Documenting The Transition From Old-Style Linear Lesson Planning
To New-Style Hypertext Lesson Plan, Including A Design For Tests That
Grade Themselves
Some of what I want to teach teachers is not strictly computer technical
stuff. It overlaps into systems thinking, quality management and planning,
futurism and meditation, and smart nutrients. I am also an expert on stress
and nutrition, and the brain, from a unique perspective, and I am also
a member of Mensa. In fact, much of what I want to include is not computer
software stuff at all, but it is about learning.
As a software technical writer, and as a philosopher-futurist, the Documenting
is "The Thing". The documenting CREATES the mental model and the metaphor
that materializes or manifests the future level-of-consciousness of choice.
Part of MY work is to build these "Better Ladders To Heaven"---the mental
models and metaphors for followers to follow, in converting from LeftBrained
thinking to WholeBrainedWithHeart thinking, in the educational arenas.
[ For more on how metaphor and mental models help us to create the future,
see my commentary and some
excerpts from Julian Jaynes' The Origins Of Consciousness In The Breakdown
Of The Bicameral Mind. ]
In the same way, part of learning "how to learn how to learn", is in
learning to document your journey in thinking, each week recording your
intentions as to what you will focus on, and in then recording your progress
on certain points, whether you had any stumbling blocks, and whether anything
made learning that material particularly easy, whether you are having trouble
concentrating, or focusing, and what seems to help that.
In making recordings of your thoughts, you strengthen the learning process,
because "learning" is apparently some kind of recording within our biological
media. So, in a broad sense, documenting your self-directed course means
a special kind of journaling. When you SEE the words, or SPEAK the words,
and when you TYPE the words with your finger muscles, you strengthen your
capacity to understand this kind of information, because you make a stronger
RECORDING in your atoms and molecules.
We can use the same kind of journaling to document our self-discovery
of how to be prepared in the wholistic mode, to be "on-stage" in the classroom.
When you have a thought as to what helps you feel enthusiastic and energized
about a subject, or about all subjects, record it, and later you can share
this with other teachers.
What does it take to get you totally tuned in to your subject material,
so that you can directly transmit these "thought frequencies" to the students?
These are the ideas that you can help me document, by volunteering them.
We need to synergize the collected wisdom of the best teachers, and make
this available to new or less-experienced teachers, so that they can learn
to be better teachers from your collected wisdom.
I would love nothing more than being the catalyst for teachers writing
this book as a group effort. I am committed to making this happen, whatever
it takes. If I can find someone who has already done it---any part of this
effort--- that we can use as a resource model, then I will put those URLs
on my home pages. They can be in the printed book also, but these pages
can be always changing, and URLs can become obsolete, when printed in books.
With more teachers empowered to really transmit knowledge directly,
In The Moment, speaking and listening with both sides of their brains,
to students listening with both sides of their brains, and to use both
sides of their brains while designing the lesson plan structures that define
their courses, all students will learn easier, and all teachers will do
the right thing.
Learning how to turn off that LeftBrain verbal chatter except when we
need it, and deepening our listening to the RightBrain intuitive pre-verbal
level of knowing, will help us all learn.
First of all, we want to leave behind BLAME, JUDGING, DOUBT, and LABELING.
It doesn't help to try and blame anyone or any segment of society for the
fact that our schooling has been too much on the LeftBrained side. Each
of us does the best we can, with what we understand at the moment. It is
not necessary to lay blame or breed divisiveness. What matters is to advance
the state-of-the-art of teaching, to new heighths, to make all teachers
better teachers, all learners better learners.
BLAME and LABELING, JUDGING, DOUBT and other negatives like that do
not promote WholeBrained learning. For me to condemn another means that
I have to shut off my own HeadToHeart connection. For me to try and cheat
or lie or somehow advance myself or my pocketbook by hurting another, costs
too much. I need that HeadToHeart connection, that inner conscience, to
know when I am right and when I am wrong. I can't sacrifice that inner
knowing for momentary advantage.
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