Don’t think about thinking. It’s not on the test…
A double thank you to Dan Pink (and Mike Sporer) today, for introducing me to Tom Chapin’s guitar-based critique of trends in modern education policy:
Obviously Tom’s closing observations about the importance of teaching of students how to think and engage in rational discourse strike a chord here. And our belief in the potential multiplier gains to society from helping children to develop their thinking skills explicitly rather than implicitly, has been one of our primary motivations in making Debategraph freely available to schools and colleges as an open education resource.
Viewed as a whole, though, what do you think of points Tom’s making? What are the other issues and voices in the debate?
I have embedded a rough starting point for the debate map below, using the arguments presented on Tom’s Not On the Test site, and would welcome input from teachers, students and educational policy specialists to help develop the map into a comprehensive overview of this vital debate.
Changing Climate: live blogging the Progressive Governance summit
Congratulations (and a relaxing Sunday) to Simon Dickson and the Downing Street digital team, for their phenomenal work on Policy Network’s Progressive Governance summit this morning.
At short notice, they produced an impressive and engaging microsite built around a live video stream, live blogging and comments, and immediate access to the summit papers. It was a perfect illustration of how lightweight web technology can transform the public experience of political gatherings of this kind; simultaneously demystifying proceedings and adding new layers of understanding—both about the content of the summit and, as Ellee Seymour notes, about the participants.
It was a courageous decision by all concerned to innovate rapidly in this fashion; a decision fully justified by the outcome. More soon, please.
The summit—which drew together Michelle Bachelet Jeria, Helen Clark, Bill Clinton, Kemal Dervis, Robert Fico, Alfred Gusenbauer, Antonio Guterres, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Donald Kaberuka, Gediminas Kirkilas, John Agyekum Kufuor, Pascal Lamy, Peter Mandelson, Thabo Mbeki, Romano Prodi, Kevin Rudd, Javier Solana, Jens Stoltenberg, and Dominque Strauss-Kahn, as well as Gordon Brown—focused on globalisation, development, international institutions, and climate change, with practical calls to action on each theme summarised in the final communiqué.
I followed the session on climate change, and the accompanying paper by Nicholas Stern and Laurence Tubiana, Director-General of (IDDRI), with particular interest in the context of the climate change debate map that Debategraph is developing in collaboration with Mark Klein at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. Watch this space too, for emerging details of a broader international collaborative initiative on climate change deliberation.
Our early work in progress on the climate change map is embedded below, and we expect the map to move to a fully mature and comprehensive analysis of the global policy debate by the summer.
Anyone interested in participating in this process is welcome to contact us via email at david [at] debategraph [dot] org.
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