The Lizard Brain
As I was perusing my Google Reader, I ran across Seth Godin‘s talk at 99% called “Quieting the Lizard Brain”. The question is poses is “why do human beings sabotage their work so often?” As I watched his talk, I began to wonder h0w we can help students to avoid self-sabotage in the classroom and in their work. As more students create their own experiences and begin to publish, how can we give them (and teachers as well) the freedom to put their work out there and get beyond the excuses as to why they can’t or shouldn’t. I don’t have answers, but I did want to share.
As seen at Vimeo.
Categories: Education, Reflections, teaching
hey bill,
finally got to view this video, thanks for sharing.
it is more about the paradigm shift than anything else. students are so used to being either right or wrong in the classroom that they have come to doubt themselves. this is why publishing is so crucial and “thrashing” in the beginning is crucial. getting first drafts is darn near impossible, which is why publishing is so crucial cause we can thrash from the get go and all through the process. I do more work with my scholars in the first half of any project cause i thrash with them every day until finally they “get it.” in pre tech days we had to wait till the scholar finally handed in something anything and reluctantly they would revise. with publishing, we always have something and we can then thrash till an end product is in view earlier rather than later. publishing is good because it lets us thrash.
one of the aspects of publishing on the web that i love is that it is always under construction. just as the software folks have version 1.0 then 1.1, then 2.0, then 2.1 as so on that we constantly revise and it is about finishing lots of times not just once. we are coming out of a paradigm that when we publish we are done until the second edition. now with web publishing our paradigm shifts to publish, thrash, and republish or ship and reship and reship again. so working on the web and publishing from tghe get go allows you and your scholar to thrash from the get go and by the way, they are shipping early, thrashing and revising.
i always hated pre tech days getting a paper from a student a day before it was due to review before revising. publishing on the web circumnavigates the old ways and because it publishes or ships early so thrashing has to happen early.
another block to “yes but” is publishing early so our scholars can see they can do something by doing it and thrashing. publishing, shipping has changed because of the web.
quieting the lizard brain is by making the web page from the get go and working on your work on the web live and saving is publishing so scholar and teacher can thrash early and often.
this is the paradigm shift, pulling the plunger so hard we break it by changing the status quo.
I see my scholars loving to break the plunger and publish their work. when they come in the next day they look forward to finding a print out of their page from me and with my comments so they can make their work better and see that it is appreciated.
once we get them to publish and start and publish once, it is down hill from there.
schools have traditionally encouraged the lizard brain in us. when we decided to publish our scholar’s work online and put them in control we changed all of that, bill.
ted