Now that I have your attention, I will shamelessly admit that the title was just a hook. Yes, you should read this book. If not for yourself, for your children or for your neighborhood’s children. My thanks to Christian Long over at think:lab for his post which brought The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden to my attention.
I just happened to be online in a Borders bookstore after an off-campus meeting when his post came in to my reader. Checked out the author’s site, watched their video, and immediately bought the book for my own motley crew. My seven year old is already hard at work on his knots, having mastered the reef knot and clove hitch, working on developing his own mnemonic for the figure-8 and trying to figure out the bowline.
What I love about this book is that it encourages kids (and those of us refusing to grow up) to get out and play like we used to. As has been pointed out in the blogosphere, learning is messy. So is life. Yes there will be bumps, bruises and tears along the way, but they make the laughter, joy and happiness (dare I say learning?) all the sweeter. This book is just one more reminder.
Inspired by Jen Wagner, I too am celebrating Cyber-compliment Day.
I find myself often inspired and amazed by what I come across in the blogosphere. So I too will make some time today to send a shout out to those who have inspired or challenged me. What a positive way to address the issues raised after last weeks Cyber-bullying downturn.
I’d post more on this but I’m off to thank my feeders personally. Won’t you join me?
March 21, 2007 at 11:33 am · Filed under Creativity
Came across this Wired article today in my feeds entitled Masterpieces of Disaster. The American Red Cross in the San Francisco Bay Area is taking a proactive approach to emergency preparedness with their Prepare Bay Area project. Hiring Publicis & Hal Riney, the Bay Area ARC has developed a diversified high-impact communication portfolio including mobile billboards which are designed to integrate into real settings, water bottles with the message “Try living on this for three days” and fake earthquake early warning simulators (an old-school bell that would ring when the earthquake shook hard enough), among others. You really need to look at the photos accompanying the article for the full impact!
The Red Cross message:
“What do we have to do to get your attention?”
Now this is an in-your-face approach to communication and only time will tell how well it is received but it made me stop and think about how I get my message out to my own intended recipients whether they are faculty, students or the general public.
This has been blogged to death but since I’ve been referencing it in a number of workshops it just made sense to have it here on my site.
Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, has created this 5-minute warp speed video that shows us the evolution of the web, but also how it has shaped and been shaped by evolutions in the types and social nature of various online applications. It seems to me that this movie could be just the tip of the iceberg and that it would be a great foundation or even a springboard for a larger study of how we are shaped by our technology and in turn serve to shape technology. The cyclical relationship between man and machine. Hmmm…
Anyway, enjoy…
[tags]ethnography, machine, video, web2.0, wesch, youtube, video [/tags]
The Free Geek Project - Here is a program worthy of note and emulation. Not only does it address the issue of the technology graveyard in a manner both unique and socially conscious, it’s underlying tenets challenge the paradigmatic approach to learning that our educational institutions have come to embrace. Watch the video, observe who is teaching us and think about how you could create a similar environment in your own teaching and learning world!
Technology integration is not a new problem, just take a look at this YouTube video for an historical perspective.
Passed on to me by one of my graduate faculty members.
UPDATE: The original link was taken down by the user, the new link above gives the video but without the English subtitles. But it doesn’t really matter if you think about technology support and watch the body language!
UPDATED UPDATE: ZrednaZ reposted the video by popular demand so I relinked to the version with English subtitles.
This was pulled from Will Richardson’s post from his time at the Science Leadership Academy in Philly.
“As I looked around the brand new SLA library where we were working, noticing a few empty shelves, I said to Chris “you know, you should reserve one of these shelves for books that your students make.”
As you can see by the picture, he agreed.”
Now imagine what positive message this sends to our students. We value your work so much that it deserves its own home in (y)our library. What will your students publish?
Jeff Han’s amazing work with how we interact with our technology is not a new item, the video and buzz has been circulating on the ‘Net for more than 9 months. Yet it took Tim Lauer’s post, Jeff Han article in FastCompany, and another on Touch Interfaces… last week for it to sink in.
My issue of FastCompany (February 2007) arrived this week and I’ve only just now gotten a chance to sit down and flip through it. The article about Jeff Han (available online here) and his work on the touch interface is amazing and as I reflect, it strikes me as a way to kinesthetically interact with our technology in a much more organic and natural way than we ever have before. I also took the opportunity to view the FastCompany video clip thanks to Bryan Alexander and the TEDtalks video linked to by Tim. What I have seen resonates within me. It makes me wonder how this interaction will affect our learners. Will it improve accessibility? Is it intuitive enough? Will it lead to advances in learning?
We all have those kinesthetic responses: your PIN at the ATM, your password on your computer, phone numbers that you can only remember when your fingers simulate the act of keying them in. We don’t really have to think about them, they happen almost autonomically. But this action involves only our fingers, what would happen if our interactions utilized and/or required more of our body? What if recollections were based on physical gestures? I envision a musician or rock climber for whom their knowledge manifests itself in a physical form. Consider the new opportunities for kinesthetic learning that could be incorporated into the Wii system. There is already talk of creating a surgery sim but what else could be developed which would tap into this new tool for learning?
Data is no longer uni-dimensional, and as Han has shown it can be now represented visually in three dimensions. Think Minority Report meets the Matrix where tables, graphs and data can have a physical structure. How will this new way of visualizing and physically manipulating information allow us to retain, reuse and reconstruct knowledge? With visionaries such as Han, we may well find out within the next few years.
Ok, this might seem to be a bit off subject but I think it speaks volumes to how the cunning application of technology can engage learners.
I heard rumors that J. K. Rowling had announced the release of her 7th and final Harry Potter title. I had intended to visit her site but my ADD got the better of me. Then I came across a post by one of my most recent blog favorites, Wes Fryer,entitled Discover the final Harry Potter book title. Wes was reporting on a CNN link which provides directions on how Potter fans could learn the title of this last book. I won’t play spoiler for those who want to find out for themselves, but it turns out that J. K. Rowling’s website has hidden a number of “easter eggs” which in turn lead to a game which upon successful completion reveals the final title.
As I followed the instructions, it occurred to me that this sort of engaging, challenging and creative application of technology is what makes learning so much fun. It is not the rote memorization, it is not the regurgitation of meaningless factoids - it is in the exploration and experiential interaction engage our learners and this engagement generates excitement and passion which translates into lasting memories and this retention leads to a greater likelihood that these memories will be around to contribute to the cultivation of new knowledge.
Very cool indeed!
And to add to the novelty, this 7th installment will be available on the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year of the 2000 millenium, or 7 on 7-7-7. Hmm…
[tags][/tags]
I picked up a copy of this book at Borders (which I didn’t realize was tied to Amazon.com until I went to add it’s URL) in Concord a week ago for a few reasons. One was that I wanted to get back in touch with what the industry was providing for HTML references. I was also curious to see how different XHTML was from HTML since my first HTML class was taken in the mid-90’s and I hadn’t really done anything formal to update my skills since. I also wanted to learn more about CSS and was looking for a book that might explain it in such a way that my faculty and students would understand it.
I found all of that thank to Kathy Sierra and her Head First series of guides to programming. This book was written by Elisabeth & Eric Freeman and in the style of the rest of the series, explains its content in an irreverent but coherent and enjoyable conversation. What’s more, their use of relevant examples places the learning in a context which makes sense to the learner. Many of the HTML texts I’ve seen are typically a simple listing of HTML tags isolated from real-world application. The HeadFirst series uses a number of different examples wrapped up in a story line which draws the learner in and personalizes their experience. It is perhaps this use of storytelling which sells me the most on this book.
Printed by O’Reilly, this book is available just about everywhere and I highly recommend it for those who want more than cookie cutter templates and have a desire to learn HTML, XHTML and CSS. It’s done wonders for my comprehension of CSS and allowed me to refine my coding. Now it’s time to hack my blog theme CSS!
