"What I think is happening is that as the system becomes ever more standardized, with more control at the top from government, corporations, another grassroots movement is coming," said Miller. "What you're seeing now with Brooklyn Free School and others is families and educators wanting to get out from under the thumb of this standardization agenda."
"So many kids going to these alternative schools have really thrived," Miller said. "Because they've been freed from the rat race. They follow their own path. They're happy. And that's what this is about: not having to be successful in conventional terms."
Isaac Graves, a former Albany Free School school student who now writes and researches free school programs extensively, said he took from his experience a startling, "legitimate passion to learn," and appreciated how few constraints there were on what he was allowed to study. He remembers being 13 and reading about acid rain, how it was killing all these fish in the Adirondacks, so he and a group of students decided to try and stop it. They became so passionate that they contacted Eliot Spitzer, who was attorney general and "fighting coal plants" at the time, and asked him to speak to students. They also brought in a government biologist.
"Nobody told us to learn about these things," Graves said. "We wanted to."
via david: Trying to answer without understanding the difference between social entrepreneurship and social innovation is difficult. This piece is still RT'ing and pushing 300 since it appeared.
The problem with big companies is that they set up training sessions that last for a week instead of mentoring sessions that last for an hour. Once a week everyone should meet with their mentor for an hour and talk.
And what do they talk about? A good mentor knows that the mentee drives the conversation. Maybe the mentor saw the mentee make a mistake and could comment on it, but younger people know when they are struggling and are always ready to learn if they respect the person who is helping them.
Formal training really has never been a good idea. The army does it for new recruits but they do it because they are trying to create soldiers who don’t think and just follow orders. At the higher level of army training, at the Army War College for example, officers sit around and talk.
Tell everyone they need to spend an hour a week mentoring and an hour a week being mentored. Let them say officially whom they have chosen. Create a culture where mentoring is the norm.
They recruit for two reasons: one, to add more dollars to their bank account. Two, because they have a high dropout rate and must keep replacing students.what really gets me is this:
This is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. Money spent by taxpayers to pay for art classes be reduce class size is instead being paid to ad rise the wares of shoddy online schools.
what about the human capital we are losing, what about the spirits we are breaking, much more important than any money.. we are killing curiosity/creativity.. and people - notice suicide rates.
from http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/25/why-the-happiest-states-have-the-highest-suicide-rates/“Perhaps for those at the bottom end, in a way their situation may seem worse in relative terms, when compared with people who are close to them or their neighbors. … For someone who is quite unhappy, the relative comparison may lead to more unhappiness and depression.”Sadly, this may mean that increasing happiness by reducing economic inequality could paradoxically produce more suicides as a “side effect.” But this is one problem we are unlikely to have, as economic inequality is high and rising in the U.S.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/25/why-the-happiest-states-have-the-highest-suicide-rates/#ixzz2Ddky3zEb
In 2011 160,000 students from 190 countries enrolled in an Artificial Intelligence course, CS221, taught by two eminent computer scientists from Stanford University and Google Corporation. 20,000 successfully completed the course. Two other similar courses were simultaneously offered on the subjects of Machine Learning (104,000 registered and 13,000 completed the course) and Introduction to Databases (92,000 registered, 7,000 completed). Udacity a for-profit start up from the authors of the AI-Stanford course started delivering similar free online courses. For example, 90,000 students have enrolled in the CS101 on computer science (Python Programming and building a Search Engine). More recently, EdX (a joint partnership between from MIT and Harvard) and Coursera (an educational for-profit company founded by professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University) were added to the list of AI.In addition, during the last years, online courses that don’t align with the course content nor the instructor, but to other learners and their knowledge, commonly referred as c-MOOCs (Connectivist Massive Open Online Courses) have been carried out with great success.
problem is power - the people experimenting don't have legislative power, the people with power aren't experimenting
being given a dashboard without a steering wheel has never been the core promise a democracy makes to its citizenswhat kept her (martha payne) there was political will - the expectations of the citizens that she would not be censored..
Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo)
monika hardy (@monk51295) Harvard Biz Review (@HarvardBiz)11/28/12 6:45 AM Microfinance is often seen as the only path for women seeking economic opportunity in emerging economiess.hbr.org/UVPR3x kool beans.. no..? perfect timing. and this isn't a rights issue.. it's an opportunity for your thumbprint issue.. |
Bonnie Stewart (@bonstewart)
Alan Levine (@cogdog)monika hardy (@monk51295)Bonnie Stewart (@bonstewart)Alan Levine (@cogdog)monika hardy (@monk51295) Tom Fullerton (@tomfullerton)11/28/12 6:37 AM An update on #phoebetheoak seedling. She has sprouted a massive trunk as long as my middle finger. Her rootsinstagr.am/p/SkzqHJq-dt/ kinda like this... just there..showing life rather than wasting days proving stuff not provable.. while the human spirit keeps on dying... monika hardy (@monk51295)11/28/12 7:12 AM “@tomfullerton: update #phoebetheoak seedling. Her roots instagr.am/p/SkzqHJq-dt/” -what if nclb=acknowledge aliveness. too silly? how silly?
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