Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Monday, June 30, 2008

Granting Works!

BUILDING NEWS

First of all, I encourage everyone to visit detroitmakeithere.com (a
division of Crain's Detroit Business) and read "Hamtramck Hatching an
Art Center"
http://www.detroitmakeithere.com/article/20080620/DM01/318183545
This article features the input of several Hatch members as well as
various Hamtramck community members. The companion piece. "Nuns,
cops, artists: Art center s home has storied past"
http://www.detroitmakeithere.com/article/20080620/DM01/864809131
sheds some light on the building's history.

Hatch is moving forward on purchasing the police station. The board
feels that the benefits of taking ownership in the next few months
outweigh the risks. In light of current city staff changes, we also
suspect that the transfer process will be smoother if we get it done
before a new economic developer and city manager come in. The city is
currently writing up a purchase agreement for us.

We have identified more potential grant money: Wayne County is
offering a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to Non-profit
organizations to spend on repairs. Scott will be getting bids from
electricians, roofers, and plumbers and use this info to put together
an estimate of how we would intend to use the grant. This will need to
be the public hearing in July.

You can help us get grants by writing a letter of recommendation to
Hatch; and by encouraging your colleagues and friends to do the same.
Contact schneider@hatchart.org schneider@hatchart.org>
for details.

Friday, March 28, 2008

NEW TOOLS!

New Tools for Vibrant Communities


By John Bebow - March 28, 2008

Here's a new toolkit for Michigan residents and community leaders who are convinced that healthy arts and culture are crucial to healthy Michigan communities which are, in turn, crucial to attracting and retaining talented workers who can help assure Michigan's economy thrives.

The toolkit, from ArtServe Michigan, is packed with facts and figures about Michigan arts and culture and helpful tips for those seeking to advocate for better arts funding from state government.

Taken straight from the toolkit, here are a few things you might not have known about the status of arts and culture in the Great Lakes State:

1. State funding for the arts in 2007 was $6.5 million. That's less than one-quarter of 2002 funding levels.

2. California spends more than $100 million a year on visual and performing arts education. Nine other states also have funding streams for this purpose. Michigan does not.

3. There is no reliable system in place to tax superstar entertainers and athletes who earn money in Michigan giving concerts and playing at professional sports venues. Arts advocates argue that a reliable tax system on these mega-multi-millionaires could provide an invaluable and consistent funding stream for Michigan arts venues and attractions. "Michigan's Department of Treasury is opposed... because the department does not currently have a reliable system in place to track what income is coming from non-resident entertainers."

The toolkit also offers personalized, community-by-community data on "creative industry" employment trends and state funding for local arts and culture projects so you can follow the money flowing (or not flowing) back home to your neighborhood.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Thursday, February 28, 2008

HATCH-HATCHES

Hello, Hatch members and those who are keeping an eye on us, I have terrific news to report!

After two years of talking, planning,dreaming and hoping, Hatch may finally have a home. Last night theHamtramck City Council unanimously approved a resolution to grantHatch a one-year site option on the former police station so we canpurchase the building for one dollar. We have one year to raiseenough money to make the building operable. Thanks to all of you thatturned out for support!

This is exciting both for Hatch and for Hamtramck, which will reapthe benefits of having an art center along with the positive image ofa progressive city that takes bold moves to support art and culture. The media has taken note, so watch for stories on Hatch in print and on air.

The next step is ours to take. We will be applying for a number ofgrants and will begin an aggressive fundraising campaign. Hatch will need you to both help and contribute. More than ever we will need volunteers to keep this groundswell of progress moving forward.

We will be mailing out a document that will list the things that you cando for Hatch and the things that Hatch can do for you. It will also be placed on the website if we do not have your mailing address.

Personally I would like to thank all of you who have done so much forHatch. This has been a group effort and it will continue to be. Those of you who have been hoping to get involved or have been thinkingabout joining, now is the perfect time. You can be a part of something positive, exciting and homespun.

If you have questions, ideas or reactions, please email me! I am atmailto:atschneider@hatchart.org.

Chris Schneider
President of Hatch

p.s. Did anyone happen to record the television broadcast of the CityCouncil meeting last evening? It would be great to put the video ofthe unanimous vote on our website.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Hamtramck City Council HATCH Presentation / BE THERE!

WHO: Hatch: A Hamtramck Arts Collective, friends and supporters

WHAT: Request for site control option for old police station,presentation by Chris Schneider


WHEN: Tuesday, February 26, 2007, 7:00 pm

WHERE: Second Floor, Hamtramck City Hall, 3401 Evaline St, Hamtramck,MI

One of the primary goals of Hatch is to have a physical space for usto carry out our mission of providing education, artist networking,opportunities, exhibitions and studio space in an effort to organizethe creative community and benefit the surrounding area.

As you may know, we have had our sights on the former Hamtramckpolice station, located on Evaline across the street from City Hall,for some time. We have been preparing to do a presentation to CityCouncil, where we propose to gain site control over the building fora one year while we raise capital to renovate the space.

Whatever your reasons for membership, I ask that you all rally behindthis one task. Ideally, I would like to see all 52 members present,showing what a positive and energetic force we can be (and won't itbe fun for us all to get together for this one occasion?).

If you arenot a member and still wish to support us in our creation of an artscenter in Hamtramck, we need you, too! You won't be required to speakor even attend the entire meeting (our presentation will be the secondor third item on the agenda); we just wish to quietly demonstrate howmany people stand behind our goal.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to email me atschneider@hatchart.org <mailto:schneider@hatchart.org>.

Chris Schneider
Founder and President of Hatch

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

HATCH Proposal to Come before Hamtramck City Council

Tuesday, February 26, 7:ooPM

Hamtramck City Council Meeting, City Hall, 3401 Evaline, Hamtramck.

Mark your calendars: Hatch is on the Agenda!

We will be giving a presentation for the city council requesting site control of the old police station (3456 Evaline).

In the coming years, we at Hatch hope to utilize this building for a community art center, gallery and studio space. Chris Schneider will be delivering the audio-visual presentation; a product of many members' hard work.

We encourage all members and supporters to please come to this meeting and show your support: enthusiasm may be our best selling point!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Summary: WEB 2.0 February 2008

« My Big Twelve: Dreams and Goals for 2008 | Main | Change »

Local, Global, or Glocal?

I've been struggling a lot with the concept of classrooms and schools collaborating and connecting globally. In fact, the question "is networking and collaborating outside of school central or supplementary" was raised at Educon and I was instantly immersed into an internal battle over my position. What I've realized is that I am not really debating whether or not we should immerse our classrooms globally; instead, I'm struggling with the starting point for establishing a global classroom and school.

When in the classroom, my focus was on leveraging the power of a global audience. We opened our wired discussions to other schools. We blogged to the outside world. We leapt at every opportunity to connect and collaborate with the outside world. Sadly, I look back and realize that the primary reason it couldn't sustain itself was the lack of a school climate and culture that was supportive of the systemic acceptance of school as a learning community.

Today, my interest is in creating sustained, systemic changes where every classroom is empowered for the 21st Century, not the proliferation of isolated classrooms and small pockets of change that are based more on the individual teacher than the culture as a whole. While I understand the excitement about collaborating and networking outside of the school as well as the need, I find it just as important if not even more important to discuss what is happening within the culture of the school itself: is it a collaborative environment? is it a learning environment? is networking occurring? is literacy a focus in all classrooms?

Thus, my answer to the question about networking and collaborating outside of school is that we need to "Think Globally, Act Locally". In other words, my focus is on being Glocal: 'starting from within the local community and spreading globally (Hicks).

Leverage Local Connections

At the classroom level, a great starting point is bridging gaps between your own classrooms. If you teach three sections of the same subject such as Chemistry, are your classes collaborating and connecting or are these functioning as isolated sections? By creating an environment where all your sections are collaborating, communicating, and connecting, the collective knowledge is widening and students are beginning to experience a community of practice within the school.

From there, this type of learning environment can expand to others teaching the same subject (or grade level for k-8) so that it is now about a collective approach to American Literature not just each American Literature teacher functioning in isolation. Through discussion forums, wikis, webcasts, and live broadcasts, the framework for collaboration becomes relatively simple yet the importance of creating such an environment is a critical step for learning for students and adults: "educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they create structures to promote a collaborative culture" (Dufour, 2005, p.36).

It doesn't stop there. As the students and teachers become immersed in a learning community, the skills in collaborating, communicating, and connecting continue to grow so that the community, network, and audience can expand its boundaries across departments, sister schools, and onward to a truly global classroom. The key, however, is that the environment is allowed to grow naturally and the foundation of such a learning community that much stronger where students are able to scaffold their skills and teachers are able to best understand how to leverage participatory media and the global audience:


There are those kids -- just like there are those teachers -- who will take to the idea of writing to an unknown audience and seeing what happens. But hoping and wishing for the serendipitous moment makes for bad teacher planning, and over the long haul I think it won't get the vast majority of our students publishing their voices to the world. If we want to see kids embrace the power of communication technologies like blogs and wikis and podcasts, we need to be good teacher-planners. We need to give them reasons to publish. We need to help them see their audience... whether it is using a blogging platform for and art classroom exhibition that other students will critique or bringing in a group of math majors from a college to work with our math students, kids need to understand why they should share their work with the world, and then -- once they do -- we allow for all the serendipitous moments that so many of us in the edu-blog world have benefited from to occur (Lehmann)


An Example Worth Discussing

Blogging is a perfect example of what I'm discussing here. Right now, there are a lot of isolated blogs within schools where students are blogging for a specific course and that is it. When the student leaves that teacher, the blogging essentially ends unless the student chooses to continue writing. In theory, the blog has a global audience but even in cases where this is true, the length of time students have with the blog is too short in most cases. While these educators and students are undoubtedly doing wonderful things, the question of sustainability and systemic change raise questions about the long term impact of such endeavors.

What if students were given a learning space as soon as they entered the school, including a blog space, and this was used
across courses and grade levels? In other words, the student owns their space and grows with them -- a sort of blogging across the curriculum. By creating such a space, the process could be scaffolded where early grades are learning what it means to engage in transformative blogging and beginning the process of creating their network locally while thinking globally. Here is an rough example of what this might look like within a high school:

9th Grade: all students receive their learning space; students begin blogging in a central space with a focus on learning the process with an audience of their peers
10th Grade: students begin to expand their network to the entire school; the concept of connecting and communicating with a wider audience begins to form as students continue to build their skills.
11th Grade: The network continues to expand and reach out to a wider audience in an organic way. Students understand what transformative blogging represents and what it means to write for a local and global audience
12th Grade: The hope is that students have reached a point where blogging is a natural part of their personal and professional learning environment. Students are writing in a natural and fluid environment that will sustain itself long past formal schooling

While very rough and by no means perfect, this is the type of environment I believe allows for the perfect blend of local and global so that 21st Century skills are not only taught but learned and that a learning community is built from within in order "to promote the qualities and dispositions of insatiable, lifelong learning in every member of the school community -- young people and adults alike -- so that when the school experience concludes, learning will not" (Barth).

The Ripple Effect

Many of us are excited about Global possibilities but sometimes at the expense of local. As Christian Long recently stated in his blog, "perhaps whether there is something to be said for NOT going global just because we can, especially if it serves our kids better in the process. Maybe we need to talk about concentric circles of local scale first. And global pitches second." If the belief is that all classrooms should be collaborating and connecting with the outside world, we need to develop learning community within our own walls before moving outside to a global community. Systemic change is difficult when it come from a few exceptional teachers -- pebbles tossed into the lake. It comes from the entire school functioning as a learning community and creating a powerful ripple effect that rocks the whole lake and branches the community out organically.

So, is it global, local, or glocal? I'm thinking Glocal*!

References


Barth, R. (2007). Turning Book Burners into Lifelong Learners. Published in Educational Leadership 2nd Edition. Wiley & Sons.
Boyd, D. (2005). Why Web 2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization.
Dufour, R. (2005). What is a Professional Learning Community? National Educational Services.
Hicks, D. (n/a). Towards a glocal language curriculum: 2000 and beyond. Cambridge University Press.
Lehmann, C. (2007). When to Publish.
Long, C. (2007). The Global vs. Local Connection.


*Glocal has a number of definitions and uses that I'm obviously not employing here. Basically, my point is that we need to think both globally and locally, so the term, in this context, is just the merging of the two terms.


Comments

Ryan, interesting ideas. You caused some writing on my end...

http://tinyurl.com/2r3dr3

Miguel:

Your points are quite interesting and offer some insights into what I'm pondering.

I don't see this as a walled garden issue but as more of helping students grow their network starting from within and giving each student a learning space that isn't confined to a specific course or a specific teacher. This focuses beyond individual classes and moves it towards a systemic use of participatory media and literacy focus.

The last thing I want is a walled garden. However, I think there is a starting point where connecting locally allows us to branch off. Perhaps audience as peers makes it seem as though I'm advocating for this. However, I'm advocating for students to start local and expand.

How many students are blogging right now without a global audience? It is great to speak about the Internet in an authentic state, but there are a number of classrooms blogging and an audience is never established. By the time one begins to form, the course is over and the blog ends because it is course or grade based NOT student based.

I want all students to have the opportunity to engage globally for a sustained period. Right now, I see a few exceptional teachers doing the best they can within a limited scope: grade-level or subject-matter.

Thanks for the thoughts that I'm sure I'll continue to ponder.

I too am struggling at the moment. I am wondering if we are shooting ourselves in the foot because we have a great number of educators testing theory without sound research.

I shouldn't even try to relate this because I just picked up the book, but your line of thinking is similar to Neil Postman's Technopoly. I stumbled upon this book through Wes Fryers NCLB post and then, in an odd occurrence, discovered the book at eye level while crossing through Borders to get to the coffee shop.

Postman provides great insight to the all or nothing line of thinking that technophiles support. He cautions that when the new is blindly looked upon as just better we fail to look at it with both eyes.

I am with you. If we just unleash students on this stuff because it is the next big thing are we losing something that will not be revealed for a decade or so?

Postman begins the book with a story from Plato's Phaedrus. There are two thoughts in this story that are eating away at me. 1. The inventor/discoverer is never the best judge of good or harm. 2. (speaking of writing) Pupils will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be considered very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quiet ignorant. (access without understanding)

Are we building knowledge or breeding contempt for it? (Google will make my choices for me using an algorithm)

Sorry I did this here, but I am having one of those moments. Am I a leader or a follower? And for that matter who are leaders and does the fact they blogged first make them the authority of the future of education?

Some teachers are working hard to make sure HOTS are part of the experience, but what about the vast majority?

I need to regroup.

Your point is well made and I agree... maybe I am missing somethings as I read your message and Mighuels response.

1. Doesn't everything go back to the school's and teacher's purpose, goals, and objectives. Ask why you want to have your learners collaborate and you will find where you need to start!

2. Can't you list a dozen school activities that lack congruence across grade levels. We ask our k - 12 teachers to meet once or twice a year to align curriculum?

3. Once you can define what the purpose and ultimate goal of our public education system is, than we can finally begin to address your point more fully. Are we trying to get them into college? Are we focused on a basic set of knowledge standards? Are we preparing them for the 21st century? Are we trying to help them become life long learners? Are we trying to get them to be active citizens of our country? Are we focused on behavior? Is it to learn how to pass the test?

Interesting quick reads I found in 2 minute Google Search:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?storyID=6906

http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/Menu/statement.htm

Hey Scott:

Thanks for the comment. Since you've laid out your thoughts by points, I'll respond in a similar fashion :-)

1. Of course, it does come back to and should come back to what we are attempting to accomplish. Obviously, there is extensive research in the area of collaboration, so I'll simplify this a bit that it is considered a best practice.

Because of that, I want collaboration occurring with great breadth and depth allowing for those global connections to foster growth on a local level. As Reich and Solomon say, "you must make sure they are tapped into the world and the local community, so that the changes and differences that result from being connected to people all over the globe are integrated into what you do at local and global levels."

2. I sure can but there is two issues here: 1. cultures of isolation must be removed in schools 2. I see this as more than just an activity. In fact, this is what I want to move away from: today, we are doing a collaborative activity. I don't want collaboration, connecting, and networking to be an anomaly but what we do day in and day out as learners.

With today's tools, this should be easier to accomplish for teachers, departments, and schools. Again, the research is vast in the area of professional learning communities yet many are still not embracing this concept or have embraced it on a surface level.

In some sense, I would say because of your comments I feel it is even more important to build this foundation locally if we want to see all learners experiencing a glocal (boy, I'm butchering this term) learning environment.

3. Not to heavy of a question, eh :-)

Seriously though, since most mission statements around the country encompass pieces of each of your questions, I'm sure we could package it up in a nice, cohesive statement.

But, like intended vs. taught curriculum, I wonder if the intended mission of many schools is truly lived out in each and every decision made within schools.

Wow! Thanks for the comment Ken. I must admit that I've never read anything by Postman but you have me intrigued.

Based upon the questions and thoughts in your comment, I know I've missed something well worth reading, so I'll hold a bit on my thoughts until I've read this piece.

Thanks for getting the wheels spinning!!

Ryan-
I was just having a conversation with Scott Meech and a few other educators about the value of Ed.Voicethread in comparison to having a teacher use a pro voicethread acct with students using sub-identities.

Ed.Voicethread is a great solution for students to carry a digital suitcase and create a digital learning trail over time. It is a bummer that it doesn't allow authentic comments from people who will never be able to have an Ed.Voicethread account, but I'll take the upside.

We have the same thing with blogs. Some teachers have their kids use blogger for a history blog, some english teachers then have the students use blogger to create a separate english blog. We need one platform in our school so students can blog across different classes and across many years.

Definitely a timely post as I've been thinking about these same challenges, Ryan.

Thanks,
Matt

I love your concept: "Golcal"

Yes, I believe it is very important to "Think Globally, and Act Locally". I can see how new technology, such as blogging can help. This new culture has the opportunity to build bridges across the globe and allow communication between cultures like never before. Making connections at the local level with the school community is a start in bringing us all closer at the global level. This is as you said a "collaborative culture" and educators need to help generate more interest in using new technologies to enhance the learning environment.
jmv

Monday, February 11, 2008

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

In case ANYONE forgot WHAT it was WE are ALL ABOUT!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Lights, Camera...........Call to Action!

Invite the lights, cameras

February 2, 2008

Just as corporate America seeks tax incentives to lure business, so, too, should Michigan work to lure the film industry ("Lights, camera, action ... Michigan," Jan. 22). Where some see unoccupied factories or urban grit, producers like Michael Bay ("The Island" and "Transformers") see possibility and art in Detroit.

They hire electricians and other skilled tradespeople; they stay in hotels; they hire location scouts, assistants and makeup artists.

Films can showcase Detroit's interesting landscape to millions as a place to do business and visit. In the mid-20th Century, Detroit was a hotbed of the ad and film industry for commercial production, and films were shot here en masse.

Detroit boasts some of our country's most talented creative professionals who have made fortunes here for decades. Instead of reading headlines about people leaving Detroit and Michigan, we want them to stay and work in film and other industries that can profit in and for Michigan. To help our region survive and thrive into the future, we must welcome and aggressively seek all industries.

In 2008, the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau plans to officially launch Film Detroit and continue promoting metro Detroit as a location for commercials, films, documentaries and still photo shoots, and to help support our partners in the Detroit and Michigan film offices.

We created Film Detroit after Michigan's film incentive passed last year, and this year our team will launch a Web site, attend film trade shows and events, and work hard to make Detroit a player in the film industry. A more competitive Michigan film incentive will give us a better chance to attract more films and help diversify our economy.

I urge the Michigan Legislature to pass a more aggressive film incentive as soon as possible.

Larry Alexander

President and CEO
Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors
Bureau/Film Detroit


Lights, Camera...........Call to Action!

As a life-long resident of Southeastern Michigan and participating member in the Detroit commerical film industry for four decades I can concur with this intention.

I have also been an ardent advocate and in some cases a pioneering early adopter, developer and implementor of sophisticated 21st Century digital technologies.

This issue (business case) and the correspondingly supporting advanced technological executions when coupled together could become the basis for a "renewed emergent business sector" culminating in a foundational regional Detroit Creative Culture that would sustain such an overwhelming undertaking.

For those creatives whom heed this clarion "Call to Action" more at http://www.dwiff.blogspot.com/

Much continued success!

Best,

Jim Ross

Frozen Grand Central

FREEZE SUCKA!

Friday, February 1, 2008

Collaborative Online Teacher Network

Microsoft Launches Collaborative Online Teacher Network
Microsoft project gives educators a worldwide collaboration forum
By Jennifer Orlando, Converge Magazine

Jan. 31, 2008Microsoft Corp.'s Innovative Teachers Network (ITN), a new online forum, promotes the exchange of best practices and methods on how to effectively incorporate technology into the classroom. Teachers across the country and around the globe will have an opportunity to communicate and collaborate with some of the world's best educators.

Sudafed PE commercial: Swelling Head (2008)

OR: Contact 21st Century Digital Learning Environments!

Sunday, January 27, 2008

21st Century JUICE!

The New York Times


January 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

The Age of Ambition

DAVOS, Switzerland

With the American presidential campaign in full swing, the obvious way to change the world might seem to be through politics.

But growing numbers of young people are leaping into the fray and doing the job themselves. These are the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s, and they are some of the most interesting people here at the World Economic Forum (not only because they’re half the age of everyone else).

Andrew Klaber, a 26-year-old playing hooky from Harvard Business School to come here (don’t tell his professors!), is an example of the social entrepreneur. He spent the summer after his sophomore year in college in Thailand and was aghast to see teenage girls being forced into prostitution after their parents had died of AIDS.

So he started Orphans Against AIDS (www.orphansagainstaids.org), which pays school-related expenses for hundreds of children who have been orphaned or otherwise affected by AIDS in poor countries. He and his friends volunteer their time and pay administrative costs out of their own pockets so that every penny goes to the children.

Mr. Klaber was able to expand the nonprofit organization in Africa through introductions made by Jennifer Staple, who was a year ahead of him when they were in college. When she was a sophomore, Ms. Staple founded an organization in her dorm room to collect old reading glasses in the United States and ship them to poor countries. That group, Unite for Sight, has ballooned, and last year it provided eye care to 200,000 people (www.uniteforsight.org).

In the ’60s, perhaps the most remarkable Americans were the civil rights workers and antiwar protesters who started movements that transformed the country. In the 1980s, the most fascinating people were entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who started companies and ended up revolutionizing the way we use technology.

Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways. Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry. If that sounds insanely ambitious, it is. John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan title their new book on social entrepreneurs “The Power of Unreasonable People.”

Universities are now offering classes in social entrepreneurship, and there are a growing number of role models. Wendy Kopp turned her thesis at Princeton into Teach for America and has had far more impact on schools than the average secretary of education.

One of the social entrepreneurs here is Soraya Salti, a 37-year-old Jordanian woman who is trying to transform the Arab world by teaching entrepreneurship in schools. Her organization, Injaz, is now training 100,000 Arab students each year to find a market niche, construct a business plan and then launch and nurture a business.

The program (www.injaz.org.jo) has spread to 12 Arab countries and is aiming to teach one million students a year. Ms. Salti argues that entrepreneurs can stimulate the economy, give young people a purpose and revitalize the Arab world. Girls in particular have flourished in the program, which has had excellent reviews and is getting support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. My hunch is that Ms. Salti will contribute more to stability and peace in the Middle East than any number of tanks in Iraq, U.N. resolutions or summit meetings.

“If you can capture the youth and change the way they think, then you can change the future,” she said.

Another young person on a mission is Ariel Zylbersztejn, a 27-year-old Mexican who founded and runs a company called Cinepop, which projects movies onto inflatable screens and shows them free in public parks. Mr. Zylbersztejn realized that 90 percent of Mexicans can’t afford to go to movies, so he started his own business model: He sells sponsorships to companies to advertise to the thousands of viewers who come to watch the free entertainment.

Mr. Zylbersztejn works with microcredit agencies and social welfare groups to engage the families that come to his movies and help them start businesses or try other strategies to overcome poverty. Cinepop is only three years old, but already 250,000 people a year watch movies on his screens — and his goal is to take the model to Brazil, India, China and other countries.

So as we follow the presidential campaign, let’s not forget that the winner isn’t the only one who will shape the world. Only one person can become president of the United States, but there’s no limit to the number of social entrepreneurs who can make this planet a better place.

You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

NOW That's WHAT I'm Talking About!

Lights, camera, action ... Michigan

In our Opinion / Editorial

Detroit Free Press

January 22, 2008

Having recently enjoyed dinner together, perhaps Gov. Jennifer Granholm, state House Speaker Andy Dillon and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop could next take in a movie.

And take in the possibility, too, of rolling out a deep red carpet to bring more of the movie industry to Michigan. If Lansing's leadership is looking for an issue to wrap themselves bipartisanly around in the early going of this year, a hefty tax break to lure filmmakers could be it.

While it's not the kind of heavy industry that made Michigan so prosperous and proud in the past, the film/video business is a growing field that uses cutting-edge technology and appeals to the bright, young "creative class" folks who are leaving Michigan for lack of opportunities. Beyond writers, performers and directors, moviemaking also employs technicians, builders, logistics and numbers people, and food service and hospitality providers.

It's a $60-billion-a-year business in the United States that is expanding with the number of outlets to show movies -- cable stations are hungry for original programming -- and the new means of delivering video information. It's not just about commercial feature films anymore, either, but also advertising, music videos, games, instructional DVDs and television shows. That DVD that came with the elliptical trainer you got for Christmas had to be made somewhere.

Michigan will never displace sunny southern California as the heart of the movie industry, but recent trends show that moviemakers will work anywhere if there's a tax payoff. That's why a number of recent movies set in Detroit ("Four Brothers," "Assault on Precinct 13," for example) were largely shot in Ontario.

Canada has enjoyed great success with a tax-break strategy; provinces are now competing with each other to offer the best deals. States have begun queuing up with tax plans and proposals, too. Put another way, Michigan is already late to this game.

However, language is being drafted for legislation that could set the tax rebate for filmmakers as high as 35%-40%, the best deal in the country. A state Senate committee is scheduled to consider the possibilities at a hearing this afternoon in Lansing, although a bill is not yet ready.

This seems like the proverbial no-brainer.

It brings new business and jobs into Michigan, even if only for as long as the filmmaking lasts, so whatever revenue the state gets is new money; 60% of something is better than 100% of nothing. There's no double-standard against other employers, since Michigan has a long history of offering tax breaks to coveted businesses or using tax incentives for the expansion of existing companies.

Successful commercial movies put a place on the map. Couples who see "Somewhere in Time" are still drawn to romantic weekends on Mackinac Island, where the movie was made in 1979. Michigan offers just about every kind of location, four seasons and, unfortunately, has a huge inventory of big, empty buildings that could be converted to sound stages. Not much happening inside the Wixom plant these days.

Movie companies can now get a 12%-20% state tax write-off on their costs in Michigan. Janet Lockwood, director of the Michigan Film Office, said "Michigan has to go big" in whatever tax plan is offered to compete with other states, such as New Mexico and Connecticut, which are aggressively grabbing larger shares of the movie business.

With bipartisan interest, the state House had a hearing on the tax-break idea last fall. and Lansing's Gongwer News Service reported Monday that Gov. Jennifer Granholm might have something to say about it in her State of the State speech next week.

Seems like the stage is set. Action!

PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:33 am Post subject: Lights Camera, Action!
_____

Could be a "Detroit Ticket" to ride. Creative Class and Content "Catalyst!" Sign-on for more at http://www.dwiff.blogspot.com

Best,

Jim Ross
_________________
Jim Ross
21st Century Digital Learning Environments
41810 Huntington Ct.
Clinton Township, MI 48038
586-228-0608


Albom, Binder say incentives can make state site for films

January 23, 2008

BY DAWSON BELL

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Michigan would become a preferred site for the film industry almost overnight if state government provided bigger financial incentives and other help to the people who make movies, according to testimony Tuesday from Free Press columnist and author Mitch Albom and Michigan native and filmmaker Mike Binder.

"This is a booming, growing business," Albom said, and "there is a simple way for us to get into it. Incentives will do it."

Albom, whose work has been adapted into several made-for-TV movies, and Binder, whose credits include "The Upside of Anger," urged the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee to act quickly on legislation to increase the tax breaks for movie and TV production from 20% to 40%.

They also urged the committee to create tax incentives for people who return to Michigan to work in the industry and beef up the state's Film Commission. Doing those things could spur a major industry and job creator within just a few years, Albom said.

Binder said the state needs to send a signal that its labor unions would welcome filmmakers.

Both said productions they are working on could be shot in Michigan as soon as this year if the incentives were put in place quickly.

Lawmakers attending the hearing signaled they were willing to move quickly.

State Sen. Hansen Clarke, D-Detroit, said his city was a perfect location for producers interested in "gritty urban reality." He also expressed hope that its appearance in film would make the city a more attractive place to live and work for young people.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm also supports increased incentives for TV and movie production, spokeswoman Liz Boyd said.

But details remain sketchy, and the actual legislation to enact the changes still is being drafted.

Contact DAWSON BELL at 313-222-6604 or dbell@freepress.com.



PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:25 am Post subject: Movie Industry and the Creative Class
_____

Politcally correct while generating CREATIVE vehicles for "capital formation" and addtitional revenue-generating activities.

These are also the kind of Creative Class assets that KEEP and ATTRACT 21st Century talent in and to our state.

Bring it On!

See more: http://www.dwiff.blogspot.com
_________________
Jim Ross
21st Century Digital Learning Environments
41810 Huntington Ct.
Clinton Township, MI 48038
586-228-0608

ALERT: Position Practicum!

Students 2.0


21st Century Education: Thinking Creatively

Posted: 22 Jan 2008 01:15 AM CST

This was originally written for publication for my school’s newsletter’s edition on “21st century learning”. I present it to you here not as an attempt to present any new ideas, but in the hope that it might help to pull together many of the ideas that are floating around in online education discussions. Those familiar with Dan Pink might see some of his influence here. Enjoy.

Twenty-first century education won’t be defined by any new technology. It won’t be defined by 1:1 laptop programs or tech-intensive projects.

Twenty-first century education will, however, be defined by a fundamental shift in what we are teaching—a shift towards learner-centered education and creating creative thinkers.

Today’s world is no longer content with students who can simply apply the knowledge they learned in school: our generation will be asked to think and operate in ways that traditional education has not, and can not, prepare us for.

Education has long tried to produce students who can think (and at times, think critically) and it has, for the most part, succeeded. As we move into a world where outsourcing, automation, and the ability to produce a product, physical or intellectual, at the cheapest cost, become the cornerstones of our rapidly evolving global economy, the ability to think critically is no longer enough.

The need to know the capital of Florida died when my phone learned the answer.

Rather, the students of tomorrow need to be able to think creatively: they will need to learn on their own, adapt to new challenges and innovate on-the-fly. As the realm of intellectual accessibility expands at amazing rates (due to greater global collaboration and access to information), students of tomorrow will need to be their own guides as they explore the body of information that is at their fingertips.

My generation will be required to learn information quickly, use that information to solve new and novel problems, and then present those solutions in creative and effective ways. The effective students of tomorrow’s world will be independent learners, strong problem solvers and effective designers.

If we accept the above to be true, I would argue that there are two types of education that will prepare students for the world of tomorrow: experiential learning and project-based learning.

Physics Lab

Experiential learning can be best seen in extracurriculars and in some schools, senior projects. These experiences give students the opportunity to face first-hand the challenges that arise when applying the theoretical knowledge provided by traditional classroom learning to real-world challenges. Light designing for MICDS Theatre has taught me how to take my technical knowledge of lighting and apply it to a creative and artistic end. As issues arise, I must problem-solve within the constraints provided by my technical knowledge and my creative vision—I must think creatively.

Project-based learning is the in-class complement of experiential learning. The concept behind project-based learning is simple: give students the basic tools, then ask them to go above and beyond on their own projects, exploring the information in their own way, and on their own terms. The effect can be awe-inspiring. Our students are diving deeper into subject matter than ever before, and doing so on their own terms in ways that they enjoy. Whether it is through producing a movie on burlesque dance or deriving Kepler’s laws using calculus, students are not only learning, but they are learning how to learn.

Traditional-rote learning has its place too, as a jumping-off point for our intellectual endeavors.

We are, however, crippling our students if we don’t give them the tools necessary to be life-long learners.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

THE FUTURE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES!

The Future of the Future: Boundary-less living, working and learning

By Art Murray - Posted Dec 28, 2007

Competing in a billion-mind economy means totally rethinking how you live, work and learn. That applies to you as an individual as well as to the organizations to which you belong. In the enterprise of the future, living, working and learning environments are converging in an unprecedented way.

Where we’ve been

In the last century, those environments were intentionally kept apart. Family issues were left at home and almost never discussed at work, at least not outside the lunchroom. The work environment was designed in linear, assembly-line fashion. You worked your way up the ladder. You watched your vesting and your leave balances accumulate, just like frequent-flyer miles. Not much changed as we moved from the industrial age to the information age. The same factory production mentality was applied to software, healthcare, legislation, litigation and just about anything that could be boxed and packaged into a system.

Learning took place in a classroom, sitting in desks that made an economy class window seat on today’s airlines look like the back of a stretch limo. You would read Chapter 1 the first week and answer the odd-numbered questions. Then on to Chapter 2. At the end of week 3, you would have a unit test on the first three chapters, and so on. Everything was arranged in sequence. You took biology one year, chemistry the next and then physics, because that’s how they were arranged, in alphabetical order. When you completed enough courses, you graduated.

Where we are

Fast-forward to the knowledge age. More of your work takes place at home. More of your learning takes place at work. For those who still commute, family life is becoming more closely integrated with work life. That shows up in benefits ranging from on-site dependent care, to health and wellness programs, to counseling services, to scholarships for employees and their dependents.

Universities are helping to change the office into a learning environment, by offering evening classes in the same conference room as the morning staff meeting. Or on the same desktop, laptop or PDA as your virtual staff meeting. There is growing demand for courses on learning how to learn, dealing with novelty and creative problem solving.

Today’s knowledge workers have a boundary-less mindset. Bosses with an assembly line mentality will not get their phone calls returned. The growth of "e-lancing" and other trends show that work is migrating to the worker, rather than vice versa. And knowledge workers are much more discriminating about what they do, and for whom they do it.

You can live, work and learn virtually anywhere: at the office, coffee shop, airport lounge or beach house. For me, it’s my car. The same goes for my friend Chris, who drives a Pontiac Vibe. His front passenger seat folds down into a table, and a 110-volt electrical outlet is built into the dashboard.

The bottom line: Organizations can no longer focus strictly on working, while ignoring living and learning. Neither can you, as a knowledge professional. The enterprise of the future must bring all three of those areas into balance.

Living means loving what you do and finding fulfillment in it. Working means doing what you love, in a way that is both challenging and rewarding. Learning means continually making new discoveries and putting those discoveries to work, both personally and professionally.

In essence, you and your organization, and your extended network, are now co-dependent. Your ability to grow is limited if your organization and network aren’t growing. Likewise, if you aren’t growing, you are inhibiting the growth of the organizations to which you belong. Think brain trust, as opposed to assembly line.

Where we’re going

Meeting the intellectual and creative challenges of the 21st century demands using every ounce of creativity available. That means building and sustaining a creative environment for yourself, your employees and your family. As a knowledge worker, you need time to think. To innovate. To experience. To create. And you can’t do it in offices designed for a bygone era, loaded with stress, distractions and interruptions. The same goes for neighborhoods. That’s why environment is more important than ever, on all fronts.

Here’s a quick exercise. Start putting together a list of old, worn-out industrial-age baggage you can shed. Albatrosses that are dragging you down, holding you back, stressing you out. Draining not only your productivity, but your creativity as well. Hint: Look around for any junk food, both physical and mental.

Now ask yourself this question: Has the growth in your well being kept pace with the growth in your paycheck? You will always need money, but maybe not as much as you thought. In a knowledge economy, there are many different forms of capital, including relationships, knowledge and your own personal brand. In the final analysis, it all boils down to this: What does your work-life balance sheet look like?

Based on the answers to those questions, look at how your living, working and learning environments need to change. Then start whittling away. Better yet, go ahead and put an axe to your cubicle (figuratively speaking, of course)!

After doing so, you may pick up your boarding pass to the enterprise of the future. Welcome to World 3.0.

The Creative Class in "HAMTOWN"

Jim Schmeir runs his company, 4th Street Productions, from his Eton Street Station work/live unit in Birmingham. (top) Colin Hubbell is the owner of 55 Canfield Lofts, a work/live development in the Midtown district of Detroit. (bottom)

Can the CommuteMetro Detroiters discover the joys of a commute-free lifestyles

On a bustling Monday night, Shannon Lowell is the barista at Café 1923 in Hamtramck, MI, serving hot, frothing drinks to the mayor, a couple of journalists, off duty sausage factory workers and a bar owner. Between orders he runs upstairs to check on his grandmother who resides there, then comes down to serve sandwiches to a small group meeting in the back room.

Lowell, 38, co-owner of a lively café situated in a former, turn-of-the 20th-century butcher shop that was restored with loving perfection last spring, revels in an Old World community where most of his patrons live within walking distance and own shops below their residences or just around the block.

With seven years of sweat equity into his rehab project, Lowell percolates a dream that is replicating itself in new construction in Southeast Michigan and around the nation — a close-knit aggregate of dwellings and businesses where entrepreneurs rule with familiarity.

The line between living and working is blurring all over town.

The notion of cottage industries wired by the latest communication devices and situated close to urban centers has unlimited possibilities for attracting and retaining knowledge workers, according to Lou Musante, a Pittsburgh-based consultant to Richard Florida, author of the "Rise of the Creative Class." Shopkeepers such as Lowell are eager to share the wealth.

"My neighbors grab a chair, catch me up on what's happening in the neighborhood. If they don't have money they write it down, pay later. No sweat," Lowell said. "We cherish the building. The business is a wonderful bonus."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics cites 4.1 million home-based businesses, and millions of people who work part-time from home. Developers quote this target for new and rehabbed condos, lofts and studios with flex zoning and ample parking for visitors.

X-OLOGY magazine found four fresh projects offering a home and a shingle to innovative entrepreneurs. There's an industrial producer and lawyer starting fresh in Birmingham, a 19-year-old retailer in Walled Lake, a movement afoot in Hamtramck and a visionary developer in the Midtown district of Detroit.

Happy in Hamtown

A happy chatter of friends, techno music and coffee making fills Caf�eacute; 1923. Erik Turngate, director of community and economic development (www.hamtramck.us), opens his laptop to show pictures of the Vet Park Lofts, the first live/work project for Hamtramck.

On Joseph Campau, the busiest strip in Hamtramck, developer Chris Bray converted a former Disabled American Veterans post to four units priced between $185,000 and $189,000. The units, which overlook Veterans Park, feature 16-foot-high ceilings, plate glass windows, spiral staircases, full basements and rear courtyards.

"You are down the hall and around the corner from urban pioneers." —Colin Hubbell, owner of 55 Canfield Lofts

Hamtramck expects to develop a wellspring of new live/work units to complement the thriving shops and affordable residences in the 2.1-acre town with new immigrants from as many as 30 nations sharing space with artisans, thespians, entrepreneurs and workers from the nearby American Axle & Manufacturing and Kowalski Sausage plants.

"Living here is much like a cultural immersion," says Mayor Karen Majewski, who is fond of saying hello in 15 languages. "Almost everything is within walking distance. People stop, take time for their neighbors."

Wishful in Walled Lake

Fresh out of West Bloomfield High School in 2006, Heather Kral, 19, bought a live/work condominium in Walled Lake for her jewelry store and residence. She is the youngest entrepreneur along a row of hair, nail, antique and art shops close to a picturesque downtown.

"My grandmother thought this would be a good investment. I'm surrounded by interesting shopkeepers who help refer business to one another," says Kral, who augments her income by coaching cheerleading at West Bloomfield High.

The stylish Legato Live/Work units, sold by Geof Greeneisen, vice president of the Terra Land Group in Novi (www.terralandgroup.com), include small-scale developments in Walled Lake, Ferndale and Howell. The company expects to build more than 300 units around the region. The price ranges from $159,900 for a third-story loft unit to $209,000 for a live/work with street offices.

Kral runs Sparkling Elegance, retailing artisan jewelry, scarves, purses and accessories in the 300-square-foot space. She can lounge in a kitchen with granite counters, and enjoy a two-bedroom, two-bath unit with zero commuting time. A two-car garage behind the unit serves as storage for off-season merchandise and parking for residents.

"It takes the right location, the right city for everything to fall into place as flexibly as we would like to see," Greeneisen says. The beauty of the live/work is flex zoning, whereby living and working are in harmony. People can choose to use the space as entirely residential or commercial or some combination.

Greeneisen's vision is even bigger. "We see this as a catalyst for infill communities, something to revitalize existing retail," he says.

Shannon Lowell runs his restaurant, Café 1923, beneath his grandmother's residence in Hamtramck.

Based in Birmingham

Clients love Jeff Schmeir's efficient, 500-square-foot office on the first floor of his live/work townhouse in Eton Street Station (www.crosswinds.com) inside the emerging Railroad district of Birmingham.

The get-down-to-business office affords Schmeir plenty of space to run his industrial production business, 4th Street Productions. If time allows, he invites clients upstairs for coffee and a terrace view of the 55 artisan lofts and work units built in trend-setting Eton Street Station.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics cites 4.1 million home-based businesses, and millions of people who work part-time from home.

Schmeir and his wife, Ilana, bought a 3,600-square-foot unit with four floors after he closed his production office and sold their house in 2004. An average unit runs $539,000 for commercial frontage, two-car garage and three residential floors. He is proud to say he lost 25 pounds running up and down the 56 stairs between floors.

If Schmeir is worried about a bustling complex with 24-7 traffic and neon, Crosswinds Communities, a Novi, MI-based condominium and home builder, assured him and other property owners they work closely with the city of Birmingham and the condo association to fit zoning to the new lifestyles.

Jim Agemy, vice president of Crosswinds Communities, says the number of parking places, business hours and noise volume are strictly regulated. "The biggest noise we hear is trains," Schmeir says. As the economy rebounds, he hopes to see more businesses and condo owners locate there. "Some of us are planting community gardens in our free time."

Migrating to Midtown

The line between living and working is blurring all over town, according to Colin Hubbell, owner of 55 Canfield Lofts in the bustling Midtown district of Detroit (www.hubbellgroupdetroit.com). Hubbell sold nine of his 29 units while completing construction.

Prospective tenants can produce work inside their units, conduct meetings in Avalon Bakery's new café, slated for the first floor, and accommodate vans and customers in a large, gated garage.

Fresh out of West Bloomfield High School in 2006, Heather Kral bought a live/work condominium in Walled Lake for her jewelry store and residence.

"You can accomplish more with today's technology regardless of what city you're in," he adds. The new Bureau of Urban Living sells office supplies and clever products across the street. Tenants can take a break and walk to Wayne State University, 30 restaurants and the Detroit Institute of Arts in the epicenter of cool Detroit.

The 700- to 1,500-square-foot loft condos are priced between $140,000 and $210,000. Carved out of an 80-year-old warehouse with giant cement pillars, brick walls and floor-to-ceiling windows, they offer an arresting view for live/work options.

"You are down the hall and around the corner from urban pioneers," Hubbell says, noting he is on a mission to build hip housing in the cultural district of Detroit.

The Good Ole ONE, TWO Punch! CREATIVITY and PROCESS Mind Mapping




Thursday, January 3, 2008

There is Art in Nature, too!

BIOMIMETICS
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard” the proverb advises, and scientists today are increasingly searching out interesting animals and plants to gain design insights that will help them create novel materials and compounds. This new field of biomimetics has several facets to it. Some workers mimic natural methods of manufacture of chemical compounds to create new ones (a waterproof glue has been developed by studying the natural adhesive produced by molluscs; current research is trying to create a pollution-free water-based paint by mimicking the way insects’ wings grow and dry). Others imitate mechanisms found in nature (Velcro is said to have been created as a copy of the hooks in natural burrs; new strong but light materials have come from studying the structure of bone). Yet others learn new principles from, say, the flocking behaviour of birds, or the emergent behaviour of bees and ants. The aim is to study the natural processes as a starting point, gain insights and then improve on their performance, which is often slow or susceptible to extremes of temperature.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Go Figure!

The New York Times

December 30, 2007
Bright Ideas

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike

IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.

Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.” In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself.

This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.

Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.

Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent.

The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?

That’s a common reaction when experts set out to share their ideas in the business world, too, says Chip Heath, who with his brother, Dan, was a co-author of the 2007 book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” It’s why engineers design products ultimately useful only to other engineers. It’s why managers have trouble convincing the rank and file to adopt new processes. And it’s why the advertising world struggles to convey commercial messages to consumers.

“I HAVE a DVD remote control with 52 buttons on it, and every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too,” Mr. Heath says. “People who design products are experts cursed by their knowledge, and they can’t imagine what it’s like to be as ignorant as the rest of us.”

But there are proven ways to exorcise the curse.

In their book, the Heath brothers outline six “hooks” that they say are guaranteed to communicate a new idea clearly by transforming it into what they call a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story. Each of the letters in the resulting acronym, Succes, refers to a different hook. (“S,” for example, suggests simplifying the message.) Although the hooks of “Made to Stick” focus on the art of communication, there are ways to fashion them around fostering innovation.

To innovate, Mr. Heath says, you have to bring together people with a variety of skills. If those people can’t communicate clearly with one another, innovation gets bogged down in the abstract language of specialization and expertise. “It’s kind of like the ugly American tourist trying to get across an idea in another country by speaking English slowly and more loudly,” he says. “You’ve got to find the common connections.”

In her 2006 book, “Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine — and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It,” Cynthia Barton Rabe proposes bringing in outsiders whom she calls zero-gravity thinkers to keep creativity and innovation on track.

When experts have to slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, she says, “it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems.”

She cites as an example the work of a colleague at Ralston Purina who moved to Eveready in the mid-1980s when Ralston bought that company. At the time, Eveready had become a household name because of its sales since the 1950s of inexpensive red plastic and metal flashlights. But by the mid-1980s, the flashlight business, which had been aimed solely at men shopping at hardware stores, was foundering.

While Ms. Rabe’s colleague had no experience with flashlights, she did have plenty of experience in consumer packaging and marketing from her years at Ralston Purina. She proceeded to revamp the flashlight product line to include colors like pink, baby blue and light green — colors that would appeal to women — and began distributing them through grocery store chains.

“It was not incredibly popular as a decision amongst the old guard at Eveready,” Ms. Rabe says. But after the changes, she says, “the flashlight business took off and was wildly successful for many years after that.”

MS. RABE herself experienced similar problems while working as a transient “zero-gravity thinker” at Intel.

“I would ask my very, very basic questions,” she said, noting that it frustrated some of the people who didn’t know her. Once they got past that point, however, “it always turned out that we could come up with some terrific ideas,” she said.

While Ms. Rabe usually worked inside the companies she discussed in her book, she said outside consultants could also serve the zero-gravity role, but only if their expertise was not identical to that of the group already working on the project.

“Look for people with renaissance-thinker tendencies, who’ve done work in a related area but not in your specific field,” she says. “Make it possible for someone who doesn’t report directly to that area to come in and say the emperor has no clothes.”

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

The DIGITAL GENIE is OUT of the BOTTLE!



Friends and Colleagues:

Please visit the blog-site Students 2.0 http://students2oh.org/ and witness the beginning of something extraordinary......the World of Education as WE knew it will never quite be the same. AND this is a GREAT THING!

Friday, December 21, 2007

SHOCKING!



Future School: Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up

Alvin Toffler tells us what's wrong -- and right -- with public education.

published 1/24/2007

Forty years after he and his wife Heidi set the world alight with Future Shock, Alvin Toffler remains a tough assessor of our nation's social and technological prospects. Though he's best known for his work discussing the myriad ramifications of the digital revolution, he also loves to speak about the education system that is shaping the hearts and minds of America's future. We met with him near his office in Los Angeles, where the celebrated septuagenarian remains a clear and radical thinker.

alvin toffler
Credit: Getty Images

You've been writing about our educational system for decades. What's the most pressing need in public education right now?

Shut down the public education system.

That's pretty radical.

I'm roughly quoting [Microsoft chairman] Bill Gates, who said, "We don't need to reform the system; we need to replace the system."

Why not just readjust what we have in place now? Do we really need to start from the ground up?

We should be thinking from the ground up. That's different from changing everything. However, we first have to understand how we got the education system that we now have. Teachers are wonderful, and there are hundreds of thousands of them who are creative and terrific, but they are operating in a system that is completely out of time. It is a system designed to produce industrial workers.

Let's look back at the history of public education in the United States. You have to go back a little over a century. For many years, there was a debate about whether we should even have public education. Some parents wanted kids to go to school and get an education; others said, "We can't afford that. We need them to work. They have to work in the field, because otherwise we starve." There was a big debate. Late in the 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, business leaders began complaining about all these rural kids who were pouring into the cities and going to work in our factories. Business leaders said that these kids were no good, and that what they needed was an educational system that would produce "industrial discipline."

What is industrial discipline?

Well, first of all, you've got to show up on time. Out in the fields, on the farms, if you go out with your family to pick a crop, and you come ten minutes late, your uncle covers for you and it's no big deal. But if you're on an assembly line and you're late, you mess up the work of 10,000 people down the line. Very expensive. So punctuality suddenly becomes important.

You don't want to be tardy.

Yes. In school, bells ring and you mustn't be tardy. And you march from class to class when the bells ring again. And many people take a yellow bus to school. What is the yellow bus? A preparation for commuting. And you do rote and repetitive work as you would do on an assembly line.

alvin toffler

Alvin Toffler appears on a television monitor as he testifies before a Congressional Economic Committee in June on Capitol Hill. This is the first time that interactive video and teleconferencing technology has been used during congressional hearings.

Credit: Getty Images

How does that system fit into a world where assembly lines have gone away?

It doesn't. The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we're stealing the kids' future.

Do I have all the answers for how to replace it? No. But it seems to me that before we can get serious about creating an appropriate education system for the world that's coming and that these kids will have to operate within, we have to ask some really fundamental questions. And some of these questions are scary. For example: Should education be compulsory? And, if so, for who? Why does everybody have to start at age five? Maybe some kids should start at age eight and work fast. Or vice versa. Why is everything massified in the system, rather than individualized in the system? New technologies make possible customization in a way that the old system -- everybody reading the same textbook at the same time -- did not offer.

You're talking about customizing the educational experience.

Exactly. Any form of diversity that we can introduce into the schools is a plus. Today, we have a big controversy about all the charter schools that are springing up. The school system people hate them because they're taking money from them. I say we should radically multiply charter schools, because they begin to provide a degree of diversity in the system that has not been present. Diversify the system.

In our book Revolutionary Wealth, we play a game. We say, imagine that you're a policeman, and you've got a radar gun, and you're measuring the speed of cars going by. Each car represents an American institution. The first one car is going by at 100 miles per hour. It's called business. Businesses have to change at 100 miles per hour because if they don't, they die. Competition just puts them out of the game. So they're traveling very, very fast. Then comes another car. And it's going 10 miles per hour. That's the public education system. Schools are supposed to be preparing kids for the business world of tomorrow, to take jobs, to make our economy functional. The schools are changing, if anything, at 10 miles per hour. So, how do you match an economy that requires 100 miles per hour with an institution like public education? A system that changes, if at all, at 10 miles per hour?

It's a tough juxtaposition. So, what to do? Suppose you were made head of the U.S. Department of Education. What would be the first items on your agenda?

The first thing I'd say: "I want to hear something I haven't heard before." I just hear the same ideas over and over and over again. I meet teachers who are good and well intentioned and smart, but they can't try new things, because there are too many rules. They tell me that "the bureaucratic rules make it impossible for me to do what you're suggesting." So, how do we bust up that? It is easy to develop the world's best technologies compared with how hard it is to bust up a big bureaucracy like the public education system with the enormous numbers of jobs dependent on it and industries that feed it.

Here's a complaint you often hear: We spend a lot of money on education, so why isn't all that money having a better result?

It's because we're doing the same thing over and over again. We're holding 40 or 50 million kids prisoner for x hours a week. And the teacher is given a set of rules as to what you're going to say to the students, how you're going to treat them, what you want the output to be, and let no child be left behind. But there's a very narrow set of outcomes. I think you have to open the system to new ideas.

When I was a student, I went through all the same rote repetitive stuff that kids go through today. And I did lousy in any number of things. The only thing I ever did any good in was English. It's what I love. You need to find out what each student loves. If you want kids to really learn, they've got to love something. For example, kids may love sports. If I were putting together a school, I might create a course, or a group of courses, on sports. But that would include the business of sports, the culture of sports, the history of sports -- and once you get into the history of sports, you then get into history more broadly.

alvin toffler

Scene Setter:

Portrait of the young man as an artist, circa 1970.
Credit: Getty Images

Integrate the curricula.

Yeah -- the culture, the technology, all these things.

Like real life.

Like real life, yes! And, like in real life, there is an enormous, enormous bank of knowledge in the community that we can tap into. So, why shouldn't a kid who's interested in mechanical things or engines or technology meet people from the community who do that kind of stuff, and who are excited about what they are doing and where it's going? But at the rate of change, the actual skills that we teach, or that they learn by themselves, about how to use this gizmo or that gizmo, that's going to be obsolete -- who knows? -- in five years or in five minutes.

So, that's another thing: Much of what we're transmitting is doomed to obsolescence at a far more rapid rate than ever before. And that knowledge becomes what we call obsoledge: obsolete knowledge. We have this enormous bank of obsolete knowledge in our heads, in our books, and in our culture. When change was slower, obsoledge didn't pile up as quickly. Now, because everything is in rapid change, the amount of obsolete knowledge that we have -- and that we teach -- is greater and greater and greater. We're drowning in obsolete information. We make big decisions -- personal decisions -- based on it, and public and political decisions based on it.

Is the idea of a textbook in the classroom obsolete?

I'm a wordsmith. I write books. I love books. So I don't want to be an accomplice to their death. But clearly, they're not enough. The textbooks are the same for every child; every child gets the same textbook. Why should that be? Why shouldn't some kids get a textbook -- and you can do this online a lot more easily than you can in print -- why shouldn't a kid who's interested in one particular thing, whether it's painting or drama, or this or that, get a different version of the textbook than the kid sitting in the next seat, who is interested in engineering?

Let's have a little exercise. Walk me through this school you'd create. What do the classrooms look like? What are the class sizes? What are the hours?

It's open twenty-four hours a day. Different kids arrive at different times. They don't all come at the same time, like an army. They don't just ring the bells at the same time. They're different kids. They have different potentials. Now, in practice, we're not going to be able to get down to the micro level with all of this, I grant you, but in fact, I would be running a twenty-four-hour school, I would have nonteachers working with teachers in that school, I would have the kids coming and going at different times that make sense for them.

The schools of today are essentially custodial: They're taking care of kids in work hours that are essentially nine to five -- when the whole society was assumed to work. Clearly, that's changing in our society. So should the timing. We're individualizing time; we're personalizing time. We're not having everyone arrive at the same time, leave at the same time. Why should kids arrive at the same time and leave at the same time?

And when do kids begin their formalized education?

Maybe some start at two or three, and some start at seven or eight -- I don't know. Every kid is different.

What else?

I think that schools have to be completely integrated into the community, to take advantage of the skills in the community. So, there ought to be business offices in the school, from various kinds of business in the community.

The name of your publication is Edutopia, and utopia is three-quarters of that title. I'm giving a utopian picture, perhaps. I don't know how to solve all those problems and how to make that happen. But what it all boils down to is, get the current system out of your head.

How does the role of the teacher change?

I think (and this is not going to sit very well with the union) that maybe teaching shouldn't be a lifetime career. Maybe it's important for teachers to quit for three or four years and go do something else and come back. They'll come back with better ideas. They'll come back with ideas about how the outside world works, in ways that would not have been available to them if they were in the classroom the whole time. So, let's sit down as a culture, as a society, and say, "Teachers, parents, people outside, how do we completely rethink this? We're going to create a new system from ground zero, and what new ideas have you got?" And collect those new ideas. That would be a very healthy thing for the country to do.

You're advocating for fundamental radical changes. Are you an optimist when it comes to public education?

I just feel it's inevitable that there will have to be change. The only question is whether we're going to do it starting now, or whether we're going to wait for catastrophe.


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