Inspiration to learn about yourself

Via Education Innovation , I came across this metropolismag.com posting with these 10 tips from IDEO for creating a 21st century classroom experience 1. Pull, don’t push Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Education is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing – and can’t help but seek out an answer. 2. Create from relevance Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone. 3. Stop calling them "soft" skills Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a ...

Sweden and Denmark once again lead the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009 edited by Soumitra Dutta, Insead and Irene Mia, World Economic Forum. The Report, which you can read by clicking here , underlines that good education fundamentals and high levels of technological readiness and innovation are essential engines of growth needed to overcome the current economic crisis. Living in Switzerland - ranked 5th - I was curious to find what was written in the report about this country. Here is an extract from page 15 of the report: "the country’s ICT excellence seems to be the result of the interest and usage of the business sector and ordinary citizens rather than of a precise government vision and strategy. The country displays the highest and third-best levels of business and individual readiness, respectively, out of the 134 countries covered, coupled with widespread usage (6th and 3rd for individual and business usage, respectively), while the govern...

Watching this video by Hans Rosling, I learned that people across the world have become wealthier and healthier in the past 200 years. I also learned that the differences between and within countries are large.

Have a look at this 5 minute video that takes you through HEC Montréal . Good, creative initiative by the 150 students who participated.

I’m participating at BlogCampSwitzerland 4 , a European conference, today. BlogCampSwitzerland 4 takes place at ETH Zürich . You can get more information on BlogCampSwitzerland 4 by clicking here .

When asked to identify a trend they see emerging in leadership, the trend most often mentioned by 112 executives is the shift from an autocratic style to one that’s more participative. I read that in this Center for Creative Leadership Research White Paper – a document that I came across by reading this blog posting of Stefan Lindegaard. How is the management style of leaders at the company / companies you work for?

Reading this article about the work of Ms. Lynda Gratton , I became aware of 3 actions that support the principle of igniting latent energy: # 1. The first is to ask questions that spark energy, to engross and interest others as well as your own curiosity. # 2. The second action is to create visions that compel. These are visions of the future that you and your colleagues can buy into, that encourage others to imagine the future and to become excited about being involved in that future. # 3. The third action you can take is to co-operate with others to craft meaningful and exciting work. Have you thought about whether you are asking enough questions that spark energy?

Watching this 2 minute interview with Paul Sloane, I learned that one of the greatest enemies of innovation is success.

At an interesting presentation by Benjamin Wilding on Tuesday, March 10 at the University of Zurich , I was not least struck by this quote by Benjamin Franklin - written on page 3 of Mr. Wilding’s slides: Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

In this interesting Knowledge@Wharton article , I read about the following 10 key lessons that Mr. Alvarez de Mon , IESE Business School , believes managers can learn from Rafael Nadal , the current # 1 tennis player in the world. # 1. Talent Each of us is born with a different talent. The key is to choose a profession that permits you to develop it. Although talent is a function of genetics, it needs to be nurtured in order to bloom fully. # 2. Character Nadal is an example of how a strong and determined character can propel a career to the very top. Along with talent, character is the second engine in an unbeatable duo. # 3. Training In both sports and business, there should be a natural relationship between making mistakes and being prepared to learn. In the case of Nadal, not everything is technique; it’s also about mental control, and about an eagerness to be constantly learning. Before he unseated Federer as the world’s number-one player, Nadal had been defeated on various occasi...

In the executive summary of the 2008 State of the World report , I read that women account for over 40% of the world’s workforce but only earn 25% of the global income. Today is equal pay day. On the website equalpayday.ch , I read that here in Switzerland, men earn about 20% more than women. I also noticed this statement by Mr. Heinz Karrer, CEO of Axpo : "Der Weg zu einer wirklichen Gleichstellung mag ein steiniger sein, aber es lohnt sich, ihn bewusst und beherzt zu gehen. Wir haben uns in der Axpo HR-Politik dazu verpflichtet. Das heißt gerade in traditionell von Männern dominierten Branchen wie der unseren: Erstens konsequent den gleichen Lohn für den gleichen Job und die gleiche Qualifikation bezahlen . Und sich zweitens bei jeder Neubesetzung die Frage stellen: Okay, bisher war da zwar ein Mann? Weshalb nicht ab morgen eine Frau?" On the Global Gender Gap Index 2008 , Switzerland is ranked # 14 – a very strong improvement compared with Switzerland’s 2007 ranking as # 4...

Today, I spent some time at apple day at Jucker Farmart in Seegräben, Switzerland . I was very positively surprised – not only about the good, fresh taste of the apple juice that Jucker Farmart makes but about the entire customer experience that the people, who work for Jucker Farmart, created. What I saw, heard, and tasted was really unique. As you can see from the last photo below, even the bathroom was designed using great creativity. Congratulations to the people working for Jucker Farmart. Keep up the good work.

Reading this McKinsey Quarterly article by Soumitra Dutta and Matthew Fraser with the title "When job seekers invade Facebook", I noticed - not least - the last sentence: We may find ourselves asking more frequently that age-old question "What are friends for?" In this regard, I came to think about the great song “That’s what friends are for.”

On this Doodle Blog posting , I learned that Doodle is among the 200 best Swiss websites . Doodle is placed in the category social networks . If you need to, for example, set up a time for an event with other people, Doodle is a great tool which is easy to use. It is also a free tool. Doodle works like this: Step # 1 : Create a poll. Step # 2 : Forward the link to the poll to the participants. Step # 3 : Follow online what the participants vote for. As you can read more about in this Doodle Blog posting , Doodle recently launched several new features. Among these is Branded Doodle , a service that enables companies and other organisations to purchase their own private Doodle, branded with their logo and name. Read more about Branded Doodle by clicking here . Read also about the other new features of Doodle by clicking here .

Web 2.0 in education View more presentations from Frank Calberg . (tags: collaboration blog )

In this very interesting blog posting , Gary Hamel presents the following 10 management challenges regarded as uniquely critical: 1. Ensuring that managerial work serves a higher purpose. 2. Fully embedding the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems. 3. Reconstructing the philosophical foundations of management. 4. Eliminating the pathologies of formal hierarchy. 5. Reducing fear and increasing trust. 6. Reinventing the means of control. 7. Redefining the work of leadership. 8. Expanding and harnessing diversity. 9. Reinventing strategy making as an emergent process. 10. De-structuring and disaggregating the organization. Thinking about how the company, you work for, is managed, which of the above mentioned management challenges do you view as being the most important?

Reading this Mashable posting , I learned that the number of visitors at Twitter grew very strongly in 2008. Here’s an interesting talk by Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter.