Gary Stager came to Poughkeepsie Day School at the end of March and he began with a lively Vassar College/ PDS presentation Ten Things to do with a Laptop. His title is a deliberate nod to a groundbreaking 1971 article by Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon “Twenty Things to Do with a Computer.” They had twenty on their list but…
Does this Jerry King cartoon from FNO strike a chord? It’s easy to say “less is more” but not always so easy to see the sentiment translated into the practical of everyday life where the pressure seems on for more stuff in less time. Here is Carl Honoré – author of In Praise of Slowness explaining how to get more…
El externado de Poughkeepsie desarrolla a ciudadanos educados con una pasión para aprender y vivir. Nuestra comunidad exige integridad, responsabilidad y respecto mutuo. Poughkeepsieの昼間学校は学び、生存のための情熱の教育がある市民を開発する。 私達のコミュニティは完全性、責任および相互点を要求する。 Пугхкеепсие Day School разрабатывает образованных граждан, имеющих страсть к обучению и жизни. Наше сообщество требует честности, ответственности и взаимного уважения. A former colleague – a wonderful Spanish teacher – has a sign by her desk…
What’s next for computers? Here’s a demonstration of a multi-touch interface. Pretty amazing.Imagine the classroom or the workplace where everyone has access to this technology.
Gary Stager with PDS faculty March 30th Here’s a story that Gary related at Vassar on Thursday. It’s about his seven year old nephew and a truly ridiculous reading assignment. Schlock and Awe
It was a great day in the James Earl Jones theater at PDS yesterday. Dan Gold – a member of the PDS class of 1978 – was there for the first public screening in the Hudson valley of the film he co-directed: Everything’s Cool – a hot documentary about global warming. This is a film that informs and entertains. It…
Earth…a poem by the the children in the Pre- K. These are their words – the places they know, the animals they know and their request to us. Their words and pictures became a book that they made together. It is now back in their classroom. Outstanding.
In an earlier post, I mentioned the prescient Marshall McLuhan who saw decades ago that we were living in an era of connectivity and communications In that interview, he commented that most of us think in the past. For artists, he says, it is different. They live in the present, they think in the present, and it can be terrifying.…
Take a look at this fascinating video about web 2.0 from Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. The machine is us. The machine is using us. The machine will not stop. According to Professor Wesch we’ll need to rethink a few things including: copyright authorship identity ethics aesthetics rhetorics governance privacy commerce love family ourselves.…
The Age of Industry – that is what Mary Ellen calls kindergarten and this industry was certainly on display in the playground today. There was a potentially poisonous bug to be investigated in the playhouse, milk crates and logs to be hauled uphill in defiance of gravity and surface friction on the snow, and tree displays to be created on…
Why can’t they be like we were? Perfect in every way? What’s the matter with kids today?* BYE BYE BIRDIE (The Musical) (Music by Charles Strouse / Lyrics by Lee Adams) Technology Literacy and the MySpace Generation That’s the title of an article by Susan Mclester in Technology and Education (March 15, 2007) It includes the following: Listening to the…
The Indian National Curriculum Framework opens with this most telling childhood anecdote from the poet Rabindranath Tagore: When I was a child I had the freedom to make my own toys out of trifles and create my own games from imagination…One day in this paradise of our childhood, entered a temptation from the market world of the adult. A toy…
Last weekend we lost an hour and gained the Spring. This particular Spring is by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Flemish (ca. 1564 – ca. 1638) It hangs in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College Look at that activity! Those raised beds! This picture is about to be the focus of an exciting interdisciplinary Lower School project. Take…
It was University of Toronto English professor Marshall McLuhan who predicted universal connectivity. Listen to this archival interview from April 1965 where he predicts a future for education saying that: “in the future people will no longer only gather in classrooms to learn but will also be moved by “electronic circuitry.” How far are we along on this path? McLuhan…
“It is easier to change the course of history than to change a history course”. “Proposals for change in schools are often met with a thousand points of no“ Liz, Julie and I are at the NAIS annual conference in Denver. We were joined by Trace who gave a great presentation yesterday. (On that, more later). The theme of the…