Natural medicine

I have been thinking a lot about natural medicine and the philosophy of essential oils lately. I have an idea of how they might work now:

The functions of the body drive what we feel by our 5 natural senses (sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste). But the functions of our body are also modified by sensory input from our 5 natural senses. So we can affect the functions of our bodies by stimulating our 5 natural senses. When we are ill, we can stimulate our 5 natural senses in a way to counteract what we are feeling.

This seems to make sense to me right now. I will continue to think about these ideas...

I am amazed at the range of topics my mind takes to on a regular basis. My interests seem to be in everything around me. Learning is not an activity resulting just in specialization, but also in transformation and the development of capacity - in all areas of our lives. There is something self-actualizing about learning across all domains of human experience.

2013 Educause Horizon Report

I watched most of the Educause 2013 Horizon Report release conference today. Technology advances drove the conversation, but little was said about actual learning implementations. I think technology has moved beyond people’s capacity to creativity apply it to learning and teaching. Technology cannot compensate for a lack of understanding of learning and teaching.

Curriculum

With so much of technology available to our students, it is interesting how difficult it is to lead them to learn what we feel is most important for them to learn. While self-guided learning helps student stay engaged, what students choose to learn may not always lead to profitable ends. For example, a student that is fascinated with mathematics and chooses to spend several years mastering its techniques and definitions may or may not  develop the skills necessary to apply the knowledge to meaningful, real-world context (aka - a job). In other words, it is necessary for all of us to learn things that we are not necessarily interested in, but that are just as critical to our productive participation in society. Learning is profitable only when it increases our capacity to contribute positively to the society in which we find ourselves.

Perhaps the key to teaching these less-interesting ideas is to help our learners experience them in their own context. A process of Learn-Act-Share can be a very profitable approach to these subjects.

1. Learn what must be learned.
2. Act on what is learned through projects, goals, assignments, etc.
3. Share what was learned with teachers and peers

This is an incredible process that is both scalable and topic-neutral. This process also invites greater levels of mentoring and coaching from the teacher. This process is also described here.