Last week, Chris Bisignani was kind enough to leave a careful, detailed reply to a post of mine about structural problems with modern reform. I finally sat down and sketched out the beginnings of replies to the myriad questions he raised. So here it is, an ongoing discussion about the nature of reform.1 [...]
When most teachers walk into a classroom, they’ve already put in hours of work preparing for the next forty minutes. What they say, what they do, what materials are made available, how they organize students—to some extent, all the teacher’s moves have been orchestrated ahead of time. For many teachers, careful orchestration is [...]
a problem
Reform efforts exist on a spectrum spanning two extremes. One extreme feels that reform can only start outside the ailing institution. The other extreme thinks that only by working within the system can we change it. Unsurprisingly, the answer usually lies between the two extremes. Those who think that outside [...]
Colleen Kaman was kind enough to send me an awfully good essay from The New Atlantis, called “Shop Class as Soulcraft”.1
Reading through the article, I ran across a contradiction in my thinking about hands-on work. Typically, consumerism is associated with materialism, which I had previously articulated, ad hoc, as the predication of happiness upon [...]
A while ago, a friend of mine noted something that had been bothering me for some time: when I told people about my university, they were invariably excited, but the message came across more as a menagerie of features than a cohesive vision. Over dinner, he asked me a question I found incredibly helpful [...]
I’m going to constrain the meanings of these words for this post. People bandy them about, but there are some essential differences that call for their distinction.
Opportunities are the chance to do something, the chance at something. Rights are guarantees that are (morally or ethically) inviolable. Privilege are opportunities accorded by virtue [...]
It’s essential to keep in mind that when you’re trying to talk to somebody about a field that perceived as rapidly progressing, you need to be more vigilant about securing the timeliness of your credibility. Reading Illich’s Medical Nemesis, I found myself constantly questioning his conclusions, given their foundation upon statements like:
Awe-inspiring medical technology [...]
And that’s a pretty big idea.
Recently, I commented that one element of Ivan Illich’s work I really appreciate is his focus on infrastructure that addresses needs emergently, rather than focusing on one-step solutions to solving social problems. Too frequently, this one-step bias leads to treating symptoms and leaving causes unaddressed1.
Among other things, this same, [...]
At a meeting for the Center for the Future of Civic Media1 today, Lucy and Clay from ThoughtAndMemory gave a quick talk about their work in the tradition of James Patten’s “Swipe ‘n Gripe”. But, there work isn’t art. It’s real. They’re implementing a system wherein you can text or photograph a [...]
Today I drove out to the Cambridge School of Weston to discuss setting up an electronics/programming/circuit-bending class there during IAP. I arrived about fifteen minutes early, and the teacher was kind enough to invite me to sit in on the last fifteen minutes of her class. In doing so, what I saw and [...]
This morning, I was taking a nap on the floor in a basement hallway. The steam pipes below ground warm the floor in certain areas; so when I’m cold, I often search out these hotspots.
About forty minutes later, an MIT Police officer woke me, asking for identification. He had received a call for [...]
Given how awful Ticketmaster is and how dissatisfied its customers are, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t come along with a slick “Web 2.0″ solution to this problem. . .Between social networking and Twitter and the plethora of music services like iLike, it seems straightforward to come up with a killer feature list.
So, why hasn’t anyone [...]
I have a confession to make: I went through an Ayn Rand phase. It ended. And now, meritocracy seems to be too often perverted. Richard Florida points out in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class:
But meritocracy also has its dark side. Qualities that confer merit, such as technical knowledge [...]
Again, from Instead of Education:
The best and only really good place for do-ers would be a society that does not yet exist. In that society all people, of whatever age, sex, race, etc., could have work to do which was varied and interesting, which challenged and rewarded their skill and intelligence, which they could [...]
So in MAS.714 the other day, Mitch handed out this story from CNN about what people are calling “augmented cognition,” or “aug cog.” From the article,
New technology may help to put kids on a more level playing field, which may in turn motivate them to learn and encourage competitiveness. Using modern artificial intelligence and [...]
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