The most important thing is insight
Another one less than enamoured with talent. William Faulkner in a Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957. (The audio is here) “At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite […]
Careful Documentation
This (thank you Cristina) is a great mini-documentary about the impact of documentation as used in the Reggio Emilia schools and with the Making Learning Visible project Documentation: Transforming Our Perspective from Melissa Rivard on Vimeo. Intuitively, I am wholeheartedly behind this sort of approach. Instinctively, too, I worry...
People vs Ideas
Ed Catmull might be my new hero. “Which is more valuable, good ideas or good people? No matter whether I was talking to retired business executives or students, to high school principals or artists, when I asked for a show of hands, the audiences would be split 50–50. (Statisticians will tell you that when you […]
Steve Jobs on Teamwork and Rocks
Lovely metaphor for teamwork and difference from Steve Jobs (thanks to Sonja for spotting this) “When I was a young kid there was a widowed man who lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He’s a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have […]
Marsalis, Students and the work-talent gap
Thanks Cristina and Gary Branford Marsalis’ take on students today
Cashiers and Maths Prodigies
From Bounce: In 1896 Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, carried out a simple experiment to find out. He compared the performance of two calculating prodigies with cashiers from the Bon Marché department store in Paris. The cashiers had an average of fourteen years experience in the store but had showed no early gift for mathematics....