Nutshell
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Dr Mel Ganus, EdD, MBA, ADD
aka Dr Mel the Squid Lady
3rd person pronouns: z/zer & favorite pronouns: we/us
“Working toward the greatest good for the greatest number.”
Wikian at Large, committed to radical inclusivity since 2004. Creative problem solver, Experiential Learning Designer, Community Organizer, Coach/Advisor/Consultant, Researcher, Scientist, Philosopher, Queer, White, Very Privileged, and a Passionate wiki fan
Links to some of my best and most useful work off wiki
editYou and Your Squid Brain - Can You Think Before You Ink? & How to SQUID Your Squid Brain
- Coloring & activity book for kids of all ages
- read by the infamous Dr Philip Zimbardo: 3 minute video
- my even crazier version: 2 minute video
PLEASE SHARE AND REMIX THIS WIKILOVE!
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It’s a maze of twisty passages all around here. Sometimes, it’s hard to feel appreciated, and you deserve some love! This Heart-shaped Labyrinth is to say Thank YOU for all your hard work. I appreciate you being here - I really do - and so do these peeps! |
| You can also share some wikiKind wikiLove (on English Wikipedia) by adding {{subst:Heart Labyrinth}} to any talk page with your own message. |
Hottest current projects
editwikiKind and
wikiWonderlands
CoFounder, wikiKind/wikiBlind, WikiSoCal meetup.com/WikiSoCal and San Diego Wikimedians User Group [1]
Designer of wikiWonderland - adventures in training for contributors of all ages, abilities and cultures Please ask me for details and to get a look at what’s been designed so far!
Personal Website: www.drmelganus.org ~ On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Dr.Mel.Ganus ~ on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelganus/
We call our projects Quality of Life Experiments www.QoL-X.org and invite you to connect with us and try some QoLx of your own!
The meta experiment: What can we do to improve the trajectories of Quality of Life for ourselves and those we care about?
As of March 2019, also very proud to be a Wikimedia Foundation Organizational Strategy Liaison, building partnerships and gathering input for the WMF strategic plans for the future of human knowledge and our contributions to those futures! What do you most wish the foundation would consider in designing those plans?
older info
editProud to have been part of launching WikiConference North America 2016 here in San Diego. Excited to be part of what happens next as we build WikiSoCal and plan for future events. For updates and more details, please join our meetup group at www.meetup.com/WikiSoCal.
In 2017 we put together some incredible projects, including this partner project proposal. We were unable to get funding from the Wikimedia community then, but still have tremendous potential to grow our programs and activities in support of the worldwide growth of open knowledge communities. You can take a look at our old proposal here: We would welcome your comments and encouragement to continue using whatever support we can find. WikiSoCal 2017 Proposal
Founder and Director, Quality of Life Experiments (http://www.qol-x.org) and advisor/coach to anyone looking for support (www.drmelganus.org)
I'm proud to have helped more than 1,000 college students and community members learn how to edit Wikipedia articles for their first time, as part of their normal research papers. Their enthusiasm for contributing to this collective body of human knowledge is not surprising - it is so much more satisfying than watching a research paper become irrelevant to both student and instructor after it is graded.
I am most passionate about helping people improve quality of life for themselves and those they care about. I see self-directed learning as one of the most fundamental skills needed for making those improvements. I believe that we are all usually doing "the best we can." But our skills often leave us far short of our goals. In my mind, the gap between "the best we can do" and "the best anyone could do" is a function of how well we can learn what we need to improve. I love finding and creating high impact learning activities and materials, especially those we can share with people very very quickly.
Toward helping others, I work as an education advisor for students, nonprofits, and other education-related projects. I am also a part-time faculty developer, helping faculty members at various schools learn techniques for improving their students' learning. My emphases include choosing quality-of-life learning objectives relevant to students, metalearning (learning how to learn more, faster), and how to make the most of emotional intelligence in education settings. And, I am serving on an NSF grant focused on improving assessment of learning.
If you, reading this, have any questions or shared interests, I'd welcome hearing from you, learning more about your perspectives and favorite resources. I could also use more connections here in Wikipedia - it takes a lot of time to edit and write the articles I care about, I think I'm still a novice editor, and a few Wikipedian buddies would be great!
Since completing my doctorate, I've been able to focus on helping people (especially young people) better understand how our brains work so we can learn faster, improve our emotional management skills and develop better decision making habits. In our work with www.qol-x.org We're using animal metaphors and mnemonics to make the complex information easier to make sense of. Our website and other posts are still a work-in-progress, but that seems normal these days, so go check 'em out and let me know what you think? Posting as much as possible under Creative Commons license.