Charalambos Vrasidas (Pambos) is Head of the Centre for Advanced Research and Development in Educational Technology in Nicosia, Cyprus. He is a charismatic and energetic dynamo who started the Centre with no funding or support from his university (only permission). CARDET now receives more grants and funding than the Department of Education at the University of Nicosia. He applies several clever strategies in order to make his Centre hum, including cherry-picking the brightest young talent, offering 3 month internships with bonuses for high performers as a way of evaluating potential employees, building in 10% redundancies for under-performing employers, and using the Centre’s NGO status to attract pro-bono personnel support.
He has several interesting philosophies about life and education, and recommends the following:
- Design Thinking For Educators (http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/), released by the IDEO group who are rated as one of the world’s most innovative firms (http://www.ideo.com/)
- Xplane, specialising in visual facilitation (http://www.xplane.com/xblog/)
- The book Killing Time by Paul Fayerabend, who writes about making the most of one’s life.
