email me for her scholarship.
@rsbabey
Au contraire, I do not believe that "America" or anywhere else has been overly dependent on one sort of thinking or another. Any thinking would be a good thing.
it is Pink who advocates moving from this to that.
Gary, Judy, and Christian- Thank you so much for talking with our class today. I learned so much and herd so many great comments and I now understand and have a better feel for this book then I have ever felt before.
I do think Daniel has some valid points but there are also many aspects that could be changed to better show these ideas.
@whitneys
Learning is more natural than you may think. It's not always the result of struggle or hard work - sometimes it is.
Think about how you learned to speak. It didn't require study, tests, quizzes, bell schedules, etc...
maddieh- I love your point on how we need to join together our own ideas. We need to take the strong points made today from Mr. Stager and the senses in AWNM, and make or own idea of thinking and the world today. And I love the point you said about how a lot of the details in AWNM are clouding the true point. Great observations.
Thank you to everybody who took the time and effort to blog with us. I really appreciated your effort and I enjoyed hearing your ideas and talking with you. Thank you very much once again.
~Becky
I agree with Mr. Stager, symphony is not a good word to use for what he talks about in that chapter. A symphony is separate instruments combined together to create one beautiful sound. But you also have to focus on the details of each instrument. Pink says that only the big picture is important.
morgant- Details and big picture should not be separated. They should be incorporated into the same area because if you don't focus at all on the details, then you don't know what makes up the big picture. And if you only focus on the details, you don't understand the big picture.
I agree with Tylerg. If you don't know anything about the details, and only the big picture, then nothing new would ever be built. If people start to only see the complete car and not the complex parts and ways they are put together, then eventually, when cars break down, no one would know how to fix them. You have to see a combination of details and big picture.
Maddieh- The thing about this book is that the details are more important the big picture. Pink is saying in the book that right brain is becoming more and more important, yet to gain any credibility he has to provide left brained facts and research. The book contradicts itself as it is about how the right brain is growing in power, but it is built on left brain details.
Gary- Yes, America's fear of outsourcing and other economic threats play a large role in the success of this book. Without this fear, no one would want to read Pink's book. He effectively uses this fear to tell us that artists and other types of creative vocations are the way to make a good living in the future, and that they will become the successful businessmen. The problem with that theory is that most artists want to be artists... not the CEO of a successful company.
Christian Long- You bring up a good point. If these ideas are seen merely as provocations, then it makes sense that people can interpret and use them in different ways. If Pink stated that they are "final truths" then I think that his book would not be nearly as popular because there will always be people that disagree.
Gary- That's true, stew would make just as much sense as symphony as the metaphor for this chapter. Stew is made up of many different foods and vegetables combined together to make one good stew. So I guess he could have used that as well. It wouldn't have sounded as convincing though, if he had called it stew.
I agree with Morganw, drawing really doesn't have anything to do with symphony. I was surprised that he started talking about the differences between the "right brain" and "left brain" in this chapter when for the most part of the book he had been talking about how we need an entirely new mind. I was disappointed after I read this chapter.
Well, I was extremely disappointed to have missed such a contraversial Fishbowl. You guys did a really great job talking about Symphony.
MY TAKE-
Symphony is, metaphorically speaking, the cobination of many pieces to one big idea. Just like a symphony combines several intruments to create one unified sound. Symphony is the ability to take all of the otherwise useless facts in our world and connect them into a big picture. A big picture is useful to consumers because they don't have time to look into facts and statistics these days, but they would rather stand back and look into the grand scheme of things. Symphony is an important aptitude because we must be able to take things in our lives and put them into one big idea so that we can better understand ourselves and the world around us.
TO GARY
You disagree with Pink very much. You say that Symphony is not a new aptitude, that Symphony shouldn't be called Symphony, and that Pink's book is not the end all be all of our future. You say that he uses popular economic fears to convince the reader of an upcoming Conceptual Age. You say that theories require research before they are made. You say that MorganW deserves 15$ for agreeing with you.
To this is say:
Symphony is NOT a new idea or concept, it has been around since we wondered the globe. We as humans take ideas and put them into one picture or idea to make it easy to comprehend. Gary, I must commend you for saying that Symphony is a misnomer of Pink's big picture idea. To this I say that Symphony is a metaphorical and not literal name. I agree that Symphony isn't always about drawing and metaphor making, but he couldn't go into every detail about big picuture thinking. You say Pink's book isn't the fate of our world. I completely agree. And I think that when this book was assigned to us that there was sort of a united agreeing with Pink's ideas in our class. you helped us open our eyes to the other side of the story, and that is great. I don't agree with everything Pink says, but I think that this book was an affective warning to us that things aren't going to stay the way they were ten years ago.I also think that Pink does play off of some common fears we have in the US. Most are overhyped and unrealistic. But with such change as automation and outsourcing (some-in my opinion-realistic fears) that we should be prepared. As for your idea about theories that caught my eyes- I think that anyone can throw a theory into the world much like Pink did. I think that you disagreed with yourself because you say that Pink has no solid facts, but he has thrown an idea out there. And, some people agree with his theory.
So Gary, I agree with you about some things. I highly respect your ideas, and I am honored to even write to you. Your disagreing with Pink's book has helped open our class's point of view about Pink. Thanks, Gary.
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