19 May

Posted at 20:47h in Scoop.it

Does the character of our leaders matter? According to research done by KRW International it really, really, does!

Welcome to a Leadership Channel Podcast on TotalPicture. Joining Peter Clayton today is Fred Kiel, PhD, co-founder of KRW International, the author of Return On Character. For more than thirty years, he has helped Fortune 500 CEOs and senior executives build organizational effectiveness through leadership excellence and mission alignment.

 

Strategy+Business considers Return on Character one of the best business books of 2015.

With Credit Suisse replacing their CEO after years of fines and the future of companies like Uber and Yahoo! being questioned because of bad CEO behavior, (or the current CEO poster boy, infamous former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli), could this be the wakeup call we need to start measuring how the character of a leader impacts their organization’s performance?

For the first time we now have data to measure the correlation. In Return On Character (Harvard Business Review Press,), the findings are revealed from KRW International’s seven-year study on the financial impact of character.

 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

 

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=LeaderShip

 

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=LeaderSkills

 

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Character

 

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Soft+Skills

 

Check also:

 

– http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Emotional-Intelligence

 

– http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Emotions-and-Learning

 

– http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Empathy

 

– http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=EQ

 

– http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching?tag=Daniel-GOLEMAN

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.totalpicture.com

19 May

Posted at 20:45h in Scoop.it

During this time of significant educational change, we are forced to ask ourselves, what is the role of the teacher?

Teachers continue to be central to learning, but the role is changing significantly. Our children still need to develop real skills and real knowledge, but they also need to be self-reliant, resilient, and fully capable of re-inventing themselves. This means students must learn how to self-direct their learning.

So if students are self-directing their learning, what’s the role of the teacher?

Teachers build the curriculum/lessons with the individual student based on his/her needs and interests rather than move through a fixed curriculum en masse.

Teachers provide the experiences and tools to access new knowledge in specific areas of interest as facilitators of individual pathways, rather than being a provider of the content or expert in one or every area,Teachers become experts in how people learn, not only in teaching.

Teachers support a community of learners in teams, possibly of multiple ages, rather than alone in classrooms with fixed grades of students.

Teachers have more autonomy over their daily schedule, and can be flexible to adjust their schedules to support student needs.

Teachers provide opportunities for real-world, connected, practical learning rather than isolated academics.
These are the types of changes in the teacher’s role that are fundamental to developing students who are capable of independent learning and reinvention in a rapidly changing world.

 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

 

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/so-whats-the-change-for-teachers-in-21st-century-education/

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.wab.edu

12 May

Posted at 17:25h in Scoop.it

“Bright colors in the natural world often result from tiny structures in feathers or wings that change the way light behaves when it’s reflected. This structural color is respon­sible for the vivid hues of birds and butter­flies. Arti­ficially harnessing this effect could allow us to engineer new materials for appli­cations such as solar cells and chame­leon-like adap­tive camou­flage. Inspired by the deep blue colora­tion of a native North American bird, Stellar’s jay, a team at Nagoya Uni­versity reproduced the color in their lab, giving rise to a new type of arti­ficial pigment. “The Stellar’s jay’s feathers provide an excellent example of angle-inde­pendent structural color,” says Yukikazu Takeoka, “This color is enhanced by dark materials, which in this case can be attri­buted to black melanin particles in the feathers.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.photonicsviews.com

12 May

Posted at 17:24h in Scoop.it

The evolution to bipedalism forced humans to develop suitable strategies for dynamically controlling their balance, ensuring stability, and preventing falling. The natural aging process and traumatic events such as lower-limb loss can alter the human ability to control stability significantly increasing the risk of fall and reducing the overall autonomy. Accordingly, there is an urgent need, from both end-users and society, for novel solutions that can counteract the lack of balance, thus preventing falls among older and fragile citizens.
 
In a recent study, the researchers show a novel ecological approach relying on a wearable robotic device (the Active Pelvis Orthosis, APO) aimed at facilitating balance recovery after unexpected slippages. Specifically, if the APO detects signs of balance loss, then it supplies counteracting torques at the hips to assist balance recovery. Experimental tests conducted on eight elderly persons and two transfemoral amputees revealed that stability against falls improved due to the “assisting when needed” behavior of the APO. Interestingly, this approach required a very limited personalization for each subject, and this makes it promising for real-life applications. These findings demonstrate the potential of closed-loop controlled wearable robots to assist elderly and disabled subjects and to improve their quality of life.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.researchgate.net