Contents

Tim Berners Lee Q&A's the www

Weinberger's worldwideweb = small pieces loosely interconnecting - 12th graders see also timbl and co-mentor through life

What's the greatest vision of why we learn or network that you've read

Have you ever seen Gombrich's 1 genre for 9 year olds applied beyond his chosen context : cultural developments through the history of man

TeachGlobalEd looks cool at first sight - but more reports needed

What did Shakespeare mean?

Also, I am a great fan of the democs approach 1 2 - if you follow up these 2 links and then want to ask me questions, I am eager to share what I know of how these learning games work

Notes for The Margin

Some of these jottings may help us to double check all the ways learning could be enjoyed and experienced

Antidotes that it would be fun if one of the 250 topics could connect

I believe in the adult measure: how much of your lifetime did you spend experiencing a competence at the edge of the ability you had already achieved- see csikszentmihalyi

Through life, I have increasingly made notes on stuff that seems to have wasted people's time. Have you too? Let's list them in this space and then work out which diary topic they could flow into

1 Could we rate the texts schools use to teach with on a big yawn index? I mean why do books for our kids have to be wriiten in such dull ways as if they have captive minds. To illustrate this, we may need to start from the other side. If you went into a library, have you ever asked what's the history (or name another subject) book for kids that's best written for them to use their exploring minds with. Here's an extract from what I believe to be a most extraordinary history book that anyone from 9 up could feel wanted them to be free and alive in learning not captive and a comotose sponge for turgid facts.


EH Gombrich: A Little History of the World
Gombrich travels through the history of the world in 40 episodes each about 6 pages long

Here is an extract from episode 11 China in the time before Christ

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Exercise: How 3 people break ice in 3 minutes:
Best use: imagine its the start of a day where a large group of people have come toghether who do not know each other - eg many conferences. Why not ask them to huddle in three's with each person spending one minute telling the other 2 about the moment that most changed their life, and what she or he has done differently since

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Meg Wheatley's "change your world of learning exercise" - commit to ask yourself the same question 14 days in a row. Fuller briefing: if you have had a few hours of conversation with a circle of people where really new ideas have emerged - before you metally leave, write down the question that most sumarises what you now want to learn to practice that you had not realised before today. Ask that question 14 days in a row- eg the first time you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror each morning! eg 1 -from a much missed friend whose last day was London 7/7/05

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treasure your multicultural origins I am currently reading Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian. And cannot resist quoting this pearl. Tagore was proud that his family background reflected a confluence of 3 cultures : Hindhu, Mohammedan, and British. He emphasised the need to be vigilant in favour of open-minded tradition,and the role of deliberation as the founding of good society:

-where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

-where knowledge is free

-where the world has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls

-where the stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desrt sand of dead habit

Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake