What makes a leader great?

Last week we came across an interesting fact: Leaders gain trust by conforming. So today we looked more closely at Leadership. Some of the students had really great insights into this as they have recently been on a leadership course.
First we brainstormed the differences between being bossy and being a leader, jotting down our ideas on a Venn diagram.
Then we shared the traits of the best leaders.
We read together the book of "Yertle the Turtle" which is a story of how not to be a good leader, and the students were able to pick out exact examples of Yertle's mistakes, like his selfishness - the way he put his needs before any of the other turtles.

We ended the session with a suggestion: if you knew that Dr Seuss was writing a book about Hitler and his lack of thought for other humans in his quest for power, how would that change your view of the book?



Social Loafing

What a cool phrase! Today we learned about some other concepts of group psychology, and social loafing is one of them. It's basically the effect that takes place when the tug of war is on, and each individual member of the group chooses to work less hard than they might if pulling on their own.
Deindividuation is what happens when someone feels free to cyber bully, and say things they would never say in person.
Here are some of the interesting facts that have been discovered about groups after lots of studies...

10 Rules That Govern Groups

What most groups of people have in common.

Much of our lives are spent in groups with other people: we form groups to socialise, earn money, play sport, make music, even to change the world. But although groups are diverse, many of the psychological processes involved are remarkably similar.

Here are 10 insightful studies that give a flavour of what has been discovered about the dynamics of group psychology.

1. Groups can arise from almost nothing

2. Initiation rites improve group evaluations

3. Groups breed conformity

4. Learn the ropes or be ostracised

5. You become your job

6. Leaders gain trust by conforming

7. Groups can improve performance…

8. …but people will loaf

9. The grapevine is 80% accurate

10. Groups breed competition

Conformity

Today we looked into some group psychology, and in particular what it is about groups that makes us act in a particular way.
We read a book called Ferdinand, about a bull that is unlike all the others and refuses to conform. It's a wonderful example of the kind of diversity which is not only accepted but promoted in our modern society.
However, that doesn't change the fact that most often than not we will find ourselves behaving in a certain way in order to conform with the group we belong to, even if the group's behaviours are not in line with our usual personality.
There have been many studies done along these lines.
We watched a Khan Academy video and learned some new terms: Groupthink, the Bystander Effect, and Deindividuation.

Bystander effect:

Multiple Intelligences and Social Identity

Today we had a look at the graphs of our Multiple Intelligence quizzes. We talked about why we took three of them and averaged the results, and we talked about the dangers of seeing a test like this as a negative thing. We also talked about how the results are useless if we choose to skew them.
This video from the Khan Academy looks at Self Concept and Social Identity, and Kristy asked a good question about comparisons and whether they are a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. I think in the end it depends on attitude - we could use comparisons to increase our self esteem, or we could use them as a springboard to self motivation.

Self concept, self identity, and social identity:


We read together the book "Frederick" by Leo Lionni. Frederick is a field mouse who does not help his four brothers and sisters collect food stores for the long winter ahead. Instead he tells them that he is gathering the sun, words and colours so that it will keep them going.
The students immediately saw that Frederick had different smarts from the rest of his family. We discussed whether he should be judged negatively for this. It also raised questions about the nature of work, and whether all contributions to a joint goal should be rewarded in the same way. What would happen if all his family decided they were poets? What if they were all collectors? Danielle mentioned that the book is about diversity.
I introduced the students very briefly to the concept of Socialism, its aims and ideals.

Multiple Intelliences

This week we pooled our group: some students from last year's sessions, plus some new students.
Our topic today, Multiple Intelligences, is something that we've all been looking at in our respective classrooms, and we were able to bring together what we've already learned about Gardner's theory.

We talked about the strengths of each smart and also about where we think we fit into the theory. We noted that this is our "self image" and that the multiple intelligence quizzes are all based on this: our self awareness.
We touched on three different aspects of self: how we ARE, how we THINK we are (self image), and how we HOPE to be (self improvement).
Each student took three different Multiple Intelligence quizzes, and we talked about why it might be useful to take a test three different ways.
Here are the links to our quizzes:
Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Quiz 3
Each student then graphed the results, and we talked about how or why the results came out slightly differently in different surveys. We did notice however that in general the results were fairly similar, which is reassuring.
We were quickly running out of time before we got to pool our graphs, and began to touch on the big questions:
1. How do the results of a Multiple Intelligence quiz AID us?
2. How do the results of a Multiple Intelligence quiz LIMIT us?

Back next week with more interesting discussions from the Library at GD!

Cryptography

Today we started our session with two more curly questions: 1. What can you do with a brick? 2. List as many jobs as you can think of that don't exist yet, but will in the future.
It was fun to discuss our answers. We noticed that as soon as we begin to pool our ideas we can think so much more broadly.
We had a look at the Khan Academy website, where you can learn anything. In the applied maths section there is a whole series on Cryptography, including its history and a chance to try it out.
We watched the videos and discussed the Caesar cipher, how it was broken, frequency tables, and how to make it harder to decrypt. We also used the cipher to create our own coded messages.
What is cryptography?: What is Cryptography? A story which takes us from Caesar to Claude Shannon.

The Ship of Theseus

Our first session for 2015!
We had a great session today with 15 brand new faces. First of all the students had to consider their answers to two open ended questions: 1. Name everything you can think of that is orange. 2. What can you make with a pillow and a mirror?
We talked about the reasons we'd asked to bring them together, and discussed what it meant to think outside of the box, and what "curly" questions are.
Together we read the book "The Mixed Up Chameleon", which is a story about a chameleon who wishes to be like other creatures, until no part of his original body remains.
Our discussion centred around identity, what makes you you, and about being grateful for the things you have rather than wishing for others. "Be careful what you wish for," one of the students suggested. It was also a book about social identity; wanting to be like others, and about personality or instinct. We could tell that although the chameleon looked nothing like a chameleon by the end of the book, he was still a chameleon inside, as his first instinct when he saw the fly was to eat it.
The book also raised questions about change - how much can change about something before you can no longer call it the same thing, and it is actually a new thing.
This is a well-known paradox called the Ship of Theseus.
We watched an interesting video which introduced this paradox, and discussed the ship amongst our group. It is very cool that we all had different opinions on the idea, and that all our answers were valid.

 

If you want to explore more about the Ship of Theseus puzzle, the Khan Academy has a good learning video here:

 

Metaphysics: Ship of theseus: Jenn introduces us to a puzzle that has bedeviled philosophy since the ancient Greeks: the Ship of Theseus. She tells the Ship of Theseus story, and draws out the more general question behind it: what does it take for an object to persist over time? She then breaks this ancient problem down with modern clarity and rigor. Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Wang, Lecturer, Stanford University