 |
| A nanosuit, as worn by a soldier from Crytek’s video game Crysis. Image located at crysis.wikia.com. |
(1) Blogging. Not long before designing his presentation to the Board of Trustees, Tim worked with his tutor to create a blog "Exploring Current Events" via Blogger.com (@Blogger).
This profile serves a dual purpose. It allows him, on one hand, to
continue to develop his writing skills and to practice strategies such
as audience awareness, digital literacy, research, and proofreading. On
the other hand, this blog also encourages him to extend his IP work to
the Internet and share his thoughts with a larger community. Tim has
reflected upon topics ranging from the limitations of dyslexia
empowerment, Steve Jobs and his approach to business, Greece's request for $300 billion of Germany, and Elon Musk (@elonmusk)'s challenge to utility companies with his "Powerwall." Please be sure to check out Tim's blog, as he is likely to continue this profile when school resumes in September.
(2) Hard Drive Deconstruction.
During the final month of school, Tim began to dissect a hard drive in
order to understand its mechanics. He felt particularly interested in
how an actuator reads the disk in addition to how a hard drive's retrieval system compares to that of a floppy disk. Tim and the IP
faculty enjoyed various conversations on the defragging process and viruses. Ultimately, Tim proved relentless in analyzing the machine.
He even used his accidents as learning experiences, such as when - after
cracking one of the magnets in the hard drive - he began to study neodymium.
(3) Networking.
Early in May, IP received a visitor in the person of Evan Donovan, a
Kildonan alumnus ('13) who created a personal IP-esque structure before
the program even existed. While visiting, he and the IP faculty
happened to begin speaking about 3D printers. His college possesses two
of the devices, he explained, and he uses them in order to print out
the body and parts for drones. He went on to to say more, and before he
made much headway, we called in Tim to participate. The two students
lost track of the IP faculty and held a heady conversation concerning
rotor databases and drone designs. Ultimately, Evan recommended that
Tim purchase a $75-$120 practice drone of the hobby variety; such a
device, he assured the latter, could help him learn the basics of flight
without the cost of a top-notch machine. He also offered that he and
Tim get together over the summer in order to troubleshoot the latter's
drone work. Tim readily agreed. This evolving partnership bodes well
for Tim's work next year (drone specific or otherwise).
(4) Quantum Physics and Fusion.
Tim gave the IP faculty a pleasant surprise when he approached them one
day with the request to explore quantum physics. He assured us that
this branch of his studies would constitute only one week's worth of
study, but fortunately, he has immersed himself in this discipline to a
depth much greater than he originally expected. During Founders' Day,
for instance, he replicated the "Double-Slit Experiment" (not unlike Khaled)
and went on to speak towards theories he was researching. He felt
particularly inspired by quantum computing and quantum entanglement theory
for their ability to revolutionize computer effectiveness. This interest aligned nicely with the in-roads that he
forged into Lockheed Martin Skunk Works (@LockheedMartin), a company that is attempting to
build a prototype that harnesses the power of fusion for commercial and
defense ventures (see the video below). You know, questions and curiosity like Maddie's are magnets that draw us towards our teachers, and they transcend all technology or buzzwords in education. But if we place these technologies before student inquiry, we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest tool as teachers: our students' questions. For example, flipping a boring lecture from the classroom to the screen of a mobile device might save instructional time, but if it is the focus of our students' experience, it's the same dehumanizing chatter just wrapped up in fancy clothing. But if instead we have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions, through those questions, we as teachers have information that we can use to tailor robust and informed methods of blended instruction.What did you think of Musallam's presentation? Please post in the comments section below.
Due to last week's unconventional structure, the IP team was
privileged to meet with new (albeit temporary) iPeople from grades 8 to
12. One of the students who graced our building was sophomore Clancy. Currently engaged in the Personal Project, Clancy approached the IP
team with an interest in the ethics of technology and nanotechnology (@Nanotechnology, #nanotechnology). Throughout the week, he proved himself an expert on the subjects and an ideal candidate for IP.Now, to be able to treat cancer requires the addition of nanoparticles to the patient. And this is the future. ... These particles are emitting light, so they tell us back - in the surgical table and research - exactly where they are going. They're not binding to anything because they only will bind to diseased tissue. ... Again, because it's not radiation, it's not chemotherapy, there won't be any collateral damage. We can target these particles precisely to where they are supposed to go in the body.What do you think? Do you have a comment for Clancy? If so, please post in the comments section below.
...So they travel through the vasculature, and now we're outside of the vasculature just watching an animation of nanoparticles. As they come in contact with the tumors, they light up the tumors. Scientists have now figured out how to not only attach the nanoparticles but to get the drugs to travel completely through the tumor (which is really important). And once these nanoparticles attach to the tumor, they release their payload. Their payload, again, which includes therapeutics. It includes toxins that will kill the cancer, but they won't touch the other tissue.
Ever the game aficionado, Marcus has been exploring innovative
elements of gaming. He is currently developing a biometric experiment
that he hopes to commence in the near future. He has also begun to
explore cutting edge gaming devices. Of those that he has researched,
no competitor currently bests the Oculus Rift (@oculus_rift).
Senior Consultant and the Director of Digital Facilitation Services for The Grove Consultants Internationa in San Francisco," Rachel Smith
is a visual facilitator, has led her own graphic design company, and
continues to explore the intersection of education and technology
(passages taken from the description of Smith's TEDx Talk).
As such, she proposes that visual note-taking - a record system
consisting of pictures in addition to words - is an important learning
tool...not for dyslexic students but for all children. Smith elaborates upon her thoughts in a talk given at TEDxUFM (@TEDxUFM) called "Drawing in class":Visual note-taking opens the door for more playful connections between information, for students to use their imaginations in an activity that can often be very passive (note-taking). It also helps students to create a personal visual memory aid that they can study from later, that they can look at and [use to] tell themselves the story again. When a teacher is teaching, what they're doing, really, is telling a story about something they're passionate about. And when a student takes visual notes, what they're doing is making that story visible.What do you think? Do you employ visual note-taking? Please post in the comments section below.
We're going to go over three simple steps that will get you set on this road, get you started. And the first one is to choose a tool that works for you. The second one is to start building up that mental library of images (that I talked about). And the third one is to really practice listening and capturing the key points.
When you've done visual notes, the way that you tell if you did it right is if you can look at your notes and tell back the story that you heard from that speaker. Then you did it right. There's all there is to it. There's no more than that. Can you look at it and recall the story?
Ever
the savvy technology expert, Tim continues to research drones and
game design. He has begun to complement these explorations, too, by
considering the ethics of technology. This discipline concerns itself
with the ethical (or moral) considerations of implementing technology in
our modern age.
CEO and one of the founders of Epic Group PLC, Donald Clark (@DonaldClarke63) is committed to the idea that #technology does - and must - play a role in education (passages taken from Clark's bio).
Having spent "30 years experience in online learning, games,
simulations, social media and mobile learning projects," Clark had this
to say about technology in education during a 2012 @TEDxGlasgow event:The real scalability in education comes with the Internet because it gives us a world of digital replication for free. A world of digital abundance where some aspects of learning content are available for anyone, anywhere, at any time. It absolutely frees us from the tyranny of time and location. ... And that's the trick: freeing education from a place, from a specific time.What do you think? How can we use social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube educationally? Please post in the comments below.
Now if - as is clearly the case - the Internet and #socialmedia can lead young people to change the tyrannical and corrupt governments, can we really say that social media will have no role in education? How do you think those kids in Tahrir Square (@3alTahrir) learned to avoid tear gas by using Pepsi Cola (@pepsi)? How do you think those revolutions arose first through blogging, then through Facebook, then through Twitter, then through YouTube, and the ubiquity of mobile devices? We'd be fools to ignore the pedagogic lessons that are right in front of our eyes, politically and in terms of education.
We have to start thinking differently about what school is. There's a great quote that I read by a guy by the name of Justin Reich (the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow, based in the Office of the President and Provost at Harvard University: @bjfr) who's a teacher at Harvard. And he said, 'You know, the problem right now is that we're paying so much attention to the measurable part of learning that we risk neglecting the immeasurable part of learning." And it's that immeasurable part that - right now, in a world where we have access to so much stuff - it's that immeasurable stuff, that hard-to-measure stuff that's much more important. It's that creativity, that gritty problem-solving, that persevering disposition that we have toward learning. All that stuff that's really hard to measure? That's the stuff that our children need right now.For a post discussing Richardson at TEDxNYED (2011), please click here.
So what's happening here? I think what we need to look at is ... learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It's not about making learning happen. It's about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens. I think that's what all this is pointing at.
There is a lot of buzz going around about Reuben Paul, an 8-year-old who at such a young age is already very knowledgeable about information security.
Last month, Reuben delivered a talk at DerbyCon on what kids can teach adults about infosec. He has since given the opening keynote speech at this year’s (ISC)2 Security Congress and the closing keynote address at the 2014 Houston Security Conference.
If that weren’t enough, KEYE CBS News in Austin produced a cover story featuring Reuben and Prudent Games, a company that designs and develops educational apps and games to teach math, science and cybersecurity, for which Reuben serves as CEO.
