From the minute a child is taught to play
a musical instrument, he's no longer poor. He
becomes a child in-progress heading for a
professional level, who will later become a
full citizen.
- José Antonio Abreu (2009) accepting the TED
Prize for his brilliant work in creating
the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra system
benefitting
hundreds of thousands of the poorest children
across his nation,
| Amazing Summer Learning for Creative Educators! |
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|
Join Macarthur Genius Deborah Meier;
legendary educator and author of 40 books
Herbert Kohl; digital imaging and photography
expert Lesa Snider King;
author/animator/illustrator Peter Reynolds;
Dr. Gary Stager and a stellar
faculty at the Constructing
Modern Knowledge.
Constructing
Modern Knowledge provides a rich learning
environment in which educators have the time,
resources and inspiration to learn via the
creation of personally meaningful technology
projects while interacting with some of the
wisest educators of our time.
Social
events
include an institute dinner and reception at
the legendary FableVision Studios before a
big night out in Boston. A preconference
science and history tour of Boston is
available for a nominal fee on July 12th.
Constructing
Modern Knowledge respects the budgets of
schools and educators by keeping registration
costs affordable and by offering team
discounts. The institute is appropriate for
all K-12 educators, administrators and
teacher educators.
Learn more about Constructing
Modern Knowledge, the professional
learning event of the year at constructingmodernknowledge.com
Early-bird registration ends May 1st. CEUs
are also available.
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| Constructivist Celebration Comes to Seattle - May 16th! |
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The first ever NCCE
Constructivist Celebration is an
opportunity for you to let
your creativity run free with the world's
best open-ended software tools in a great
setting with enthusiastic colleagues who
share your commitment to children, computing,
creativity and constructivism. You might
think of this stimulating event as a spa day
for your mind and soul!
The day will be kicked off with an
inspirational keynote, "Creativity, Community
and Computing," followed by five hours of
creativity on your own laptop using software
provided by consortium members.
The Constructivist
Celebration is an
incredibly affordable event for you and your
colleagues. $55 gets you free software from
Inspiration, FableVision, Tech4learning and
LCSI, a great lunch and the day's activities.
The Constructivist Celebration is a
partnership between the Constructivist
Consortium, NCCE and the Washington State
Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
This workshop and the hands-on activities are
appropriate for PK-12 teachers, technology
coordinators and teacher educators. Members
of the Constructivist Consortium (including
Melinda Kolk, Dennis Harper and Gary Stager)
will lead creative activities and serve as
guides throughout the day.
|
| On Newstands Near You |
|
 Last June, a fine young magazine called GOOD contacted me. They said that they appreciated
my writing and would like to work with me.
Little did I know that they meant work then! I was about to leave for NECC,
lead the Constructivist
Celebration, plan Constructing
Modern Knowledge and take my son on a
4-day tour of historical civil rights sites
in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Memphis and
Little Rock. I stayed in my hotel room at
NECC writing and ended up dealing with
fact-checkers via iPhone from the parsonage
where the King family lived in Montgomery.
However, the resulting article was well worth
the effort and sacrifice. The GOOD team was incredibly professional and the art
direction the article received was insane (in
a good way).
Then, they made my article the cover story
of the September/October 2008 issue. It was
amazing to have a a major feature article
published in a magazine that my parents could
actually buy! If you have not yet encountered GOOD,
I recommend it. They give 100% of their
subscription money to charity too.
I also continue to write for the Huffington
Post. I hope to make a small impact on
the state of
educational reporting and introduce critical
education
issues to the Huffington Post's impressive
readership.
You may subscribe to my Huffington Post
articles and read new my recent work,
including some harsh critiques of President
Obama's disappointing education policies here.
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| "New" Whitepaper |
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Back in 1996, I presented a couple of public
lectures in Melbourne, Australia. Portions of
those seminars were published in a monograph
entitled, Computing
and the Internet in Schools: An International
Perspective on Developments and
Directions.
It seems to me that after fifteen
years of 'Computer Literacy' nobody seems to
be really 'literate', and very few
can 'compute'. Since I am among friends, dare
I whisper the awful secret that we have not
really achieved very much?
I no longer have a digital copy of that
document and spent years trying to figure out
a good way to get it online since it was
printed in blue ink (making it difficult to
scan) and even if I did scan it, the OCR
would be terrible. After wasting time and
money buying a series of crappy sheet-fed
scanners, I finally bit the bullet and bought
a Fujitsu
ScanSnap S510M Instant PDF Sheet-Fed
Scanner (Mac
model) (PC)
This scanner rocks! It's reliable, fast at
more than 30 pages per minute BOTH SIDES and
automatically knows if one side is blank or
if the document is upside down or sideways.
It's the best investment I've made in ages.
The OCR even works! Now, I'm able to archive
all sorts of gems from the past. I'll share
some via my blogs in the future.
In any event, I cut up a copy of the
monograph, inserted it into the new
scanner and now I can share it with the
world in a searchable PDF format.
Remember that co-operation begins
at home. If you have classrooms in rows,
where the children never talk to each other,
then it is highly unlikely that you are going
to succeed with any collaborative projects in
cyberspace.
Was I prescient in the predictions made about
the future more than twelve years ago - long
before anyone was blogging or talking about
2.0 anything?
To my mind, the notion that we
are going to use the greatest communication
vehicle ever, to deliver lesson plans, is not
a useful one. In a worst case scenario, if
implemented, such an approach could be a way
of controlling what teachers do and what
children learn.
(NCLB
anyone? BrainPop? 'Interactive Whiteboards'
with content delivered by the vendor?)
Read it and you decide. I'd love to hear what
you think!
(quotes from 1996 document by Gary S. Stager,
Ph.D.)
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| "Ancient" Papert Paper Unearthed |
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|
In 1970, my friend, colleague and mentor
Dr. Seymour Papert wrote a seminal paper on
children, computers and learning. The
groundbreaking work, Teaching
Children Thinking, was published in
1971. Until recently, I had not read this
lost gem. With a bit of help from Cynthia
Solomon, Marvin Minsky and the Interwebs
machine I am able to share this important
article with you.
"The phrase, "technology and
education" usually means inventing new
gadgets to teach the same old stuff in a
thinly disguised version of the same old way.
Moreover, if the gadgets are computers, the
same old teaching becomes incredibly more
expensive and biased towards its dumbest
parts, namely the kind of rote learning in
which measurable results can be obtained by
treating the children like pigeons in a
skinner box." (Papert 1971)
By the way, Dr. Nicholas Negroponte talks
of the importance of this early Papert paper
in this recently
published TED Talk.
History buffs should also watch
Negroponte's TED
Talk from 1984 to see how well his
predictions for the future fared. That's the
year the Macintosh was released.
|
| My Blog is Under Renovation |
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|
I haven't been contributing much to my
personal blog lately. "Stager-to-Go" got
hosed by Blogger and Google refuses to
fix the documented bug. This makes it
impossible for me to host and upload to my
Blogger site. I guess you get what you pay
for.
So, I have been relocating and rebuilding
my blog in my spare time (and as time
permits). For those who just can't live
without their regular dose of Stager, point
your browser to my new WordPress blog at http://stager.tv/blog.
Once there, you may subscribe to the blog as
well.
However, remember that the new blog is IN BETA and not all
of the clever features work yet. So, please
be kind. All of the content is fine. Some of
the menus and such may not yet be
operational.
Over time I also hope that the new blog will include articles I wrote for the now
(regrettably) deceased site, The Pulse:
Education's Place for Debate, but that
content is in an even bigger heap of busted
HTML.
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| To Qatar and Back |
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|
In 1990 I led professional development in the
world's first two "laptop schools."
Back then I got to work in schools for weeks
and months at a time. My brief was to do
anything I thought would improve the quality
of the institution. It's been a while since
I've had the chance to do such a variety of work
in one school.
Last November, I had the privilege of
spending a week working at the Qatar
Academy in Doha's Education City. I was
invited by Flat
Classroom pioneer and edublogger
extraordinaire, Julie
Lindsay, to help her school prepare for
going "1:1" next September. My work
began a fews hour after my long flight to the
Middle East and didn't end until a few hours
before I left.
I taught distinct computer-rich demo
lessons in a English, math and science
classes. I taught two long classes of
elementary school students in which they used
data analysis to solve an open-ended problem
and another in which they programmed their
own video games. The classes used the Web,
collaborative tools, InspireData, MicroWorlds
EX and StarLogo
TNG. My goal was to create a sufficient
number of different models of computer use to
give the faculty possibilities to consider
after I left.
I also participated in discussions with
each department of the school, including P.E.
and preschool, plus met with senior
administrators and members of ICTQatar. I
gave a public keynote and a presentation for
primary school parents attended by an
adorable class of incredibly well-behaved
first graders. In my "spare time" I
led two hands-on teacher workshops and met
with Julie's 21st Century Learning Group. My
meeting with the school's student tech team
was equally rewarding.
The week was exhausting, but exhilerating.
I met some fabulous educators and enjoyed
their hospitality. Best of all, I was
thrilled to have the opportunity to flex all
of my muscles. I loved working for one school
where I could discuss Reggio Emilia, visual
art, emergent behavior, computer science,
music composition, network policies, school
reform and so much more. The Qatar Academy
was receptive and embraced learning with both
hands. I had the time of my life!
Julie Lindsay wrote a quite generous blog
post reflecting on my work in her school.
It's worth a read.
If you don't quite believe that I was
worked like a rented camel, take a look at my
schedule!
In March, I was invited back to Qatar to
speak at a conference on the future of
education and ICT in the relatively new
nation.
|
| New Education Essays by Dr. Marvin Minsky |
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|
Dr. Marvin Minsky, one of the world's most important scientists, great thinkers and master tinkerers, has begun writing a series of provocative essays about education for the One Laptop Per Child community on their wiki. This growing collection of essays make for great reading and may spark debate with your colleagues.
To date, the collection of essays
includes:
- What
Makes Mathematics Hard to Learn?
- Effects
Of Grade-Based Segregation
- Role
Models, Mentors, and Imprimers and
Thinking
- Questioning
"General" Education
- Education
and Psychology
It has been one of the great pleasures of
my life to have spent time with Dr. Minsky. I
was honored that he agreed to participate in Constructing
Modern Knowledge last summer. I hope
these essays inspire thought and even better,
action.
If you have not read Minsky's remarkable
books, The
Society of Mind or The
Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking,
Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of
the Human Mind, what are you waiting for?
(Both books are available for a song via
these links to Amazon.com)
|
| Where I'll Be |
|
|
Dr. Stager's upcoming schedule includes
the following speaking, teaching and
consulting engagements:
- April 23 - Montreal,
Canada Keynote speaker at day-long
seminar, The Best Education Ideas in the
World, for Quebec's Inspector Generals.
- April 30 - Boca Raton,
FL Keynote speaker at National
Center for Education Research and Technology
Conference (superintendents)
- May 14-15 - Brooklyn,
NY Robotics and MicroWorlds workshop
leader for middle school student tech
leaders
- May 16 - Renton, WA Keynote speaker at the Constructivist
Celebration co-sponsored by NCCE and
OSPI
- June 28 - Washington,
D.C. Keynote speaker at the
Constructivist Consortium's third annual Constructivist
Celebration at NECC
- June 28 - July 1 Washington
D.C. Featured
Presenter at the National Educational
Computing Conference
- July 6-10 - Brooklyn,
NY Leader of science and technology
summer camp program for middle student tech
leaders
- July 8 - Princeton, NJ Keynote speaker at The
Principal's Center for Educational
Leadership
- July 12-16 Manchester,
NH Host/organizer of Constructing
Modern Knowledge
- July 27-31 Bento Gonçalves,
Brasil Presenting three new papers
at the World
Conference on Computers in Education
- August 17-20 Los Angeles,
CA Leading team of of experts in 1:1
computing professional development for
independent middle school
- Late August -
Australia Plan to speak and consult
across Australia Contact
Gary to schedule PD services.
- October 6-9 Christchurch, New
Zealand Keynote speaker at the Ulearn09
Conference
- Early October - New
Zealand Opportunities for
professional development and consulting. Contact
Gary to schedule PD services.
Learn how your school, company,
organization may work with Dr. Stager by downloading
this brochure or by clicking here.
|
| Random Interesting Stuff |
|
Follow
me on Twitter
Marketing and evangelism guru, Guy
Kawasaki, has published his best book since
the classic, Selling
the Dream. You might think of his new book, Reality
Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting,
Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your
Competition, as a manual for your life.
Kawasaki's book is full of practical advice for
navigating the information age world and
despite its title is not a get-rich-quick
tome. I've given copies to colleagues, grad
students and even a high school senior.
Highly recommended!
Read savage
reviews of Tom Friedman's journalism.
Vanity Fair recently published an article
entitled, Tom
Friedman's Five Worst Predictions.
John Taylor Gatto's new book, Weapons
of Mass Instruction A Schoolteacher's Journey
through the Dark World of Compulsory
Schooling, is a great read and at times
like being beaten over the head with an
interactive whiteboard.
The best
jazz CD in years
A high-def DVD
of Stevie Wonder's brilliant 2008 tour (I
saw it at the Hollywood Bowl)
Check out the pile
of books and assorted stuff sitting next
to my virtual bed.
A really cool First
Amdendment web site for educators and
students.
Jo Boaler's new book, What's
Math Got to Do with It?: Helping Children
Learn to Love Their Least Favorite
Subject--and Why It's Important for
America is terrific. Her provocative
article, Where
has All the Knowledge Gone?, does an
extremely good job of explaining how politics
has caused "research" to be
manipulated on behalf of certain pedagogical
theories at the expense of student learning. Read
the article quickly before EdWeek starts
charging for it!
Books by Constructing
Modern Knowledge guest speaker, Herbert
Kohl
Books by Constructing
Modern Knowledge guest speaker, Deborah
Meier
Constructing
Modern Knowledge Guest Speaker, Lesa
Snider King, is the author of PhotoShop
CS4; The Missing Manual.
The best
videogame for under $15 Big fun for the
whole family!
Professional-quality recording microphone
for your iPod
Small USB
webcam (Mac/PC) with terrific audio
Great
online collection of videos on learning and
technology
Books
and resources for creative educators
If you like the USB Snowball
Microphone, you'll love the smaller,
portable, less expensive Snowflake
Mic!
You really need to be familiar with the
extraordinary "El
Sistema" program using classical
music to improve the lives and communities of
hundreds of thousands of poor children across
Venezuela. Watch the El Sistema founder, José Abreu collect
the $100,000 TED
Prize and the performance by the magnificent The
Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra. conducted
by former "El Sistema" student, Gustavo
Dudamel (newly appointed conductor of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic).
Anyone interested in 1:1 computing in
education should take note of the resources
provided by the Anytime Anywhere
Learning Foundation
Charlie
Bartlett is a charming and chilling movie
about high school angst with Robert Downey
Jr.'s stellar
performance.
I've been moving all of my web and blog
hosting to 1and1.com with great success and I'm saving money too! Check
them out! Their tools are great, prices
affordable and it was easy to host my own
Wordpress sites.
|
| About the Critical Friend... |
|
|
The Critical Friend is an online
newsletter for 21st Century educators
published free-of-charge by Gary Stager.
It offers unique perspectives on important
educational issues, debunks hype and
confronts special interests all with a sense
of humor. This newsletter analyzes trends and
challenges the status quo.
Thoughtful educators, parents and
decision-makers may be inspired to rethink
their educational beliefs and practices. The Critical Friend will blow the
whistle on superficial education journalism
and attempts to put the latest "crisis du
jour" into perspective.
Pass this newsletter along to friends and
unsubscribe if you wish not to be bothered in
the future.
|
|
Wow! |
|
It's been about six months since I began
writing this issue of The Critical
Friend. There always seems to be more
exciting news, stories and resources to
share with you.
Since our last issue, life has been rich and
hectic. Last August, I accepted a full-time
position at Pepperdine
University. After fifteen years at
Pepperdine, I am now
Visiting Professor and teaching a variety of
courses at the Masters and doctoral
level. I just returned from accompanying
doctoral students on a tour of the MIT Media
Lab, MIT
Design Lab, Henry
Jenkins' New Media Literacies Group and FableVision
Studios.
Last June, a record 140 educators filled Casa
Rio Restaurant on the San Antonio Riverwalk
for the Constructivist
Celebration. Enjoying the
time to collaborate, share, create, laugh and
learn in addition to a lavish lunch of
Mexican food nourished each participant. I
kicked off
the day and Pete Reynolds brought it to a
close in the best talk I've seen him give in
the twenty years we've worked together.
In July I hosted the first ever Constructing
Modern Knowledge summer institute.
Educators
from as far away as Sudan and Israel spent
four action-packed days exploring the rich
and wondrous ways computers may enhance
learning. Their ample project development
time was interrupted occasionally by
interactions with Alfie Kohn, Bob Tinker, Peter
Reynolds and support from my magnificent
faculty,
including Cynthia
Solomon, Sylvia
Martinez, John Stetson and Melinda
Kolk.
What a treat it was when one of the world's
greatest scientists, thinkers and raconteurs, Dr.
Marvin Minsky spent 90 minutes chatting
with us on an extraordinary range of
subjects.
Since the summer of 2008 I have been involved
in leading a funded project with Generation
YES to improve middle school
science education via robotics, MicroWorlds programming and peer mentoring in Brooklyn,
NY schools. It has been great fun and
continues to evolve.
In late September I returned
to my "second
home," Australia, after too long an absence.
While there, I spoke at the Australian
Conference on Educational Computing in
Canberra. It was great catching-up with old
friends and colleagues. Best of all, I have
been invited to keynote the April 2010
ACEC in a city that I love, Melbourne.
One of the first keynotes I ever did was
the 1992 ACEC
conference in Melbourne. 2010 marks the
twentieth anniversary of my work in Australia
- a very special occasion.
My article, "School
Wars," was the cover
story in a fantastic young publication, GOOD
Magazine. The art direction for the article
is amazing, the editorial process was
rewarding and my parents could actually go to
a store and buy something I wrote.
Right-wing Washington D.C. think tanks
absolutely hated the article - a sign that I
did my job. I also continue to write for The Huffington
Post and am looking for other
editorial opportunities.
In November I spent a whirlwind week
working at the Qatar Academy, the PK-12
school within Qatar's enormous Education City
complex in Doha. I worked from sunrise to
sundown and had a blast. From the Middle
Eastern desert of Qatar, I flew to Rochester
to be the closing keynote again at NYSCATE's
annual conference (for my money the best
edtech conference in America). Other keynote
speakers were my pal David
Jakes, Don Knzezek
and Marc Prensky.
After attending the Inauguration of
President Obama and an inaugural ball, I had
the great
fortune of
speaking at Educon
2.1 in Philadelphia where
I met amazing people and participated in a
panel discussion on school reform that's the
stuff of legend. Prior to Educon, I organized
a one-day preconference event, Constructing
Modern Math/Science Knowledge. We had a great
turnout to work with some of my oldest
friends and heroes, including Carolyn Staudt, David
Thornburg, Ihor
Charischak and Brian
Silverman. I am so grateful to each of them
for their generosity and brilliant
contributions to a memorable day.
In early March it was back to Doha, Qatar to
speak at a conference about ICT in Education
sponsored by ICTQatar. I've also spoken
recently at the National Assocation of
Secondary School Principals national
conference, the ASCD annual conference and
at the NSBA annual
conference in San Diego.
The next few months are action-packed too.
There is the first ever Constructivist
Celebration in the Pacific Northwest on May
16th. I'm speaking to all of the Director
Generals
(superintendents) of Quebec and an NCERT superintendent's event. II am also a featured
speaker at NECC after leading the Constructivist
Celebration at NECC in Washington D.C. on
June 28th.
I will be presenting two new
papers at the 2009 World
Conference on Computers in Education in
Bento Gonçalves, Brazil this July. WCCE 2009
is the fifth consecutive WCCE I've presented
papers at since 1990! My team of innovative
educators will join me in helping a
prestigious Los Angeles school plan for its
1:1 computing launch during an intensive
four-day event this August.
I hope to be in Australia this
August after a host of summer work
commitments and have been invited to
keynote an
exciting conference in New Zealand
this coming October.
Best of all, Constructing
Modern Knowledge is July 13-16th in
Manchester, NH. It's
going to be amazing. Please come and if
you're not available, spread
the word to colleagues. I can't believe the
amazing stuff we have planned for this year's
institute! More information is found within
this newsletter and at constructingmodernknowledge.com.
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