8 Gigs a Week
Woohoo! Apple’s 13″ MacBook Air now comes with 8G RAM standard! This will make it so much easier for more people to do powerful things.
April 19, 2016
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Woohoo! Apple’s 13″ MacBook Air now comes with 8G RAM standard! This will make it so much easier for more people to do powerful things.
“Education is one of the formative technologies of human civilization, a constructed system of logically ordered parts intended to be the bedrock of social and political advancement.”
I don’t agree with his arguments against digital tech in the classroom, but this little nugget I love.
“…imagination lets us live in the past and in the future, and by escaping the present moment we can use our memories of the past to predict what will happen in the future; ie: I know from past experience that fire burns skin, so I know inside my minds-eye that if I stick my hand into a fire I will lose my flesh. This is so instinctual we don’t even recognize it’s constantly happening with every symbol that we’re perceiving in our day-to-day moments. But it is this ability that allows us to navigate the complexity of our society. Even more exciting is the fact that this skill also works with emotions, not just situations.
The premise, again, is quite simple: When we see someone experiencing an emotion ( be it anger, sadness, happiness, etc), our brain “tries out” that same emotion to imagine what the other person is going through. And it does this by attempting to fire the same synapses in your own brain so that you can attempt to relate to the emotion you’re observing. This is basically empathy. It is how we get the mob mentality, where a calm person can suddenly find themselves picking up a pitchfork against a common enemy once they’re influenced by dozens of angry minds. It is our shared bliss at music festivals, or our solidarity in sadness during tragedies.” (1)
Such an important bit of knowledge. Think on this the next time you get stressed out in a situation: remember that people are watching you and will mimic your neurons.
It can work the other way too: if you have a confrontation, be aware of how your own brain and body are trying to mimic their frustration. Own that, learn from it to understand where they are coming from, but don’t let that emotional mirroring seep into with how you approach or resolve the problem. Again: their neurons are watching yours – modeling cool, calm behavior is necessary to get them to trigger their own neurological mirroring. Articulate your empathy through direct words “I can see how you are frustrated by this and here’s why I can see that…” But everything else should be how you want them to act: cool, calm, and professional.
1. From: http://soulanatomy.org/the-neurology-of-happiness-how-complaining-is-literally-killing-you/
People ask from where I got my business prowess and growing leadership skills. I did what anyone in my shoes would do: surrounded myself with people who could help me. A collection of curated friends and colleagues with whom I could feed my learning to fill in the holes.
I’m so excited that my most influential mentor – who has grown into a good friend – has set up shop, called Leader 180, to help other leaders and businessfolk grow. If you are looking to develop as a leader or get some strategic perspective on your business, you need to reach out to Leader 180. Dr. Cindy Larson has escorted me through every turn in my career, and I know I’m better for it. She’s assembled a powerful team: I know and have worked with most of her team, and they are the best human beings around. They listen to you and get excited about helping you solve problems.
Take advantage of this team. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
In 2014, Veronica Arreola began a goal of taking a selfie once a day for a year in an effort to capture herself in real life situations – an attempt to support the idea that selfies could be used as a platform of humanizing women (a goal of feminism, to counteract the objectification of women). She encouraged other women to do the same and created the hashtag #365FeministSelfie.
Over the course of the year, something happened: the community started to notice women who repeated posted selfies wherein they celebrated things like surviving another rant from their husbands about “how worthless you are.” The community started to ask questions:
Some eagle-eyed selfie-ists noticed a pattern with a few fellow participants: far too many selfies posted with a caption about a husband’s rant. The questions began. Does he do this a lot? Are you happy? What else does he say to you? Do you have friends close by who can support you?
It soon dawned on a few of the women in our community that their husbands were emotionally abusive and had separated them from nearby friends and family. These were not typical quarrels; this was domestic abuse. The awakenings were devastating.
I wanted to post this because this narrative offers two revelations.
I’d like to see more makers – those who hold the skills to create – rise to the challenge of becoming heroes for social change. To those I say: you hold the ability to change the world; why aren’t you doing it yet? Said with love.
I believe mobile computing is a powerful tool and we are still trying to figure out how it integrates into our lives. Behavioral sciences are still processing what data they have about the use of mobile devices, but this narrative provides clear evidence of how the integration of these devices might actually provide help to those who otherwise wouldn’t have it:
People can be physically isolated from their communities, but a simple smartphone can connect us to people across the country who are able to see the forest for the abusive trees.
The moral of this post is that we are ultimately accountable to each other. How we use our talents and leverage the tools at our disposal impact others. I’m thrilled that Veronica Arreola started her hashtag and saw it through to the end, finding ways to support the social change it stirred up. We should take our cue and join her.
An oldie, but goodie. I often reread it to remind myself that there are multiple ways to learn and that we are often limited by own our biases.
http://www.21learn.org/archive/cognitive-apprenticeship-making-thinking-visible/
I am so proud and honored to have been appointed CEO of Mobile Makers Academy. Speechless, humbled, and excited are all words that come to mind. Thankfully, I have a great team to help me articulate my thoughts:
http://mobilemakers.co/blog/2015/9/30/mobile-makers-is-now-a-hack-reactor-core-school
Super thanks to Aleen Simms for inviting me to her Less Than Or Equal podcast. We had a hoot chatting about education, my transition from a female-dominated field (education) to a male-dominated field (tech), and of course, Doctor Who. Check it out:
Penn State recently started offering a course to their faculty on how to teach veterans. I’ve had the pleasure to teach and watch others teach veterans. They bring so much to the classroom, and enrich the community. Yet, teaching them warrants new tools and strategies. Here are a few resources to get you started.
Key & Peele, setting the tone and stage for how media should portray the professional teacher.