Jun
8
Written by:
Dan Maas
6/8/2009
Several years ago, Dan Pink spoke at the Colorado Association of School Executives summer convention and I had an opportunity to work with him. We engaged in a kind of "fishbowl" keynote where we had an active blog site available and while Mr. Pink was speaking, people engaged in dialog about his points. Some folks just posted questions while others engaged in full debate in real time. Mr. Pink paused after about an hour and asked me to share some of the blog posts which he then addressed... thus making the keynote specific to the audience in the room.
This activity was patterned after a fishbowl blogging activity that Karl Fisch (one of our school technology leaders in LPS) where students blogged during fishbowl activities rather than taking reflective notes during a discussion. Later that year, Karl Fisch, Anne Smith, Maura Moritz, Dan Pink and I corresponded about some freshman level classes reading A Whole New Mind for class. We got the book added to the Board-approved list and the teachers setup blogs with Dan Pink. For the past two years, Dan Pink has graciously visited some of our blogs and even done some video conferences with our students giving them powerful access to this world-famous author.
The impact of the book, A Whole New Mind, is profound. I think I first read it four years ago and found it in the same realm as the World is Flat, but more accessible and more useful in terms of practical things to think about dealing with the fundamentally different world we are working in. Through the years now, I've seen many educators grab on to the Pink message and use the book in various ways. Recently an educator (Janni Black, Jeffco) emailed me with this link http://awnm4schools.wikispaces.com/ in hopes that educators might collaborate on ways to use this book in the classroom. Here are some other resources:
https://21st-cent-school.wikispaces.com/
http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2008/01/think-pink-whole-new-learning.html
http://karlfisch.wikispaces.com/AWNM09
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Teaching_creativity
This book certainly has a lot to offer and I hope more educators will take a look and engage in these ideas.