It might be good I’m on my way to a beach vacation tomorrow… People who know me, know that my 13 year-old son has been struggling in school. He quit going altogether in the first semester. Then he started the second semester full of promise, excited to go back and be again among his […]
Category: Uncategorized
Voices in the margins
In open online spaces, we are not equally fragile. It is everyone’s responsibility to listen and care and support marginal voices. Whether or not they wish to speak. Whether or not they wish to be present. Whether or not they like what we do. – Maha Bali Bali’s quote challenges us not only to actively […]
What I think, feel and believe: Ice cream & education
I applied for an EdD program over the winter. A couple of weeks ago I got accepted. I now have one more week to accept the offer. Should I do it? This week that question slammed into another question What kind of ice cream do I like? Back story: Almost 20 years ago I accidentally […]
Deciding better, learning better: Different kinds of stories
Lately I’ve been thinking about data and stories, design and luck, prediction and intuition, faith, empathy, beliefs and truth, scale and thinking small, political and personal, power, control, freedom and social justice. And how all of these ideas crashing into one another inside my head. Conflicting and challenging one another. Creating turmoil, unease and discomfort. […]
Stories scare me, but I’m listening
There was a time that I woke up one day and realized that I’d been manipulated. By stories. Lots of good compelling stories. Stories I wanted to believe. No technology was involved in the telling or my choosing to believe these stories. When I decided to leave, it meant that everything that I believed was […]
Measurement, data and theory: Emerging themes
The last week has been an interesting one with lots of good conversation about measuring, data and theory here and on Twitter. I think three themes have emerged. Hoping to get additional thoughts, input and dissenting views 🙂 Theory vs. Data. I remember a good discussion at LAK11 between David Wiley and Eric Duval (I think) […]
Data vs. blind loyalty? I choose data
This is the second blog post that I’ve wrote in which I seem to be defending measurement. Everything else being equal, I’d argue that a decision based on data is better than decision based on a belief (that often come in the form of urban myths, folklore or statements that start with “We all know…” […]
In defence of the lowly KPI…
I’ve had alot of fun hanging out with an Ed Tech/ Open Ed group over the past week. Most of what was said made sense to me. Then the conversation shifted to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)… Now I have seen alot of bad KPIs. Example: A boss shared with me our new measures of success […]
Big Ideas and Organic Growth
I just got back from a conference, an experience that almost leaves me with a few nuggets to ponder, often about what was not said or the opportunity. In this case, the main takeaway nugget from OpenEd2015 related to little groups with big ideas. And what happens when they capture the attention of the big […]
Solutionary needs
I happened across a podcast of Grace Lee Boggs recently on The Moth. In it she said: “It is such a wonderful time to be alive, because we can create solutions and he [Jimmy] was a solutionary. He could do visionary organizing; propose things that people really wanted to do but didn’t know they could […]