In spite of being involved with technology in one way or another for most of my working career, I’ve never been much of a gadget guy. So, I was a bit surprised when I saw the iPad and immediately felt like I had to have one. Apple excels at marketing to our irrational side (hilarious video to drive home that point), and I guess the iPad was the path into mine. Of course, plunking down hundreds of dollars for a highly breakable mobile device that doesn’t even feature a camera wasn’t an entirely crazy thing to do. The iPad is a great tool for lifelong learning, and since that happens to be the focus of this blog, here are the ten apps I have found useful so far as part of my iPad learning mix: [tweetmeme] (Note: You can find all of these simply by going to the app store on the iPad and searching, but I’ve also provided Web site URLs where available.) Evernote Regular readers know I am a big believer in taking notes. I’ve been using the note-taking app Evernote on my laptop for some time, but since having it available on the iPad, it has assumed a much more prominent place in my learning mix. Partly this is a matter of convenience - using Evernote helps greatly with synching notes between the iPad and my laptop - but by having it on a mobile device, I am also in a much better position to take notes when I am out and about. At this point I am still using the free version, but an upgrade to the pro version may be in my future. http://www.evernote.com. Free.  Pro version available. MobileRSS RSS feeds have become the backbone of my learning mix, so not having one on the iPad is unimaginable. MobileRSS is a free app that connects to your Google Reader account and puts into a user-friendly iPad form. The free version is ad supported, or you can upgrade to a no-ad version for $2.99. (So far, I have stuck with the free version and have not found the ads obtrusive.)  http://www.nibirutech.com/mobilerss-google-reader-iphone.html. Free.  Pro version available for $2.99. Pulse Pulse bills itself as a "visual news reader" and makes sure to mention on its download page that Steve Jobs himself referenced the app in a recent keynote address.  It’s somewhat new to my mix, but I am trying it out to address a particular issue. Namely, I like to separate out mainstream news and the "mega" blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch from my more focused RSS feeds. So, I’ve decided to chunk all of those into Pulse as a place where I can have a quick look at them from time to time. http://www.alphonsolabs.com. $3.99. Free Books With 23,469 public domain books in its text collection (all from the Gutenberg Project, I am assuming), Free Books is well worth the price tag - free! You can also download the Free Audiobooks app, which claims 2,947 classics, for $1.99. The audio app has not been specifically formatted for iPad yet, but that doesn’t really matter much once you click "Play." http://freebooksapp.com. Free. Kindle Yes, that’s right - there is a Kindle app for the iPad. I tried out Apple’s own iBooks app initially, but you just can’t beat Amazon’s selection - or the somewhat reassuring knowledge that your eBooks will work on both an iPad and a Kindle.  I’ve already read a number of books on the iPad and have particularly liked the ability to highlight and make notes. Now someone just needs to come up with a great way to harvest those into Evernote. http://www.amazon.com/kindleapp. Free. Dragon Dictation I’ve only played around with this one a bit so far, but the Dragon Dictation app is pretty impressive. You can easily record voice notes and then copy and paste them into other applications or post them to Facebook or Twitter. You can also easily e-mail them - which means they can be e-mailed to your Evernote account.  Now if Evernote and Dragon would just fully integrate so that the voice note recordings in Dragon would be automatically transcribed! www.dragonmobileapps.com. Free. Seesmic or TweetDeck You do by now think of Twitter as a learning tool, right? I’ve tended to be torn between using TweetDeck or Seesmic as my desktop Twitter client. I lean a bit more towards Seesmic because I like the way it handles multiple Twitter accounts, but I’ve always felt the TweetDeck interface was a bit better. The same applies, I find, in the iPad environment, but really you can’t go wrong using either for real-time updates on people and topics of interest. As far as I can tell, though, neither offers Twitter search functionality - a deficiency I hope will be addressed in the near future. http://seesmic.com/seesmic_mobile.  http://ww.tweetdeck.com/ipad. Free. iWiki You can, of course, simply access Wikipedia on the iPad using Safari, but I think that iWiki does a nice enough job of optimizing presentation of the site and adding valuable features that it is well worth $2.99.  The easy saving of articles for offline viewing is perhaps the most valuable of its features, though it also adds some nice navigation tools and a simple way to see your search history on Wikipedia.http://comoki.com/iwiki/. $2.99. Delicious This one may fall a bit short of "excellent," but I use Delicious so much as part of my ongoing learning mix that I can’t see being without it on the iPad. The Delicious app makes it possible to add a bookmark to your Delicious account from the iPad. The problem is that you either have to know the URL you want to add by memory or you have to cut it from another application, close that application, open the Delicious app, and paste it in. With a few relatively simple steps, you can make the process for saving URLs to Delicious from Safari a bit speedier, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I think this app is worth having, but I hope it becomes a lot more user friendly in the future. http://delicioussafari.com/bookmarks.php. Free. YouTube and iTunes I’ve lumped these two together and put them last because they are pre-installed on the iPad, so you don’t need me to tell you about them. It’s always worth emphasizing, however, what amazing tools these are for lifelong learning.  If you have never checked out Open Culture’s Intelligent You Tube Channels or educational Podcast Library, you now dial them up on your iPad. Free. Granted, nearly all of the above could be done on an iPhone, and most of it also mirrors what I already do on my laptop, but Apple is definitely on to something by offering a device that is somewhere between the two.  As of right now, it is looking like Apple might sell nearly 13 million of them in 2010. So, I may be crazy, but it looks like I’ve got plenty of company - and hopefully there are many lifelong learners in the crowd. What about you? Are you using any of the apps above on your iPad, or are there others you can suggest for avid lifelong learners? Please comment and share. Jeff P.S. - Be sure to check out 10 Killer Content Sources for your iPod Learning Mix. These work on the iPad, too! Related posts:25 Free Online Resources and Web Apps for Lifelong Learners

If there is one thing I have realized through writing Mission to Learn - and blogging in general - it’s that I already know quite a lot that I don’t tend to act on all that well. So, I am starting to focus more on knowledge I have accumulated - particularly knowledge related to everyday life - and trying to put it to better use. Eating certainly is one of the top items on this list - all the more so because diet can have such an impact on how well the brain functions. There are countless books out there about how to eat better, what not to eat, and how our whole approach to eating is destroying us (and the world), but it seems to me that I already know the things that are likely to have the biggest impact on my day-to-day habits - i.e., the 20 percent that will make 80 percent of the difference. I just need to act more consistently on what I already know - whether from past reading and research or simply from having observed what works in my own life. Here’s what I have been able to simplify my knowledge of food down to so far. Let me know if you have suggestions about how to make this simpler (or any glaring omissions or errors you think I have made): 1. Eat less, but eat - and at more frequent intervals Don’t load up on huge meals that suck away all your energy for digestion and cause you to store calories you don’t need. And don’t go for hours on end without eating anything. (I have tendency to do this when I am holed up in my office.) Lighten up on the traditional three meals and fill the in-betweens with some small, nutritious snacks like nuts and or fruit. 2. Avoid Things Are Pretty Certainly Bad Every time we turn around there is something else that is supposedly bad or good for us. It can be dizzying to try to keep up. But it seems to me there is a pretty clear list of "greatest hits" in the bad camp that we should mostly consume in moderation, or in some cases, avoid altogether. These include: In moderation: Saturated Fat Cholesterol Sugar Salt/Sodium Alcohol Avoid altogether: Partially Hydrogenated Fats (Trans Fats) Plastic with PCBs The last one, plastic, is a perhaps not as well-established as some of the others, but I have read enough about it at this point to feel that avoiding anything that has PCBs in it is a good "better safe than sorry" move. To get your recommended dietary intakes (DRIs) on those in the "moderation" group, you can check out the USDA’s dietary guidance Web page. Like so many government efforts around diet (the "Food Pyramid" comes to mind) it is not the most user friendly of resources, but you can find what you need with a little effort. 3. Avoid Processed Foods There are any number of benefits to being able to grab something out of the freezer and pop it in the microwave, or to cook up something our of a can or jar. It’s easy, in a lot of cases it is (or at least seems) relatively cheap, and it can make it possible to juggle a busy schedule while still managing to eat decent meals. The down side, though, is that processed foods tend to be full of a lot of the items in the bullets above. They also are not very eco-friendly to produce and distribute. It’s better to avoid them to the greatest extent possible, and maybe enjoy the many benefits of preparing more of your own food. 4. Eat More Fruits, Vegetables, and Whole Grains This is a natural counterpart to avoiding processed food and I don’t think I have ever encountered legitimate research on healthy eating that didn’t highly recommend a variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Make an effort to include a larger percentage of your daily intake. 5. Go Local As Much As You Can Food sourced locally is generally fresher than food brought in from far away, and the energy costs and related environmental impact of getting it to market is just bound to be lower in most cases.  Consider joining a community supported agriculture (CSA) provider in your area. And don’t just stop at supporting your local farmers, bakers, and other food producers, try growing a small garden of your own - maybe even a guerilla garden - baking something, or figuring out other ways you can produce your own food. I guarantee you will learn a lot in the process! 6. Drink Water The whole bottled water, super-hydration craze makes me cringe. There’s no telling how much plastic we have churned through unnecessarily as result of this fabricated market "need." Nonetheless, I know I generally feel better when I drink several glasses of water a day. It’s kind of like the oil that keeps the body engine running smoothly. Chances are your existing tap water is just fine for this purpose. If you have doubts, have it tested and/or get a Brita filter pitcher. 7. Play First, Then Eat You can substitute "aerobic exercise" or whatever you like for "play," but I took the idea for this subtitle from a recent New York Times article that pointed out the highly positive impact of scheduling recess for school children before lunch rather than after.  I think this makes sense at any age. Physical activity is a natural and necessary complement to food, and in general, it seems better for the exercise to come first.  (And of course, whatever you do, don’t go swimming until at least 30 minutes after eating! So that’s it. No rocket science here, but that’s the beauty of everyday knowledge - you can get so much out of identifying and sticking to a fairly small and simple set of guidelines. The magic is in the "identifying and sticking to" part. What are some simple lessons that guide your approach to eating? Please comment and share. Jeff P.S. - If you want to dive deeper, you may want to check out Nutrition Made Clear, a great course from the Teaching Company. No related posts.

[tweetmeme] Here’s a simple (though perhaps not easy) proposition: Let’s value schools based on their ability to help produce happy adults. Not adults who can pass certain tests, or display mastery of those skills that we (in the U.S.) are worried other countries are trouncing us in, or even adults who possess college degrees, but rather adults who are well-prepared to live fulfilling lives, doing work they care about and contributing in positive ways to the communities to which they are connected. I’ve probably already lost the cynics and defeatists by the beginning of this second paragraph, but for everyone else, I’m betting the idea sounds at least vaguely attractive. Maybe it’s even what you thought schools were supposed to be doing.  As I have been researching and writing a book on K-12 education this summer, however, I’ve been struck by how little weight is given to fulfillment and happiness as a desired outcome of our educational system - at least in the U.S.  And this in spite of the fact that our children from ages 5 - 18 (and often starting earlier), spend nearly half their waking hours in educational institutions. It matters greatly what we think the outcome of these many hours should be because how we define the outcomes determines the strategies, tactics, and measurements we will use to get there. If it is all about higher test scores, then guess what, our educational institutions will develop approaches aimed at producing good test takers. There are already plenty of people wailing about how No Child Left Behind has resulted in just such a situation. But most of the "solutions" don’t sound much better. They are geared towards producing more college graduates - which will inevitably lead to kids excelling at getting into and out of college, but not necessarily significantly better off for having done it. Or they are geared towards meeting the supposed skill set needs of a vocal set of large business leaders. Or they are geared toward the mastery of a core set of knowledge - as if that isn’t likely to lead to more rote memorization and assessment for the sake of assessment. There may be valuable forms of educational attainment contained in all of these solutions, but they have little to do with real achievement, much less fulfillment. Trying to gauge whether schools have contributed in a meaningful way towards fulfillment, towards the type of happiness associated with "the good life," as Aristotle put it, may seem messy, but it strikes me as increasingly possible. The research that Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and others have done in the field of positive psychology suggest numerous approaches that might be tried if we have the collective will to test and implement them. A focus on fulfillment also strikes me as increasingly necessary - particularly from the perspective of curing the ills of the U.S. educational system.  If our goals is to reassert ourselves as leaders in educating our children, why are we acting like followers who are doggedly playing catch-up to the test scores and college graduation rates of other nations?  Is it possible that as leaders we need to be thinking differently? Don’t get me wrong: I value things like a college education and mathematical brilliance. We need people who are educated to a high level; we need people who can understand the intensely complex calculations that underlie so much of our current science. But more importantly, if we expect to achieve new heights, we need the people who do these things to love them, to be passionate about them, to see them as part of a fulfilling, happy, engaged life. We don’t need to be shoving them down the throat of every student who enters our educational system.  That devalues both the outcome and the student. I’d say we should focus instead on helping people find what will make their lives as fulfilling as possible, and then support them in excelling at it. Let’s figure out the best possible role the schools can play in achieving that outcome. What do you think? Please comment, or if you have a "What if…" for schools, please Tweet it with the hashtag #whatifschools. Jeff P.S. - You might also find what Leo has to say about education interesting. And be sure to check out Clark Aldrich’s provocative Unschooling Rules blog No related posts.

Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself. - John Dewey from Democracy and Education I’ve come across a number of interesting items on the Web and in my inbox lately. Many of them I will be sharing in a new edition of the Free Learning Monitor (due out later this week), but I thought I’d go ahead and share a few things in a blog post as well. First up - Dan Lewis dropped me an e-mail to alert me to his "Now I Know" daily e-mail newsletter. He’s on a mission to prove true the old adage "you learn something new every day." Worth checking out if you want a little learnin’ delivered to your inbox every day. On the other hand, if you are mobile and poetically inclined, you really need to know about Cell Phone Haiku, where Erik Lanke has authored more than 600 haiku’s to help him with reflecting upon and making sense of his day-to-day life. In a somewhat different vein, I think Seth Godin’s recent post on monitoring your internal dialogue provides a great example of what I mean by putting consciousness and reflection to work as everyday learning habits. Finally, what NY Times columnist David Brooks describes as a "metacognition deficit" is very much in line with what Seth says, though his description of A Case of Mental Courage drives the point home in at a much more emotional level. I’ll leave the details of the story for you to explore on your own, but I will cite a sentence from Brooks’ column that I happen to like: "Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate." Indeed - though I think we may as well go ahead and strike the world "public." Enjoy, Jeff P.S. - Subscribe to the Learning Monitor now, and you will automatically receive the previous edition. Related posts:35+ Delicious Learning Links - a new Monitor is out!

I put out a new edition of the Free Learning Monitor yesterday, and as part of an effort to attract new subscribers (may as well be up front about it, eh?), I thought I’d highlight the 10 items in it that have received the most clicks from readers. Here they are, starting with the most popular. 1. Unschooling Rules http://unschoolingrules.blogspot.com/ Ongoing Research on the Perspectives and Insights from Homeschoolers and Unschoolers on Deconstructing Schools and Reconstructing Education and Life. Via http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52177 2. Now I Know: Learn Something New Every Day, By Email http://dlewis.net/nik/ We’ve all heard the adage, "you learn something new every day." It’s definitely true.   Want to keep learning all sorts of interesting things? "Now I Know" is my free daily email where I share these things.  No more than once a day.  No spam. 3. Reading in a Whole New Way http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Reading-in-a-Whole-New-Way.html [Kevin Kelly's contribution to a recent 40th Anniversary edition of Smithsonian Magazine to which 40 thinkers were asked to contribute (you guessed it) 40 "things you need to know about the next 40 years."] 4. Very Important Study On Learning & The Brain http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/05/26/very-important-study-on-learning-the-brain/ Learning Strategies Are Associated With Distinct Neural Signatures is the not-very-"sexy" title of a report in today’s Science Daily about a very important study on learning and the brain. It appears — at least, to me — to provide more scientific evidence to the perspectives on motivation that Daniel Pink and others have written about. 5. Nixty: Empowering Education for Everyone http://www.nixty.com/ NIXTY is a Virginia-based startup that is revolutionizing education. The co-founders wanted to create a service with the outrageous goal of empowering education for everyone. They had experience in the eLearning/LMS market, but needed to learn more about open education. They consulted with several thought leaders, professors, and students around what a next generation learning platform might look like. The result is NIXTY! NIXTY combines powerful technology with open education to meet the audacious goal of empowering education for everyone! NIXTY provides an educational platform that students, educators, and institutions harness to meet their learning goals. Primary products include ePortfolios, Courses, WikiCourses, and Continuing Education Courses. 6. iPad Curriculum http://www.ipadcurriculum.com/ [I recently wrote about my own use of the iPad as a lifelong learning tool and subsequently stumbled upon the iPad Curriculum site.] iPad Curriculum is a collection of the best in applications, practices, and deployment of the iPad as a learning device. Via Go Sky Watch Planetarium ~ Stephen’s Web http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53007 7 through 9 The following three are currently tied: Email College - Free Online Learning At Your Convenience http://www.emailcollege.co.uk/ Want to develop a new skill, be entertained, get on at work, start a business, earn an extra income, unleash your creativity or discover new ideas and interests? Our Free Online Learning Courses are effective, powerful, easy to use and give you world-class training on your desktop along with a completion certificate. There’s no paperwork, no exams, no commitment, no sales, no advertising, no junk mail and no catch. Just practical online courses that have relevance to your life. Via http://allwomenstalk.com/8-free-online-courses/ *** Effective Learning Skills (concentration, memory, and more) http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/learn/203.htm#i [I can no longer remember how I came across this site, but it has some useful tips.] These "power tool" ideas for studying really work, and your improved learning skills will help you immediately and will continue paying dividends for a long time. *** School of the Future | Unschooling Education http://schoolofthefuture.org/ [It's a little hard to get a grip on what this is all about, but then, I think that is part of the point.] School of the Future is a project about what a school can be. The mission/hypothesis of the future is that the best learners/teachers are the best teachers/learners. School of the Future invites anyone to propose classes, workshops, apprenticeships, installations, or moments that add to our active research about how to make a better education.The project defeats the notion that school is as it should be, and to offer witnesses of the school the freedom to experiment with what their learning and teaching process can be. In the process of exploring the possibilities of school, we aim to become a body of unschooled and educated teaching students. 10: 100 Intro Open Courses on Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Learn http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2010/05/12/100-intro-open-courses-on-everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-learn/ While the classes you take through online college  are a great resource, you can augment your learning by taking some time to see what entirely free courses are out there offered by universities. Taking these courses can be a great way to get a foundation of knowledge or expand on what you already know. Here are 100 open courses that are designed for beginners, so you can start your educational journey on the right foot. *** There’s plenty of other great stuff in the Monitor to go along with the items above. Subscribe now and the latest edition will be sent to your inbox automatically. Jeff Related posts:Getting a First-Rate Business Education Online - Free 35+ Delicious Learning Links - a new Monitor is out! Great Learning Resources for 2010 - A New Learning Monitor is Out!

[tweetmeme] Somewhere along the way I began to write less about games here on Mission to Learn, but my interest in them as an approach to learning has never faded, and after seeing the Jane McGonigal video below it has multiplied many times over. McGonigal begins with the startling - and no doubt disturbing to some - news that we now spend around 3 billion hours weekly playing games. Where she takes that statistic, however, is what is most fascinating about this video. From McGonigal’s point of view, we need to multiply the number of hours we spend gaming by 7 (yes, that means 21 billion hours weekly), if we want to solve big problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, and obesity. Why all this game play? Because it is practice. It is learning in a virtual world the types of skills and behaviors we need to solve the seemingly intractable problems of the real world. For example, collectively all of the players of the highly popular World of Warcraft multi-player online game have spent 5.93 million years solving the problems of that world. In perhaps the most provocative turn of her talk, McGonigal frames this amount of time in evolutionary terms - human beings "stood up" approximately 5.93 million years ago, and everything else has happened since. I’ll stop there, because I think you really need to see the entire video to appreciate McGonigal’s thinking fully. The video runs about 20 minutes, and I guarantee you that if you are the least interested in how we learn and change on a large scale, it will be worth your time. I’m eager to hear your thoughts once you have watched it.  Do you buy the evolutionary analogy and the potential for transferring the benefits of gaming into the real world? Please comment and share your views. Jeff P.S. - If you like this post, you may also be interested in an article I did a while back for WE magazine called Playing for Change. Related posts:Serious Games Round-Up 5 Learning Games for Climate Change - Blog Action Day 12 More Learning Games for Change - and a Bonus

I hadn’t intended to follow my long dry spell on writing about games with two game-related posts (or two TED videos) in a row, but the Marketing Over Coffee guys mentioned the following video with SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch (@12 minutes), and it sounded too good not to explore and pass along. It also happens to be a great follow up to my previous post on learning to save the world by playing games. Seth says in his talk that he doesn’t want to lose competitive advantage by revealing too many of the game dynamics that SCVNGR uses, but you can actually get the entire Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck over on TechCrunch. I’m sure I don’t have to point out to the average Mission to Learn reader that this is powerful stuff from a teaching and learning standpoint. The ability to wield influence - which is what these dynamics are all about - has always played a significant role in effective teaching, and skilled learners should be able to recognize and manage influence. Of course, as social networks become more and more pervasive, the importance of these abilities multiplies dramatically. At a minimum, we need to be able to recognize game mechanics whenever and wherever they are used, and determine whether the intent behind them is for good or evil. Yet another layer of complexity in the massive, multi-player game of life. Jeff P.S. - If you have not ever read it - or haven’t read it lately - I highly recommend Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. As far as I am concerned, it should be read in high school, college, and multiple additional times throughout life. Related posts:5 Learning Games for Climate Change - Blog Action Day 12 More Learning Games for Change - and a Bonus

I’ve been increasingly disturbed in recent years by the amount of misinformation that seems to flow through the political system in the United States. In relative terms, I doubt it has increased any over previous times, but as the magnitude of the issues the world faces grows, the need for collective understanding of the facts seems stronger than ever. And yet, significant numbers of people persist in believing, for example, that Barak Obama is a Muslim, in spite of no evidence to support this belief. Or, during the health care reform debates in the U.S., the notion that "death panels" would have the power to deny benefits to the sick and elderly took root and grew with relatively little resistance among certain ideological groups. Why is this sort of misinformation and misperception possible, and can it be corrected?  Based on a recent report, the outlook for the second part of the question is less than promising. The report, titled When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions, is based on four experiments designed to test whether false or unsubstantiated beliefs about politics can be corrected.  Participants in the experiments read mock news articles about politically charged issues like stem cell research, tax cuts, and the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq.  Each article contained content that could be misleading or deceptive. For a random set of participants, however, the articles also contained a factual correction of the misleading content at a later point in the article. Participants’ reactions to what they read were correlated with their ideological beliefs. Here’s one of the major findings, as stated by the report’s authors: In each of the four experiments, which were conducted in fall 2005 and spring 2006, ideological subgroups failed to update their beliefs when presented with corrective information that runs counter to their predispositions. Indeed, in several cases, we find that corrections actually strengthened misperceptions among the most strongly committed subjects. For example, participants in one of the experiments were given a mock article that contained a statement George W. Bush actually made: "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks, and in the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take." For a random subset of participants, the article also contained corrective information from the official report that established there were no WMD stockpiles or any evidence of production in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. Liberal and moderate participants who received the corrective information were less likely than their counterparts who did not receive this information to believe there were WMDs in Iraq prior to the invasion.  The impact on conservative participants, however, was just the opposite: the corrective information actually strengthened their view that there were WMDs. Liberals have little reason to be smug, however. In a different round of experiments, participants were asked to read an article with potentially misleading information about stem cell research and were then asked about their level of agreement with the statement "President Bush has banned stem cell research in the United States." Again, some participants received a version of the article that contained clarifying information - namely, that Bush’s policies limited only government funded stem cell research, not privately funded research. Conservative and moderate readers who received the corrective information were less likely to agree with the statement about a ban on research than their counterparts who did not receive this information. But liberal readers were significantly less likely to be impacted by the corrective information - they stuck to their belief that Bush had banned all stem cell research. So, how do you change beliefs that are deeply held but factually incorrect? The reports authors’ reference other studies suggesting that, over time, bombarding people with a "sufficient" amount of clear, correct information can work. But I find it hard to place much faith in that approach given how fragmented our information channels have become. We no longer live in a world with three major news channels and one or two local newspapers to which everyone in a community subscribes. Instead, we tend to pick and choose among a wide variety of information sources that support what we already believe. Game environments - the subject of my previous two posts (here and here) - may, in fact, be among the better choices for bringing together people of diverse beliefs and helping them form a common, accurate understanding of major issues.  More fundamentally, we need to place more emphasize than ever on developing and practicing good learning habits - like critical thinking and reflection - that prevent misinformation from making inroads in the first place.  As the report suggests, once the truth gets twisted, straightening it back out is no easy matter. Jeff No related posts.

[tweetmeme] Carrie Oakley contacted me recently about guest posting here on Mission to Learn, and given her focus on online colleges, I challenged her to write something about why we should get rid of placed-based colleges. Here is the provocative post she produced. Comments welcome. - JTC Online schools are mushrooming everywhere these days, and it’s not that hard anymore to tell the genuine ones from the diploma mills. A number of online institutions have established strong brand names and reputations for themselves, and even with traditional brick and mortar big guns like MIT jumping on the online education bandwagon, it stands to reason that place-based higher education is losing the importance and prestige it once held. The death of brick and mortar colleges will likely be long, slow, and painful, but here are ten reasons why we should consider speeding up the process and abolishing them right now: They’re way too expensive for most people. Unless you have enough money stashed away or come into an inheritance, you’re likely to find yourself deep in debt by the time you graduate. They set admission criteria that are overrated and totally unnecessary in order to earn an education. No matter what additional qualifications you may have, it’s your grades that finally matter when you seek admission into a brick and mortar college with a good reputation. So if you’re looking for a second chance, with the hope of turning your life around after goofing up in high school, traditional institutions don’t give you one. Online equivalents are just as good when it comes to quality and the only reason people hesitate to accept them is because traditional colleges were around first. Online education builds more character and infuses discipline into your life - you’re more motivated to succeed because you’re going to college for a particular reason and not just because it’s expected of you. Online education is the best way to take learning to the masses and make education affordable to all irrespective of their background and financial constraints. Online education does not discriminate on any basis - age, race, color, caste, culture - when it comes to admitting students. The sky is the limit when you choose to study online. Online education is flexible - you can choose to finish your degree as fast as or as slow as you like, you can earn while you learn, and you can schedule classes according to your convenience. Online education lets you do more in less time - you can take two or even more degrees simultaneously if you’re able to manage the course work and keep up with your assignments and lessons. Online institutions define the future of education - with our increasing reliance on technology and the dwindling supply of the world’s natural fuel reserves, very soon people are going to prefer to stay home and learn using their computers and the Internet. This guest post is contributed by Carrie Oakley, who writes on the topic of online colleges. Carrie welcomes your comments at her email id: carrie.oakley1983(AT)gmail(DOT)com. No related posts.

Only 28% of people 18 years and older living in the United States indicated they’d read the entire U.S. Constitution in response to a telephone survey conducted by the Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier in July 2010 to gauge Americans’ understanding of constitutional principles. Of those who had read at least some of the Constitution (98% of survey respondents), only one-third reported having read the Constitution on their own since high school or college. Those numbers got me thinking—I couldn’t remember reading the Constitution since leaving school. Sean O’Brien, executive director at the Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier, talking on The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio on September 20, 2010, convinced me to pick up a copy of this 223-year-old document: "The Constitution, the body of it, is 4,400 words. It’s about the equivalent of 17 pages in a novel. Most people could sit down and read that in 20 or 30 minutes, and it’s not that hard to do." With campaigns for mid-term elections well underway and O’Brien’s admonition in mind, I decided it was time to reread the Constitution. It took me only 20 minutes. I encourage you to invest that little bit of time in reviewing the country’s cornerstone. (It’s easy enough to find the text of the U.S. Constitution online, but for a screen-friendly or printer-friendly PDF, I suggest the National Constitution Center’s version.) Here are just five things I learned—or remembered—while rereading the Constitution. September 17 is the day the framers signed the Constitution in 1787. That date is still recognized as Constitutional Day, and the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, displays the full, original document only on that date each year. The Constitution is divided into seven articles, the first three are the longest and devoted to the three branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial. The Bill of Rights is not part of the core Constitution but the first 10 of the amendments added to the Constitution. Virginia ratifies the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, making them officially part of the Constitution. According to Section 6 of Article I, elected representatives and senators are exempt from arrest while attending or traveling to and from legislative sessions—except in the case of treason or a felony. Section 3 of Article IV states, "…no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress." That last one may seem a bit obscure, but the day after I reread the Constitution, Dan Lewis brought it alive for me by writing about the state of Franklin in his daily Now I Know e-mail. In 1784 (a few years before the Constitution becomes effective for the ratifying states in 1788), North Carolina ceded almost 30 million acres of its western-most territory to the federal government to clear up debt incurred as part of the American Revolution. The occupants of the territory didn’t like the idea (they feared Congress would sell their land to another nation), and so, even though North Carolina rescinded the cessation a few months later, the settlers decided to declare independence—but they came up short, garnering only 7 of 13 votes, when they needed 9 to approve the move with a two-thirds majority. So Franklin existed in limbo (not a state in its own right nor a part of North Carolina) and as a de facto republic in its own right until 1789 when threats from Native American tribes made rejoining North Carolina attractive because of access to the state militia. In 1790, North Carolina again ceded the territory to the federal government, and the area wound up being the eastern part of Tennessee. What will you learn or remember as you reread the Constitution? Please exercise your first amendment rights by leaving a comment Celisa Related posts:The Power of Re-Reading

Five ways of not knowing Innocently not knowing. Simply being unaware of the existence of or need for particular knowledge. Receptively not knowing. Open to learning what you know you don’t know. Willfully not knowing. Ignoring, repressing, or generally refusing to acknowledge. Mistakenly not knowing. Thinking you know when you don’t. Hubristically not knowing. Thinking something is knowable in a final sense when it isn’t. [tweetmeme] The first two are relatively easy to address. The last three are often beyond repair. What are some others? Jeff Related posts:7 Ways the Internet is Improving Our Writing

This is a guest post contributed by Angelita Williams. [tweetmeme] If you are a frequent reader of Mission to Learn, you probably share the ideal that learning is an activity in which we engage throughout our entire lives. Even though we may hold fast to this ideal, it’s disheartening to see how many people act as if learning ends once our formal education draws to a close. We receive that diploma, and it’s on to getting a job, building wealth, and maybe settling down and having children. Of course, none of these milestones are undesirable in and of themselves, but what exasperates me is the ultimate goal that drives them: the pursuit of happiness. If you take a look at most best-seller lists on book Web sites like Amazon, you’ll be sure to find something of the self-help variety. In the vein of nearly all how-to books, they promise you the keys to happiness if you follow certain steps or guidelines; they purport that this notion of "happiness" is precisely what we must all be aiming for. One popular book and blog that comes to mind is Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. The subtitle basically says it all: Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. Without going into the details of the book, Rubin’s aim is more perkiness than happiness; like most self-help guides, it endeavors to make us feel "happier" using short cuts So, what’s the alternative? Having become disillusioned with the self-help drivel trafficked at bookstores and promoted online, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a recent Guardian opinion editorial that calls into question the presumptions underlying the pursuit of happiness as it is typically understood. In the editorial, Adam Phillips, a child psychologist and literary critic, describes what we may lose when we put all our eggs in the pursuit-of-happiness basket. My favorite part about the piece is that Phillips proposes a healthier, more rewarding alternative to seeking happiness at all costs. Phillips notes: So by way of conclusion I want to suggest that a right to the pursuit of happiness is asserted when a capacity for absorption has been sabotaged, when there is a loss of confidence in people’s passions. Happiness becomes important when the possibility for absorption is under threat. That the child does not want to be happy—or perhaps, more exactly, the child doesn’t want only to be happy—the child wants first to be safe, and then to be absorbed. There are, for example, only two reasons for children to go to school—apart, that is, from acquiring the werewithal to earn a living: to make friends, and to see if they can find something of absorbing interest to themselves. Absorption is the key. When we are truly learning, when we have committed ourselves to learning―especially beyond the realm of traditional education, where learning becomes an active, voluntary experience instead of a required one―we are participating in mindful absorption. While not every subject or concept will hold our interests, continually searching for this absorption, whether it’s by reading a book, developing a software program, learning an instrument, finding a challenge at work, or sharing a powerful idea with friends and colleagues, is what―in my mind―gives our lives purpose. So, next time you are lured by the holy grail of happiness, consider picking up something that keeps you absorbed. Try learning. By-line: This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online courses.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com. Related posts:What’s wrong with this statement? What if schools had to make kids happy?

[tweetmeme] I recently finished reading Peter Miller’s The Smart Swarm, and I highly recommend it.  In it, Miller provides a fascinating overview of how various types of animals - ants, honeybees, termites, sparrows - tackle complex problems by leveraging collective "intelligence." Better yet, Miller points to the lessons that humans might learn from these animals. What follows is a run down of some of the major lessons from the book. Also, I’ve posted an excerpt - When in Doubt, Turn to the Experts - but I highly recommend reading the book in its entirety. *** Miller identifies four major principles of smart swarms: self-organization, diversity of knowledge, indirect collaboration, and adaptive mimicking. Here are ten points I took from his discussion of the four principles: Decentralized control: For self-organization to produce worthwhile results - like, for example, the Linux operating system or Wikipedia - individual members of a group have to be free to make their own decisions within a relatively sparse set of restrictions imposed by the community (e.g., no profanity, appropriately commented code). Distributed problem solving: It’s in the very nature of complex problems that no single individual has the answer. Each member of the group contributes a bit towards creating a solution, just as many different writers and editors may contribute to a single Wikipedia entry. Multiple interactions: Of course, for distributed problem solving to work, there have to be opportunities for individuals to interact frequently and in a variety of different ways.  As Miller puts it, repeated interactions help to "amplify faint but important signals and speed up decision making" [267]. Diversity of knowledge: Of course, if all the interactions are among the usual suspects (a problem I find with many trade and professional associations), then you end up with birds of a feather syndrome, or homophily.  For wrestling with really complex issues, bring together individuals with a wide range of backgrounds and cognitive abilities.  A "healthy dose of randomness" [267] can also be a plus. Limits of human intuition:  Our "gut" is often not what we think it is. In addition to the tunnel vision that can come from homophily (above), Miller argues that our intuition, which has been "shaped by biological evolution to deal with the environment of hunters and gatherers, is showing its limits in a world whose dynamics are getting more complex by the minute." [58] Friendly competition of ideas: To compensate for the limits to our intuition and make the most of a diversity of knowledge, what we need is a bit of healthy competition among ideas - you know, the type of thing you might get when you don’t just teach to the test or dogmatically adhere to "best practices." Effective mechanisms for narrowing choices: If you are going to allow for a bit of competition, you have to have some way to narrow down the choices and make decisions. For me, Miller’s description of the seemingly byzantine processes of New England town meetings [83-91] suggested why human beings so often fail at directly leveraging collective intelligence - most of the time, we don’t have the patience and discipline for it. Indirect collaboration: Miller doesn’t really talk about it as such, but I think that human beings’ ability to collaborate indirectly - to work independently yet collectively toward a common end like Wikipedia, or, I would argue, democracy - is perhaps the great antidote to our seeming weakness in working directly together to make hard choices.  The wonder is not that we face so many problems, but that we have somehow solved so many together in spite of our differences. Adaptive mimicking: One of the reasons that indirect collaboration and many of the other concepts listed here have such power is that, once they start to take hold, they can spread rapidly because of our tendency to mimic each other.  The forces of influence are strong - particularly given the growth of the Web and mobile communication technologies. While they can be forces for good, they do also have their dark side - a point Miller brings home with force in his discussion of locusts as well as a number of human tragedies resulting from crowds spiraling into self-destructive behavior. Risk minimizing strategies: As so much of Miller’s book suggests, there are often great benefits to going along with group behavior. As one sociologist Miller interviews puts it, "Nine out of ten times it’s the right thing to do…or at least it is a risk minimizing strategy [212]."  In other words, when we run with the herd, go with the flow, we tend to increase our real and perceived safety - both physically and mentally. The challenge for all of us, of course, is paying enough attention to know when it makes sense to break away from the herd. Naturally,there is a great deal more to Miller’s book than what these ten bullets can provide. If you have the least bit of interest in how human beings learn and act as groups, reading all of The Smart Swarm is well worth your time. Jeff P.S. - Still not subscribed to Mission to Learn?! If you enjoy what you read here, I’d be really grateful if you would subscribe by e-mail or RSS. Related posts:Two Brief Lessons from the Mile High Learning Club

It’s time again for Blog Action Day, the annual initiative by Change.org to get bloggers around the world to focus their attention on a single issue. This time around, the focus is on water, a substance so fundamental to human life that the ways to write about it seem limitless. I encourage you to visit the "Why Water?" page on the Blog Action Day site for a brief but powerful overview of the many ways in which water impacts our lives, but for the sake of keeping things simple and, well, actionable, I’m going to focus here on just one small aspect of water consumption: the plastic bottle. Here’s a quick factoid on bottled water from the Blog Action Day site: The US, Mexico and China lead the world in bottled water consumption, with people in the US drinking an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled. Wow. This falls in the "we know it can’t be good but we keep doing it anyway" or "we already know what we need to know to change things for the better" camp. At least in the U.S., the tap water supply in the vast majority of places is perfectly safe for everyday consumption. In places were it is not, relatively inexpensive filtering approaches can get rid of whatever contaminants there are. There is simply no reason to keep manufacturing and filling plastic bottles - particularly when the plastic itself may contain harmful substances. Unless you are living in a part of the world where there simply is no safe water supply other than through bottled water, just stop. Stop buying those plastic bottles of water. Stop distributing them at meetings and conferences. Stop accepting them on airplanes or other places where they are casually handed out. Just stop. It’s a small step that can make a big difference. Jeff Related posts:5 Learning Games for Climate Change - Blog Action Day Eat to Learn, Learn to Eat: 7 Simple Rules for Eating Better

This is a guest post from Kimberly Bowen. [tweetmeme] Children are new to the learning process. They constantly see and experience things for the first time. They pause to listen to noises, try things over again until they master it, observe language until they can speak it and ask if they don’t know what something means. As we grow, we identify other ways to efficiently gather information. However, with this, we sometimes stop paying attention to the details in our everyday lives that could provide us with fresh insight and information.  Consider these tips on how to rekindle this childlike process for obtaining knowledge. Take Time to Observe Start paying more attention to the things around you. Take time to appreciate the clouds in the sky. Pay attention to how your coworker’s day is going. Become aware of the people you are in line with at the checkout counter. Have a purpose in your observation, whether it’s to better understand human nature, be more effective with your time or gain appreciation for others. Go Exploring Coming across things you have not seen or experienced before can help you appreciate things like a child. Hike on a new trail, visit a place you’ve never been or try a different route to work. Look at the things you see every day with a new eye. Consider how you would perceive them if it was the first time you’d ever noticed them. Learn From Everyday Moments Pause to think about the things you do every day. This can be a good practice if you feel you don’t have much opportunity to learn new things, or if you feel you are not progressing in your lifelong pursuit of education. Assess what you have learned during your day. For instance, did a conversation not go as well as you planned? Evaluate what went well and what could have been different. Consider how you can avoid a similar situation in the future. Write down the knowledge you have gained in a journal and review them occasionally. See where you have made improvements and how you have grown from these experiences. Model Other People’s Good Qualities Start paying attention to the good qualities in others. Make a list of these traits and determine how you can emulate them. Work on the qualities one by one until you master them. Take Time to Read If you are busy, which most people are, look for ways you can incorporate reading into your schedule. Listen to audio books in your car, read on the bus, take a couple minutes of your lunch break or put a book next to your bed where you can read a couple pages before you go to sleep. Try different genres. Ask people what their favorite books are and read them—not only will you gain more knowledge from the books, but you will learn more about those around you by understanding the books they like. Study famous and influential people and events in history. Read both fiction and nonfiction. Do some research on the life of the author. Find out what world and local events were taking place at the time the book was written. Talk to Others Share with others the things you are discovering, whether it’s something you read in the news or heard about in another conversation. By talking about what you are learning, you can better understand and retain the knowledge you gain. It can also help you to discover fresh perspectives. Be a Hands-on Person Find a new creative outlet. Research how to prune rosebushes and practice on the ones in your yard. Follow instructions on how to cut tile and create a mosaic table. Take something apart to ascertain how it works. Enroll in a continuing education course on NorthOrion such as photography, ceramics, yoga or bowling. However you decide to do it, incorporate learning into your every day routine. Select those methods that come natural to you. Be willing to look at gaining knowledge as a child does, unembarrassed and optimistically. You may find that you can gain their same enthusiasm. Byline: Kimberly Bowen, NorthOrion Staff Writer (www.northorion.com) Related posts:7 Secrets of a 9 Billion Dollar Industry

There is stability in change, unity in opposition. That’s my sole, indirect comment on the elections under way in the U.S. right now. Well, one other: Don’t believe everything you think. I read that one on a bumper sticker as I went out for a walk this morning, and it seemed like an appropriate bit of sophistry for the complex times in which we live - times which demand a philosophical perspective. A philosophical perspective was just what I was hoping to cultivate as I walked, and I had loaded up my iPod with a great new free resource for achieving my goal: The History of Philosophy Podcast hosted by Peter Adamson of Kings College London. It’s early days yet - as of this post, Adamson is only five episodes in to covering the entire history of philosophy - but even if he makes it only part of the way through, it looks like this will be a tremendous learning resource. So far, I’ve listened to his take on the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and found it very engaging. I’ll definitely be adding this to my list of content sources for my iPod learning mix. (Heraclitus, in case you are a little rusty on your pre-Socratic philosophers, was the one famous for saying you can never step in the same river twice.  The opening sentence of this post represents a key slice of his overarching philosophy.) If you happen to feel like the words "engaging" and "philosophy" don’t belong in the same room together, much less the same sentence, I’d urge you to lay that bias aside and give Adamson a listen. Philosophy is, after all, the love and pursuit of wisdom. Or, put a bit differently, philosophy is a mission to learn. Jeff P.S. - Many thanks to Stephen Downes for highlighting the History or Philosophy Podcast in his OLDaily. There’s no telling how long it would have taken me to discover it otherwise. Related posts:Discover Your Inner Philosopher 10 Killer Content Sources for Your iPod Learning Mix

I’ve recently published an updated version of the Learning 2.0 for Associations eBook I posted a couple of years ago. It’s free - as in no money or e-mail address required - and you can download it at the link below. Learning 2.0 for Associations Home Page It’s a quick read. Once you’ve had a chance to take a look, I’d be really interested to know - how learning 2.0 are the trade and professional associations to which you belong? And do you care? Do they need to be more "2.0″ to really meet your lifelong learning needs? Please comment and share your thoughts. Jeff P.S. - I’m also continuing to build out Web pages with links to great learning 2.0 resources (see link above). If you have any good ones to suggest, please comment and share those as well. I’m not trying to account for every resource there is - just looking for real gems. Related posts:Top 10 Click Getters from the Free Learning Monitor

Success leads to happiness. On the surface, this seems like a straightforward enough statement, one that’s not difficult to accept. But there are at least three problems with it. The first two may be obvious to you: Defining "success" is difficult Defining "happiness" is difficult. Because these concepts are difficult, there is - as far as I can tell - a near universal tendency to associate success with attainment of one variety or another (e.g., lots of money, education from the best schools, high social status) and happiness with mere pleasure (or, as a guest writer here recently put it, with "perkiness.") Even if we can get past these issues and arrive at a deeper understanding of success and happiness, the third issue may not be obvious: The order is wrong. However you happen to define either success or happiness, it’s actually the latter that tends to lead to the former - i.e. happiness leads to success - rather than the other way around. At least, that’s what a growing body of research seems to indicate. For more background and a glimpse into the research, I recommend a recent Harvard Business Review IdeaCast (@ 15 minutes) with Shawn Anchor, author of The Happiness Advantage. In the podcast, Shawn talks about both success and happiness as concepts and argues that traditional approaches to success often interfere with real happiness - and ultimately with true success. Anchor’s perspective is an important one, I think, for lifelong learners. One of the key motivators for learning tends to be "success" in one form or another and consciously or not, success is usually perceived as a step towards happiness.  The problem, however, is that the steps never end - one success demands the next - and it’s easy enough to find yourself well down a path you never meant to take. Starting from a different perspective - one that puts happiness first - is no small challenge. In most formal education systems conventional notions of success as attainment - high grades, degrees, credentials - are emphasized from day one. Schools are about "success," not happiness.  (What if the opposite was true?) Breaking free from this mindset after years as a student is perhaps the greatest challenge faced by the serious lifelong learner. There is no easy way to do it, though Anchor’s comments point to habits that I emphasize often here at Mission to learn - particularly consciousness, practice, and reflection. Also, it is important to emphasize that a focus on happiness does not take success out of the equation. Rather, it leads to a higher ideal of success and ultimately to a much higher level of success than traditional approaches. In short, it gets the order right: Happiness leads to success. Jeff P.S. - If you aren’t yet subscribed to Mission to Learn, please consider subscribing by RSS or by e-mail. If you are already subscribed, I’d be grateful if you would tell a friend, family member, or colleague about Mission to Learn and ask that they consider subscribing. Related posts:Learning and Absorption: An Alternative to Happiness How-Tos What if schools had to make kids happy?

A guest post by John Dewey [tweetmeme] Some attitudes may be named…which are central in effective intellectual ways of dealing with subject matter. Among the most important are directness, open-mindedness, single-mindedness (or whole-heartedness), and responsibility. Directedness Confidence is a good name for what is intended by the term directness. Confidence is not a name for what one thinks or feels about his attitude; it is not reflex. It denotes the straightforwardness with which one goes at what he has to do. Whatever methods of a teacher call a pupil’s attention off from what he has to do and transfer it to his own attitude towards what he is doing impair directness of concern and action. Persisted in, the pupil acquires a permanent tendency to fumble, to gaze about aimlessly, to look for some clew of action beside that which the subject matter supplies. Dependence upon extraneous suggestions and directions, a state of foggy confusion, take the place of that sureness with which children (and grown-up people who have not been sophisticated by "education") confront the situations of life. Open-mindedness [A]n attitude of mind which actively welcomes suggestions and relevant information from all sides. Openness of mind means accessibility of mind to any and every consideration that will throw light upon the situation that needs to be cleared up, and that will help determine the consequences of acting this way or that. [I]ntellectual growth means constant expansion of horizons and consequent formation of new purposes and new responses. These are impossible without an active disposition to welcome points of view hitherto alien; an active desire to entertain considerations which modify existing purposes. Retention of capacity to grow is the reward of such intellectual hospitality. The worst thing about stubbornness of mind, about prejudices, is that they arrest development; they shut the mind off from new stimuli. Open-mindedness means retention of the childlike attitude; closed-mindedness means premature intellectual old age. Exorbitant desire for uniformity of procedure and for prompt external results are the chief foes which the open-minded attitude meets in school. The teacher who does not permit and encourage diversity of operation in dealing with questions is imposing intellectual blinders upon pupils — restricting their vision to the one path the teacher’s mind happens to approve. Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked. Single-mindedness [W]hat the word is here intended to convey is completeness of interest, unity of purpose; the absence of suppressed but effectual ulterior aims for which the professed aim is but a mask. It is equivalent to mental integrity. Absorption, engrossment, full concern with subject matter for its own sake, nurture it. Divided interest and evasion destroy it. Social instincts, the strong desire to please others and get their approval, social training, the general sense of duty and of authority, apprehension of penalty, all lead to a half-hearted effort to conform, to "pay attention to the lesson," or whatever the requirement is. Amiable individuals want to do what they are expected to do. One has only to recall his own experiences in school or at the present time when outwardly employed in actions which do not engage one’s desires and purposes, to realize how prevalent is this attitude of divided attention — double-mindedness. We are so used to it that we take it for granted that a considerable amount of it is necessary. It may be; if so, it is the more important to face its bad intellectual effects. Responsibility By responsibility as an element in intellectual attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept them: to accept them in the sense of taking them into account, acknowledging them in action, not yielding a mere verbal assent. It is only too easy to think that one accepts a statement or believes a suggested truth when one has not considered its implications; when one has made but a cursory and superficial survey of what further things one is committed to by acceptance. Observation and recognition, belief and assent, then become names for lazy acquiescence in what is externally presented. It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in instruction — that is, fewer things supposedly accepted, — if a smaller number of situations could be intellectually worked out to the point where conviction meant something real — some identification of the self with the type of conduct demanded by facts and foresight of results. The most permanent bad results of undue complication of school subjects and congestion of school studies and lessons are not the worry, nervous strain, and superficial acquaintance that follow (serious as these are), but the failure to make clear what is involved in really knowing and believing a thing. *** John Dewey was one of the great philosophers of the last century, and regardless of whether you have ever read a word he wrote, you have almost certainly been impacted in one way or another by his thinking about education.  The above post was assembled from passages extracted from Chapter 13 of Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Democracy and Education is available in its entirety through Wikisource. I think it is a book that should be read by anyone who takes their role as a citizen in a democracy seriously - not just those who work in the field of education. Depending on your background and reading habits, you may find it somewhat tough going, but Dewey is much easier to read than many philosophers, and you will be rewarded for your efforts many times over. As always, I welcome you thoughts. Jeff Related posts:20 Social Networks for Lifelong Learners 25 Free Online Resources and Web Apps for Lifelong Learners 15 Language Learning Tools for Lifelong Learners

We’ve still got a lot to learn, eh? Rest in peace, John. (John Lennon, October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980) (Click through if you don’t see the video) No related posts.

I was starting to put together a post on Top 10 "Big Ideas" in Education from the University of Phoenix blog when I realized that I really do not want to do a full post on it. At the same time, I wanted to say more than 140 characters about it, so the Mission to Learn Twitter stream was not an option. As I was debating whether I need a Tumblr account, it occurred to me that this is the sort of thing for which I could be using Facebook. So, I’ve posted something over on Facebook and thought I’d take this opportunity finally to highlight the existence of the Mission to Learn Facebook page. If you are a Facebook user, I encourage you to visit often and give it a "Like." I’ll be doing more and more there over time. Jeff Related posts:Mission to Learn Site Restoration 10 Most Popular Posts of All Time on Mission to Learn A New Look for Mission to Learn

[tweetmeme] The clock is ticking down on Christmas, and I’m guessing there are a few readers out there like me who still have some shopping to do. Here are some gifts - in the form of learning activities - you may want to consider for the lifelong learners in your life. Most of them are digital, so you don’t have to worry about getting them shipped some place on time. 1. Learn to Save the World $25 at a Time I thought I’d start with one that might not seem obvious. Kiva is a nonprofit that facilitates micro-lending to entrepreneurs across the world. By lending as little as US $25, you can help a shop owner in Ghana increase her inventory or a small farmer in Costa Rica build a greenhouse. (Examples of projects I have helped fund through my Kiva account.) Naturally, you can’t help but learn a lot along the way. US $25 gets you a downloadable Kiva gift card to fund a friend or family member’s account. 2. Monkey Around at a Zoo or Museum I’m lucky to live not too far from the North Carolina Zoo and we also have fantastic museums in our area. Just do a quick Google search and you will almost certainly come up with great museum or zoo annual membership options in the vicinity of someone on your list. 3. Take Note Readers here know I am an advocate of taking and reviewing notes, and I’m slowly becoming addicted to Evernote, the note-taking application that syncs your notes across the Web, your desktop, your iPad, and your mobile phone. For US $5 a month, or $45 a year, you can snag a premium subscription that offers some great extra features for the avid learners in your life. (Note the gift option on the right side of the page.) 4. Experiment The array of gadgets, gizmos, and kits that the amateur scientist now has access to is really quite astounding. Check out the wide selection at Edmunds Scientific. 5. Amazing Lectures to Go Anybody who says the lecture is dead hasn’t experienced the great content available from the Teaching Company or LearnOutLoud. I’d call it brain candy, but it is far too nutritious for that metaphor. Lately, I’ve been particularly enjoying Robert Greenberg’s How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, but there are selections to cover all interests available from both sites. Pick a topic, and grab a gift certificate. 6. Get Schooled In Rock With its latest release, Rock Band 3 in "Pro" mode has become a serious learning tool. If being the next Jimi Hendrix is your thing, you can now opt for an actual Fender Squire Stratocaster, touted as "a fully functional, full-sized, six-string electric guitar that also functions as a game controller."  Or opt for the wireless drum or keyboard options and start building actual musical skills from basic up to expert level. 7. Train the Brain Lifelong learners are always looking for ways to beef up the ‘ol gray matter. Give the learner in your life a boost with Lumosity Brain Games. 8. Learn a Language Ah, a mainstay of New Year’s resolutions: "This year I am going to learn to speak ___________." Help the learner in your life keep that resolution with some great language learning options like those from Transparent.com and Visual Spanish (FREE Spanish Lessons!). 9. Give to Learn There are so many ways in which nonprofits support our learning and the learning of others, but they can’t do their work without adequate funding.  You can hardly go wrong in choosing an organization to contribute to, but if you are looking for ideas, one of my favorites is Heifer International.  Also, note that Wikipedia - a key resource for pretty much every lifelong learner these days - is currently in the midst of a big fundraising drive. 10. Read …wait for it… a book Yes, that’s right. The good ‘ol book, in paper form, is still one of the greatest gifts there is. If you aren’t sure what a good book might be, check out the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2010 or its Modern Library selection of Top 100 Novels. Whatever you choose, my recommendation for buying is to find a local independent bookstore, if one still exists in your area. We’re lucky here in my area to have the great Flyleaf Books. Got other ideas? Please share them in the comments. Happy Holidays, Jeff Related posts:20 Social Networks for Lifelong Learners 25 Free Online Resources and Web Apps for Lifelong Learners 15 Language Learning Tools for Lifelong Learners

[tweetmeme] There are a number of books I return to time and again for inspiration. Among those in the non-fiction category, Made to Stick and Switch by Chip and Dan Heath are easily in my top 10, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity recently to participate in a Switch Bootcamp offered by Dan. It was a full day affair packed with lots of great content and conversation, but one brief exercise we did jumped out at me as particularly in the spirit of Mission to Learn. The exercise, derived from the Heaths’ overall framework for change, was aimed at identifying "bright spots" in our efforts to establish habits and achieve personal goals. As we went through it, I realized that it was a simple, but effective approach to the sort of reflection and goal-setting I often advocate here on the blog. Here (with Dan’s permission) are the steps: 1. Identify a goal you want to achieve with a simple "I want to ___" statement. I decide to go with "I want to spend more focused time writing songs." It’s something I used to do a lot of, but rarely make much headway with these days. 2. List out three or four times/circumstances in which you have previously been successful in achieving or making significant progress toward the goal. For me, my last long string of song writing was all too long ago in graduate school, and to a certain extent, before that when I was playing music more with other people, rather than just on my own. In more recent times, the last decent song I wrote was for a recording I did for my son’s birthday. 3. Identify the factors that made you successful in these circumstances The obvious one for me was that I had much more free time back in graduate schools days and earlier, but that realization was not very helpful - I do a reasonably good job of blocking out the small amount extra time I can find for writing in general, but that hasn’t resulted in much song writing. But the process of reflecting made me realize two other factors. One was that I usually had some sort of clear focus that drove past song writing - like writing a song for a some special occasion or putting together some new tunes for a show. The other was that I tended to read a great deal more poetry and fiction at the times when I was most prolific, and I also tended to go to more live music shows - in other words, I was exposing myself more to things that probably helped to spark the type of creativity I needed for writing music. 4. Come up with specific actions that help reproduce successful times or remove barriers Simple as it sounds, the fact that something other than "more time" might spur my song writing was a revelation. Finding more time right now would be like getting blood from a stone, so I need to get more out of the time I have. One specific action will be to mix up my reading a bit more. As fond as I have become of non-fiction - like, er, Switch - in recent years, I need to get back to reading more poetry and fiction. I also need to figure out a focus that would drive me to writing more songs - something as simple as finding an open mic night to play at some point in the not-too-distant future. Leveraging another idea from the Heaths, I might need to set myself an "action trigger" to make sure I follow through on these actions - like, for example, reading a poem right before diving into work each morning and jotting down a few ideas. I need to think about the specifics a bit more, but you get the idea. So, that’s it. I’ve served myself up as a guinea pig here with the hope that you will see how very easy and yet incredibly useful this exercise can be. Give it a try, and please comment to let me know how it turns out. Jeff P.S. - Subscribing to Mission to Learn: Ah, what a great idea for starting off 2011 right. You can do it for free by RSS feed or e-mail. Related posts:4 Simple Steps to Jump Start Your Learning Habit While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Or the Importance of Setting Learning Goals 5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Learning Habit, and How to Do It

As we head into the second month of the year it’s a good time to reflect on what you have learned so far in 2011, and what you might do to become a better learner throughout the year. I’ve started jotting down some tips along those lines. Here’s the first: 1. Adopt a growth mindset in all things If you have not yet read Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, put it at the top of your list. Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, has spent years researching what differentiates people who achieve and maintain success and she’s boiled it down to a simple dichotomy: consistently successful people have a growth mindset - a belief that they can always learn, grow, and become better at whatever they set their sites on. This is in contrast to the fixed mindset that holds back so many people - a belief that whatever talents or abilities you have are basically innate and not changeable to any significant degree. Now, I would assume most people who self identify as lifelong learners already possess a growth mindset to at least some degree, but as I read Dweck’s book, it became clear to me that there are more than a few areas of my life in which the fixed mindset rules. Take a close look at your own life, and I suspect you will find the same. One key to becoming a better learner is to ferret out these fixed mindset areas and replace them with a growth mindset. As long as you are willing to put a little time into reflection, that’s easier to do than it may sound. A particularly powerful conclusion of Dweck’s work is that simply being conscious of the dichotomy between growth and fixed can make a tremendous difference. So what are you waiting for - start putting a growth mindset to work today. Addition (Feb. 8, 2011): Just came across this post on Carol Dweck by Dan Pink. Links to the transcript of a talk given by Dweck as well an infographic on the two mindsets. Jeff P.S. - The next tip is coming soon. To be sure you receive it, I highly recommend subscribing to Mission to Learn either by RSS feed or e-mail. Related posts:10 Ways to Be a Better Learner: No. 3 - Ask Questions 10 Ways to Be a Better Learner: No. 2 - Cultivate Your Network By The Numbers: 5 Favorite Learning Habits List Posts You May Have Missed