I am constantly struck by thought-provoking media, from images to video to music. Below, I archive such media and offer some of my thoughts on how they affect my imaginings of education.
Google Apps Turns Around a School
This school is doing something really right with regard to technology in education. They commit to creating a culture of online collaboration and communication. Most importantly, the tools students use are ones they have access to (for free!) when the are not in school as well.
How Google Creates
This interview with Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Product and User Experience. When I listen to how she describes the importance of questioning, of balancing nontraditional and quantitative data, in creating new products. There is a freshness to what she says, I think. What if teachers asked questions of their students like Mayer speaks of users: How can we fill the needs of students?
Inquiry for 21st Century Students
This brief video piece drives home just how different our students’ researching is and will be. It knows no physical limits.
19th Century Writing Class
This image is from a book on English public schools from the early 20th century. It shows a writing class at Christ’s Hospital in the first part of the 1800s. I’m struck by what has and hasn’t changed. On the one hand, teachers still teach a comparable number of students–roughly 130. On the other hand, students growing up in the digital age seem less and less familiar with this kind of tangibility: wooden desks in one room.
Marks of Indifference
Marks of Indifference
(Thanks to Mark Wyse for permitting me to use his artwork as a way to re-imagine education.)
I saw this piece in the Met Museum a number months ago. It gripped me. There is something in its linearity and absence that conveys poetry to me. I imagined a bookshelf once occupying the wall space. Notice the holes where screws once held the shelves to the wall, and the violence with which they must have been removed.
Schools Kill Creativity
If you’ve never seen Sir Ken Robinson talk through how schools kill creativity, grab a drink and watch this one. A cup of tea or a cold Old Speckled Hen would do nicely.
