I’m not a big fan of pigeon-holing people or stereotyping, so was a bit skeptical. Ironically, after some further research, I found that this is exactly what INTJ personality types are known for. This is from the Myers & Briggs Foundation website (my emphasis):

Have original minds and great drive for implementing their ideas and achieving their goals. Quickly see patterns in external events and develop long-range explanatory perspectives. When committed, organize a job and carry it through. Skeptical and independent, have high standards of competence and performance – for themselves and others.

What I am, and increasingly a fan of, are heuristics. These are rules-of-thumb and methods of problem solving that ‘just work’. My use of and belief in the power of heuristics fits in well with my Pragmatist outlook. If the sixteen personality types were all much-of-a-muchness and I could see myself in all of them, then I would dismiss the power of such talk. However, looking at the list, I’m certainly not anything like any of the personality types beginning with ‘E’ (for extroverted, presumably). In fact, the only other one remotely like me is INTP (the ‘P’ standing for Perception).

As Vicki Davis remarked in a follow-up tweet, the overviews tend only to talk about the positive traits of the personality types rather than including the negative elements. And then there’s the fact that Typealyzer looks at the web page towards which you direct it. As typing in dougbelshaw.com/blog would only take it to the front page of this site with summaries of blog posts, the results are likely to be distorted.

To gain some clarification and a second opinion, I searched for websites where you could take Myers-Briggs personality tests online. I took three. Here are the websites with the results underneath:

http://www.kisa.ca/personality

OK, I thought. Well this is just a test on someone’s homepage. And I may have just been answering the questions in a way that would get me to be INTJ. On with the next test…

HumanMetrics.com

OK, OK, but these aren’t exactly rigorous tests are they? So I searched for something with a bit more clout – and came across…

BBC – Science & Nature – What am I like?

So there we have it. I’m of the personality type INTJ. Apparently this is one of the rarest personality types! You can read more about INTJs at the BBC website, at PersonalityPages, or at Wikipedia. There’s some fascinating (at least, for me!) stuff in there.

If one of the most powerful things an individual can do in order to be successful and happy in life is to know thyself, then the quick Typealyzer blog test has got to be worth a try as a starting point.

What did YOU come out as?

Such ‘unorganized’ meetings of people – TeachMeet is a similar, slightly more structured example – are the subject of this blog post. What prompted my thinking about organization was part of the discussion we had, foolowed up by listening to a Radio 4 podcast on the way home called Thinking Allowed. I suggest that you listen to it right now!

The whole point of organizations is to achieve something. These may be set in stone and known by all participants in the organizations, or there may be many (and possibly conflicting) objectives framed by participants. All organizations, therefore, have different degrees of productivity, both globally (as an organization) and, depending on their size, on a more micro-scale.

I say this because we discussed at the tweetmeet – which was itself a kind of exemplar – the concept of an ‘unconference’. This is defined by Wikipedia (as I write, anyway…) as ‘a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose.’ Our purpose, I suppose, was to discuss things face-to-face that we’d previously discussed online, and to get to know each other a little better. Then, on the way home, listening the Thinking Allowed podcast (above) it got me thinking more generally about organizational structures.

Michael Thompson, author of Organising and Disorganising, talked about going on a expedition to climb the South face of Mount Everest. He explained how there were two separate groups – ‘Team A’ and ‘Team B’ – with the leader and middle managers (as it were) in the former group and the rest in the latter. He explained how this rigid hierarchical structure led to those in Team B, despite being experienced and highly-motivated mountaineers, adopting a chaotic, somewhat anti-organizational structure.

The important thing, however, was that order in fact came out of this structure; order that depended on those involved. This is the thing that is missing in organizational planning these days: the role of individuality. Because, actually, someone who fulfils a role in an organization cannot simply be swapped-out for another person. The whole organizational structure depends on the talents, personality and individual attributes of that person. Change one part of the organization and the whole thing shifts. It may be a small amount in some cases – imperceptible to some – but a rearrangement and alteration does take place.

This helps to explain why organizations seemingly consisting of brilliant minds that should be amazingly productive and innovative fail to be so. An effective organizational structure is one that removes barriers and enables individuals within an organization to reach his or her potential. This, of course, cannot be at the expense of another, otherwise it is a futile exercise. One such way of going about organization, therefore, is to unorganize things, to mix things up a little.

So I’d encourage you, as Tom did me today, to once you’ve attended an unconference, to think about organizing (or un-organizing…) one of your own. You can’t really state in advance the specific things you’re likely to learn, but that’s part of the fun! I’ll leave you with a couple of things. The first is a Twitter message from @hrheingold which sums up in a far more eloquent way than I could ever manage the benefits of letting a little (controlled) chaos into organization:

The second is a link I came across, shared by Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher), whilst writing this post. It’s called 8 Tips on How to Run Your Own UnConference. I hope that and this post change your thinking a bit and encourage you to think a little differently about organization, or the lack of it, and how it could impact the productivity of any organization of which you are part!

* I knew Lisa Stevens originally from last year’s TeachMeet at BETT, Jose Picardo from an Open Source Schools event, and Tom Barrett from some work we did for a Becta-funded project into Web 2.0 in the classroom at Nottingham University a few months back. The reason it says #tweetmeet in the title is because on Twitter you can add tags by prefacing words with hash symbols. These then can be tracked by websites such as Twemes.com. You can see this in action on the front page of the tweetmeet.eu website!

Image credits: iPhone Matrix App -MoPhaic & Podcamp West, both from Flickr

But what is synaesthesia? Nature defines it in the following way:

An unusual ‘mixing of the senses’ in which a stimulus in one sensory modality (for example, a sound) elicits a percept in another modality (such as visual perception of a colour).

All In The Mind explained that this definition can be widened to include something both I and my mother experience: conceiving of time as being physically and spatially located. It’s difficult to explain this in words, and my perspective and view on time changes depending on the period I’m ‘looking at’. To give you some idea, however, here’s something like what I ‘see’ when I think of the period of human history:

The above is a very quick and rough sketch – what I actually see is a lot ‘thicker’ and 3D. As you can imagine, this has its benefits and is probably one reason why I’m a History teacher! :-p

I didn’t think anything more about this until I listened to one of the series of TED Talks entitled A Journey to the Center of the Mind by Vilayanur Ramachandaran. Towards the end of his (fascinating) talk, he mentioned that ‘creative’ people (artists, poets, etc.) are eight times more likely to experience synaesthesia than ‘normal’ people. He explained the condition as probably being due to a malfunction in the gene that ‘trims’ ‘the connections that exist initially between all parts of the brain.

So I wondered… perhaps there’s a link between synaesthesia and migraines? After all, I experience ‘aura’ when I have a migraine – something like a less extreme version of the picture below, usually starting with patches of coloured light:

Sure enough, when I looked it up I found several references, including this one. Now I’m no painter or poet, but I am fairly good at metaphors and making links between (often fairly diverse) subjects.

I’m firmly of the belief that, especially when it comes to the brain, things cannot be studied or considered in isolation. Although I want to do further research, I’m fascinated at the possible link between synaesthesia, migraines and creativity (in the form of associationism). Perhaps, like autistic people who are fantastic mathematicians or artists, migraines have their associated upsides…

Do you experience synaesthesia? Perhaps you see numbers or days of the week as being certain colours or, like me, conceive of time in a sensory way. Do you also get migraines? I’d love it if you could share your experiences!

(Image credit: My Brain on MRI by CaptPiper @ Flickr)

If you haven’t seen In The Night Garden before, you really should – it’s quite an experience. Each episode is around 30 minutes long, but you can get a flavour from this YouTube video:

I’ve watched most of the episodes several times by now. We record them all as the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to screen the programme in the morning instead of during CBeebies Bedtime Hour.

The above is by way of prelude to my main point. The programme (probably intentionally) can put you into a state of not quite being awake and not quite being asleep. In that rather nice state of consciousness I got to thinking just how much like an ideal communist society it is:

• The characters have all of their needs provided for, yet no-one is in overall control (do they ‘own the means of production’, though?)
• There is no monetary system.
• Men, women and children are of equal status.
• There is no mention of, or reference to, religion – the garden just exists.
• In the most innocent way imaginable there is ‘free love’ – in that everyone kisses everyone else.
• Liberal parenting (in the form of the Pontipines) prevails.

Whilst I’m sure the group who conceived and produced the show aren’t raging communists, it does make you think of the values being explicitly and implicitly inculcated into even the youngest of children… :-p

• 71% of pupils admit being a bully – and the other 29% are liars if, as I suspect, ‘bullying’ has been very widely defined. Real bullying can blight lives and should not be condoned under any circumstances. Minor name-calling and fallings-out, on the other hand (although some will no doubt disagree), are all part of growing up. It’s the human equivalent of play-fighting in animals.
• Some exams ‘harder than others’ – really? My goodness! Groundbreaking news. And surprise, surprise, they found History GCSE is harder than Geography GCSE. Perhaps historians’ jibes that Geographers do nothing but colour things in have some credence after all…
• Unions ‘protecting poor teachers’ – this is something I feel strongly about. There’s a lot of talented people out there who should be in our schools rather than some of the no-hopers I’ve come across in previous schools. I haven’t (thankfully) come across any in my current school, but that’s why we’re a high-achieving specialist school. Having recently received the latest issue of my union’s magazine it’s clear that a great deal of the time they ‘protect’ whinging teachers who really need to get out of the profession and do something to which they’re more suited. That’s not to say that unions don’t do a good job some of the time – both my Dad and myself have had positive experiences – but they really do need to face up to the fact that some teachers aren’t up to the job. There’s only so much ‘professional development’ people can do! :p

What do you think?

BBC News

Whilst learning an instrument and visits to the theatre are things I would want my son Ben to experience, that’s my choice. All too often the middle class way of life is held up as some kind of paradigm. Well yes, on the whole I like it, but it’s not without its problems and shortcomings. If it was all a question of money (and the lack thereof) then I would welcome this with open arms. But it’s not. I can afford to take my family to the ballet, opera and performances of Shakespearean plays but, to be quite honest, I’m not that interested and would rather spend my money on other things.

I think that, like most things the Labour government do as regards education, this initiative is focused not on the individual well-being of children but on a more national picture. Here’s the telling paragraph in the BBC News article:

“[Children] will learn through culture using engagement with the arts and other activities to boost attainment, other skills and personal development.”

So it’s all to do with boosting attainment and making the UK a destination for ‘cultural activities’. I know a lot of people may disagree with me on this one, but I can’t help but feel that this is one part of the population dictating to the rest…

I think everyone knows my stance on copyright and which side of the fence I sit on. Given that literally millions of people download TV shows, etc. from the USA before they air in the UK (technically illegal) then I think the government could have a bit of a fight on their hands (ID cards anyone?)

(via TechCrunch)

You may have noticed that next to the title of this blog there’s a little section where it tells you what I’m currently doing. This is powered by Twitter, a site which exists to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’. You can update your account as often as you wish by going to twitter.com, texting a phone number, or sending a message via your IM account (MSN Messenger, AIM, GTalk, etc.)

At first I thought this was a bit frivolous, however not only is it addictive, but it keeps people up-to-date with what you’re doing, and you can also look back to see what you’ve been doing in a week (useful if you keep a semi-regular diary/journal).

Finally, you can ‘follow’ other members (i.e. see what they’re up to) or – with their permission – add them as ‘friends’. You can then get updates (via phone, IM or web) as to what they’re doing. I notice that the BBC have started using Twitter with short updates which you can get via the 3 methods mentioned above. Innovative use of new technologies? I like it…