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This is a PBS documentary on Steve Jobs that I watched yesterday. Very interesting! There are segments in which the engaging features of Apple products are mentioned.

"Every young person will continue to need basic knowledge, of course," he said. "But they will need skills and motivation even more. Of these three education goals, motivation is the most critical. Young people who are intrinsically motivated - curious, persistent, and willing to take risks - will learn new knowledge and skills continuously. They will be able to find new opportunities or create their own - a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear."

Rather interesting (and humorous) blog post on the "rockstar" motivation to create Apps. According to the author, "Back then peoples heroes were the likes of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant or Bob Dylan. Today it's Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or Reid Hoffman. An entirely different breed." Maybe he's right?

I think vocational schools give students the means for making time spent in school relevant and useful to them. They pursue an interest and see it connected to a relevant future. In the current age where interdisciplinary work is the norm, jobs are mutable, and careers are evolutionary, vocational education is no longer preparing students for a job or career; just their first one.

I completely agree! I have a good friend who dropped out of high school, earned his GED the same week, and went on to a technical vocational school to study IT/systems management. Turned out that once he got to the vocational school, he became the top student in most of his classes, and well-known for staying after class to engage instructors in intellectual debate. I find it disappointing that our society tends to devalue vocational schools; it seems to me that we should instead be focusing on what fits each student best.

This game does a great job of incorporating the social aspect of gaming. In addition, Sokikom uses classroom management techniques to reward postive behavior through "class cash." It would be interesting to look at what behaviors are actually transferred into the classroom.

I met this woman this morning and her story made me think of a project based curriculum design. She created her own major in college around issues of equity in communities around the world. She combined that with an interest in ecological sustainability and she proceeded into a career with the question: How are all of these things related and how can we approach social issues with systemic interventions? Her work in New Bedford is as promising as initiatives like Geoffrey Canada's.

Interesting article, some good points about managing class and using tech well, some curious points about eliminating jobs-

Seth Godin is giving away a book online, encouraging it to be spread among teachers and getting hundreds of thousands of readers. He usually writes about marketing and the spread of ideas, but he takes on education in this series of blog-post-provocative-conversation-starting writing. He states, "School was invented to create a constant stream of compliant factory workers to the growing businesses of the 1900s. It continues to do an excellent job at achieving this goal, but it's not a goal we need to achieve any longer."

This article applies what we've learned about self-efficacy, interest, and engagement to literacy: "What makes a child an engaged reader?"

Thanks for sharing this, Stephanie. Part of my job is to select books for a reading & writing academy in Seoul, and after reading this article I realized that affective elements of reading play a significant role in my book selections.

Hi Stephanie - The author is listed as working for Reading is Fundamental, which is an organization I now follow for my work on the T545 class project. Part of their agenda is to "prepare and motivate children to read by delivering free books and literacy resources to those children and families who need them most." They focus on reaching underserved children from birth to age 8. I am hoping my website project addresses some of the issues raised in this article. Thanks.

A brief interview with L. Rafael Reif, MIT's provost, and Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory about MITx, a new/developing online certificate program. Interesting how much they can not anticipate how/what this will impact (re: education, jobs, higher ed market).

After dinner, when Tom Beasley is ready to take a break from his day job in the Yale classics department, he busts out the comic books. But it's all in the name of education, with a digital twist. Beasley, a seventh-year graduate student, is writing his dissertation on Thucydides, chronicler of the Peloponnesian War. In his evening project, he turns from history to the mythology of the Trojan War - in particular, the comic book series Age of Bronze, written and illustrated by Eric Shanower. Beasley's task: produce a reader's guide to the richly detailed, 31-part (so far) comic series in preparation for its release as an iPad app, intended for classroom use. The digital version, called Age of Bronze "Seen," launches on October 15 and includes maps, genealogy charts, and other interactive features.

Thanks for sharing this, Chris. It's both interesting and relevant to my project for this course. A comment at the bottom suggested that really the companies need to change their unrealistic minimum criteria for job candidates. I've heard that argument before, and sometimes I do wonder when I see complaints from companies looking only for people with 5+ years of STEM work experience railing on the state of STEM education. What do you think?

Thanks for sharing Chris! I can totally relate to this. I remember having to sit through those "weed out" intro biology and chemistry courses in undergrad. They were the antithesis of motivating but I pushed through because I knew without them I couldn't do the "cool science" I wanted to. I remember at the time thinking these courses were weeding out people who were entertaining the idea of a STEM career but just didn't want to put up with the cut throat nature of these courses. It seemed to me the classes were more concerned about weeding out people than by providing an environment that really fostered learning.

This conversation and the reporting her have more depth.