Well, It’s finally done. The 21st Century Teacher Blog has served it’s purpose. But now, changing demands and shrinking free services and features have required me to relocate the blog to a commercial host, give it a much needed face-lift to match my own learning and thinking styles, and to reemerge from the ashes like a Phoenix with a new energy, purpose and name: the Divergent Learner blog.

I, like many of us in the edublogosphere using Apple Macbooks, am a Divergent Learner that really shines and feels in his own when brainstorming, expanding, imagining, fantasizing, and seeing the big picture before the details. I work best in groups and collaborating. My personal learning network is one of my most cherish resources, both socially and professionally. I am visual and learn best with imagery and colors and shapes dancing around. So everything about this new blog space will reflect me and celebrate right-brain thinking, shaping and honoring.

Divergent Learner is in harmony with Dan Pink’s prediction that we need a whole new mind and that right-brainers will rule the future. The Conceptual Age calls to us. And, we must answer in creative, inspirational, participatory ways — distributed and democratic collective intelligence. But it’s not that easy: the left-brain remnants of society, business, education, politics, religion, family and beyond are still a powerful and counterproductive force that doesn’t serve us well as people, nations, students, educators, business teams, friends or family members. Shifting to the right requires patience, persistence and strength.

For now, I have only migrated by Edublog archives over to the new digs at Divergent Learner. Please update your RSS feeds and social bookmarks to redirect links from the old to the new. The Divergent Learner is back!

Thanks
Frank Stonehouse Lupo
Divergent Learner
http://divergentlearner.com/blog

This morning while excitedly participating in the live CNN-Facebook coverage of Obama’s Inauguration Day activities, I happened upon my Facebook friend Brandy Agerbeck, who is a talented graphic facilitator. I asked her if she was going to draw the speech to commemorate it. She said that she hadn’t thought of it at all! She grabbed her paper and pens and went to work. Great Job, Brandy! The result: Obama’s Inauguration Speech. Click link to read Brandy’s accounting of the drawing and conceptual process; and visit her online portfolio. Her incredible talent puts me at awe!

Also, if you are reading this post, I would be thrilled if you would participate in my PLN Inauguration Day Voicethread. Thanks!

I made this Wordle graphic of President Obama’s Inaugural Address on January 20, 2009 .. minutes after his speech was completed. Click image to visit Flickr for larger version. Speech was crafted by 27-year-old Jon Favreau in a Starbucks. And, while I was participating in the live CNN-Facebook coverage, I prompted graphic facilitator Brandy Agerbeck to draw the speech, and she DID.

I have a second Wordle desgin that is more formal looking. Wordles hit magazine covers, too!

Also, if you are reading this post, I would be thrilled if you would participate in my PLN Inauguration Day Voicethread. Thanks!

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many.

Read the rest of this entry »

Please share your thoughts, hopes and dreams for the new Presidency and Administration before, during and after the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama. –Frank

Original Voicethread (large version)

I was looking at all some really complex charts on personal learning networks (PLNs); and was thinking how intimidating they must be for those just starting to grow a network. Sometimes simple can be more powerful. After all … All PLNs start with a single connection.

I have been wanting to “right” this post for a while now. Well, today the time just seems “write.” Time to start the dialog, with myself anyway. Hopefully, others will dance the dance with me.

OK, I’m just going to come right out and say this. The 1st item on the agenda of any 12-step program worth its salt is to self-acknowledge and confess, to give name to something. So, here it is: I AM A RIGHT-BRAINER. OK, it’s out. I admit that I have felt powerless over a left-brain driven, promoted and protected society —that my life has reached a turning point. No longer will I hide in the shadows of left-brainers (LBers), nor wholesalelingly take their oppressive and controlling “crap.” Sorry, sometimes you just have to use the best word. Plus, I need to stimulate a bit of controversy to bring on the commenting (or so I have witnessed with other bloggers). Oh yeah, we right-brainers (RBers) love analogies and metaphors; but, they drive LBers to madness. So, I use them a lot. Somehow it helps to level the playing field a bit. You know for sure that you’ve brushed upon a heavy LBer when they respond, “but a person is not a rose, so I don’t get your point; and it doesn’t make any sense,” while scrunching up their face and squinting the eyes a bit. It’s the telltale look of dismissal and disdain for your creativity and breach of sticking to the logical “facts.” A rose IS a rose after all, isn’t it? BINGO! You’ve hooked one.

Now you must decide to either throw them back into the murky waters or reel them in. For friendships, I tend to cut the line (for extreme LBers, even if I lose an expensive lure in the process) and steer my boat full-throttle ahead. On the other hand, we need diversity of thought, style and approach for most business, organizational and community situations, so coexisting and supporting others is holistically beneficial. We really do need each other, don’t we? RBers are responsible for cultivating groupness, so I guess we have to find a way to include, nurture and honor all people, like it or not. Besides, iterating back and forth between the two sides yields practical solutions to real problems or opportunities. (EDIT: If the truth be told, I DO have a lot of friends leaning left, just not far left).

My secret fantasy shared with you today is that Dan Pink is 120% right (there I go again trying to short-circuit my left-brain readership); that Right-brainers will rule the future. Just take a look at the picture above. Would you rather be stuck isolated in a cubicle gathering facts, analyzing and writing logical reports? Or would you rather be romping with others through the flowers and flying a kite across green lushness, creating new things and exploring the unknown with no walls to confine you or your vision? According to Pink, outsourcing is making LBers less in demand, as logical and analytical features can be easily replicated by both humans (in other economically developing countries) and computers (rules, routines, instruction, typical LB strengths). And that the real need during a Conceptual Age is for creative powers that can make connections in ways that meet new needs and reach emerging markets. However, is the choice really yours or mine to make? Or are you predestined to a disposed brain pull, with occasional visits to the other side? Maybe you move freely and balanced between the two? Maybe not. Are you happy or frustrated? Perhaps, just as a transgendered feels physically trapped in the wrong body, can we be unfittingly captive on one side of the brain, while longing to be on the other?

So where am I going with this blog post? I don’t really know. I am opening and inviting dialog, meandering, searching, exploring, hovering above and looking down and up and from side to side, and creating a new understanding of all of this for myself. I don’t need all the answers right now. Abundance and the fruits of ambiguity await.

So where are you? Left, right, perfectly balanced in the middle, or decidedly leaning one way or the other? What’s better? Where are we (you) going? Why? Need to take self-inventory? Below in normal-weight font are LB attributes; and in bold/italic font are the RB ones. Be honest with yourself. Look back upon your actual past actions and NOT your self perception (they are often hugely disconnected). Better yet, let someone else do the initial placement for you. Ready to talk? Let’s go then!

TAKE INVENTORY

Left brain, Right brain

Information Age (Drucker), Conceptual Age (Pink/Friedman)

control, explore
linear, holistic
scarcity models, abundance models
safe, risk-taking
practical, impetuous
forms strategies, presents possibilities
reality based, fantasy based
self-oriented, community oriented
uses logic, uses feeling
detail oriented, big picture oriented
facts rule, imagination rules
words and language, symbols & images
present and past, present & future
math and science, philosophy and religion
can comprehend, can “get it” meaning
knowing, believes
acknowledges, appreciates
order-pattern perception, spatial perception
knows objects name, knows objects function

better at closing sale, better at opening sale

logical, analytical, quantitative, rational, verbal / innovative conceptual, holistic, intuitive, non-verbal, imaginative, creative

pursuer, preserver

knows peoples names, remembers peoples faces

competitor, organizer, fine print expert, writing, lists, analyzer, doer, phonics, language, talk-talk-talk, splitter: distinction important / emotional expression, context, welcoming of change, synthesizing, creator, flexibility, consistent, versatile, kinesthetic, curiosity, visionary, searcher, synergy, playfulness, metaphoric thinking, group-oriented, music, artistry, problem solving, sensing, color sensitivity, believer, people-focused, visualization capability

learn phonetic analytical method, learn sight method

right-brainers like: role play, metaphors, analogies, visuals, movement, background music