As I sit in the Vancouver Airport waiting for a flight to Sydney, I thought that I would continue to share some of the things that I am reading over the summer.  I think it is nice to keep up with different articles but I am enjoying looking into some different blogs.  It is nice however to have a break and just relax.  I think over summer you can have both (or winter which I will be experiencing in about 16 hours).

Here are some posts/things I saw this last week:

1.  Less Confident People Are More Successful – A friend set me onto the Harvard Business Review and I have read some great articles already but was really interested in this article.  I was actually kind of surprised at the idea that confident people would struggle.  Here is one point that I struggled with:

Lower self-confidence makes you pay attention to negative feedback and be self-critical:Most people get trapped in their optimistic biases, so they tend to listen to positive feedback and ignore negative feedback. Although this may help them come across as confident to others, in any area of competence (e.g., education, business, sports or performing arts) achievement is 10% performance and 90% preparation. Thus, the more aware you are of your soft spots and weaknesses, the better prepared you will be.

What I struggled with here is that it would seem confident people would be more willing to accept criticism and move forward with it than someone who lacks it.  A confident person would be able to take that feedback and realize it is not personal, but an effort to make some better.  Am I way off here?  What are your thoughts?

2.  Letters to a first year teacher (Compilation) – This is just a cool little resource that has a lot of inspiring words for both new and experienced teachers.  Something that is definitely worth looking at as many prepare for their next school year.

3.  The Evolution of a Lecture – Jeff Utecht, who has some amazing ideas and does some very cool things with his students, talked about what many still know which is that the lecture still has a place in our schools.  Just as many complain about PowerPoint presentations, the reality is, if used properly, that type of lecture can still be useful.  The reality of it is that if done with some interactivity, the lecture can be a quite informative piece of the classroom:

There are so many ways to engage your audience when giving a lecture that it should be just what we expect from a lecture in today’s digitally connected world.

We also know more about the brain then ever before and know the brain needs processing time, or think time about every 10 minutes. Which is why whenever I’m giving a talk, about every 10 minutes I give the audience a 3 minute talk and process time. This also allows me to look at notes, chat rooms, tweets, or whatever system I have set up and reflect on how the lecture is going, see where I need to make changes and adapt to the audience. Again TED Talks are so good because they are no longer than 18 minutes and most are much shorter than that. Giving us that perfect chunk of knowledge that we can handle, process, and make meaning of.

Jeff offers some great suggestions of how you can improve the lecture using technology and engaging students in a different way.  Definitely take a look at the article.

Alec Couros (who actually blogged twice this week!) shared this really powerful image of a “life in 3 pictures”.  It is emotional to say the least:

I also thought this video of someone conducting an interview with themselves from 20 years ago was a pretty cool highlight this week:

My flight is boarding and I am off to Sydney!  Have a great week!