Category Archives: Uncategorized

High School Dropout Success Story

Design By Nature, Maggie MacnabThis is  from  “About The Author” from a wonderful book, “Design By Nature – Using Universal Forms And Principles In Design,” published 2012.

 

Quote from the first chapter on intuition and creativity, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”  – Albert Einstein

Maggie Macnab grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her parents, Sandy, an architect, and Arden, a poet and teacher, and her younger brother Jesse. Her interest in nature and its creative potential was encouraged by her father who gave her a microscope at age nine to see the invisible, read her science fiction shorts as bedtime stories, taught her to observe and draw nature, and took her camping and horseback riding in the high deserts of New Mexico. She learned early on to appreciate nature in all of its many guises in beautiful and mysterious places such as Chaco Canyon,the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Big Bend National Park, Puye Cliffs, and the Santa Fe River on Upper Canyon Road.

Maggie left school at age 16 with one credit outstanding toward graduation, determined not to spend another year in the public education system, and began training in commercial art (the predecessor to design) in Albuquerque in 1973 as a production artist. She learned hands-on with hot metal and emerging computerized typesetters, printers, and ad agencies in Albuquerque and Austin. Maggie started her freelance business in Albuquerque in 1981, subsequently winning national awards and receiving recognition in national design magazines and books from 1983 on. She raised her two children, Evan and Sommer, in the Sandia Mountains.

Maggie teaches design theory at the Digital Arts Program at the University of New Mexico/Albuquerque and for Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She is the most part self-taught and has pursued education in her own way, never looking back.

 

The takeaway: pay attention to and honor what you feel your gifts are and don’t be afraid to go where they take you.

Silhouette man wonders what’s wrong with America

Interesting comic strip comparing Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden approach to education spending priorities and reasoning to our apparent priorities.

I couldn’t figure out how to embed or copy the actual comic image, so you’ll have to go to Silhouette Man to see and enjoy this one,

Factory Model for Education No Longer Working

Factory Model for Education No Longer Working

Here’s a quick summary of the article. This won’t be surprising if you’ve been reading on the subject, but it is a worthwhile reminder.

  • Industry has been implementing new technologies for 30-40 years
  • Education continues using systems created in the 1900s
  • Teaching the same subjects in the same way at the same pace to a roomful of children
  • In the 1900s, 17% knowledge workers were needed; today it’s 60%
  • Simply techno-cramming is not effective and not efficient without personalizing for individual learning,
  • Utah and Florida performance-based contracting examples are worth looking at:

Read the full article here.

New version of the alphabet song

It’s summer and time for a little fun with what you can stumble upon on the web.

Around the Alphabet in 26 Musical Genres

What’s the point of being insanely musically gifted if you don’t have a little fun with your talents? Music producers Andrew Huang and Dave Brown collaborated to create a songencompassing 26 genres in alphabetical order.

The song spans from ambient to zouk, stopping along the way to feature grunge, K-pop, and reggae. Despite the rapid changes in instruments and lyrics, a chord progression links each genre’s 10-second clip together. A label in the lower right-hand corner of the screen indicates which genre you’re currently listening to, making the video a cool, compact musical education.

Happy July ~

What is the best predictor of success in a person’s life?

What’s the best predictor of success in a person’s life?

Dr. Angela Duckworth says it’s “Grit” in this June 2013 video/TED Talk, 

You should watch it.

TED Talks Education  Angela Duckworth: What Is Grit?

 

Happy Birthday America – July 4, 2013

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA! Keep the faith; hold on to the “American idea” of liberty for all.

lib·er·ty n
1. the freedom to think or act without being constrained by necessity or force
2. freedom from captivity or slavery
3. any of the political, social, and economic rights that belong to the citizens of a state or to all people (often used in the plural)
See also civil liberties

civ·il lib·er·ties npl
the basic rights guaranteed to individual citizens by law, for example, freedom of speech and action

Education contact information

With a little bit of work you can use this post to locate the name, address and telephone number of an actual person who should be willing to listen to the situation you are having problems with. They may be able to either do something about it, direct you to someone who can, or note it for discussion at their next problem-solving meeting. As a reminder for how this works, see my earlier post, Bitching Doesn’t Work.        Continue reading