Webspiration Wednesday

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I’ll be honest, today’s Webspiration Wednesday was a flop.  I wanted to introduce teachers to Daniel Pink’s a Whole New Mind and did a quick video search to see what I could find.  I came up with an interview that Oprah did with Daniel Pink about his book.  It would have been great if Oprah wouldn’t have opened her mouth.  I think she mentioned that she donated 4,500 books to Stanford grads no less than 50 times.  The interview wasn’t great, Oprah didn’t focus enough on the book, she was leading the questions to get the answers that she wanted. A flop.  On the upside, teachers got enough of a glimpse into the book that they were left wanting to read it.  So even though the video was a flop, the inspiration was still there.  Our local library offers digital downloads and A Whole New Mind is one of the audio books available for download.  My hope is that the staff will listen to it and think about how it relates to our classrooms and education.  Daniel Pink has a discussion guide for educators that is free to download on his website.    In the next few weeks, I hope to show Daniel Pink’s TED Talk on his newest book Drive (also excellent).

In A Whole New Mind, Pink asks us to consider the world that we are living in. He calls the age we find ourselves in the Conceptual age.  In this age, many left brain jobs are disappearing.  If a computer can do it faster, someone overseas can do it cheaper, or what you are offering isn’t in demand in this age of abundance, the job will become obsolete.   So then, creativity becomes the competitive difference that can differentiate commodities. Pink outlines six essential senses that need to be developed:

  1. Design – Moving beyond function to engage the senses.
  2. Story – Narrative added to products and services.
  3. Symphony – Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus).
  4. Empathy – Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
  5. Play – Bringing humor and lightheartedness to business and products.
  6. Meaning – the purpose is the journey, give meaning to life from inside yourself.

As an educator, I am interested in how we can help our students develop these senses so that they can be prepared for the world ahead of them.  Here is a clue: it has nothing to do with standardized testing!

Have you read A Whole New Mind?  What take aways do you have for us?

If you haven’t read A Whole New Mind, I highly recommend it.