Mindsets and Praise

On my nightly Facebook wander I saw this clip that had been shared by a friend. It is simple and powerful and captures some of Carol Dweck's research about praise in a concise way. What we say to students matters.

More learning opportunities

I often thought when I was actually attending University how great it would be to be able to slip in and attend many courses that I was interested in. Now you can, here is another link to open source education that is free. You can attend the courses and achieve a certificate or you can keep on learning about something purely for interest.

Have a look by clicking here.

As Adults We Need to Keep Learning...

I am always astounded by the links that you find to quality material to learn new things online. The challenge is now to find the time to listen to and absorb all the wonderful things that are out there. Here are a couple of worthwhile links.

Have you always dreamed of studying at MIT? Well now you can.



Jonathan Fields has a very good blog with links to all kinds of fascinating material. Use this link as a starting point to explore further. This particular links provides seven keynote sessions that are listed in the comments as being more worthwhile than 2 years of a reader's tertiary education.

The Seven Survival Skills Our Learners Need

This is a thought provoking presentation by Tony Wagner, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education. Not only does it contain a video of his presentation but also a slideshow of the presentation that accompanied the presentation.

Our curriculum is world renowned for developing these skills in our learners. What will be the long term effect of the focus on National Standards? How can we honour both the core values of our curriculum and ensure our children are achieving and continuing to achieve?

You can find out more about Tony Wagner here:

Follow him on twitter:

Creativity, Curiosity and Compliance

Another thought provoking presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, published in April 2013 on TED. I always enjoying to his common sense delivery that makes what we believe seem so achievable.

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational "death valley" we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility. Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Resilience, perseverance, grit!

An interesting but short TED Talk discussing research about what makes a difference for success. Well worth 5 minutes of your day.

How do we develop these traits in the classroom? 

A Couple of Sites to Explore

ToonDoo - A great place to create your own cartoon strips.

Great for:

• Conversations
• Values
• Practising another language
• Writing steps
• Jokes

TED Talks have been around for awhile now and in the last 18 months or so TEDEd talks have been established. They are designed to use in the classroom with children and to inspire your teaching. Have a search through, you never know what you might find and where it might lead.

Here is a list of the top 10 talks on this site.

The Learning Never Stops

I think it is readily accepted now that great teachers never stop learning. The exciting thing is that opportunities to be involved in worldwide lectures and seminars seem to be increasing. The challenge remains is how to find the time to fit these things into our already full days. We are so busy creating learning for others we forget to look after ourselves.

The beauty of a site like this one is you can register your interest and watch the webinar at a time that suits. Alternatively you can look at webinars that have been pre-recorded and uploaded to the site.

Here is a link to the University of California : Irvine that hosts a myriad of webinars that may interest.

http://unex.uci.edu/services/events/recorded.aspx