e-wot?

This is my post-earth-hour contribution. Only a link, but a good one: http://www.dothegreenthing.com/

This is a great collection of quotes about the transformative power of conversation. All are excellent.

I’ve just finished listening to two audiobooks (via iTunes): Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and The Element by Ken Robinson – one right after the other. They went really well together. Not only a good combination of compatible ideas, but each book also had something important to say that the other book didn’t quite capture.

Outliers shows us how good timing, opportunity to practice and hard work are often the most common characteristics of the most successful people. The Element shows how successful individuals are successful usually in spite of their education, a system that often focuses too much on curriculum planning and assessment and too little on nurturing human talent.

The example of the Beatles came up in both books. Gladwell cites how the Beatles had the opportunity to hone their live act, musicianship and song writing through hours of live playing on the Hamburg club scene (at least 10,000 hours is the magic number Gladwell cites). Robinson talks about Paul McCartney’s bad music teacher, and how he and John Lennon would instead mentor each other in their musical development. Robinson focuses on the diversity of talent, engagement, circles of influence and other social phenomena and inner reserves that support creativity and get people into their ‘element’. Gladwell focuses on the timing of opportunities and the advantage we get from being able to make the most of these opportunities.

All in all, a satisfying combination of books that I highly recommend.

It’s been a year, and I’ve decided to process-map how I set up a private Ning network for our teachers to use for their personal development. It’s been quite a success. The Google Analytics show good stats and senior teachers are asking me for info about the sites to add to their presentations, or to do more – and better. All good. So I think it’s time for me to outline how we got to where we are.

I’m going to start this next week. I think I’ll be using OmniGraffle to build the flow charts.

Google has been quite patchy these past few days. Even my wife’s been complaining. So it must be bad. Cos she just uses Google Search.

Well, I’ve just spent three hours trying to sort out a Google Sites account for a community of practice that I’m in using Google Sites, and it’s been really painful. Server error is the message I get. I’d prefer a nicely crafted Google message. Oh well.

If you’re into web usability and web analytics you should try Crazy Egg. It rocks.

I use Crazy Egg, Google Analytics , Google Trends, and the Firefox/IE addon SEOQuake. Essential tools I reckon.