The Illinois Model

There's no value in collecting blocks unless you're connecting them to build something awesome! Student empowerment. Gamification. Incestuous Amplification. Special Forces selection. Broadening systems perspective. Implicit racial bias. What can you connect with your current base of knowledge and understanding? The Five Biggest Fears that Kept Me from Empowering Students.  John Spencer is a college professor and former middle school teacher. He explains the anxiety of turning over the classroom controls to his students. The infographic that lists his particular fears is one that really hit home with me. They were exactly those fears of mine as I shifted to student-led formats in police training classes and programs!  The art and craft of making board games for the CIA.  How can we (or  can  we?) use games to learn new workplace skills in adulthood? Charlie Hall brings us inside the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for a glimpse of their use of games ...

There's no value in collecting blocks unless you're connecting them to build something awesome! Product management. USMC drill instructors. Change is not hard. Biased algorithms. Expertise. Here are the pieces that I enjoyed this past week: Making Good Decisions as a Product Manager . Brandon Chu talks decision-making, risk management, prediction, and confidence levels. While his environment is different than most of my readers and followers, it certainly has a great deal of cross-over value. I'm not a supporter of the whole percentage thing...but I completely understand his use of the numbers to convey a point. What I find interesting is the discussion on time . How can we manipulate (or extend) time in our respective fields? Teaching United States Marine Instructors New Tricks: Developing Adaptability Through Experiential Learning .  Fred Leland is a former Marine and retired police lieutenant. He moderates workshops for police trainers and USMC instructors/office...

Today, the recurring story in my social media feeds is that of police body worn cameras outfitted with facial recognition software.  And I have but one thought: American government is not ready for this. In the last decade, nothing has complicated American policing as much as the deployment of body worn cameras. When are they turned ON? When are they turned OFF? What about during civil protests? Can police record First Amendment activities? What are the Fourth Amendment concerns?  Can officers watch the video prior to report writing? How about before interrogation about wrongdoing? What if the officer is involved in a citizen's death? When can the videos be released to the public? Who determines what is edited out for privacy? What about buffer zones that go back in time and record? How are innocent persons' privacy protected? When can video be used in courts of law?  How about for police internal investigations? What if _____? The list goes on and ...

There's no value in collecting blocks unless you're connecting them to build something awesome! Fake science. Police & social media. Decision games. Automated work. Increased memory. Here are five pieces that I found valuable this week: Power Poseur: The lure of lucrative pseudoscience and the crisis of untrustworthiness of psychology.   James Coyne describes a trend where junk science is used or exaggerated to sell products. The brunt of his article is aimed at Amy Cuddy's research on power posing and the effects on testosterone and cortisol levels. Coyne's piece is a skeptical view into research, evidence-based, and marketing fields.  Chris Hsiung - WINx Chicago 2017 . In this 18-minute TED-style talk, police Captain Chris Hsiung of Mountain View CA Police Dept discusses government use of social media. In the heart of Silicon Valley, MVPD is a pioneer in their use of social media to further strengthen their relationship with the community. Having met Chris...

I'm writing from the premise that some really, really(!)  smart people tend to be terrible at connecting with their audiences. This isn't a claim that every academic ignores the power of emotional storytelling....but rather a generalization garnered from years of being put to sleep by boring lecture after boring lecture.  You smart people have some great ideas, insight, and projects that should be shared with us working folk. But something is missing in the way you talk to us. Sometimes, we shut you down before you even start speaking. Let's start with what should be the simplest step: the slide deck . While platforms like  Prezi are gaining popularity, m any presenters take comfort in the linear format of PowerPoint or Keynote to develop visual aids. (Personally, I'm partial to Apple Keynote.)  Here are two fundamental concepts of slide theory: You should not be useless without your slides. Your slides should be useless without you. I follow professio...

There's no value in collecting blocks unless you're connecting them to build something awesome! Killing people. Tactical decision games. Training for the unknown. The Caveman and the Professor. Calling out bullshit. What else is in this week's list? How Do You Answer The Question, "Did You Ever Kill Anyone?"  Certainly an odd question. However, among the police officers I know who have shot and/or killed someone, I've watched this answered a variety of ways. Sometimes it depends on the audience, the asker, the mood of the environment. How does emotional intelligence play out in the engagement between the curious asker and the (un)comfortable answerer?  Red Teaming and Other War Gaming for Business.  This is a 40-min podcast. Host Des Walsh interviews guest Fred Aubin, a retired Lt Col in the Canadian Army. Fred's path and mine have crossed before, through our journeys studying adaptability. Fred talks about red teaming - where the adversarial ...