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"the success of journalism's future can only be assured to the extent that each and every person in this room helps generate the excitement, the passion, and the creativity to make it so."

John Seely Brown: "Even when children are high achievers and facile with new technology, many seem gradually to lose their sense of wonder and curiosity, notes John Seely Brown. Traditional educational methods may be smothering their innate drive to explore the world. Brown and like-minded colleagues are developing the underpinnings for a new 21st century pedagogy that broadens rather than narrows horizons. John Seely Brown, former chief scientist at Xerox, has morphed in recent years into the "Chief of Confusion," seeking "the right questions" in a range of fields, including education. He finds unusual sources for his questions: basketball and opera coaches, surfing and video game champions. He's gathered insights from unorthodox venues, and from more traditional classrooms, to paint quite a different picture of what learning might look like. The typical college lecture class frequently gathers many students together in a large room to be 'fed' knowledge, believes Brown. But studies show that "learning itself is socially constructed," and is most effective when students interact with and teach each other in manageable groups. Brown wants to open up "niche learning experiences" that draw on classic course material, but deepen it to be maximally enriching. In basketball and opera master classes, and in architecture labs, he has seen how individuals become acculturated in a "community of practice," learning to "be" rather than simply to "do." Whether performing, creating, or experimenting, students are critiqued, respond, offer their own criticism, and glean rich wisdom from a cyclical group experience. Brown says something "mysterious" may be taking place: "In deeply collective engagement in processes...you start to marinate in a problem space." Through communities of practice, students' minds "begin to gel up," even in the face of abstraction and unfamiliarity, and "all of a sudden, (the subject) starts to make se

Future of News Summit

Seven Things That Could Make Your Gadgets Obsolete: (1) HDMI 1.4 - new standard for moving media from source to display will include 3DTV & ethernet for transfer of data up to 100 Mb/sec (2) USB 3.0 - new USB format at up to 400 Mb / sec is ten times faster than USB 2.0 (3) 3DTV - you'll need glasses - to appear latter half of 2010 (4) DLNA - Digital Living Network - around since 2004 is now getting integrated into lots of digital appliances. Get ready for the promised "connected house" (5) Mobile ATSC - to allow us to get t.v. broadcast signal to mobile devices (6) Ambient Light Sensors and other eco-friendly tv features (7) Internet-enable TV sets