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"Reason and Purpose Learning by Doing Designed to support the digital lives of young people and their capacity for learning, Quest to Learn is a school committed to graduating strong, engaged, literate citizens of a globally networked world. Through an innovative pedagogy that immerses students in differentiated, challenge-based contexts, the school acknowledges design, collaboration, and systems thinking as key literacies of the 21st century. Within an integrated, rigorous Regents-based curriculum students work with teachers to gain the skills necessary to meet these requirements, and even surpass them. On-going evaluation and feedback create opportunities for students to plan, revise, and reflect on their own learning. The overall curriculum is rooted in mathematical practices and the use of smart tools, with an explicit intent to innovate at the level of how students are assessed in context. Most importantly, teachers work with students to build individual and academic competencies and enrich youth identity development within contexts that are relevant and meaningful. The school has been designed to help students to bridge old and new literacies through learning about the world as a set of interconnected systems. Design and complex problem-solving are two big ideas of the school, as is a commitment to deep content learning with a strong focus on learning in rigorous, engaging, and relevant ways. It is a place where digital media meets books and students learn to think like designers, inventors, mathematicians, writers, and more. Q2L brings together teachers with a passion for content, a vision for helping kids to learn best, and a commitment to changing the way students will grow in the world. Quest to Learn has purposely responded not only to the growing evidence that digital media and games offer powerful models for reconsidering how and where young people learn, but also to the belief that access for all students to these opportunities is critical. We beli

Following the links ifrom ted's post in the gamification forum item... I bounced on this school. Always interesting to discover new ways of looking at traditional things...

"My name is Venkatesh Rao (I go by 'Venkat') and I started writing the ribbonfarm blog in 2007. Since March, 2011, it has been my base for full-time writing, independent research, consulting and other random activities. I am also the author of a book on the interplay of timing and decision-making, Tempo and write an email newsletter called Be Slightly Evil. Between 1997 and 2011, I pursued a traditional research/entrepreneurial career (a PhD, a postdoc, a startup, and an industrial R&D lab where among other things, I founded trailmeme.com as Entrenrepeur-in-Residence). Ribbonfarm is a blog about looking at things from unusual perspectives (that's the "refactored perception" bit). The topics range from philosophy, art and sociology to business, innovation and technology. Unlike blogs that serve as content marketing channels for other products and services, Ribbonfarm is the main act here, and I try to organize the rest of my life and work around it.

I am looking for more people like this , looking at things from unusual perspectives (that's the "refactored perception" bit). The topics range from philosophy, art and sociology to business, innovation and technology. If you can indicate them to me, please do...

"Mark Surman introduces "Democratizing Learning Innovation"" Mark is interviewed here by Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of Smart Mobs. In this video, he says we've reached a historical moment where learning can be liberated from its industrial, factory-model roots.

Example of innovation in technology and biology

YOUmedia is an innovative, 21st century teen learning space housed at the Chicago Public Library's downtown Harold Washington Library Center. YOUmedia was created to connect young adults, books, media, mentors, and institutions throughout the city of Chicago in one dynamic space designed to inspire collaboration and creativity. High school age teens engaging with YOUmedia can access thousands of books, over 100 laptop and desktop computers, and a variety of media creation tools and software, all of which allow them to stretch their imaginations and their digital media skills. By working both in teams and individually, teens have an opportunity to engage in projects that promote critical thinking, creativity, and skill-building.

About Us Shareable is a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of sharing. We cover the people, places, and projects bringing a shareable world to life. And we share how-tos so you can make a shareable world real in your life. In a shareable world, things like car sharing, clothing swaps, childcare coops, potlucks, and cohousing make life more fun, green, and affordable. When we share, not only is a better life possible, but so is a better world. The remarkable successes of Zipcar, Wikipedia, Kiva, open source software, Freecycle, and Creative Commons show this. They tell a hopeful story about human nature and our future, one we don't hear enough in the mainstream media. They show what's possible when we share. They show that we don't act merely for our own good, but go out of our way to contribute to the common good. They show that we can solve the social and environmental crises we face, and thrive as never before. They show that a new world is emerging where the more you share the more respect you get, and where life works because everyone is motivated to help each other. We tell this story because a shareable world might be just what's needed to enjoy life to the fullest today while creating a better tomorrow. And it's being built by people from all walks of life right now. Shareable is your invitation to join these innovators today. Want to start sharing? Check out our top 20 how-to share posts and our complete index of how-to share posts. Want to get involved in Shareable? You can contribute stories, feedback, and money. You can follow us on Twitter Facebook, and Identi.ca and share our stories with friends. You can register and join discussions about your favorite posts. You can subscribe to our e-mail list. We have more ideas for getting involved here. Want to know more about sharing? For the big picture on sharing, check out the following features: "Four Degrees of Sharing," by Janelle Orsi; "Ten Ways our World is Becoming More Share

"Jonathan Zittrain, chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute argues that with the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation - and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control."

A speech about The future of Internet by Prof. Jonathan Zittrain see my blog http://ow.ly/5asW2

IThis article, written at the end of her life, presents the Historical Origins of The theory of Socio-cultural Viability by Mary Douglas, who is to be seen as the inspirator of the theory, and to have established the foundational ideas who have been further developped by her students, and later further developped and applied by many scholars across a wide range of disciplines. The first paragraph will hopefully provide some incentive to dig further: Introduction: What is Grid and Group Cultural Theory? How Useful can it be in the Modern World? It is a pleasure for me to reflect on the history of Grid-Group. I first described the idea in Natural Symbols ( Douglas 1970), a kind of necessary sequel to Purity and Danger (1966). I now realise that it was a simple idea presented in a complicated way. After a late start it has been radically redesigned by creative collaborators whose work I will describe. Back in the 1960's social anthropologists still felt it was necessary to vindicate the intelligence of colonial peoples, then known as "natives" or "primitives." A major objective of teaching and writing in anthropology was to attack something described by Levy Bruhl as "primitive mentality," which seemed to mean "primitive irrationality." Malinowski had started in the 1920's showing that the Trobrianders had rational customs and laws. In the 1930's Raymond Firth was original in focusing on the "primitive economics" of the Polynesians and found that the basic laws of supply, demand, and price applied in the rustic economies he studied. Evans-Pritchard made a frontal defence of Azande rationality. After World War II, Nadel and Gluckman followed up with the complexities of Nubian and Barotse legal systems. The very idea that the concept of "jurisprudence" could apply to "the natives" was innovative. In the 1950's and 60's we continued to dismantle intellectual barriers assumed to distinguish "Them" from "Us." The following ex

I believe this to be a helpfull introduction to the study od the Theory od Socio-cultural viability, which, it seems to me, is a usefull framework to look from a new angle to cooperation theory, institutional decision making, democracy and many other fields of social sciences

"Some kids learn by listening; others learn by doing. Geoff Mulgan gives a short introduction to the Studio School, a new kind of school in the UK where small teams of kids learn by working on projects that are, as Mulgan puts it, "for real." TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Category: People & Blogs Tags: TED TEDTalks TEDGlobal Geoff Mulgan Creativity Culture Design Education Work learning learn Studio School projects active learning participatory License: Standard YouTube License 223 likes, 4 dislikes Top Comments 1) 0:15 (to skip intro) 2) I'm sending this to my all my professors and even my old high school teachers too! More people need to hear about this idea! It may not be perfect now, but with more minds working together, it can be fine-tuned into something to suite ALL students (not just those in Media and Arts). Thanks TED! jerrylittlemars 14 hours ago 28 @merkowaty1 additional: just about ANYTHING is going to be more fun than traditional school as we have them today. ion010101 13 hours ago 6 see all All Comments (58) Reactions (2) Respond to this video... we do indeed learn by doing yet we are watchin

This is a really great initiative, worth watching. Sometimes I feel a bit unsettled, so much things happening in every corner of society at large... accelerating at such a fast pace... Whare, When, will this lead us towards... What can I do?

"The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, is a greatly influential book on the subject of urban planning in the 20th century. First published in 1961, the book is a critique of modernist planning policies claimed by Jacobs to be destroying many existing inner-city communities. Reserving her most vitriolic criticism for the "rationalist" planners (specifically Robert Moses) of the 1950s and 1960s, Jacobs argued that modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. The modernist planners used deductive reasoning to find principles by which to plan cities. Among these policies the most violent was urban renewal; the most prevalent was and is the separation of uses (i.e. residential, industrial, commercial). These policies, she claimed, destroy communities and innovative economies by creating isolated, unnatural urban spaces. In their place Jacobs advocated for "four generators of diversity", writing on page 151, "The necessity for these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make. In combination, these conditions create effective economic pools of use." Mixed uses. Short blocks. Buildings of various ages & states of repair. Density. Her aesthetic can be considered opposite to that of the modernists, upholding redundancy and vibrancy, against order and efficiency. She frequently cites New York City's Greenwich Village as an example of a vibrant urban community. The Village, like many similar communities, may well have been preserved, at least in part, by her writing and activism. The book also played a major role in the urban development of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where Jacobs was involved in the campaign to stop the Spadina Expressway.[1] The book continues to be Jacobs' most influential, and is still widely read by both planning professionals and the general public. Urban theorist Lewis Mumford, while f

The first time ever I understood how to share a diigo bookmank to a Group Hi Ha!!!

[JOSEPH HENRICH:] The main questions I've been asking myself over the last couple years are broadly about how culture drove human evolution. Think back to when humans first got the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution-and by this I mean the ability for ideas to accumulate over generations, to get an increasingly complex tool starting from something simple. One generation adds a few things to it, the next generation adds a few more things, and the next generation, until it's so complex that no one in the first generation could have invented it.

"We believe technology is transforming K-12 education. The infrastructure, hardware, software, and platforms are either available or being developed that will change the nature of how we teach our children in profound and far-reaching ways. A high-tech wave is beginning to sweep through the educational world largely driven by technology entrepreneurship. But the impact of those entrepreneurs will depend on the quality of their ideas, their ability to execute, and their ability to get funded. Imagine K12 is a for-profit enterprise looking to invest time, experience, energy and resources in entrepreneurs who have a passion for education and the technical know-how to create their vision."