From this month’s Harper’s Index:
Chance that an American who was home-schooled feels this way: 1 in 25
Harper’s quotes a new research study from the National Home Education Research Institute as the source.
From a posting on the Tomorrow’s Professor mailing list on a concept called active waiting:
Active waiting has many other benefits, some of them hard to imagine until experienced. It brings serenity because it is neither tense nor pressing. It provides a growing mindfulness of having something important and worthwhile to say before saying it. It promotes a more causal but focuses attitude toward preparing and presenting; teaching that once had to be written out is now more easily and enjoyably done from conceptual outlines and diagrams that often fill but a page per class. With active waiting, and decisions about the final structure of the content are put off, classes are more spontaneous and more likely to involve students as active participants. And, not least, with active waiting there is more opportunity for discovery in teaching.”
This is a short article but it describes an internal process that is very similar to what we call “holding space” in Open Space facilitation: that ability to be both totally present and completely invisible for the group. In fact this is a good skill to have for all kinds of facilitation, including parenting and being in relationship.
Found through the excellently repurposed blog of Karen McComas.
A gem shared by John Engle on the OSLIST, and keeping right in line with some recent thinking on action:
— Soren Kierkegaard
In Open Space Technology meetings, action plans begin with baby steps. In the action planning phase of an Open Space event, I ask participants to identify key projects that need to be started or ideas that need to be moved forward. In order to focus small, self-organized workteams, I distribute a small form that helps to capture immediate next steps.
As a result, I am always looking for questions to focus planning groups on concrete collaboration. I found a few today at Reforming Project Management Theory and Practice:
Very useful, combined with a question that asks the group to identify a time and place to meet again.
My friend and fellow Bowen Islander John Dumbrille is beginning to engage with issues of accessibility for Web sites. He has some recent posts on his blog which look to me to be the beginning of a white paper. It will be interesting to see how his thinking evolves along these questions:
�Simple� or �common� does not make for great design � �appropriate� does. A person who has had a brain injury that affects her cognitive functioning, and a person who was born blind both have “disability” in common, as well as some legal or social disconnect issues. But their lives and needs are very different� so why serve them the same experience?
The question is an interesting one from a web design point of view, but my curiosity is piqued a little more in thinking about these same questions applied to organizational structures. Connecting people, all people, in common endeavours requires attention to diversity AND functionality. It’s not a question of one size fits all, as John also points out, but many sizes serving many.
At the very least it’s given me some nice food for thought for our regular coffee breaks together.
