Today’s LikeMind talk was put on by James Carlson, the founder of Milwaukee’s Bucketworks. James was talking about the future of education and current innovations in how we educate students…
- in the past decade or so, there has been a proliferation of education options
- some of those types of schools have focused on “project-based learning” instead of standard lecture-homework style learning.
- project-based learning is more similar to how we behave outside of school–we want to accomplish a particular goal, so we work towards, finding our way as we go–why not apply that thinking to education?
- project-based learning encourages kids to pursue knowledge and info instead of just asking them to remember and comprehend.
- three schoools doing project-based learning are the Community High School, The Alliance School and the Professional Learning Institute
- out of initial 60ish charter schools in Milw-area, 40ish are still operating.
- some ideas from charter schools are drifting into mainstream schools, but not too quickly
- Great Lakes Constructivist Consortium helps to export project-based learning techniques to other schools
- “Maker Movement”, www.instructables.com
- would be good to see a space that could combine a school with a co-working space–where students could learn, could teach others, could see working adults in action (and as inspiration)
- as schools move to smaller class-sizes, what will community do with the structures left behind–the old-style, large, monolithic “grey” schools?
- an idea for a “future” school would be a space that is community-integrated–parents are assisting in teaching, seniors/retired folks are able to share of their skills and experiences with a younger generation, and the education is a more 2-way experience than a 1-way dialog.
T * MKElikemind
