Wednesday 27 November 2013

How to Live on Twenty Four Hours a Day

Listened to an interview with Tony Benn on TV today. It was a very entertaining and kind of uplifting interview.  n it referred to a book called "How to Live on Twenty Four Hours a Day" by Arnold Bennett.  It has a Wikipedia entry and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

I liked the way it talks about reclaiming 90 minutes a day to improve oneself. Whilst he meant his message for salaried workers working a 40h week it still makes me long for time to do things like wrote this blog or read a book.  Worth a go? Certainly worth a think.

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Systems Thinking

Space as a context for systems thinking.


Habits of Mind

Would Art  Costa's ideas be a good way of teacing thinking next year.  There's more to them than our MALL (meta-cognition, analyses, lateral and logical thinking) and they would intersect at times.  There are 16 HoMs we could focus on one per week and that way we'd get through them all twice in a year,

  • Persisting
  • Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
  • Managing impulsivity
  • Gathering data through all senses
  • Listening with understanding and empathy
  • Creating, imagining, innovating
  • Thinking flexibly
  • Responding with wonderment and awe
  • Thinking about thinking (metacognition)
  • Taking responsible risks
  • Striving for accuracy
  • Finding humour
  • Questioning and posing problems
  • Thinking interdependently
  • Applying past knowledge to new situations
  • Remaining open to continuous learning
They actually don't look like ways of thinking.  Habits is a good word.

Maybe not.  They will arise so opportunistically that it's possibly better to have them as 16 posters to refer to and remind of.  Sometimes you could engineer them in.