Listening to Forum on NPR - Neuroscientist Greg Bern joins us to discuss the human brain and innovative thinking. He says our brains normally constrain original thought. How do innovators buck the brain's lazy habits to eventually overturn conventional thinking? Bern's latest book is "Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently."
Podcast will be here soon: http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R810281000
With all the financial crisis information overload, I realized that I don't have a good understanding of the economics history of the US, since I never studied it in depth. To stay in the spirit of what we preach in the ITEC 830 class, I downloaded podcasts of the 10 lectures on History of the US Economy by Stanford professor of Economics Timothy Taylor. It is fascinating to see the parallels between now and the first decades of the 20's Century, but it is even more so, to be able to learn from one of the best lecturers on the subject, while on a Greyhound bus or an airplane! I highly recommend it. I got my lectures from the Teaching Company, but I bet they are also available on Stanford's website.
I didn’t get a chance to blog last week, but I enjoyed reading D. Pink book “A Whole New Mind”. The book is well written, relevant and very timely, I wish more recommended textbooks were like that.
In the first three chapters D. Pink defines the Conceptual Age and explains its causes and characteristics (Abundance, Asia, and Automation). He also gives an interesting overview of what he calls L-Directed and R-Directed way of thinking and lays a foundation needed to understand how these concepts linked together will affect the future of education. His ideas resonate very strongly with what I have seen first hand, working in the high-tech industry and seeing how it has been affected by these changes during the past decade. Similar thoughts have affected my decision to join the ITEC program, and D. Pink makes me feel good about my decision.
I have recommended this book to several people already, and I think every teacher should read it to understand the priorities of educating for the 21st Century. That said, I think the danger we are facing in the US, on the other hand, is that “core subjects” will be even more neglected in the process. We should not ignore the L-Directed skills only because Asia is already ahead on them, so no reason to even try. The salaries and the standard of living in Asia and other developing countries will continue to rise, so eventually outsourcing is not going to be the most cost effective solution for every problem. On the other hand, American children will continue to face fierce competition for the best education from their peers from abroad. So far, while I applaud the innovation of American education, I still turn to Russian tutors for math and science.
I went to Boston to visit my son who is a freshman at Tufts University.
And then I took a bus to New York where I met with my classmates from High School. I haven't seen one of them for almost 25 years! I also visited Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, recommended by D. Pink in his book The Whole New Mind.
I have read about location based services and technologies before, but Leslie's presentation on locative media really opened my eyes to many opportunities of these emerging technologies for education. Of course, most learning is happening in the classroom, but who doesn't like field trips! I have to admit that on these trips I always enjoyed being a part of the group, but I could see how in the near future we could be seeing students listening to their personal iPhones, instead of a teacher or a guide. However, even traditional field trips could be so much more productive and memorable, if students are researching and producing content that is available right there, on location. This instructional media would be especially useful, when personal opinion of the content creator adds value, as in my example with campus tours, where it is important to hear it from the current student, not just from the admissions office or from the marketing brochure. My son's school is located in the Presidio, it is now a National park with great historical significance. I immediately thought how students of the school could research the history of their school surroundings and create virtual guided tours of the area. Turns out their technology teachers already met with Leslie and taking this forward.
A fresh take on the browser People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they're doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.[...] We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.
- Meet the Developers:
- Top 5 Features: 1) One box for search and navigation URL 2) Thumbnails on Homepage 3) One click Bookmarking 4) Dynamic Tabs 5) Web Application shortcuts
Learning for the 21st Century report provides the most comprehensive guidelines for the school education reform. It defines reasons that explain why the change is needed at this time, lists key elements of the 21st century learning and includes steps that are necessary to make this transition in education a reality.
