Tag Archives: Parenting

Using Boredom to Help Students Learn

Bored Game TeacherWhat do you get when you take the technology away from a group of 10 and 11 year olds and ask them to be creative with a handful of household objects?

Well, Thomas Fraser, a teacher at Crestwood Elementary School in Edmonton, Canada, troubled by the short attention spans of today’s youngsters endeavored to find out by creating what he calls the Bored Game, which involves giving students a handful of common household objects with the only instruction being to do something interesting with them.

The reaction at first from his group of always on youngsters were perplexed looks of how can I create something without an iPad, smartphone or a computer?

Then they started to get into it, and were sad when they didn’t get to play the Bored Game.

CTV recorded an interview about the Bored Game that you can watch here:

(sorry, video is no longer available)

My favorite part of the story is that they’re finding that the performance of the children in a range of subjects is increasing as the children have this periodic time to play and engage their creative problem solving skills.

So, maybe we need less technology in the classroom if we want to teach kids how to learn?

In my opinion, we focus too much on teaching kids to repeat activities, facts, and figures, focusing and what they’re able to memorize and regurgitate and not enough on actually teaching kids creative problem solving and how to learn. We don’t need a new generation of trivia experts, we need a new generation of problem solvers that can help repair the world.

We’ve all heard the saying “If you give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, if you teach a man to finish he’ll never go hungry.”

If you want your child to be more successful, you have to do the same thing…

“Good teachers teach kids how to do well on the test, great teachers teach kids how to learn so they do well in life.”

For more, I encourage you to check out the Edmonton Journal Article (link expired)

Image credit: Edmonton Journal


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Is working smarter for suckers?

Work Smarter Manifesto

Last night I dreamed about the extremely unbalanced view of work in our societies, and woke up wondering whether working smarter is for suckers.

Why is that we lionize the workaholics among us and penalize those that find ways to be more efficient?

Why is that we say “thank you for working so hard” to someone who takes sixty hours to complete a task and penalize the person who figures out how to do it in twenty hours by giving them more work to do?

Out of one side of our mouth we talk about the importance of work life balance and out of the other side we praise those who worked the weekend. What’s worse, we often also speak behind the back of those who find a way to leave promptly at 5 PM every day, and look down upon them instead of admiring them.

There is the old saying “Work smarter, not harder”, but what’s the point when you get punished for doing so?

Where’s the reward?

We reward companies for getting more efficient and more profitable by raising their stock price. Where’s the reward for the individual for finds a way to get more efficient?

And why do people who work neither hard or smart get a free ride?

I am reminded of the saying “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

The attitudes about work in our society that make this quote a truism, along with the penalties for working smarter, make it nearly impossible to achieve work life balance in our culture unless you’re lazy and difficult to fire.

People marvel at how much I seem to achieve between working full-time, traveling the world delivering keynotes on innovation and change, writing books and articles, helping to run Innovation Excellence, and getting ready to launch a new collaborative, visual change planning toolkit.

The only way I’m able to pull it off is by doing my best not to explode while I work harder at working smarter.

Books like Essentialism by Greg McKeown (and many other similar ones) serve as a great continuing education and gentle reminders for the legions of us trying to working smarter.

My wife also helps keep me focused only on the ground in front of me and becoming comfortable with whatever forward progress I’m able to make on my content creation efforts as I move through the world and all of the requirements and expectations that I’ve signed up for. The importance of family also lead me to protect evenings and weekends against potentially encroaching work.

Work Smarter Not HarderBut many organizations, and our culture at large, definitely doesn’t make it easy by inflicting their own inefficient processes, policies, and expectations on us.

So, what could we do better as organizations and leaders to teach people how to be more efficient in their jobs and have the foresight to let them use that improved efficiency to allow them to go home at a decent hour to their families?

We must remember, all parents have another job to go home to, and single employees have passions to explore that work probably is not fulfilling.

Help your employees work smarter and let them reap the rewards and you too will be rewarded with a stronger next generation of employees, increased employee retention, and MORE INNOVATION. Not a bad deal, right?

P.S. For my part soon I will be releasing a new collaborative, visual change planning toolkit to help organizations work smarter by planning their change initiatives (and projects) in a less overwhelming, more human way that will help literally get everyone one the same page.

I’m looking to select a handful of companies to teach how to use the toolkit for free and feature their experience in my next book on the best practices and next practices of organizational change. If you would like to get a jump on the competition by increasing your speed of change (and your ability to work smarter), register your interest here.


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Your Chance to Help Middle-Age Guys (and Gals) Get Fit

Your Chance to Help Middle-Age Guys (and Gals) Get FitHere is your chance to help every middle-aged guy (or gal) who’s struggling with the inevitable progression of age. What used to be easy isn’t anymore!

Maybe you (or a friend) used to be a big runner and counted on running to keep weight down and stay active, but lately the motivation to run has waned, and as as a one-trick pony who’s never developed other ways to get regular exercise, with persistent plantar fasciitis that makes anything longer than a one mile walk moderately painful, the weight is starting to accumulate.

How do you re-energize what formerly were healthy eating and workout routines to accommodate the realities of middle age?

Any ideas for new forms of exercise, for establishing new routines that are realistic for an 8 to 6 office worker?

Premera would love to hear your ideas on a middle age makeover.

Simply post your idea to Premera’s Facebook or Twitter page using the hashtag #IGNITEchange, or as a comment to their stories. You are then automatically entered into a drawing to win a $200 Amazon gift card. Best of all, you have the chance to impact a real person’s life. There will be four chances to win, once every week from now until September 8, 2014 (terms and conditions link expired).

Have a true game-changing idea that will spark families to make lasting, realistic improvements to their health?

Premera is rewarding that type of innovation as well through Premera’s Innovate to Motivate challenge (link expired), which offers a grand prize of $5,000!


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Your Chance to Help Working Moms (and Dads)

Help Working MomsWorking Moms (and Dads) struggle to get a healthy meal on the table for their family every night during the week without resorting to fast food (or any other fast, but unhealthy alternatives).

If you have an idea to help working mothers (and fathers) bring healthy creativity to their weeknight meals we at Premera would love to hear it.

Simply post your idea to Premera’s Facebook or Twitter page using the hashtag #IGNITEchange, or as a comment to their stories. You are then automatically entered into a drawing to win a $200 Amazon gift card. Best of all, you have the chance to impact a real person’s life. There will be four chances to win, once every week from now until September 8, 2014 (terms and conditions link expired).

Have a true game-changing idea that will spark families to make lasting, realistic improvements to their health?

Premera is rewarding that type of innovation as well through Premera’s Innovate to Motivate challenge (link expired), which offers a grand prize of $5,000!


Build a common language of innovation on your team

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation Quotes of the Day – May 17, 2012


“Indeed parents of some of the most innovative young people whom I interviewed for this book carefully monitor and limit ‘screen time’…the Innovation Generation, have extraordinary latent talent for – and interest in – innovation and entrepreneurship, likely more than any generation in history.”

– Tony Wagner


“The faster you get at learning from unforeseen circumstances and outcomes, the faster you can turn an invention into an innovation by landing smack on what the customer finds truly valuable (and communicating the value in a compelling way).”

– Braden Kelley


“It’s a lot easier to name the things that stifle innovation like rigid bureaucratic structures, isolation, and a high-stress work environment.”

– Senior IBM Executive


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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