I’ve been following the passion quilt meme in libraryland trying to decide between two different ideas. I’ve given up and am sharing both.
The first one I see has already been used once at Stephen’s Lighthouse. I just want to elaborate on it a little bit because it’s one that my dad sent me while I was in college and that has taken on a couple of different shades for me since then. Something I’ve picked up from psychology is that we often hate the most in others that which we don’t like about ourselves. So the next time you’re complaining about someone, see if there isn’t a little kernel in there that rings true about yourself. If there is, think about what you can do to address that. But even if there isn’t that kernel in a specific instance, the advice also feeds in to the idea of modeling good behavior and that one person can make a difference. I was afraid at first that I shouldn’t pick this one, that it was a little too Pollyanna, but then again, so am I. Sometimes it’s good to bring a little wide eyed good will into a situation.
The second one is from one of my personal heroes, Bill Nye (more on Nye below). I am so enthralled with the idea of the perpetual Beta. Not everything has to be perfect before it’s released. Collect feedback, refine. Learn from experimentation. Try things! And own them. When something fails, learn from that too. One of the best things about perpetual beta is the sense of ownership, that someone is there and listening and working. That’s something that’s missing from things that are released and done.
And in that vein… I’d like to see what Tim, Char, shinylib, and bluebrarian have to share. Not so much a tag as an inquiry…
The rules are simple:
- Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
- Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
- Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
- Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.
Then add it to the Flickr Pool too.
Stepping away from the passion quilt - another thing that bumped Bill Nye up on my personal hero list: I was helping a student who was doing a paper on whether or not addiction is a disease. She needed scholarly articles on both sides of the debate. She had plenty saying that it was, but wasn’t finding any for the other side. Oooo! I thought. Bill Nye the Science Guy did an Eyes of Nye on addiction (episode 3 - unfortunately I can’t directly link to it)! I told her I was pretty sure Nye said it did end up having a chemical effect on your decision making skills, so it wasn’t all about will power, plus if Nye was saying it he was probably representing the scientific mainstream, but let’s check out the show site and see what it has. On the site for that episode he had a section called the flip side where he mentioned an article from a Yale professor arguing the opposite viewpoint - including a link to the pdf! Go Nye!
