Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society
I found a great paper by Mitch Resnick at MIT that sums up a lot of what interests me in using technology to reach out and empower students. It's called, "Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society - New technologies help students navigate the creative thinking spiral" and I think it's definitely worth the read. PDF is here. I can't agree strongly enough with one of the closing statements, excerpted here in case you're not interested in reading the whole thing:
"Today’s students are growing up in a world that is very different from the world of their parents and grandparents. To succeed in today’s Creative Society, students must learn to think creatively, plan systematically, analyze critically, work collaboratively, communicate clearly, design iteratively, and learn continuously. Unfortunately, most uses of technologies in schools today do not support these 21st century learning skills. In many cases, new technologies are simply reinforcing old ways of teaching and learning." -- Mitchel Resnick, "Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society"
Case in point... computer labs that simply support typing and learning Microsoft Word... those are highly underutilized resources and highly under delivered value to the students. Mitch also has an excellent talk and presentation posted here on the same subject:
