I've seen Adora's presentation a dozen times, and it still inspires me. From TED on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-bjOJzB7LY The goal is not to turn kids into your kind of adult, but rather better adults than you have been, which may be a little challenging considering your guys credentials. But the way progress happens is because new... Continue Reading →
Steven Rosenbaum on curation, community and the future of news
From Steven Rosenbaum via Nieman Reports: ...Today, the idea of journalist as curator is front and center, as the tools to make and tell stories are now in the hands of anyone with a cell phone, laptop or desktop computer. The old barriers to entry—the cost of a printing press or a broadcast tower—have evaporated. Of... Continue Reading →
Fourth graders play the World Peace Game
From John Hunter via TED Talks: John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4'x5' plywood board -- and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches -- spontaneous, and always surprising -- go further than classroom lectures can.
Maria Popova: content curation is a new kind of authorship
Maria Popova: Twitter is a medium of conversational direction and a discovery platform for the text and conversations that matter.
10 years of laptops in Maine schools
From the Lewiston Sun Journal [In 2001] Maine legislators approved — after months of doubt and debate — Gov. Angus King's proposal to give every seventh-grader in Maine a laptop.... Ten years later, each seventh- and eighth-grader in Maine public schools and every grades 7-12 teacher has a laptop paid for by state taxpayers, at... Continue Reading →
Robert Krulwich on the future of journalism
From Robert Krulwich: If you can … fall in love, with the work, with people you work with, with your dreams and their dreams. Whatever it was that got you to this school, don’t let it go.
The Nation: The crisis in higher education
The Nation: A scientific education creates technologists. A liberal arts education creates citizens: people who can think broadly and critically about themselves and the world.
New York Times: Let kids rule the school
The students in the Independent Project are remarkable ... because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience.
Edutopia: Portland principal promotes collaborative culture
The genius of this school is not in a program, it's not in the laptops, it's in the learning. It's in teachers designing learning that they know will work for kids ... and they have the space and the time and the autonomy to do it.
Reflecting on the tapestry of small-town life
Once or twice a week, I spend early mornings in our natural-food-and-free-wireless coffee shop in town. Over the months, I've gotten to know a few regulars.