the cultural forum is over. thanks to the active participation of the 120+ audience in the Auditorium, we had some good interactions. thanks to Socrative by MasterConnect too (:
here’s the set of slides used during the presentation. enjoy (:
I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand, origin
I have nothing against the quote “I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand.” It’s very meaningful…
But, please don’t attribute it to Confucius!
The closest that can be found is from Xunzi.
《儒效篇》荀子曰: “不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之；学至于行之而止矣。”
(Not hearing is not as good as hearing, hearing is not as good as seeing, seeing is not as good as knowing, knowing is not as good as acting; only when there is action can learning be considered as accomplished)
— reposted from yh2’s fb status update on Sep 6.
giving an A …
we first came across the idea of “giving an A” from Benjamin Zander‘s Teachers’ Day Conference 2002 (i think) held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, and i recall we were among 4000-5000 teachers seated in the session.
one day to teachers’ day, or 3 days past teachers’ day, depending on which school of thought you subscribing to. yesterday afternoon, the second/final f2f meeting of 12470 draws a conclusion to the course, and at the same time opens up a new beginning for the 10 CL teachers who have walked the learning journey together for the past 1 month (:
giving an A, is probably hard to achieve in a pseudo-student centric classroom set up cos the assessment system is still largely assessing in an efficiency-driven model based on statistical paradigm. however, giving an A can also be a teacher’s mindset. in retrospect, i may have given all the teacher participants an A right at the beginning, metaphorically. while it’s great that our workshop need not talk about assessment (excluding the SFT of cos), grades as such, i wonder if some teachers may have taken some time to adjust to the state of “i too have a voice, just like everyone else” in a course. there’s no right or wrong, just good, gooder, and how one contributes to the group’s effort to improve these two over time. adopting a constant grade mindset essentially frees up the brain cells worrying about grades (not that grade matters in this course), but allows one to focus his/her energy on contributing to his/herself, and fellow peers’ improvement.
as a teacher educator-cum-co-learner, giving fellow teachers an A (mindset) allows me to join the teachers in becoming better teachers, over time, for all participants and facilitator(s) alike (:
regardless of which day you celebrate teachers’ day (actual or psychological activity), may i wish all of us a Happy Teachers’ Day! 😀
photos interpretation exercise
was invited to join in the mgmt retreat today and the day’s “break the ice” event was to make a choice of 2 photo postcards which reflects the self, and the self’s view of the organisation. these are my choices:
the bottom reflects my view of life. life is like a theme park, it’s 多姿多彩, just like the many different rides you can experience. you may want to take some fast rides at certain time during a visit to the park, and switch to a slower ride during other times. this is somewhat like the paces i have taken in my career so far, rapid at times and creeping like now. for those of us who have visited a theme park, it’s probably not difficult for us to identify the moments when we look at a ride, but never had the courage to try it out. we will go to the rides that we are comfortable with. stepping out of comfort zone is always difficult, but one wont know what one have missed out until one try it out. i have stepped out of comfort zones (big n small) numerous times, and i am currently on my 7th ride in the park, the ferris wheel (:
the top photo represents a helicopter view of any typical organisation. there’s different depts making up the whole. while we are working towards establishing our reputation as a “mountain”, it’s good to know that there’s always another mountain out there. 山外有山，天外有天。we should always keep our eyes and conversations open so as to better ourselves. a reminder for managers though, while having a top overview is important, but watching a NatGeo documentary on TV will tell us that we have seen nothing in a helicopter. the details and beauties only reveal themselves when the helicopter landed. therefore, as managers, we should not forget to have eyes on the workings on the ground, for every detail could enhance or spoil the whole picture, and therefore the progress of the organisation/dept.