Posts tagged Encyclopaedia Britannica

Thanks to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation

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In the 1960s as a kid, I grew up making regular visits to our household Encyclopaedia Britannica. Not only for school assignments, but also on my quest to make yoghurt and rockets.

Today, as a teacher of innovation and entrepreneurship, I continue to feed my curiousity and interests often through visits to the web. Wikipedia frequently emerges as a first port of call in my journey. For instance: today’s inquiry: holographic memory and neuroplasticity, prompted by reflections as I read a ‘real’ hardcopy book by Sharon Begley (2007).

Secondly, Wikipedia plays an ‘added extra’ role as I write my contributions into the blogosphere, thanks to automated link suggestions from Zemanta in my tumblr and Ning blogs, http://pogus.tumblr.com.

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I gained substantially from my childhhood privilidged access to an encyclopaedia in my house. I support Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation especially in its pursuit to offer without cost a ‘first base’ of information to all the world’s inquiring minds: poor or wealthy.

Begley, S. (2007). Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves (1st ed.). Ballantine Books. 

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On being a talented learner: A DIEP reflection

This is a DIEP reflection based on a close reading of my personalised StrengthsQuest report individualised for my ‘Input’ and ‘Learner’ talents.

D-Describe

  • The report confirmed my predilection for gaining learning from books, and by extension other explicit learning media such as texts ‘on the web’.
  • The report also stated that I prefer to learn about people, particularly their background and talents. This is true. However, I was surprised that the StrengthsQuest analysis highlighted this point.

I-Interpret

I was surprised at the precision that the SQ analysis noted regarding my passion for reading, which is primarily non-fiction. I guess it began in the early 1960s when my parents purchased a 24-volume set of Encyclopaedia Brittannica. That was my internet. I learned how to make blackpowder, yoghurt and rockets. The books were a great source for school assignments in New Zealand.

An incident: Once I ‘entertained’ my English teacher at high school by presenting a book review of two books on nuclear engineering: ‘Perils of the Peaceful Atom’ (Curtis & Hogan, 1970) and the ‘Encyclopeadia of the Atom’. I was 14 at the time and was setting my career towards designing safe nulear and thermonuclear power stations. However, once I had arrived at university, New Zealand was a declared non-nuclear nation, and had pulled out from its plans to build a nuclear power plant near Wellington, at Makora.

I should note for the record that I do ‘input’ from other sources beyond books. One important daily source is the Sky satellite channels such as History, Documentary, BBC World, and Discovery. I also have an extensive collection of DVDs spread across four genre: drama, music and opera performance, documentary, and comedy. Furthermore, I am an avid photographer and videographer. My Aperture photo library contains about 20,000 images. Of which 4700 from my three-month sabatical in America, and a similar number from the same period in Africa in 2005. As a music-lover and amateur singer, my iTunes sound library contains 7000 songs, and 24 days of recording. Sound recordings (of lectures and my musical performances) from my H2n Zoom digital recorder are also now populating my sound library.

The epiphany for me was the feedback about my interest in learning about the individual differences in people so that I could: better match my teaching to their needs, and better find people with whom they could work together productively. I had hitherto presumed this interest was a basic, hard-won mediocre skill that had ‘made sense’ for me to learn given my role as a teacher of management, leadership, and team work. These ‘people roles’ were somewhat remote from my earlier understanding of what management was about: the application of management science.

I can pinpoint exactly how I have learned developed this meta-Individuation talent. The journey began with my exposure almost 20 years ago to the Myers-Briggs type indicator under mentorship of a Jungian analyst. The MBTI indicator confirmed me as a serious geeky nerd, we might say now (INTJ = Introvert, Intuitive, Thinker, Judger). I had just completed my doctoral dissertation in operational research/management science (Mellalieu, 1982). I operated with the presumption, informed by Mr Spock of Star Trek fame, that all problems could be subject to rigorous analysis and deduction, without heed of emotional considerations…. Perhaps you see why my wife at the time sent me of for analysis!

I discovered the Belbin Team Role indicator as part of a piopneering course employing outdoor adventure learning and Revans’ action learning (Leberman & Mellalieu, 1996). My Belbin Team Role  identified that I was not just a creative nerd ‘Plant’ (as per the MBTI), but also a Coordinator and collector of ideas from others: a Resource Investigator. Apparently, a rare combination.

Meredith Belbin’s approach impressed me with its apparent ability to predict the potential strengths and failings of a team - provided you knew the Belbin signature of the component team members. The importance of understanding individuals in a team context was confirmed vividly when a team of my postgraduate entrepreneurship and innovation students collapsed from stunning success (winning the inaugural SIFE competition in New Zealand) to outrageous failure as the Belbin Apollo Syndrome took root.

What implications might this learning have for my professional and/or personal life? The StrengthsQuest analysis gives me comfort and confidence that I can proceed from basic capability to a degree of excellence in applying strengths-based education in the context of enterprise development and innovation. I am pleased that I took the decision to embed the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment as a key component of my teaching in my BSNS 5391 Innovation & Entrepreneurship course. In that course, I place particular emphasis on the notion that we might not all posess talents to be a succesful entrepreneur, but with careful recruitment and team-building, we can create a winning enterprise (Mellalieu, 2010).

E-Evaluate: Could the process of learning (and teaching) have been more effective and/or efficient? I have taken 20 - 25 years to arrive at this point of confidence in applying Strengths-based education! So, yes, perhaps the process could have been more efficient! That is why I task my students to work together on an innovative venture. During that venture, they share their StrengthsQuest profiles, reflect on their learning, and produce a Professional Learning Agenda (PLA) for their continued development beyond my class. My personal learning may have been serendipitous, initially unwilling, and occasionally epiphanic. However, my intention is that my students achieve a more productive and effective start to their strengths-based journey of career and personal development.


P-Plan: In what ways might this learning incident serve me in the future?

  • Read with urgency the book I obtained recently from Gallup: Teach with your strengths (Liesveld & Miller, 2005).Explain to my students - and colleagues - how my strengths inform the approach I embrace with my teaching
  • Consider how someone else could take over teaching my course when I take sabbatical! (My Head of Department has complained that I teach at least a decade ahead of my colleagues and students … However, that intent has been embedded in my teaching philosophy since I began teaching in 1987. I am a self-declared curriculum innovator. That usually means that only someone who has experienced my courses is competent and capable of teaching them ‘my way’)
  • Finally, I must extend my inights and interest to other colleagues. So far, I have persuaded six staff to complete the StrengthsFinder assessment. Time to get a Community of Practice (COP) going in our department!

Note: See other postings about reflection in my blog, http://pogus.tumblr.com/search/reflect

Sources

Curtis, R., & Hogan, E. (1970). Perils of the Peaceful Atom: the Myth of Safe Nuclear Power Plants. Littlehampton Book Services Ltd.   

Leberman, S., & Mellalieu, P. J. (1996). ALP-DevCo and the Action Learning Programme: A Trojan Horse for Moving from Mystery to Mastery - Training educators to use experiential education using an isomorphically-framed training-products development company. In Proceedings of the Outdoor Education Conference: From Mystery to Mastery (pp. 66-83). Turangi, NZ: Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://web.mac.com/petermellalieu/Teacher/Examples/Entries/2007/10/8_Training_educators_to_use_experiential_education_using_an_isomorphically-framed_training-products_development_company.html

Liesveld, R., & Miller, J. A. (2005). Teach with Your Strengths: How Great Teachers Inspire Their Students. Gallup Press. 

Mellalieu, P. J. (1982). A Decision Support System for Corporate Planning in the New Zealand Dairy Industry (Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics, statistics and operations research). Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10063/568

Mellalieu, P. J. (2010). Creating a winning enterprise: your place in the entrepreneurial process - Internet Archive. Retrieved from http://www.archive.org/details/CreatingAWinningEnterpriseYourPlaceInTheEntrepreneurialProcess

Mellalieu, P. J. (2010, March 10). Creating a winning enterprise: your place in the entrepreneurial process - Scribd. Slideshow, Auckland: Unitec Institute of Technology. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/28298764/Creating-a-winning-enterprise-your-place-in-the-entrepreneurial-process

 

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