I get quite a few laughs when I point out that my degree is in medieval Latin poetry. Hey, what can I say? The computer science departments at my undergraduate university did not want anyone using the precious mainframe to index Latin anything. The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Dr. William Gillis had a different view. So I know zero about poetry but I could in the early 1960s generate concordances and indexes. The rest, of course, is history. Halliburton Nuclear, Booz, Allen & Hamilton (now Snowdonized), and a couple of big companies into electronic information.
Imagine my thrill when I read the most amazingly wild and crazy article in the San Francisco Chronicle (July 14, 2013) on page E8 with the reassuring, almost baby-blanket comfortable title, “English Majors, Once Disdained, Back in Demand.” You may be able to find a version of this write up at http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx. No promises, however. I am following in the footsteps of universities which are craw fishing away from the notion that someone with a degree in law or art history will be able to find a job after graduating.
In my opinion, the main point of the essay is that English majors can look beyond standing in line for SNAP cards and unemployment benefits. English majors have the ability to “construct stories.” The passage which made me a true believer about the value of an English major was:
From our earliest days our education system separates us into the “gifted” and the not-so gifted. When we're just small children, many of us are put on a path to be cogs in the machine.
Fooducate lets users scan the barcode of any a processed food item. Each product is given a letter grade based on how healthy that food item is — and provides details to support its claim. This interactive app can be used with almost any food product that can be scanned at a supermarket checkout. Whether you're taking your students on a community field trip or creating a virtual grocery store in your classroom, Fooducate is a great app for sparking conversation. This app is perfect for teaching students how to shop smart, choose healthy foods, and even think about the way products are marketed.
Big Fork Little Fork is a free app that packs a punch. Share tips on cooking, good nutrition and produce, and learn skills that can be used to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This app includes how-to videos and games that explore the food pyramid.
Plenty of schools use iPads. But what if the entire education experience were offered via tablet computer? That is what several new schools in the Netherlands plan to do. There will be no blackboards or schedules. Is this the end of the classroom?
Think different. It was more than an advertising slogan. It was a manifesto, and with it, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs upended the computer industry, the music industry and the world of mobile phones. The digital visionary's next plan was to bring radical change to schools and textbook publishers, but he died of cancer before he could do it.
Some of the ideas that may have occurred to Jobs are now on display in the Netherlands. Eleven “Steve Jobs schools” will open in August, with Amsterdam among the cities that will be hosting such a facility. Some 1,000 children aged four to 12 will attend the schools, without notebooks, books or backpacks. Each of them, however, will have his or her own iPad.
There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it'll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.
Preparations are already underway in Breda, a town near Rotterdam where one of the schools is to be located. Gertjan Kleinpaste, the 53-year-old principal of the facility, is aware that his iPad school on Schorsmolenstraat could soon become a destination for envious — but also outraged — reformist educators from all over the world.
And there is still plenty of work to do on the pleasant, light-filled building, a former daycare center. The yard is littered with knee-deep piles of leaves. Walls urgently need a fresh coat of paint. Even the lease hasn't been completely settled yet. But everything will be finished by Aug. 13, Kleinpaste says optimistically, although he looks as though the stress is getting to him.
‘Pretty Normal in 2020'
Last year, he was still the principal of a school that had precisely three computers, which he found frustrating. “It was no longer in keeping with the times,” he says. Soon, however, Kleinpaste will be a member of the digital avant-garde. He is convinced that “what we are doing will seem pretty normal in 2020.”
From the original article by Justin Reich and Beth Holland on MindShift: “What would a math class look like where students learn to compute, prove, derive, and intuit, as well as to discern and appreciate mathematical beauty?
What about a history class where students maintained a portfolio of beautiful artifacts and ideas from multiple periods?
How might efforts to curate benefit from the portability and ubiquity of mobile devices?
What would a “relevance portfolio” look like, where students catalog their daily encounters with ideas or experiences? What other kinds of portfolios could students create over the course of their academic career?”
If you are curious to get a glimpse at how tablets and their apps can be utilized to leverage curation for your classroom learning objectives, then this is definitely a good read.
You get a good introduction with some interesting historical facts about curation and about what it could be done with it in the real of education, and then you are provided with a good number of examples and tools that you can start to use right away.
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A six week course using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, concept maps, Personal Brain, and synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter
Cost for individuals is 300 dollars US or 500 dollars if employer reimburses — via Paypal. 250 for graduates of Rheingold U courses ($200 if you've taken two courses, etc.) Class cohort limited to 30 learners. If you are interested in signing up, contact howard@rheingold.com to reserve a spot.
