paul reid • blog

Schools normally react to technological change by confiscating it to protect the past: ballpoint pens to save our handwriting, calculators to save our arithmetic, digital watches to save our analogue timekeeping, mobile phones to save our... er, well just because they
are new

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Get a rhythm, when you get the blues.

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

We have to think of ways to use games not just to escape reality but to re-engage with reality.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

The weakest way to solve a problem is just to solve it.

The 20th century is the century in which change changed.

You don't understand something until you understand it more than one way.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.

The whole world of ICT is so organic and changes so rapidly - one minute my Space is cool, the next it's where your grandad goes.

We're driving faster and faster into the future, trying to steer by using only the rear-view mirror.

Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . Innovation is cumulative and the rate of change accelerates. We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living ...

Beign a part of the future you need to: "lead, follow or get out of the way".

1) the best way to predict the future is to invent it
2) the best way to predict the future is to prevent it

Be the Guide on the Side, not the Sage on the Stage

The best way to win widespread use of new technologies is to provide just-in-time support . . . assistance and encouragement when needed. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now!

You can only tell the shape of things by looking at the edges.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I will smile at friend and foe alike and make every effort to find, in him or her, a quality to praise, now that I realize the deepest yearning of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

The World is Flat," we live in a very different and rapidly changing economic and cultural environment. Schools need to change to prepare students for the dynamic opportunities of the 21st century workforce. Collaboration in most of our schools today is still called "cheating."

They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom for trying to change the system from within.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

A change agent often initially helps clients become aware of the need to alter their behaviour.

Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.

Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

Dream in a pragmatic way.

If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Life is too short for drama & petty things, so kiss slowly, laugh insanely, Love truly and forgive quickly.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation...

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves

Da best classroom iz da playground

Some argue that Wabi-Sabi, a traditional Japanese world view or aesthetic and Moe, a geek jargon for a deep positive feeling about people or things, are all based on a cultural system around Mitate (an act of creative interpretation – for example, one sees a stone in a Japanese garden as an island or a plastic anime figure as an ideal partner).

Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer.

It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;
Closely held beliefs are not easily released;
So ritual enthrals generation after generation.

A positive attitude won't solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it was a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secret of the universe.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.

The world is moving to an Internet-based platform for commerce, education, innovation and entertainment. Wealth and productivity will go to those countries or companies that get more of their innovators, educators, students, workers and suppliers connected to this platform via computers, phones and P.D.A.'s.

Reaction to the name for the next version of Windows runs the gamut. No, it doesn't stand for viruses, infections, spyware, trojans and adware.

If a man does only what is required of him, he is a slave. If a man does more than is required of him, he is a free man.

The Teacher of the future will use no textbooks, but will inspire students to learn, to develop thinking skills, initiate learning and ask questions.

Piracy is a tax on popularity.

Set aside half an hour every day to do all your worrying; then take a nap during this period.

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111

Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.

Recently, I met some middle school students who carry laptops in their backpacks. One boy told me how technology should not be a machine you go to, but a machine that goes with you. He said, somewhat impatiently, "It's part of my brain. Why would I want to leave it behind in a computer lab?

As Yoda tells Luke Skywalker, "Luminous beings are we."
Not just some of us. All of us.

It's not the biggest, the brightest, or the best that will survive,
but those who adapt the quickest.

Knowledge sharing is the lubricant of the knowledge economy, adding that information which is shared is information which is enhanced. Control freaks, he claimed, have no place in the emerging order.

We need to learn to contribute and disagree in safety.

Do, or do not. There is no 'try'.

The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed.

Chaos is the way the fields of the mind are ploughed so that new ideas can grow.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.

In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process. This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning.

Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet any more. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning".

What will be taught and learned; how it will be taught and learned; who will make the use of schooling; and the position of the school in society - all of this will change greatly during ensuing decades. Indeed, no other institution faces changes as radical as those that will transform the school.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

All truth is one.
In this light, may science and religion endeavor together for the steady evolution of Mankind:
From darkness to light,
From narrowness to broadmindedness,
From prejudice to tolerance,
It is the voice of life that calls us
To come and learn.

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.

Increasing thousands of people have a computer on their desk with as much capability at their fingertips as once was housed in an expensive and complicated mainframe. Obviously, the decentralization of power is no guarantee that the people will make good or wise use of it.

Unless a teacher is such a student, he may continue to improve in the mechanics of school management, but he can not grow as a teacher, an inspirer and director of soul-life.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.