Never Cut Down the Tallest Tree

I was listening to a radio show about forests and sustainability. One of the speakers once was told that he should "never cut down the tallest tree in a forest."

Well, why not? That tree would give plenty of lumber and be worth a good price. The speaker didn't know why he shouldn't cut down that particular tree.

Later on someone told him why. Among the reasons, the most important one was that if you take the biggest and tallest tree down the trees underneath it don't have to keep growing to get to the light. They can more or less stop where they are because they have access to the sunlight.

How I Would Use This
This idea really struck me. I know when I am striving for something, I want to know who is above me, who has climbed higher, done better. I don't want to eliminate them (except at low moments) but I want to get to where they are or as close as I can.

This spirit of competition may indeed be healthy in many ways. Some of the legends that have gone before us give us something to aim for.

So Never Cut Down that Tallest Tree.

Hammering

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. ” - Abraham Maslow

This is one of my favourite quotes.

How I Would Use This

In a word, or two words - Power Point.

Change the World for a Fiver

50 actions to change the world and make you feel good.

This is a great book. What do I like about it? It is playful.
It comes from a gorup called We Are What We Do at www.wearewhatwedo.org, a UK based organization.

In a typically British manner they have a lot of fun with the reader while getting their message across. Here is an example.

On a bright green page there is a cartoon and next to it the action step.

The Art of Reverse Haggling
Confuse the wonderful people who work in charity shops. Pay them more than they bargained for.

I love this book because it is the type of book I wish I had written. It is funny, lively, uses big fun graphics and just begs to be picked up and perused.

Now compare a book like this to nearly any environmentally based book out there and I know which one I am going to grab for a quick overview.

So take a look at their stuff.
www.wearewhatwedo.org

Oily Birds

I was listening to a report about how many birds die as a result of oil dumps at sea. The narrator was trying to point out that it doesn't take an oil slick to kill a bird. He was saying that a bird didn't need to be drenched in oil, just have a little oil on his feathers and he could well die.

So he used a visual image to get the point across. I found this captivating and reminded me how much we understand ideas that are put in terms of things we can understand and are familiar with.

Here's the image.

Imagine you are standing in a stream of icy cold water. But it is okay you are wearing gum boots so you are protected. Then you get a pinhole in one your gum boots, a tiny little thing. Would your socks and feet be protected because it was such a tiny hole. No way! Even the tiniest hole would inevitably lead to frozen feet.

So it with the birds and oil.

How I Would Use This

When explaining something that might be hard for your audience to grasp go back to what they know. Think hard about their world and where they are and make the connections.

Sort Them Out

Saw an activity that reminded me of a format I haven't used in quite a while.

Each team is given a big card with 7 categories on it. The categories are things like, marketing, promotion, customer service, systems and so on. Each category has a little description beside it to make it clear what the term means.

Then the teams are given a handful of cards. On each card there is a scenario that describes something an entrepreuneur somewhere in the world tried.

For example there is a short story about a woman who mailed all her customers Happy Spring Cleaning Day. There is another about how a small business fellow started a unique newsletter about where to find good thrift store buys.

The group then sorts the cards into the categories. They can discuss and debate which one goes where, and they can agree to disagree. In the sorting of the cards the task gets done: they learn or re-learn the categories and they see interesting examples of applying these ideas in the real world.

How I Would Use This

I work with a groups of school students and their teachers around this province in a great environmental action project. To help them get clear on some of the things they can do we have tried a sorting activity like this.

We had categories like: awareness, communication, reward and incentive and so on.

I think you could apply this to many learning situations. Just make sure the examples are diverse and interesting, or even spectacular. People really pick up on the unique and exciting ideas that way and feel free to try something like that themselves.

A Charm, Exaltation, and a Bloat

I love looking at animal group names. Test your skills. We all know flock of geese, school of fish and herd of sheep. But what comes in:

Charm
Exaltation
Bloat

Give up? Go here to find out more http://mistupid.com/animals/groups.htm

How I Would Use This

If groups of animals can have special names why can't groups of people?
What do you call a group of technicians, or lawyers, or teachers or public relations specialists or consultants?

Diet Coke and Mentos

This is an incredibly impressive demonstration that should be done outside or in a large gym. Take a 2 litre bottle of diet coke (no sugar, no stickinesss) and drill a tiny hole in the cap. Place it on a firm surface.

Then string together 3 Mentos (mints) in a line on a string with a bit of string extra at the top. You basically hang the little thread from the lid. Here is what I mean. You stick the thread through the cap so that you can hold it with your fingers while letting the Mentos dangle underneath the cap.

So the idea here is that you want to get the cap on the bottle and then let the Mentos go so that they drop in the diet Coke. You see you have to do that because when the Mentos hit the Coke a huge fountain erups.

So let's look what we have, a 2 litre bottle of diet coke on a firm surface. You are above it holding a thread through the cap while the Mentos dangle under the cap, but not touching the Coke. Then, when you are ready, drop the Mentos and run away. The huge flow of soda will come blasting through the tiny hole and create a lovely fountain.

Just try it, it is fun and lively. Then tell me what point you would make with this. What a great way to start off a presentation or wrap it up.

Here is one of my favourite presenters, Steve Spangler, doing the demonstration. http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000109

Have fun.

http://www.planetperplex.com/en/img.php?id=94

Good - Evil
In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter). It's all very filosophical too, because it visualises the concept that good can't exist whithout evil (or the absence of good is evil - take your pick).

A lovely illusion here of Good and Evil. I think there is lots of potential for an illusion like this used in a presentation.