skateistan!

Smash some old ideas. In entertainment, marketing, business, design and education! Sounds simple. Just Slightly. Not sure what to make of the classroom these days. Of school, the process, the system. I wonder if it’s somewhat related to what Seth speaks of. In any way?

“I want to argue that we are living through and are right now at the key moment of a change in the way that ideas are created and spread and implemented.”

So, what does any of this have to do with teaching? I’m not sure because for the most part, we who participate in this thing called school are too over our heads with this what not and that what not to even think about the value of old ideas properly let alone entertain new ones. Regardless, we hope.

According to Godin, we started with the factory idea. Basically build a good factory line and churn, churn, churn. I think most school systems still follow this model. The Henry Ford model of Education. What better way to ensure cheap labor than by following the factory/industry model of education.

That idea was followed by the TV one. Blanket the airwaves with ads and you rule. Acceptable spamming. Hypnotize.

Godin believes that the new idea of making meaningful change is not by using power or money but by leading tribes. The idea of tribes. Strikingly reminds me of Clay Shirky’s talk…

“There is an awareness that the internet is not a decoration on contemporary society but a challenge to it…” -Clay Shirky

“We’re living through, in our historical generation, the largest increase in human expressive capability in history.” -Clay Shirky

Interesting questions on how different/similar is this media revolution that we’re all currently a living, acting part of compared to the previous media revolutions of the printing press, the telephone/telegraph, recorded media of all types and finally broadcast.

Godin speaks of ideas (factory, TV, tribes) and Shirky speaks of media revolutions. In the end, same good message. The digital revolution is not about hardware and software, it’s about social ideas and media revolutions and understanding their implication in time to affect meaningful change.

Double-Taker (Snout), Interactive Robot from Golan Levin on Vimeo.

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to this talk by Sir Kenneth Robinson. Splendid. It seems appropriate for this time of transition for me.

I’m looking forward to getting back to teaching soon and doing what I love. And then, hopefully, soon recover my passion for being an advocate of multi-media literacies.

For now, I’ll be glad to just get back into the classroom.

As I enter 2009, I found the preceding interview of Gladwell on Charlie Rose very important for me at this particular time. I haven’t read his new book and to be honest, I don’t plan to at this time. I’m planning on going back to finish Blink and think about the relationship between rapid cognition, meaningful work and curiosity (important culminating point at the end of the interview) and how that affects not only my work as an educator but my day to day living as well.

I first discovered Malcolm Gladwell via his talk on TED on What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

It’s hard not to love anything on TED but this talk was particularly poignant for me at the time. I am not an artist and have never claimed to be but this talk re-affirmed for me my interest in the importance of intentionally teaching creativity (or curiosity) in schools.

It also helped support my feeling that the fact that art and visual literacy is something that is merely taught at the fringe or in an extra-curricular setting significantly hurts our students. In an attempt to help students in the area of science, math and technology, we fail to see the importance of art, creativity and visual literacy in this age. Despite our efforts and investment in science, math and technology in this country, why are our students still so significantly behind? And, more importantly, why does so much creative work seem to come from those same students from those same countries that are so significantly ahead of our students in the area of science, math and technology? It seems like these students have no problem being strong in disciplines that are both right and left brain.

Dan Pink has something to say about that.

After that talk on TED, I began reading Blink and reflected on the importance of “rapid cognition” and how it was immensely related to his talk on spaghetti sauce and how that relation was significantly relevant to teaching in a web2.0 classrooms(whatever that means since, for the most part, they really don’t exist…sticking hardware in a classroom doesn’t count…and, it may, in fact, hurt more than help).

So, again as I enter 2009 I plan to go back to finish Blink and enjoy thinking about the relationship between rapid cognition, meaningful work and curiosity and how that affects not only my work as an educator but my day to day living as well.