kima

Is society incompatible with imagination?

Posted by kima ⋅ December 29, 2011 ⋅ 6 Comments

It’s been a while since I last blogged here — part of the reason is that I didn’t feel I can contribute as much in the efforts to change education as the rest of my Coop friends, but part was my feeling I need to focus on my family and my own health after the … Continue reading →

Back to their future – together!

Posted by kima ⋅ August 12, 2011 ⋅ 3 Comments

This was part of my speech on August 7 at Portland, Oregon during the 8th Annual AERO Conference — Transforming Education & Our World and was originally posted at the TEDxKids@BC website. I hope you will enjoy the video I made for the occasion — bear in mind that this was my first attempt at video editing! 😉 I … Continue reading →

Bullshit freedom or freedom bullshit?

Posted by kima ⋅ June 25, 2011 ⋅ 8 Comments

Imagine this scene: — You walk into a bank with your 7 year old daughter (or son) and ask to see an account manager as you would like to open an account in her name, so she can start saving money and use her own debit card when she chooses to buy something with her … Continue reading →

What’s high school for?

Posted by kima ⋅ May 6, 2011 ⋅ 3 Comments

I don’t always agree with Seth Godin, but I usually find his thoughts valuable beyond the world of marketing and entrepreneurship he usually writes about. I was so glad he decided to venture into the question of “what value could (or should) high school bring?” in today’s blog post, he suggests we should teach the future generations … Continue reading →

Have you ever stopped playing?

Posted by kima ⋅ May 1, 2011 ⋅ 4 Comments

Cross-posting from my personal blog as I believe this is relevant to this group and the readers of this blog too. I am looking forward to your feedback! It felt like a very long day today — a failure on one of the servers at work almost led to loosing all our customer data! The … Continue reading →

Rewards: motivating compliance or learning?

Posted by kima ⋅ April 21, 2011 ⋅ 12 Comments

I sometimes pretend and say ‘Yay!’ – my 7 y/o daughter explaining how she learned to ‘comply’ in her school Incentive schemes, which are supposed to encourage desired behavior through the use of rewards, or discourage undesirable ones through punishments, are all too familiar to all of us. Probably similarly familiar are the findings that … Continue reading →

I learn for a living!

Posted by kima ⋅ April 18, 2011 ⋅ 18 Comments

Recently, a blogger friend commented on my personal blog: “It is hard to imagine myself as a once great curious and academically thriving student!” When I read that I had hard time thinking of a meaningful answer, but I think I have one after attending http://edcampvancouver.org yesterday! Bunch of educators gathered together to discuss various topics, among … Continue reading →

Attention please! I just stopped paying attention – to you!

Posted by kima ⋅ March 24, 2011 ⋅ 11 Comments

This is a repost from my personal blog. I wrote this almost four months ago but it still resonates with me when people take someone’s attention for granted. I hope posting it here may prompt additional feedback from the people reading this blog. No, you’re not annoying, just boring! Attention is the new currency in … Continue reading →

Adora Svitak on the “big” changes in education

Posted by kima ⋅ February 25, 2011 ⋅ 14 Comments

In order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first! The goal is not to turn kids into your kinds of adults, but rather better adults than you have been! – Adora Svitak, 13 years old writer, poet and humanitarian speaking to adult audience at TED 2010 Editor’s note: Ever since I joined … Continue reading →

Learning? Yes, of course. Education? No, thanks.

Posted by kima ⋅ February 17, 2011 ⋅ 21 Comments

Education teaches us that our native abilities for learning are inadequate, that they must be developed and improved upon by submitting to or even seeking out pedagogical management of some sort. ~ Aaron Falbel, a free-lance writer, editor, philosopher, and musician I was recently introduced to Aaron Falbel, who had the great privilege to have known and be … Continue reading →

Think Outside the Book

Posted by kima ⋅ February 11, 2011 ⋅ 19 Comments

“I have never let school interfere with my education.” -Mark Twain This is a guest post written by Dale J. Stephens, an unschooler and founder of UnCollege — a self-directed learning higher education alternative.I had an opportunity to meet Dale through Twitter and since then had got to know him better through our email and Skype … Continue reading →

Learning is transformational, can schooling come close?

Posted by kima ⋅ February 6, 2011 ⋅ 7 Comments

After reading Gatto, I make a distinction between education and schooling. Schooling is, at least in its current form, a way to govern education, but more often than not, education can happen without it — as millions of home-schoolers in US and many other countries and numerous important people through history that didn’t go to school can … Continue reading →

The future of big box schooling

Posted by kima ⋅ January 24, 2011 ⋅ 5 Comments

I recently posted my thoughts on Schooling the World, an important film that takes a look at the value of bringing Western-style education to sustainable indigenous cultures and beyond. I personally — and as I mentioned in my post, it seems Sir Ken Robinson too — believe the film raises many important questions which are … Continue reading →

While US waits for Superman, kids in the world are drafted as failures

Posted by kima ⋅ January 19, 2011 ⋅ 14 Comments

I posted this 3 months ago on my personal blog — My bin of thoughts. In a discussion with this group it came up that while quite a few posts have been written on the Cooperative Catalyst for Waiting for Superman, no one have yet posted anything about Schooling the World. I believe that this … Continue reading →

Learning is (supposed to be) fun, no?

Posted by kima ⋅ January 16, 2011 ⋅ 10 Comments

My older daughter is a grade 1 student in a French Immersion school and this year the school emphasizes reading and writing basic sight words as one of the goals for the kids. While the first four months she brought no homework, starting this month, her class will do a regular dictation exercise at the … Continue reading →