Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Failure Toy: Coming Soon

Looks like The Failure Toy is coming soon from the good folks at 21Toys. The Empathy Toy worked and the The Failure Toy has lots of promise. This should be fun. And this is what they say about it: The Failure Toy It’s really hard to talk about failure. Failure is an ugly word, but studies show that “kids fail less…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Play to Fail Not Fail to Play

The good folks at 21 Toys are at it again. First it was TThe Empathy Toy  and now The Failure Toy The Empathy Toy is beautifully constructed and a pleasure to hold. Not to mention fun to play with and helpful in provoking communication and thinking about oneself and others. I’m looking forward to playing to fail! So much healthier…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Every time I fail

There was a lively Twitter #satchat this morning and the topic was that fad du jour: Failure. There were plenty of excellent observations and earnest calls for embracing failure as essential to the learning process. As someone who failed rather a lot in school (and done my share of it since) it’s a topic dear to me and one I…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What failure means these days

A recent Twitter chat included the following exchange with Mark Crotty, head of school at St John’s Episcopal in Dallas. Mark blogs at To Keep Things Whole and I am a frequent visitor. He used it in a post entitled: Failure of Promoting Failure  that you can read at the link. He alerted me to the post in a tweet.…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Don’t panic: Experience success and failure … as information.

Probably the only two responses to constant change are: A. Ignore it (shrink back, retrench, resist,  go off the grid, become irrelevant, turn inwards, stay put, get run over, and so on) or B. Keep on keeping on with the learning life. Clearly Option A can take you only so far. But what happens if the modern  mantra of: “Keep…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Failing is essential

The ratio between success and failure remains pretty constant. To succeed means we must fail. And the more often we fail the more we succeed. The key is to fail frequently and fail fast. Then move on and try something else. That was the message of Tina Seelig who works at the entrepreneurship center at Stanford. The focus of her…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Failing at Fairness (again)

A decade or so ago the focus was all on girls and how schools were failing to give them the attention and support they need to compete in school and to get a fair shake in the classroom. In recent years the focus has turned to boys and, if the media are to be believed, there is a crisis of…

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