Motivator: Brand New Ending

I thought this was a good inspiration graphic for both school, and for life too!

Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

Motivator: Genius is...

Grant Snider is a fabulous artist, and he has created many posters inspired by reading and writing, and about the creative process in general. I really like this poster about "genius." Instead of the Thomas Edison adage about genius being "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." I suspect Snider's breakdown is closer to the mark! For the full-size view, see Grant Snider's blog: Genius Is... His work is also available in poster-size to put on your wall!

Article: 6 Things You Learned in School that Don’t Apply in the Real World

I really liked this post from the PersonalExcellence.co blog:

6 Things You Learned in School that Don’t Apply in the Real World

The post provides a great list of things that are NOT TRUE but which you might think are true, given the way school usually works:

1. Failure is disastrous
2. It’s better to work alone
3. There’s always a right answer
4. Someone will tell you what you need to know
5. Education only happens in school
6. Only what’s in the syllabus is important

Be sure to read the original article to get some great insights into each of these items and why they are NOT true, and how you really need to get rid of those assumptions if you want to pass the test of life itself!

In that spirit, I thought this would be a great graphic to use to illustrate this blog post; it comes from Paul Bogush's blog.

And as my online buddy (and prolific author) Nathan Lowell remarks: "I didn't give final exams in my classes. I just told the students: There will be a test, but I'm not going to be giving it. It'll come sometime after you graduate. Good luck."

Motivator: Children don't have to be slaves of praise.

Found at Twitter.

If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.
- Carol Dweck

Article: Kids of Helicopter Parents Are Sputtering Out (Slate)

Link:
Kids of Helicopter Parents Are Sputtering Out (Slate)

Recent studies suggests that kids with overinvolved parents and rigidly structured childhoods suffer psychological blowback in college.
By Julie Lythcott-Haims

Quote:

Madeline Levine, psychologist and author of The Price of Privilege, says that there are three ways we might be overparenting and unwittingly causing psychological harm:

• When we do for our kids what they can already do for themselves;
• When we do for our kids what they can almost do for themselves; and
• When our parenting behavior is motivated by our own egos.

Levine said that when we parent this way we deprive our kids of the opportunity to be creative, to problem solve, to develop coping skills, to build resilience, to figure out what makes them happy, to figure out who they are. In short, it deprives them of the chance to be, well, human.

Motivator: Next Opportunity.

Found at Twitter. Dr. Abdul Kalam is something like an English Einstein, so I am not sure if he actually said this or not, but it does fit with his irrepressible spirit of learning!

If you fail, never give up because F A I L means "First Attempt in Learning." 
End is not the end. In fact, E N D means "Effort Never Dies." 
If you get NO as an answer, remember N O means "Next Opportunity."

Motivator: Learning is not a spectator sport.

Found at Twitter.

Learning is not a spectator sport.

Motivator: If you believe it will work out, you'll see opportunities.

Found at Twitter.

If you believe it will work out, you'll see opportunities. If you believe it won't, you will see obstacles.

Motivator: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Found at Twitter.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Motivator: Baby bluebirds, it is time to spread your wings!

From this blog post: Baby Bluebirds Time to Spread Your Wings!

Baby bluebirds, it is time to spread your wings!

Motivator: The key to success

From a tweet for Kathryn Venable's blog post: Growing a Growth Mindset, Part I.

The key to success is not simply the effort or focus or resiliency, but it is the growth mindset that creates them. 

Motivator: What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Motivator: There are no limits.

As you make your way through the semester, you can keep this motivational thought in mind: There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits. :-)

Motivator: Life is a daring adventure

A wonderful quote from Helen Keller. This is actually a paraphrase; in context, here is what she wrote: Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Life is a daring adventure,

or it is nothing at all.

Motivator: Keep Going

I really like this graphic with an advice from Sam Levenson:
Don't watch the clock. Do what it does: KEEP GOING.

Motivators: If you don't like change...

I found this great cartoon at Twitter.

If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.

An Inoreader Hub for Growth Mindset

In this post I'll explain how I am setting up a blog hub and combination RSS feed for growth mindset memes and reflections. I'm designing this for my students (here's the project I'll be working on with my students), but since it is conceived as an open project, it could go in all kinds of different directions based on anyone who wants to hook up via this blog hub. Here's how it works:

About Inoreader. Inoreader is an RSS aggregator (like Feedly, etc.), but it also offers some powerful other features. Specifically:
* it lets you share what you are reading with outgoing RSS, bundles, OPML, etc.
* the outgoing RSS can also be rendered as an HTML view (that's how I run this stream: mythfolklore.net)
* you can create outgoing RSS by combining feeds and/or by Inoreader labels
* Inoreader labels can be assigned automatically by rules and manually
* Inoreader can also access content from G+ public streams (not communities), Facebook pages, and Twitter streams.

Not exactly a blog hub. You may have participated in an online experience where there was a fully automated blog hub (ds106 is a great example, and Connected Courses also used a blog hub, and there's a blog hub going to for CLMOOC). The way I am using Inoreader is not quite the same thing: this is just my own personal feed reader which also gives me the ability to share publicly the content I am aggregating and curating. I use this for my online classes, and starting with #Rhizo15, I've been experimenting with how it can be used in other ways. I am really grateful to the programmers at Inoreader for creating a tool that has this power but which requires zero programming skills of any kind!

Growth Mindset Resources via Inoreader. So, here is how I will be setting up my Inoreader in order to collect and share growth mindset memes and other resources:

1. Share your blog(s). Let me know if you and/or your students have a blog you are using for growth mindset topics. It can be a blog dedicated to growth mindset OR you can use a blog post label (tag, etc.) to indicate which items in a blog are growth mindset posts. I will add that blog feed to my combined Inoreader Growth Mindset blog folder. Use this Google Form to submit your blog address.

2. Other online streams. Let me know if you have a Facebook page, Google+ public stream (communities don't work), or Twitter feed which is dedicated, or mostly dedicated, to growth mindset materials. You can also submit that at the Google Form.  Because these platforms don't have RSS labels, I cannot directly add it to my Inoreader Growth Mindset blog folder, but Inoreader can monitor those incoming feeds and help me find "growth mindset" items.

3. Tweet me / Plus me. I can easily reshare items via my own Twitter and my own Google+ into the Inoreader feed, so either "plus me" at Google+ or @OnlineCrsLady at Twitter if you have a growth mindset item to share.

4. Inoreader outgoing. I will share the Inoreader Growth Mindset blog folder as an OPML file and as a "bundle" in Inoreader. I will also label all incoming items in this folder so that they can go out via the Inoreader Growth Mindset RSS feed and be displayed also as HTML clippings. I've also created a display page for the HTML clippings at my mythfolklore.net website:
http://mythfolklore.net/growthmindset.html.

And, last but not least...

THANK YOU, INOREADER: It is really exciting to have all these powerful tools for following the topics that I care about and also being able to share what I find with others.

I love a challenge!

Video: The power of believing that you can improve (10 min.)

I found this TED video at a Mind/Shift article: Why Talking About the Brain Can Empower Learners.

The power of believing that you can improve

by Carol Dweck
READ THE TRANSCRIPT

One of the themes of the talk is transforming the meaning of effort and difficulty: "In one study, we taught them that every time they push out of their comfort zone to learn something new and difficult, the neurons in their brain can form new, stronger connections, and over time they can get smarter."

Video: The Power of Yet: Janelle Monae and the Muppets (3 min.)

I found this Sesame Street video from YouTube at this Mind/Shift article: Preschoolers and Praise: What Kinds of Messages Help Kids Grow?

Janelle Monae - The Power of Yet

Growth Mindset Challenges

This page has moved.