Jon Stewart Skewered Stephen Harper on the Daily Show: Illustrating Cognitive Productivity with Twisted Canadian Politics

The Globe & Mail published an article yesterday morning by Lawrence Martin called “We need Jon Stewart to set Canada straight“. He wrote “Too bad [Stewart didn’t cover Harper]. Imagine the fun he could have lampooning this place?”

As it happens, on June 3, 2015 I sent Comedy Central an email urging them to cover Mr. Harper and to invite Mr. Mulcair or Mr. J. Trudeau to The Daily Show.

Well, it can be said that Jon Stewart did cover the Conservative Government of Canada —in his own way.

Continue reading Jon Stewart Skewered Stephen Harper on the Daily Show: Illustrating Cognitive Productivity with Twisted Canadian Politics

Why Use Potent Cognitive Tools —and How

Most of the information we process is digital. While the tools we use for learning are in some respects better than paper, in others they are worse. In this article, I claim that:

  • Progress is problem-driven
  • Most learning tools are cognitively impotent
  • Self-directed learners should use potent cognitive tools and do so in a manner that promotes their learning.

Continue reading Why Use Potent Cognitive Tools —and How

OS X Mavericks, Tags, OpenMeta and Your Productivity

In my SharpBrains articles, right before and right after the introduction of the iPad® (in Jan 2010), I called for Apple® to support tagging across its ecosystem. I wrote this knowing that tagging has immense potential productivity benefits, as I describe in my book, Cognitive Productivity. I first started developing software to help people learn by using tags in 2002 as lead software person on what soon became the Learning Kit Project at Simon Fraser University. In a blog post last year, I explained some of the benefits of tagging and suggested some apps you can use for it.
Continue reading OS X Mavericks, Tags, OpenMeta and Your Productivity

Why Use Several OpenMeta Applications?

The main point of this blog post is that if you’re going to use the OpenMeta tagging framework for OS X, you should consider purchasing more than one OpenMeta app. They are not expensive. But first, I describe some of the benefits of tagging. Then I present and respond to criticisms of OpenMeta.
Continue reading Why Use Several OpenMeta Applications?