Again, No ‘Genius’ Grant
The postal service lost the letter. Again! I even delayed my vacation to be waiting by the mailbox for the trusted Michael the mailman to deliver the good news that I had been selected for a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. But nothing. The announcement on September 17 that 21 new Fellows had been picked, and I […]
Chicago Library Provides Example of High-Tech and High Touch. Is L.A. Ready For This?
Brandon Towns was having trouble opening his MacBook to show me the movie he’d made because his fingers were sticky with the glue he was using to make a paper maché mask. Both sticky fingers and the Macbook capture the essence of YouMedia, the 5,500 square foot space in the Chicago Public Library where Towns […]
Chicago’s Summer of Learning a good tryout of Learning 2.0 or Connected Learning
For many months I have been tussling with how to bring the kinds of learning made possible by the Internet revolution to reality. As I have written in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago has provided a demonstration project in which students earned 100,000 digital badges making, building, and experiencing learning with more than 100 […]
The Elements of Learning 2.0: A Remix of Knowledge Acquisition and Practice
The words “remix” and “mashup” entered the vocabulary as descriptors of life in the digital age. They are also key to what I am calling Learning 2.0, the next full-scale version of public education. At the simplest level, these new terms are represented by three teenagers using Apple Garage Band to combine bits and pieces […]