Upon recommendation of the Council of the School of Thinking the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Business Thinking (DBT SoT) was conferred on Brian Anthony Monahan at a special banquet at The Melbourne Savage Club On Tuesday, 17th October 2006. His citation read, “in recognition of your world class innovations in advertising, your thought leadership in bringing these innovations to the marketplace and your service as Chairman of the Council of the School of Thinking over the past ten years”. Nicholas Holt Esq of Rigby Cooke Lawyers noted that, “it was indeed a most enjoyable occasion in a superb setting with excellent food”.

• SOT Principal (right) presents award to Dr Brian Monahan (left)

Paul Sheahan, Headmaster of Melbourne Grammar School, has invited SOT Principal, Dr Hewitt-Gleeson, to be a Council Member of the Leadership & Learning Council which is a very innovative project for bringing thinking and leadership skills to the MGS community.

• New MGS Learning & Leadership Centre currently under construction

On Friday, I finalised plans for the World Thinking Congress 2010 Melbourne (WTC2010) with the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre. I am an Ambassador for Think Victoria and Club Melbourne whose role is to bring some of the world’s best thinkers to Melbourne. Would you like to be there?

Details coming soon.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

This is the first handbook where the world’s foremost ‘experts on expertise’ review our scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent.
General issues that cut across most domains are reviewed in chapters on various aspects of expertise such as general and practical intelligence, differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, aging, knowledge management, and creativity.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Edited by K. Anders Ericsson
Florida State University
Florida Institute of Human & Machine Cognition

The next masterclass will be on Tuesday, 21 November.

Email today to book reservations.

WHERE: Melbourne Exhibition Centre, Suite 1, Level 5
2 Clarendon Street, Southbank, Melbourne.

WHAT: How To Raise The Innovation Intelligence of Your Enterprise: A 120-Minute Innovation MasterClass with Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

WHO: SOT Members & friends; teachers of thinking; executives and entrepreneurs; others who are interested in raising their innovation intelligence.

FEES: There are no fees. Seating must be limited to ‘first come first served’. These pro bono events are sponsored by School of Thinking and Melbourne Exhibition Centre to promote Thinking in Melbourne.

HOW: Email to reserve a place for you and your associates in these unique events. Say which dates you wish to attend. Give the the full names and organisation of participants. You will receive confirmation by return email. All privacy is respected.

Nemo Nascitur Sapiens Artifex - No-one is ever born a skilled thinker.

Artist grants gallery $16m vision of future
The Australian

JAMES Gleeson believes that art is society’s strongest link between the past, the present and the future. And to ensure the grand tradition of Australian art continues well into the 21st century, the painter is putting all of his money - $16 million of it - where his mouth is.

In what is by far the biggest monetary donation received by the Art Gallery of NSW in its 104-year history, Gleeson has pledged his entire estate to the Sydney landmark.

“I thought about it quite seriously for a long time, and I decided that it was the logical thing for me to do,” said the 91-year-old, who is considered Australia’s pre-eminent surrealist painter.

“Art is my main reason for existence, really. I just love what man has made to satisfy some aesthetic instinct and need, and I think there should be more of it. It is the great connecting link between the past and today.”

A BEE researcher who used the insect’s precision flying systems to overhaul robotic aircraft navigation has won the $300,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.

Australian National University Professor Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan is working with the US Army and NASA to design tiny craft based on his research of bees’ brains that could be used to explore Mars and reduce danger for soldiers on the battlefield.

Prof Srinivasan said bees were expert navigators despite their small size and brains the size of a sesame seed, and could be trained to navigate through mazes, follow coloured signs and distinguish between patterns to find food.

“What is amazing is these tiny creatures can learn something like that,” said Prof Srinivasan, who trained as an engineer in India but began studying flies and later bees “purely out of interest and curiosity”.

“Nature has evolved these systems through a million years of evolution.”

At the First Anniversary Dinner on 9 October the Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser AC, addressed the Club Melbourne Ambassadors as their new Patron in Chief. The Club Melbourne Ambassadors are a group of leading academics, scientists and other leaders committed to bringing the world’s best thinkers to Melbourne through the hosting of major scientific and other conventions. Both the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre and the Melbourne Convention + Visitors Bureau have joined to support Club Melbourne. Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson is a Club Melbourne Ambassador and will be hosting the First World Congress on Thinking at the new convention centre in 2010.

Our world and the world of the future demand that all students are supported to become effective and skilful thinkers. Thinking validates existing knowledge and enables individuals to create new knowledge and to build ideas and make connections between them. It entails reasoning and inquiry together with processing and evaluating information. It enables the exploration of perceptions and possibilities. It also involves the capacity to plan, monitor and evaluate one’s own thinking, and refine and transform ideas and beliefs.

The Thinking Processes domain as mapped out in the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) encompasses a range of cognitive, affective and metacognitive knowledge, skills and behaviours which are essential for students to function effectively in society, both within and beyond school.

Are the world’s major religions truly incompatible? KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour talks with authors Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Kirsch about the philosophy of religion in today’s modern world.