RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms - An Idea Igniter

Jean Grosser, chair of the Coker College Art Department, shared the above video with faculty in an email. This video is a thought starter on the entire concept of education and I hope some of us use it as a thought starter to the way we might even redefine classroom learning. There will be nothing easy about it.

I am finding a real convergence of ideas in having this video cross my communication environment this morning. First, I am in the middle of the new biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson and Jobs is a concrete example of a person who took control of his own education. Was Jobs really that much more "special" than a lot of other children in our world? Next, I was reading a statement of teaching philosophy from my daughter, Dr. Eve Puffer and a couple of her comments are directly related to some of the ideas spawned by the above video. Third, I am thinking of days students in my classes become particularly engaged and days when nearly all seem to be somewhere else. What can I do differently to make the first days far more common in their lives?

One of the great things about being in a campus atmosphere is the opportunity for thinking about thinking and thinking about how we think and how we learn and how we can become better at both thinking and learning.