I’m just as fascinated today with those who again claim they can predict the future. Only this time, some of them are dressed up in a charlatan outfit, they’re plastered all over the social media, and they’re peddling fear and unease about our collective lives up ahead.

And why?

To sell some deceitful program that will allay our fears, or require us to trust their fool-proof system for storing our hard-earned cash. Or perhaps to encourage us to live in a bomb-proof shelter somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Here’s a reality check for you. No-one can accurately predict the future. Oh, we can generalise with a series of trends, and we can determine some probable futures by analysing present patterns of behaviour. We can calculate how many 10-year olds there will be in 5 years from now. Just count how many 5 year-olds we have right now.

But can we accurately predict the share market movements through this year, or whether a major accident will occur in 3 months from now, or whether you will win lots of money in a lottery? No we can’t.

Naturally, most of us would prefer to have some degree of certainty about our future, which is why we keep hoping that the fortune-tellers will be accurate. But they basically won’t be. So here’s the next best option: Future-proof yourself.

And what does that mean? Well…. It means that you adopt a series of strategies and mindsets that will give you the best possible chance of thriving through whatever happens up ahead.

For now, here are some suggestions on future-proofing your life, your family, your work, your school, your workplace:

1. Focus on what you CAN control, rather than on what you can’t. If you keep thinking about things that you can’t influence, you’re wasting your energy. Do some in-control things like saving some money, or establishing some consistent everyday patterns (such as exercising), or doing some charity work. Then you’re in control of your world.
2. Fight back on the fear factor. There are some in the media who consistently resort to doomsday scenarios (note the Dec 21 2012 end-of-world scenarios being portrayed right now). Watch how a highly negative news report makes you feel. Then read a positive article about what lies up ahead, and again note your response. Become aware of your responses. It’s the 1^st stage in turning your emotions around.
3. Do some in-depth study. Having strong knowledge gives you greater confidence about what lies up ahead. If you want to know what’s going on, then make the effort to study up on the topic. Go and listen to some respected experts in the field. Find some valid online information. Remember that ignorance is rarely bliss.
4. Watch the trends. While they’re not foolproof, trends can give some indications on what lies up ahead. If you’re in business today, you may be struggling. Yet, there are some obvious trends taking place. Examples? People want to save, not spend. And technology is having a strong impact on how customers purchase goods.
5. Let go on certainty. Accept that, to live an inspiring life, you may need to embrace uncertainty. Not Knowing can end up being a welcome part of your life, rather than something to be avoided. So, be an ongoing adventurer who relishes the opportunity to be challenged by unforeseen circumstances.

And lastly, if you’re involved with kids in any way (as a parent, a teacher, a relative), I beg of you to not scare the heck out of them about the future. I’m not sure why some adults do it. Maybe it’s a power thing, like: “It’s all gonna be awful, but I’ll save you.”

Oh please. Get over it. If you push too hard with that negative line, they’re hardly going to feel positive about their world up ahead. And even worse, they might not even bother to help create that better world up ahead.

Look at the last 50 years of world history. There have been so many pending calamities (world starvation; millennium bugs), and yet somehow we get through them intact.

Inspire kids about the possibilities with their lives, and of the planet in general. And then we’re more likely to see a future that is beneficial for us all, because they’ll help to create it.

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“I once bought my kids batteries for Christmas with a note saying, toys not included.” (Bernard Manning).

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The four stages of life – You believe in Santa Claus – You don’t believe in Santa Claus – You become Santa Claus – You look like Santa Claus.

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Why would you invite a mushroom to a Christmas party?

He’s a fun guy to be with.

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Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.

‘In honour of this holy season’, Saint Peter said,  ‘You must each possess something that symbolises Christmas to get into heaven.’

The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. ‘It represents a candle’, he said.

‘Okay, you may pass through the Pearly Gates’, Saint Peter said.

The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, ‘They’re bells.’

Saint Peter said,  ‘You may pass through the Pearly Gates’.

The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of women’s panties.

St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked,  ‘And just what do those symbolise?’

The man replied, ‘These are Carols.”

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One particular Christmas season a long time ago, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip, but there were problems everywhere. Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule. Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress.

Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum.

When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom.

Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great Christmas tree.

The angel said, very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?”

Thus began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

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The Brutal Reality Of Christmas:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

3) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that ‘flying reindeer’ (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.

We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

4) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

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What does Santa suffer from if he gets stuck in a chimney?
Claustrophobia!

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Two blondes decided that this Christmas they wanted to cut down their own Christmas tree. So they drove two hours into the country and walked deep into the woods to find the perfect Christmas tree. They had planned the trip well, especially considering that they were blond. They were dressed warmly with boots, warm coats and hats. They had a chain saw, hatchet, a bag to protect the tree and rope to drag it back to their car. Every detail was covered.

They searched and searched. They had gone to all this trouble, nothing but the prefect tree would do. They searched for hours through knee deep snow and biting wind. Finally, five hours later with the sun beginning to go down, one blonde says to the other, “I can’t take this anymore. I give up! There are hundreds of beautiful trees out here. Let’s just pick one whether it’s decorated or not!”

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And my favourite:

Be naughty – save Santa the trip.

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I just had a birthday. Yes, I had a great day, thank you for asking. And as it does for so many of us, it got me thinking about what I’ve experienced in my life thus far; and also what I want to experience up ahead. So in terms of the former, I started to compile a few of my lists of favourite things. Yeah I know, there’s nothing new to this, and I’m sure that lots of you have done it before. But just in case you haven’t, can I recommend it to you with chocolate coating on top?

Here are some of mine so far. I decided to not place them in order of priority in each of the lists. I began to do that, and then realised that the order adjusts according to a whole range of things eg my mood at the time; the context for the memory. So here we go:

MUSIC.

Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

Stairway To Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

Ave Maria (Sarah Brightman)

Reminiscing (The Little River Band)

What A Wonderful World (Louie Armstrong)

Over The Rainbow (Eva Cassidy)

Imagine (John Lennon)

Cavatina (Paul Potts)

Have I Told You Lately (Van Morrison)

Hey Jude (The Beatles)

MOVIES.

The Shawshank Redemption

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

Mary Poppins (well, it sure was when I was 6 yrs old)

The Sound Of Music

Dead Poet’s Society

A Few Good Men

Star Wars

The Piano

Amelie

Schindlers’s List

PEOPLE I’VE MET.

1. You.

BOOKS (from the ones on my shelves right now; although I suspect that I’ll need to keep reworking this list)

Awareness (Anthony de Mello)

The Time Travellers Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

The Shipping News (Annie Proulx)

Life Of Pi (Yann Martel)

A New Earth (Eckhart Tolle)

Cloudstreet (Tim Winton)

Long Walk To Freedom (Nelson Mandela)

My Uncle Oswald (Roald Dahl)

Scented Gardens For The Blind (Janet Frame)

Resilience (Anne Deveson)

Favourite (or sometimes not so favourite) Lessons In Life.

Every time a child corrects me on my knowledge about a topic; and they’re correct

That I usually accomplish more when I slow down

Anything that makes me go Aha!

When I baulk at doing something, and then later realise that I probably could have done it. But by then it’s too late!

When I regret wasting a day on something; and then later realise that I needed to go through that experience to get to where I am now

When someone criticises my work, and it challenges me to develop much more effective improvements than any praise could ever have done

That everyone I meet has lots of amazing knowledge; and that it’s sometimes up to me to encourage it out of them

Unless I push myself with my learning, I begin to do the same ol’ same ol’; and yet don’t even realise it

When I just stop for a minute and realise how damn lucky I am with my life

Suddenly realising out of the blue that this moment is the one that counts the most in my life

PLACES.

My front veranda (when savouring life with friends)

Macchu Picchu in Peru

The Amalfi Coast south of Sorrento in Italy

The Fjords near Bergen in Norway

Muir Wood near San Francisco

The Great Wall of China

Just about anywhere in New Zealand (the top of the Franz Josef Glacier, or the Queenstown lookout, if I had to pick two)

Venice at dusk

Blarney Castle in Ireland

Uluru at sunrise

When I walked around there a couple of months ago, I got to thinking about what constitutes really good learning for adults. And so, partly as a result of that few minutes, I’m now sorting out what I’m going to call The Laws Of Learning. Am also thinking about writing a simple little booklet (or App, or some other form of information-supporting device) that clarifies these Laws.

Just in case you didn’t know, the scientific term for adult learning is ‘andragogy’. If you’re a teacher / trainer / lecturer / facilitator for adults, you need to know your andragogy. I might call this my Andragogy App (What a winner of a title. I can hear the deafening applause from here).

For quality learning to take place, these 12 Laws must be reinforced by the facilitator, and practised by the learners. The questions are directed towards the learner in this early outline down below. I’m open to any feedback here. What have I missed with some Laws? How could these be adjusted?

There are quite a few overlaps eg between the Law Of Modalities; and the Law Of Interaction. However, for now, I’ll stick with these 12.

I’m also thinking of writing some form of parable to create the context for this; and possibly placing this into a form of learning journey that travels through a digital (or even ancient) landscape. Maybe I’ll then go back to London and apply them to a presentation in Hyde Park. That would be the ultimate test.

So here we go. The 12 Laws Of Learning:

1. The Law Of Purpose. Clarify the purpose for the learning. Why are we doing this? Where are we going with this learning? What’s our reason for being here?

2. The Law Of Ownership. To learn effectively, the learner must own (at least part of) the process.  How have we been involved in the initial construction of this learning process? How will we monitor our own performance during and after the learning experience?

3. The Law Of Association. Effective learning occurs when the learner makes connections with what he / she already knows. What connections can we make between our prior knowledge, and with what we’re learning here?

4. The Law Of Relevance. The learning must have meaning within the learner’s own life. Can we make use of this? Will it be relevant to what we do each day? How will we put it into practice?

5. The Law Of Memory. To remember what we learn is patently an obvious factor. Watch for what is called primacy (the 1^st thing you hear), and recency (the last thing you hear). How do we commit what we’ve learnt to our memory? How do we best access it later when we need it?

6. The Law Of Modalities. Each learner has his / her preferred modes of learning. Some learners are more auditory than other, some are kinaesthetic, some prefer text, others would rather talk about it. What’s our most effective mode? How could we effectively use that in our very next learning experience?

7. The Law Of Motivation. Internal motivators are more powerful than external motivators for most adult learners. What inspires us to succeed? What do we most want to learn in our life? Or at least, what do we most want to learn here in this session today?

8. The Law Of Interaction. Learners must be immersed in the task; they have to engage with the experience. This can include direct practice; team dynamics; competitive roleplays; movement; visual reinforcement; ongoing professional dialogue. How do we each like to best interact?

9. The Law of Thinking. Critical and creative thinking are equally important, as are the questions and connections we develop as a result of our thinking. Synthesizing what we learn leads to depth of understanding. How really do we think? What do we think about during the learning? How does that help our learning?

10. The Law Of Repetition. Remember the 10,000 hr rule (it takes that many hours to become an expert in most things!). For learning to become embedded, it must be practised over and over, in a variety of contexts. How prepared are we each to practise? What strategies help us to persevere with the repetitions?

11. The Law Of Narrative. When the presenter tells a story, it creates a context for the learning. And an entertaining (and even emotional) one at that, if we’re lucky. Stories create stronger brain maps. How much more effective is our own learning if we get to hear contextual stories? What are our favourite stories, and why?

12. The Law Of Challenge. Think Goldilocks. Not too cold, not too hot. If the learning is too easy, then it’s boring. If it’s too complex for the learner, then she / he won’t relate to it. Do we learn more effectively with low or high challenge? How open are we to extreme intellectual provocation? Where are the very limits with our own Challenge Zone?

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THE ELEVEN LAWS OF NAPLAND

As negotiated between the great Learning Oracle, and the tribes of Napland

Once upon a very recent time, on a faraway planet known as Edutopia, there existed an island state called Napland. This magical place was inhabited by a race of people called the Naplanders, who were obsessed with standards, targets and goals. Once each year, the younger Naplanders (known as the Offspring) completed a national examination that evaluated their performance.

This came to be known as…. the NAPLAN TEST.

This almighty TEST determined whether the aforementioned Offspring had acquired the rules and dictums of their civilization’s communication systems. And also whether their schools would get a bucketload of money to support them in acquiring those rules and dictums in the following years.

When it came to these TESTS, three of the Naplander tribes featured strongly (although many others, such as the Parenticus, and the Media Circus, had a part to play as well). These three tribes were:

1. The Napland Educatus, who are most often found teaching in environments (commonly known as schools) that feature high levels of tension, stress, very long hours, and quite a few successes. The Educatus openly welcomed the development of high standards in the Offspring (they always had), but questioned the manner in which the TEST was used to measure / analyse/ sort / sift the Offspring, as well as to rank their schools.

2. The Napland Politicus, who are generally found wherever the Media Circus congregate (or sometimes the other way around). The Politicus hold the pursestrings, and thus, the rights, to insist upon the TEST. It would appear that their hearts are in the right place, given the money they had already spent on school buildings in the past year.

3. The Napland Offspring, who are meant to be the focus in the whole saga. Funnily enough, while they have the greatest numbers of any tribe, and while everyone says that they matter the most, they invariably have the least say in the whole process.

Sadly, the Educatus and the Politicus can not always agree on the manner in which the TEST results are to be displayed to the rest of Napland. Some in the Parenticus and the Media Circus have become obsessed with simplistic test scores in these online displays, to the utter frustration of the Educatus, who know that many deeper criteria determine a great Napland school.

And so, into this Naplandic Impasse, there recently came by chance an all-wise Learning Oracle. This great Oracle represented the collective wisdom of all of the tribes of Napland; a wisdom that sometimes seemed to disappear out the window when it came to Decision Time on any major initiative.

Upon consulting with the Oracle, all Naplandic tribes agreed to give their full support to a special set of Laws. These Laws, according to the Oracle, would ensure the sustainability and general worth of the ongoing TEST.

Since that time, these Laws Of Napland have been passed down on a stone tablet, talked about over many a coffee, and inscribed in 140-character tweets on twitter.

And so, to the Laws:

The 1^st LAW. The TEST is here to stay, so get used to it.

It’s just how politics works. Don’t bother to resist it; work with it instead. That way, you might get to have some influence in adjusting the near-future directions of the system. It doesn’t mean that you meekly accept everything that will be decided. Rather, that you get involved, and offer your opinion. So, blog / twitter / Facebook, and engage in proactive dialogue about the worth and future direction of the TEST.

The 2nd LAW. Collation of evidence is an invaluable process. Use it to support the Offspring.

Sometimes, raw data is used to poor effect (eg to politically compare schools and systems). However, that same data can be hugely instructive when it comes to supporting individual children’s learning. Don’t let your political attitudes colour the worth of this data. Educatus must consistently analyse the individual and collective data from the TEST, and then respond with explicit teaching that targets each child. Professional dialogue between the Educatus is the most effective way of implementing these targeted practices.

The 3^rd LAW. Don’t teacher-proof the system.

Sadly, other education systems around the world are based upon the assumption that teachers can’t be trusted, and that the system has to be teacher-proofed. This is a professional embarrassment to all parties concerned. The Educatus are the ones who make it all work. And the vast majority of them are impressive at what they do. Give them the resources and support to create quality learning in the classroom, and you’ll see better results on all tests over the next few years.

The 4^th LAW. Teach for the longer term, not just for the test.

Yes, schools might be under pressure to ‘perform’ in the eyes of the Parenticus and the Media Circus, but this must never distract from the focus on long-term learning. The research is indisputable everywhere in Edutopia. If you teach to the test, you may get marginally better results on the test itself in the short-term, but the long-term results will plateau. Pay respect to the need for sustainable long-term improvement in all fields, and it will rub off in the TEST results anyway.

The 5^th LAW. Collaboration works more effectively than competition.

It’s about time that the competition cliché (ie that we have to compete with each other in order to improve our standards) died a quick death. We’re not talking about the Olympics here. Not all of life has to be a bitter competition. Do you compete in your family? Your local church? Your neighbourhood? Outstanding human performances result from a deep personal inspiration to be exceptional. It’s a drive from within, not an externally motivated obsession, that leads to world-best practice.

When it comes to the TEST itself, websites full of comparative data are based on the fragile premise that the competition will somehow challenge schools to do more. So what’s that indicating? That they’re not presently doing as well as possible? This is another professional embarrassment on the part of all concerned. The Educatus want the best for their students, full stop. They’re already doing whatever they can to help students to reach those high standards. Setting up artificial competition between schools doesn’t inspire them to do more. Replace the fear factor with the peer factor.

The 6^th LAW. Focus on the heart as well as the mind.

We learn everything off by heart. For the brain to be engaged, an emotional connection must be made with the learning. Literacy rates might rise during strict instruction, but rates of reading for pleasure can sometimes fall. Remember that we’re meant to be developing a love of learning in our Offspring, and not just creating a set of numbers that have the Media Circus lauding education systems for advancing by some miniscule measurement over a two-year period. Build the Inspiration Factor, the heart, into every lesson every day for the Offspring. And this is why we need the best, the brightest and the most inspiring of adults to be the Educatus. Because they model that inspiration.

The 7^th LAW. It’s not EITHER / OR. It’s BOTH / AND.

Too often, we feel compelled to choose between work and play, or inquiry and memorization, or phonics and whole language. Yet, powerful choices often pay respect to both sides of the process, and align them to the benefit of all. Pity the poor school or system that decrees that they must choose between endless prep for the TEST; OR a comprehensive development of creativity, initiative and love of learning in the Offspring. It’s not an Either / Or. It must be a Both / And. If you’re professional enough, you can generate a strong degree of initiative and creativity, while still respecting the need for explicit TEST skills development.

The 8^th LAW. To measure the quality of a school, look for deeper authentic criteria.

You might measure your bank account, or the length of your index finger, with a clearly defined number. Schools are not that simple. And it’s not good enough to dismiss this perspective by saying that this is just our starting point with the online recording of data, and that later on, we’ll improve it further. It’s just the wrong approach, right from the start. TEST data is only a small part of the big picture. We must take into account other authentic data such as: whether the kids want to be there; whether the school contributes to the social fabric of the local community; whether parents will stick up for the school at a Saturday night party. The world is consumed by the endless simplification of issues that are invariably much more complex. This simplification fails to pay respect to the depth and substance that contributes to a sensational school.

The 9^th LAW. Focus on Second Decade skillsets.

It’s a whole new world out there, and while the 3Rs will always be critical, there are other very important skills that are worth learning. Skills such as: cybercitizenship (being able to participate effectively in an online environment); emotional intelligence (being able to self-regulate one’s emotional state when working with others); and philanthropic endeavour (being able to contribute to a better community with your personal and team actions). In this Second Decade, these skills will be vital if we want our Offspring to make a worthwhile contribution to our societies. Beware any system that reverts to simplistic 19^th Century skills only.

The 10^th LAW. When using the data from the TEST, make a decision that is based upon our own country’s culture, and not some other culture.

While we can learn from other high-achieving systems and countries, we always must be careful about duplicating what they do. There are some countries that are barely democracies, and others that have a lifetime obsession with single scores. That’s their choice. Do we want to make those same choices about our lifestyle? We might end up carbon-copying the eating habits, the movies and the language of other countries. It doesn’t mean that we also have to take what they do with school data, and simply transpose it to here. We’re just different. Think about our egalitarian nature, and the community spirit that drives our best endeavours, Then make use of those strengths to create sensational schooling systems.

The 11^th Law. It’s not about the great god Economy. It’s about our children and their love of learning.

The TEST must never be solely about preparing young people for a life of economic subservience. A world that is dominated by wealth and power has nearly destroyed us. Track deeper, and realize that TESTS such as this are simply an effective way of helping students to improve in some very worthwhile learning skills. Believe it nor not, there are even more important issues at stake: We want our Offspring to be safe, to feel valued, to love their learning, and especially, to believe that their world up ahead will be one in which it is worth living. And that will be determined by the choices we make with them today. Let’s get going.

For those who weren’t lucky enough to be at this Forum, here are some links and bits of info:

DAY ONE:

* Canadian Michael Furdyk (pictured) was deeply impressive. He’s a Gen Y, and has accomplished more than many others who are significantly more advanced in years. Why is it that certain gifted individuals manage to achieve in this way?? More on Michael here at http://www.furdyk.com/ For me, his most impressive work has been with Taking IT Global. Possibly the most advanced social justice site on the planet. At http://www.tigweb.org/

* For a scientist (and specifically a nanotechnologist) Dr Kristin Alford explored some alluring and insightful concepts. One was that of the Presencing Institute, and Otto Scharmer’s U-Theory concept. If you’re easily inspired by near-future human possibilities, it’s worth having a look at http://www.presencing.com/

* Greg Gebhart is an excellent speaker. First met him at the U-Learn conference in Christchurch in 08. He was third up on Day 1 of this B’bane session, and is the lead consultant with the Aussie Govt’s CyberSafe program.  Have a look at http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/ Greg placed some of his conference material at http://www.itvision.net.au/isq.htm Lots of great resources.

DAY TWO.

* Aucklander Graham Hart was a magic example of someone who lives in the creative spirit. His contribution to the Lonely Dog concept just captivated the audience. Ponder this for a moment. With his colleagues, he has developed a book worth $60,000. And they’ve sold 70 of them! I lingered through the example that he had brought with him; and I must admit, it was a deeply impressive work of art!

* Next up was the principal of Crescent Girls School in Singapore. Eugenia Lim is quite obviously a high achiever, and has contributed a significant degree to her country’s advancement in recent times. I worked in Singapore last November, and was fascinated by the country’s perspective on creativity. Very logical-sequential, and yet highly effective.

* Sydney-sider Nigel Collin was your classic end-of-conference high energy keynoter. I actually referred to him as Mr Berocca. Download some of his articles, and you’ll see that he has some upfront ideas about creative practice. The short video that was developed by his young son was priceless, and demonstrated that creative capacity can begin at a very early stage.

If you’re into student-centred learning, you’re going to love this. I picked this up from Morgan Daly at http://twitter.com/urbangrind Indian teacher Kiran Bir Sethi decided to develop a school that focused on the expression ‘I Can’. This goes for 9 mins, and it’s worth every second. Watch for the world’s first child-friendly Zebra crossing.

Trying to sort through the media scrum in their reporting of this disaster is always problematic, yet it’s pretty obvious that the magnitude of this event is as momentous as any that has occurred in the past fifty years on Earth.

And so, we each have a choice. We can express our sympathies at the next coffee club meeting, and roll our eyes at the misery being faced by so many of our fellow citizens (and they are our fellow citizens. They’re just in another country. Which happens to be on the same planet).

Or, we can each really do something about this.

So here’s at least one thing you can do. If you’re reading this, then you’re probably involved in education. If you are, then get involved in the School Aid appeal. School Aid have teamed up with Plan Australia and Save the Children to launch a co-ordinated appeal to all school students. A guaranteed 90% of all funds raised will be directly spent on the kids who are still alive in Haiti. If you encourage your students to raise funds for this cause, it will essentially be a case of Kids Helping Kids. And that’s just the sort of world we all want to see being created up ahead.

When a disaster of this magnitude occurs, it’s obvious that the world must unite for the one cause, and provide the support that is so necessary. If you’re socially just, you’ll appreciate the worth of this sentiment.

Get your students involved. It’s good for them; and it’s good for the planet. At the very least, it might go a small way towards helping lots of kids who desperately need it right now.

I remember reading some research indicating that the school office would be sent the most number of ‘troublemakers’ from classrooms in the 2nd last week of any term. And even moreso in the 2nd last week of the year.

Why not the last week, I thought to myself? And yet it probably makes a lot of sense. Somehow, when the end is nigh in that final week, we tend to summon up our last reserves of resilience, and cope with everything as well as possible. As well, kids will remember the last few things that were said and done, and so, we’d obviously prefer those memories to be more positive.

This following narrative has application at any time of the year; and yet I suspect that it applies even more directly to this specific time. Goes like this:

A teacher was once talking with her class, and told them about the two monsters that were always fighting inside their heads.

“So what are the two monsters?” asked one student.

“Well, one of them always looks for the best in your life, and encourages you to think about what is going well in the world around you.”

“And the other?”

“ Ah, well, that’s the monster that always looks for the worst in your life, and hassles you to think about what is going badly in the world around you.”

One student asked: “So which one wins?”

And the teacher responded: ‘The one that you feed.”