Category Archives: What If…

(What If…) Build a School in the Cloud

Sugata Mitra has won the $1 million TED Prize for his wish to build a school in the cloud. The TED Prize is meant to “inspire dreamers to think bigger about what’s possible.” Sugata’s wish is inspiring indeed.

“My wish is to help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. Help me build the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. I also invite you, wherever you are, to create your own miniature child-driven learning environments and share your discoveries.”

Here is Sugata Mitra talking about his wish at TED.

With $1 million, it is now more than a wish. There is a plan and ways that anyone can help. As a part of the plan they are looking for some core technology assistance including “Cloud-based software design to manage laboratory school operations and education resources.”

SCSU might not be ready to dive into Sugata’s wish just yet, but what if we started with a smaller, more local concept? I am excited about the new ISELF building that will house fantastic equipment for our students to use for their studies.

What if… we made some of the equipment available via the internet? It could be used as a “Virtual Lab” by our own students. It could be used by nearby high schools. Or, let’s get crazy, the world. This concept is already being applied today. iLabCentral is a great example project supported by the National Science Foundation.

 

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(What If…) Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Awards

Major leaders from the technology industry (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Mail.ru) have joined together to create a not-for-profit corporation, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, that will offer 5 annual prizes of $3 million to breakthrough scientists. This is pretty darn cool as most big awards like this go to established scientists that have already completed their work. Often the awards come from large government or health organizations. Changing the model may have a huge impact on research.

What If… Information Technology Services teamed up with partners and created our own award to be given to new ambitious faculty using technology in the classroom? This would give us an opportunity to connect ITS with faculty, showcase great work being done, and encourage others to use technology in new ways. There are many schools out there doing this already: Brown University, California Community Colleges, Old Dominion University, Rochester Institute of Technology

Reference Articles
eWeek: Google’s Brin, Facebook’s Zuckerberg Help Fund $3 Million Science Awards
CNN: Tech titans create $3 million ‘Breakthrough Prize’ for scientists

 

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(#FunFriday) Silent Disco?

So, call me sheltered but I had never heard of a silent disco until recently. According to Wikipedia, the concept was first introduced in 1969 in a sci-fi movie called Ruusujen Aika, “A Time of Roses“. And as it turns out silent discos have been going on since the 80’s in Europe. In particular the Glastonbury Festival has made good use of the concept in order to comply with noise regulations. And right down the road from us in 2012, SilentArena and Live Nation held the biggest silent disco event ever in America with over 3000 headphones at the River’s Edge Music Festival on Harriet Island.

Here is a quick video of a silent disco event during the Midsummer Night Swing dance party at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.

Universities are another common place to see a silent disco. Princeton has a fun site setup showing off their recent event here. So my friends, what about SCSU? #What If… we get UPB together with the IT and Library folks and we have a silent disco in the Library! Wouldn’t the juxtaposition of a dance party and rows of books be cool? Okay, okay… maybe that’s too nerdy. Well, once warmer weather hits it’d be a fun event for the Atwood Mall too.

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(What If…) Carpe Diem Charter School

Back on Sunday, September 16, I sent a link to a video (See video below) asking what folks thought about the approach of Carpe Diem Charter School in Arizona. They designed a school from the ground up based on a blended-learning approach. One of their strategies was to put technology first, and they seem to have some pretty good results.

Then on Saturday NBC Nightly News aired a report on this same school. There is now an entire site dedicated to the school on the Education Nation website too. http://www.educationnation.com/casestudies/carpediem/

This added press got me to think more about what this school is doing.

  • If self-paced video and online labs help the students at Carpe Diem, might they help our students?
  • If students are intimidated to ask questions, might they benefit from self-paced video and online labs?
  • If students are motivated by earning points, badges, and seeing visual indicators of their learning progress, might self-paced video and online labs help them succeed?
  • If we could watch students’ success as they complete self-paced video and online labs could we better identify how to help these students?

What if we offered classes where a significant portion of the class was “lab time” where students could come in and leverage self-paced exercises in a computer lab style environment with a teacher’s assistant present? If students were sick or needed extra time they could get access to the same lab exercises online. That could then be coupled with instructor time where those concepts could be re-enforced and more personal conversations could happen. We could take this one step further and complement the courses with an “Open Study” style collaborative study group. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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