Six Hours in at BnN I Found this Gem....

Clearly, I am becoming a blogaholic. I spent 5 hours at my lovely Barnes and Noble doing work for Natasha, cruised the magazine section on my way out, and came across this article. I won't date a guy that uses a flip phone, and apparently kids prefer smart phones. I do love the similarity.

Because my brain is tired, I just copied and pasted some snippets. The article is long, but I felt it tied in to a lot of what Maggie was talking about with her kids and learning via the internet, as well as our talk on teacher's getting replaced by technology.

*TeacherMates-"The programs are synced with the reading and math curricula used in the school -- right down to the same spelling words each week...During the time her class spends with TeacherMates each day, Flowers [teacher] can devote more focused time and attention to small groups of students. TeacherMate is the brainchild of a bearded technology lawyer turned social entrepreneur from Evanston, Illinois, named Seth Weinberger, who punctuates his verbal volleys with waving hands and liberal profanity. He says he's on year 15 of a 30-year personal life plan to transform schooling in America using technology." His program is Innovations for Learning-here's their blog. Side note*When I applied to PhD school, I wanted to focus on video game research-thank you, Weinberger for this research direction.

*Whereas Weinberger wants to improve teaching practices at existing schools, Kim focuses overwhelmingly on empowering kids to teach themselves. He sees technology as a liberating force, helping kids in rich and poor countries alike bypass schools, with all their waste, bureaucracy, and failures, entirely. "Why does education need to be so structured? What are we so afraid of?" he asks. "The more you expect from a kid, the smarter they're going to get."

*The Internet is a many-to-many environment, which is in the early stages of having a major impact on education. It involves a fairly major change in the concept of what education is, which is one of the reasons we use the term 'learning' as distinct from 'education.' It's student-centered and student-empowered.

*"The challenge of putting such ideas into practice -- and getting the kids into the educational driver's seat -- is so daunting it's almost laughable. Still, when you've seen a tiny child eagerly embracing a device that lets her write, draw, figure out math, and eventually find an answer to any question she might ask, it's hard not to feel the excitement of the moment, or its revolutionary potential. We're talking about leapfrogging over massive infrastructure limitations to unleash what Kim calls "the only real renewable resource" -- the inventive spark of 1 billion children. "They're creative, these children," he says, "no matter where they are."

Enjoy, sorry for the general copy/paste method, my brain is fried but I wanted to share the article with you guys. Off to Target to buy wedding gifts and other oddities I don't really need. I am also starving.