Last month I was interviewed by NPR (that R no longer stands for radio) about the India’s purported plans for a “$35 laptop” for education.
I was able to get in a few whacks against the visionless plan. Read my interview here
It now appears that “mine’s bigger” has been replaced with “mine’s cheaper.” The Indian announcement, like many of the “responses” to One Laptop per Child, appears to be more about a referendum on Nicholas Negroponte than improving the lives of children.
Like Negroponte or not, the entire high-tech industry swore that low-cost laptops were impossible until a handful of MIT visionaries and their friends proved them wrong.
The current line of attack seems to be, “Well that jerk wants to change the world with a $100 laptop, we will make it even cheaper.”
Nicholas Negroponte of One Laptop Per Child posted similar views here.
Incidentally, I recently celebrated my 20th anniversary of working in schools around the world where every child has a personal laptop computer.
Dear Friends,
I could really use your help!
You know how passionate I am about making schools better places for children. That’s why I have submitted a proposal to speak at the 2011 South-by-Southwest Conference. This conference could afford me with a great platform for educating the creative community about the current political threats to public education, and more importantly offer a constructive, creative and uplifting message illustrating alternative approaches that build upon each child’s remarkable capacity for intensity.
That is why I submitted the proposal, The Best Educational Ideas in the World. (Find the session description below and on the voting site.)
In order for me to be invited to speak at South-by-Southwest, (SXSW), I need for you and your colleagues, friends, relatives and students to spend a few minutes voting for my session. I apologize for how clumsy the web site is. That’s why I’ve included the following step-by-step instructions below:
- Go to: http://bit.ly/cxq78J
- Follow the instructions for creating an account
- An email will be sent to you containing a link to click that will return you to the voting site
- Click the link in the email
- Login using the email address and password you just created
- Click on the Explore the Interactive Proposals » link (http://bit.ly/bk31Hl)
- Type Stager into the Organizer field
- Click the SEARCH PANELS button
- My session, The Best Educational Ideas in the World, should appear
- Click the icon of the THUMBS UP to vote for my session.
- If you wish, click on the title of the session, scroll to the bottom of the page and leave a message of support. Every bit helps!
I am really grateful to each and every one of you who takes the time to follow the steps outlined above and votes for my session. Reaching multiple and varied audiences is the most effective way I can influence public opinion and help kids.
Unfortunately, this IS a popularity contest. That’s why I need your assistance.
All the very best,
Gary
The Best Educational Ideas in the World
Contemporary discussions of school reform focus on the creation of obedience schools for poor children or utopian governance schemes, such as charter schools. Neither approach does much to amplify the natural curiosity, expertise, creativity, passion, competence or capacity for intensity found in each child. A leading educator serves as your tour guide for a global exploration of powerful ideas and exemplary practices. Stops on the tour include personal fabrication; Reggio Emilia; El Sistema; Generation YES; One Laptop Per Child; a juvenile prison; 826 Valencia and more.
The artificial boundaries between art and science are blurred as children engage in authentic activities with real materials, create sophisticated artifacts of personal and aesthetic value and become connected to ideas larger than themselves. Collegiality, purpose, apprenticeship, complexity, serendipity and “sharaeability” are a few of the common values. Each approach either requires digital technology or may be dramatically enhanced by it. Lessons learned en-route our tour create productive contexts for learning in which students construct the knowledge required for a rewarding life.
Alternative models of school reform in which we treat other people’s students as our own will emerge. The common principles identified in some of the world’s most creative educational practices serve as lessons for parents, teachers and policy-makers eager to help children realize their full potential.
Questions answered during the presentation:
1. How can we create learning environments that build upon children’s capacity for intensity?
2. Are there humane creative models of school reform based on principles of social justice where students do extraordinary things?
3. How are disparate ideas like El Sistema, Reggio Emilia, personal fabrication, alternative prison education and One Laptop Per Child similar and offer new models for education reform?
4. Is learning natural and are children competent? Why do so many adults think that the answer is, “no?”
5. How can early childhood approaches be applied at the secondary level and the arts inform approaches to science?
Well, it’s 2:11 AM and I’m here in Denver for a week of ISTE (or are we supposed to call it the ISTE Conference?) Believe it or not, I am one of the signatories to the original ISTE Charter from back in ‘ye olden days when “computer” was removed from the titles of organizations and magazines! I still can’t help, but think that changing NECC to ISTE is akin to New Coke.
That said, I look forward to catching-up with friends, leading the Constructivist Celebration and making two new presentations at the 23rd or 24th NECC/ISTE I’ve spoken at since 1987.
This year marks my 20th anniversary working in 1:1 environments since I led the first professional development at the world’s first two “laptop schools” and it’s my 28th year working with children, teachers and computers.
Here are the program links to the sessions I’ll be presenting at ISTE 2010
Creativity 2.0: The Quest for Meaning, Beauty, and Excellence CCC Four Seasons Ballroom 2/3
Gary Stager, Pepperdine University
Digital-Age Teaching & Learning : Project, Challenge, & Problem-Based Curricula
20 Lessons from 20 Years of 1-to-1 Teaching CCC 205/207
Gary Stager, Pepperdine University
School Improvement : One-to-One Initiatives
I’ve also been invited to yuck it up with my old (geologically old) friends on Tuesday at one of ISTE’s most popular sessions!
LOL @ ISTE: Bring Popcorn and an Open Mind CCC 505/506
Saul Rockman, Rockman Et Al Inc with Michael Jay, Heidi Rogers, Ferdi Serim, Gary Stager and Elliot Soloway
Professional Learning : Student, Teacher, and/or Administrator Leader Preparation
Plans are shaping up brilliantly for Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010. I wish every single educator on earth could spend four days with us building, creating, collaborating, messing-about and discussing matters of learning, teaching and school reform with some of the leading educational thinkers of our time. I’ve been speaking with Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn and James Loewen this week and can assure you that CMK 2010 will be historic!
One of the best pieces of news I received this week was that Chris Lehmann, Principal of Science Leadership Academy is coming to CMK as a participant. It takes a mighty great educational leader to dedicate four days to learning in public!
There are still spots available and time to register. Don’t miss out!
Now, it’s 2:50 AM!
I was a pretty crummy student. My math and science grades were below average. Junior and senior high school were excruciating experiences made tolerable by my love of computer programming and fantastic music teachers. *
By the time I got to college, I took Algebra every time I needed to satisfy a math requirement and understanding as little as during my previous attempts. School often made me feel stupid, yet I also realized at a very young age that school was a cosmic farce I would somehow overcome.
Against that backdrop it’s difficult to imagine that the first time I ever spoke at a conference was at MIT. The occasion was Logo ’85 - The International Logo Conference. (Back then, edtech conferences had no exhibit hall and were held at places like MIT)
When this twenty-two year-old halfway through my 7 ½ year undergraduate studies, exited a taxi on the MIT campus, a group of people greeted me with, “Come on. Join us for dinner!” One of my dinner companions was Dr. Cynthia Solomon, now an irreplaceable member of the Constructing Modern Knowledge faculty.
Cynthia Solomon is a giant in our field despite her lack of recognition and absence from the lists of important edtech folks. That’s a real shame, especially when women and minorities are so underrepresented in our field. I am honored to have known Cynthia for twenty-five years and am deeply indebted to her for her participation in Constructing Modern Knowledge for the third consecutive year.
Cynthia Solomon Teaching at CMK 2009
So, who is Cynthia Solomon. She’s a computer scientist, educator and the inventor of the Logo programming language for children. That’s right, Cynthia Solomon, Wally Feurzig and Seymour Papert are responsible for creating Logo back in 1968. For the next two decades, Cynthia was engaged in much of the foundational research on children constructing knowledge with computers.
Check out the paper, Twenty Things to Do with a Computer, that Cynthia and Seymour published in 1971. How does what your school does with computers thirty-nine years later measure up?
Long associated with the MIT Artificial Intelligence and Media Labs, Dr. Solomon went on to lead the Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory in the 1980s. Alan Kay led the Atari Lab on the West Coast. (Check out the amazing historic videos she has assembled from that period) After that she was a founder of Logo Computer Systems, Inc. and earned a doctorate in education from Harvard. Until just a few years ago, Cynthia was a full-time school computer teacher.
Solomon’s doctoral dissertation is the basis for the seminal book, Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education. If you haven’t read it, you should. She is also coauthor with Allison Druin of the book, Designing Multimedia Environments for Children.
In the late eighties I organized a distinguished speakers series for NJ school leaders and Cynthia Solomon was the first person I hired. Since then we’ve worked together with the MIT Media Lab Future of Learning Goup in Mexico City and at the One Laptop Per Child Foundation.
One of life’s great gifts is having the privilege to meet and get to know extraordinarily smart and talented folks like Cynthia Solomon. What a pleasure it was to watch Cynthia, Deborah Meier and Lella Gandini discuss David Hawkins at last year’s CMK.
Through Cynthia, I’ve met people like Marvin Minsky (who led fireside chats the past two CMKs) and Stephen Wolfram. Cynthia seems to know all of the smartest scientists and mathematicians of the past half-century. Now, participants in Constructing Modern Knowledge get to know HER.
My greatest joy comes from creating opportunities for educators to learn from and interact with smart, talented and innovative people. That’s why Cynthia Solomon is part of the remarkable Constructing Modern Knowledge faculty and why you should attend.
The Constructing Modern Knowledge faculty also includes Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, Dr. James Loewen, Peter Reynolds, Briann Silverman, John Stetson, Sylvia Martinez & Dr. Gary Stager.
* My Ph.D. in science and mathematics education is the best revenge.
In March I had the great honor of being the keynote speaker at the 3rd ICTQatar ICT in Education national conference in Doha, Qatar. That was my 3rd trip to Qatar over the past couple of years.
Following my keynote, a nice young gentleman asked if he could interview me. I was happy to oblige and we found a vacant lounge area on the college campus where the conference was being held. That’s when the hijinx began.
First of all, the interviewer didn’t have a tripod. I convinced him that going handheld was a bad idea and helped him prop the camera on top of a camera bag. Then midway through the interview, one of his colleagues inexplicably walked into the lounge, headed to the light switches and cut our lights. After we objected, the guy spent a few minutes trying to turn the lights back on. After failing to do so, he shrugged and said, “Go somewhere else.” Eventually, the lights were turned on and a tripod emerged.
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Despite these technical difficulties, I believe that the interview came out quite nicely and I was able to explore some issues in-depth. You might think of it as my “UnTED Talk.”
If you have 42 spare minutes, you might wish to watch this video. Pleae not be put-off my the incredibly unattractive poster image displayed in the static video player below.
Many thanks to ICTQatar for the terrific job of putting the video on YouTube.
Watch Stager Webinar Now!
A few nights ago, I led a webinar for old friends in the State of Victoria (Australia) as part of an online course/seminar/learning community focused on issues surrounding effective 1:1 computing. The course is called 1 to 1 Next Steps. My webinar was entitled, “Creative Computing and the Case for Project-based Learning.”
You may now watch and listen to a recording of that webinar here.
The digital handout I created to accompany the webinar and stimulate further discussion may be found here. It is hardly exhaustive. I wanted to provide educators with just enough information to inspire their imaginations and generate discussion.
For those of you who have heard me speak before, there are indeed some familiar themes in this webinar. However, there are some new ideas expressed as well. Many of these ideas frame my work as a teacher educator, speaker, teacher and consultant.
As always, your comments are always welcome.
Enjoy!
Resources for 1:1 Next Steps Online Course
About Gary Stager
For 28 years, Gary Stager, an internationally recognised educator, speaker and consultant, has helped learners of all ages on six continents embrace the power of computers as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self-expression.
ACEC 2010 marks Dr. Stager’s 20th anniversary of working in Australia. He considers Melbourne his second home and first keynoted ACEC in 1992. Gary led professional development at the world’s first laptop schools in Melbourne and Queensland in 1990 and since that time has worked with countless schools across Australia. He has worked closely with the Victoria and ACT Departments of Education and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne.
In addition to his two decades of 1:1 leadership, Gary has designed online graduate school programs since the mid-90s, was a collaborator in the MIT Media Lab’s Future of Learning Group and a member of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s Learning Team. A long-time colleague of Dr. Seymour Papert, Stager’s doctoral research involved the creation a high-tech alternative learning environment for incarcerated at-risk teens. He is a Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University where has taught across six graduate programs and Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium and Founder of Constructing Modern Knowledge.
In 1999, Converge Magazine named Gary a “shaper of our future and inventor of our destiny.” The National School Boards Association recognised Dr. Stager with the distinction of “20 Leaders to Watch” in 2007. He is featured in the recent documentary, imagine it!² The Power of Imagination.
Gary was the new media producer for The Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri Project - Simpatíco, 2007 Grammy Award Winner for Best Latin Jazz Album of the Year. Dr. Stager is also a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. He leads his own annual professional learning institute, Constructing Modern Knowledge, in the United States.
He barracks for the mighty Richmond Tigers and the equally mighty New York Jets.
Resources for before the webinar
Ten Things to Do with a Laptop keynote address presented at uLearn 2009 in Wellington, NZ - October 2009.
(69 minutes)
Hard and Easy: Reflections on my ancient history in 1:1 computing (2009)
Three articles on effective project-based learning (2009-2010) PDF file
Computing and the Internet in Schools: An International Perspective on Developments and Directions (1996)
Seymour Papert’s Computer As Material: Messing About with Time (1988)
Selling the Dream for 1:1 Computing
Advice and talking points for school leaders interested in building support for 1:1 computing.
Laptop School Self-Assessment (2000)
This was written on the 10th anniversary of 1:1 computing in Australian schools. How does your school measure up?
The Best Way to Make Enemies (2008) - Lessons learned from One Laptop Per Child
The Most Important Computer-using Educator in the World (2010)
Post Webinar Resources (more to be posted soon)
Gary Stager’s Blog, Stager-to-Go
Gary Stager’s Articles and Papers
Earlier today, I enjoyed the great privilege of sharing the stage at the Australian Conference on Computers in Education with two of my favorite educators, Geoff Powell of St. Hilda’s School on the Gold Coast of Queensland and Steve Costa of Methodist Ladies’ College, Kew. The following is a tribute to Steve Costa, a truly gentle man with a wicked jump shot and the gratitude of the countless young people he has inspired for decades.
Stephen Costa, Deputy Head of the Methodist Ladies’ College Junior School may be the most important and overlooked educator in the world today. Steve emigrated to Australia from the United Stated in 1974 during a period in which the nation was recruiting young teachers. He fell in love with the woman he would marry and with Australia - in those days requiring him to surrender his U.S. citizenship. By 1981, Steve was teaching primary school girls at MLC to use computers. Around that time he read Seymour Papert’s, Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas, and became inspired to teach his students to program in Logo.
A little known milestone in the history of educational computing is that Steve Costa began teaching an entire class of year five girls each with a personal laptop computer in 1989. He is Patient Zero when it comes to the use of laptops in education. If you are an educator anywhere in the world - from Manhattan to Melbourne to Mumbai teaching in a 1:1 setting or contemplating the eventuality of truly personal computing, you owe a debt of gratitude to Melbourne’s own, Mr. Costa.
It is not often that you have the privilege of knowing “the person who started it all,” but Steve Costa is not an artifact found in a museum, he continues to teach kids and his colleagues every day of the school year TWENTY-ONE YEARS after he embraced laptops as an integral part of the learning process. Steve Costa has been teaching with a laptop per child for more than a generation.
When I first met Steve in 1990, I was impressed by his energy, curiosity, dazzling teaching skills, calm demeanor and love of children. He was always willing to “have a go” and try any crazy idea I might throw at him and “his girls.” He has been invaluable to me as a colleague who could inject a dose of classroom reality into a scenario without ever using such current “reality” as an excuse for not trying to do better - to push the envelope. Steve is unafraid to learn alongside students allowing them to lean about learning by his example. Anytime you want someone smart for a panel discussion or extremely competent in a workshop setting, Steve tops my list.
Countless, perhaps thousands of educators have visited Steve’s classroom over the past twenty years, become inspired and gone back to make their schools better. Steve Costa should be famous. He should be traveling the world hailed as the father of 1:1 computing. He should be running the national education system, but instead Steve Costa does the hardest, most important work of all. He teaches children every day.
David Loader gets much of the deserved credit for pioneering 1:1 computing in schools, but that effort at MLC would be a long-forgotten experiment if it were not part of the daily excellence displayed by Steve Costa. Steve Costa’s contribution to modern education and computers in education puts him on a par with Seymour Papert, Alan Kay and David Loader.
At an edtech conference such as ACEC, it is worth noting that unlike so many ICT professionals whose curriculum is technocentrically focused on the hot new toy or latest fad, Steve Costa still teaches children to program in Logo (MicroWorlds). He does so because it affords learners countless opportunities for self-expression, problem solving, debugging and to think about thinking. Too many educators succumb to peer pressure and abandon “hard fun” or sound educational practices as the spotlight shifts. Steve is not one of them. He continues to learn, grow and develop his own personal computing fluency while embracing new technologies that increase learning opportunities for young people. He is not only a master teacher, but a master learner as well - unafraid of technological advances that amplify human potential.
There is no honor sufficient for my friend Steve. One would think that a grateful nation engaged in a “digital education revolution” would put its original revolutionary, Steve Costa, on a postage stamp. They would do so if they loved their children (and their children’s teachers) half as much as Steve cares for the children in his care.
Steve Costa led a silent revolution that changed the world the year Milli Vanilli topped the charts and continues to lead every day. Since the education community tends to be short on memory, we need to learn from Steve Costa today and honor his contributions for many years to come.
Memo to ISTE: I realize that Steve’s proposal to share wisdom gained over 20 years of teaching in 1:1 environments was rejected for the NECC 2009 program. Perhaps that was an oversight. Isn’t it about time you featured Mr. Costa at your annual conference and in your publications?
I’ve written another article about teaching with computers for The Creative Educator magazine. The Genius of Print may be downloaded here (pdf) or you may download the entire issue of the magazine.
You may also download, read and share the entire issue of The Creative Educator magazine here.
You might also enjoy reading two articles I wrote for previous issues of The Creative Educator about effective project-based learning.
Download and distribute:
click article to download
Seymour Papert on Capital Hill
C-Span has now made 23 years worth of video, everything they have broadcast - 160,000 hours, available online. (Read NYTimes article) That means that some of my favorite public policy discussions, author interviews and political fireworks can be accessed and shared on-demand. The entire programs may be embedded in other web pages and an awful lot of the programs may be edited via a browser for embedding excerpts in blogs and web pages.
This is an amazing resource for teachers, learners and citizens. From time to time, I will share some of my favorite C-Span moments via this blog.
In October 1995, the House Committee Economic and Educational Opportunities and House Science Committees held a nearly three-hour hearing to examine “technological advances in education.” The first two hours or so of the hearing are a real hoot (as the kids on Capital Hill say).
The first panel consists of the father of educational computing, Dr. Seymour Papert; Alan Kay, the inventor of the term “personal computer” and many of its accompanying technologies; an Wall Street guy who gave a lot of money to the Clinton Campaign; and Chris Dede.
Papert starts off like he was shot out of a cannon. Alan Kay says that he agrees with Seymour and then throws gasoline on the fire. The Wall Street stiff decides to argue with Dr. Papert while the Congress bangs the gavel in an attempt to restore order.
The discussion is well worth two hours of your time if you care about the edtech or the future of education.
I remember seeing the hearing when it first aired and have cherished a 3rd generation VHS recording. Now I can share it with you and my students via the Web!
When I originally saw the hearing, back in 1995, I remember thinking that the members of the Congressional Education Committee may not be our nation’s best and brightest. Watch the hearing today and you can’t help notice that naughty underage male Congressional Page sexting aficionado, Mark Foley, and convicted felon, Duke Cunningham, interrogating some of the most thoughtful educational thinkers in the world.
If the video does not appear, please use this link.
