Schools kill creativity

Interesting Videos

Written by Ming Monday, 08 February 2010 17:40

I was taking a break from work to watch a little TED and I thought I'll go with something light hearted "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity". A witty funny 20 minutes.

A reflection of my teaching days when I had a peer sharing session with the other teachers of the school and we shared our problems with each other and see if we could get a bright spark out of each other. The problem I got was from a senior teacher which says "How can I get problem student "X" to be more respectful?". I've met "X" on several occasions, especially that he had to sit outside the staff office for some offence, and my answer was simple "maybe you should re-think what respect means." I don't think that sat very well with that senior teacher, nor did I expect it to sit well with 90% of the teachers around. But apparently, this boy had a somewhat rough upbringing, the somewhat rough disposition was not disrespect but norm. No one bothered to reach out to him and all he got was punishment after punishment which he never understood. And so... there you have it. Just like someone who would feed a "problem" child like Gillian Lynne medication, we brushed the problem aside with the most convenient(aka effective) solutions.

The problem with Rockettheme

Project tools

Written by Ming Wednesday, 27 January 2010 18:36

This new layout for the year is free on rockettheme. But there seems to be a constant problem with Rockettheme templates and various 3rd party extensions for Joomla. I think the commenting on my site is faulty now. So that makes Jomsocial, Parainvite, Jomcomment, SimAnswers. For all the niceties of Rockettheme templates, it really have to work better with extensions. Might go back to templateplazza instead. All their templates are iPhone ready out of box. Might increase my viewership... Hahaha.... As if...

The Pope and Social Networks

About Web and Business

Written by Ming Wednesday, 27 January 2010 11:56

"The increased availability of the new technologies demands greater responsibility on the part of those called to proclaim the Word, but it also requires them to become more focused, efficient and compelling in their efforts,"

This is from probably the most traditionalist man on the planet on the 44th World Day of Communications to be held on May 16th. The theme, The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word. Wow... The Vatican even has a site that includes the likes of iPhone app, Facebook app, Youtube Channel (and you wonder where's Twitter. Maybe the ministry hasn't found use for endless chattering). Check out the site. http://www.pope2you.net. I think it's time to speak to my pastor about doing something about our church's website as well. Broken links and outdated info. Surely we can't be that bad.

2010 stay hungry stay foolish

Recommendations

Written by Ming Monday, 18 January 2010 23:33

I saw this posting on TED and then on Youtube. Hopefully this is a right call to action for me this 2010.