No Such Thing: Education in the Digital Age

Ashley is a design thinker, brand strategist, and educator passionate about bringing design thinking into K-12 schools and mission-driven organizations. She consults with organizations and teams to bring human-centered strategy, mindsets, and content to their work.We cover a ton of ground in this conversation. If you're a current or aspiring design thinking educator I think there's a lot here for you. If you have ideas, resources, areas of DT that you'd like to hear covered on no such think I hope you'll come find me on twitter, @malesser.A quote mentioned in the episode from Paulo Freire:"There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."Notes for this Episode:Thor: https://www.throughthelg.comAshley Pinakiewicz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshleyPinaThank You For Being Late, Tom Friedman: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01F1Z0QHA&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_wdyECb23HACSWFieldguide for Educators, IDEO: http://www.designkit.org/resources/1The Teachers Guild, an online community: https://www.teachersguild.org/Design Thinking resources from Stanford "D" School: https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/k12-lab-network-resource-guideLeadership and Design: http://www.leadershipanddesign.org/Launch, book by John Spencer & A.J. Juliani: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G99AWYY/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_zkxECbNT0QSKN#DTK12CHAT: https://twitter.com/hashtag/dtk12chat?src=hashDonald Norman: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E257T6C/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_X.xECbD75EY0Q Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Graham Roberts is the director of immersive platforms storytelling, and leads a team that explores virtual and augmented reality projects, as well as innovation in video and motion-graphics. Marc is joined in this interview by Kimari Rennis of DreamYard Prep High School in the South Bronx, a Gamer and Youth Journalist.Notes from this episode:Experience Graham's work with the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/by/graham-robertsNew York Video Game Critic's Circle: https://nygamecritics.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the top of the last episode you learned about Mark Guzdial. Mark is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. After his talk at Cornell Tech's "To Code and Beyond" I had a chance to sit down with Mark and ask what questions had bubbled up while I listened to his talk live. Probably my most pressing question: what you're saying is great, but we've all seen professors like you on youtube - Mark is a brilliant, animated, ukelele playing Computer Science professor, who, from my time with him, seems as passionate about you learning about his passion topic, as he is about the topic itself. He's a rare mix, and what I'm sure many in the audience wondered - what the country is wondering right now - is how do we bottle some of that, and help thousands of teachers in every state offer young people the experience that surely the students in Mark's class have each semester. For what it's worth, out-of-state tuition at his school is $43,476 with a 26% acceptance rate. A wicked problem, indeed.Enjoy my talk with Mark. My thanks again to Cornell Tech and To Code and Beyond for helping connect us. Notes from this episode:Proust and the Squid: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060933845/proust-and-the-squid/Elliot Soloway: http://www.soe.umich.edu/people/profile/elliot_soloway/Seymor Papert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_PapertLogo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)Mitchell Resnick: https://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/Pat Bagget, Psychologist: https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/5425464 Situated Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_learning Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Mark Guzdial: he is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.This is his talk from "To Code and Beyond," a conference about education and computer science, hosted by Cornell Technion.Guzdial is a really important piece of this rubik's cube that is contemporary thought on computer science education. This talk is an important appetizer to the forthcoming episode, where Professor Guzdial and I dig into some of the topics he alludes to here. You'll notice that in the audio I intentionally made it sound like a hollow lecture hall to bring you closer to the milieu where such talks typically occur. That's not true. Sometimes a venue has technical hiccups, and this one caught the audio but didn't get a great recording. That's okay though, i'm grateful to have what we could get.If you're fired up about the talk. I'll link to the video in the show notes, where you'll be able to see some of the visuals he was sharing. It was a terrific talk, and if you can't tell from his introduction, Mark is one in a line of thought leaders who have fought hard to help us stay motivated in answering the tough questions around technology in learning. Is coding a critical 21st century literacy? Yes, he says, because it helps us learn everything else better.My tremendous thanks to Diane Levitt of Cornell Tech, who helped make this talk and my interview with Mark a possibility, and for throwing a top notch event where this and much more dialogue like it can take place.Notes from this episode:Video of the talk, "Computing Education as a Foundation for 21 Century Literacy": https://cornell.app.box.com/s/feib38ctri0hpcgylte78zbstvlrneywSeymor Papert, Mindstorms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book)Elliot Solloway: http://www.soe.umich.edu/people/profile/elliot_soloway/K-12 Initiative at Cornell Tech: https://tech.cornell.edu/impact/k-12/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Research Practice Partnerships, otherwise known as RPPs, are important. Just like in any other field, good researchers are constantly thinking about how to bring relevance and purpose to their research. RPPs make strategic partners out of researchers and practitioners to dig into what the field needs to know in the present, and closely study what’s working and what’s not.Guests from Hive Research Lab, New York University, and UC Irvine discuss the recently-published Toolkit for Brokering Youth Pathways, available online at Hiveresearchlab.org. Educators can access a series of what they’re calling “practice briefs” for youth programs to help realize promising (and sometimes less-promising) methods for leveraging youth participation for the purpose of building connections between too-often disparate learning experiences.Rafi Santo, Ph.D., is a learning scientist focused on the intersection of digital culture, education, and institutional change. Centering his work within research-practice partnershipsDr. Dixie Ching is a senior user experience researcher at Google, where she supports education-related products and services through strategic research and partnerships. Previously, Dixie has worked at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Center for Children & Technology/Education Development Center, New York Hall of Science, Discovery Communications, WGBH/NOVA, and Beijing Television.Dr. Chris Hoadley is associate professor in the Educational Communication and Technology Program, the Program in Digital Media Design for Learning, and the Program on Games for Learning at New York University. Dr. Kylie Peppler is an artist by training - Associate Professor of Learning Sciences at UC Irvine and engages in research that focuses on the intersection of arts, computational technologies and interest-driven learning. Links from this episodeThe Brokering Toolkit from Hive Research Lab: https://brokering.hiveresearchlab.org/practice-briefs/Scope of Work: https://www.scopeofwork.co/Beam Center: https://beamcenter.org/Hive Learning NYC: http://hivenyc.org/Emoji-Con NYC: https://emoti-con.org/Bridgid Baron: https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/barronbj Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vassiliki Khonsari: Producer & director specializing in interactive storytelling across screens (VR, Games, Documentary, Film) Independent Magazine calls her “One of the top ten filmmakers to watch”. Founding partner of iNK Stories, known for creating impact forward, immersive stories for global audiences. With background in Visual Anthropology, a Sundance fellow and member of Women’s Impact Network (PGA), Khonsari mentors and contributes to many organizations on reframing diversity, emerging tech and storytelling.Bio, Nick Dangerfield | Co-Founder | Planeta:Nick has worked with an assortment of artists that includes Jonas Mekas, Park Chan Wook, Moriyama Daido, Nick Waplington, Bruno S., Harmony Korine, and Justin Bieber.Nick has also built tools and platforms in the space of arts and culture for the last fifteen years, like the Playbutton, the Harinezumi camera, and to.be, as well as running Planeta. He’s now working on a live-sound transmission and adapting the David Bowie Archive for AR. Nick, Vassiliki and I are talking about Immersive Media in this episode. You'll hear us refer a couple of times to a previous conversation, which is a live version of the interview that was never recorded due to some technical issues at the venue. What's so exciting about this sequel to that first meeting, in addition to their generosity for coming back to record with me, is that we got to plunge fathoms deeper into the topic. It's a long one: but if you're like me and still deciding how to make sense of immersion and virtual media, spacial computing, and whether this will someday come together to the benefit of learners like us, then you should stick around for the full conversation. It might surprise you. Links for this episode:Donald Norman, Things that Make us Smart: https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/0201626950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547492381&sr=8-1&keywords=things+that+make+us+smartInk Stories, Brooklyn: http://inkstories.com/Fire Escape by Ink Stories: http://inkstories.com/#FE"Hero": http://inkstories.com/#heroNewPlaneta.cc: https://planeta.cc/ David Bowie Virtual Collection: https://davidbowieisreal.com/Anomalisa: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2401878/NIhilism and Technology: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786607034/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_KXnpCbMZT6CFSMagic Leap: https://www.magicleap.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tasker Smith is a technical instructor at MIT's Pappalardo Lab for Mechanical Engineering. As you'll hear through this interview, his background has a striking resemblance to television's Adam Savage of MythBusters. That is, he's held roles in all sorts of environments: performance, toys, consumer products, and lucky for the young mechanical engineers at MIT he wound up eventually making his way to higher education, cultivating young talent to be as skilled technically and emotionally to enter a world of professional engineering as they can possibly be.We talk about approaches from the lab that I think will be of interest to everyone, but especially those educators who are serious about maker education, and the role that pre-engineering programs play in schools and afterschool all over the country. If you're looking for tips and best practices, just curious what goes on in the Mech E lab at MIT, or excited to learn more about how Tasker went from studying theatre arts to modelling toys, stick around.A special treat from this episode, Tasker offers a set of files for the poster panels that come up toward the end of the interview for listeners to grab and repurpose in their own shops and maker spaces. Do check out the shownotes at NoSuchThingPodcast.org to find that gift from him.Links from this episode:Pappalardo Lab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pappalardolab?lang=enJapanese drawers links: http://digg.com/video/japanese-joinery-drawersTasker's Make Mag Leather Article: https://makezine.com/2018/07/09/use-3d-printing-shape-leather/Z Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_CorporationContinuum Innovation, Boston: https://www.continuuminnovation.com/en/Caine's Arcade: https://youtu.be/faIFNkdq96UStatasys: https://www.stratasys.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode I'm joined by two special guests and we're talking about a recent merger that may have gone unnoticed by many, but to me could be a tiny rumble before a tremendous shift that could rock education in a lot of ways. Here were some of the headlines:New Merger Wants to Create ‘WeWork for Education’ Via Digital Badges and Mini-CampusesNext for SNHU: Game-Based Learning and Digital Badges for Middle SchoolersSouthern New Hampshire University and LRNG Merge to Deploy Innovative Community-Based Education Strategy in Cities Across the U.S.My guests are two critical players leading education reform, research, and practice in this country. Dr. Kylie Peppler is an artist by training - Associate Professor of Learning Sciences at UC Irvine and engages in research that focuses on the intersection of arts, computational technologies and interest-driven learning. In addition to serving as the Director of the Creativity Labs at Irvine, Dr. Peppler is the Chief Learning Officer at Collective Shift/LRNG, the former lead of the MacArthur Foundation’s Make-to-Learn initiative, and a member of the 2016 and 2017 National Educational Technology Plan Committee, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Peppler was on the original NSF-sponsored Scratch team during the initial design and early study of the Scratch platform. Since this time, she has specialized in studying e-textile design with the LilyPad Arduino.Connie Yowell is the visionary and CEO of Collective Shift, bringing considerable experience from the MacArthur Foundation where she oversaw a $150 million program on Digital Media and Learning.Prior to joining the Foundation, Connie was an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, publishing scholarly work that examines the complex interplay among young people’s emerging identity, their social context and achievement. Connie briefly served as Policy Analyst in the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton Administration, and has worked closely with teachers and administrators to develop programs for youth development.In 2004, Connie received the Distinguished Fellows Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, an award to support scholars seeking to bridge research and practice, under which she worked with the National Writing Project to develop approaches that integrate web 2.0 technologies into the social practices of teachers. Connie earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale, and her PhD from Stanford University.My thanks to Kylie and Connie for joining. You'll hear a change in audio on Connie's mic mid-way through the interview...we had some technical difficulties with our connection, but persevered. Whether you agree with me that their story could be a taste of new education paradigms to come, I hope you'll join me in cheering them on. We need all of the brains we can get iterating toward a future where learning is accessible, connected, counted for everyone. LRNG / SNHU Merger Press Release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/southern-new-hampshire-university-and-lrng-merge-to-deploy-innovative-community-based-education-strategy-in-cities-across-the-us-300734026.htmlMastery Transcript Consortium: http://mastery.org/LRNG: https://www.lrng.org/Souther New Hampshire University: https://www.snhu.edu/Open Badges: https://openbadges.org/Walk Out, Walk On - Book by Margaret J. Wheatley and Deborah Frieze: http://a.co/d/cFUsNUSEdSurge Says: New Merger Wants to Create ‘WeWork for Education’ Via Digital Badges and Mini-Campuses: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-10-23-new-merger-wants-to-create-wework-for-education-via-digital-badges-and-mini-campusesAnd the official press release headline was: Southern New Hampshire University and LRNG Merge to Deploy Innovative Community-Based Education Strategy in Cities Across the U.S.: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/southern-new-hampshire-university-and-lrng-merge-to-deploy-innovative-community-based-education-strategy-in-cities-across-the-us-300734026.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was extremely honored to be invited by friends at CSTA-NYC to help produce a live episode of the show on the topic of Tech and Ethics. We called the event "Code of Ethics" and my thanks in particular to the kind and hardworking folks in the Audio-Visual department at Microsoft, NY, who hosted the event. Anil Dash is the CEO of Glitch, formerly Fogcreek Software, and host of Vox Media's new show on Tech and Society, Function, and long-time advocate for a more socially-minded technology sector, it's engineers, leadership, and the policy that structures (or doesn't) decisions about what gets made.Natasha Singer is a reporter for the NY Times Business Section, who covers Tech and has a special focus on accountability. And Brenda is a NYC Public School student who dreams of becoming a software engineer. She is a 1st generation Dominican-American and passionate about women in tech. This conversation was a journey into some of the most serious issues that all of us should be grappling with during Computer Science Education week. Thousands of events, big and small, are being logged globally tying into CS Education, but what could be more important than a step back to think about what, in the course of the conversation, we refer to as tech's "downstream effects." Links from this episode:Function Podcast: https://www.voxmedia.com/about-vox-media/2018/10/30/18039366/vox-media-podcast-network-function-anil-dashGoogle Is Teaching Children How to Act Online. Is It the Best Role Model?Just Don’t Call It PrivacyWeaponized Ad Technology’: Facebook’s Moneymaker Gets a Critical EyeMicrosoft Urges Congress to Regulate Use of Facial RecognitionTech’s Ethical ‘Dark Side’: Harvard, Stanford and Others Want to Address ItMaryland Schools May Tell Children When It’s Time to Log OffSenators Call for Federal Investigation of Children’s AppsDid you vote? Now your friends may know.Hudson High School of Learning Technologies: https://www.hudsonhs.nyc/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm cramming for my conversation next week about ethics and tech, and as I prepare I thought it would be a fun way to add some transparency to the process. Usually when I prepare for a big episode I reach out to folks in my network, I dig for sources, I spend a lot of time with the topic in my head. When I thought about who I should reach out to as I think about the roots of some of the issues we'll cover next week, I wondered, who might help me with something of a literature review on the ethics and philosophy part. As we know - but sometimes forget - many of the questions that we're asking today about ethics relevant to computer science have been asked before. There are entire schools of thought dedicated, scholars who've spent lifetimes... but I haven't reached back to those texts in forever, maybe you haven't either. So I did what anyone would do...John P. Cleary is my high school philosophy teacher, and the first person who came to mind when I considered who would make time for me as I cram for this interview. He's a busy guy, an Assistant Professor at Raritan Valley Community College, an acclaimed stage actor, and restorer of his cabin in the woods, where I imagine he'll one day sip brandy and read poetry by a wood stove. We caught up for a bit before diving in, but the questions you hear me refer to are ones that I shot him over Facebook Chat, where he and I keep in occasional touch. Enjoy my chat with John, it's a prep call for next weeks episode on Ethics in Tech, but if, like me, you're looking for a lit review to help you think about the scholarly history of some of civilizations' thorniest questions, here it is...Links:Joe Kincheloe, The Sign of the Burger: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2255502.The_Sign_of_the_BurgerNat'l Association of Media Literacy: https://namle.net/Zimyatin's WE, Russian novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)Neil Postman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_PostmanMartin Heidegger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_HeideggerJurgen Habermas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_HabermasMcLuhan's Mechanical Bride: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mechanical_BrideDonna Haraway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_HarawayKaku, Physics of the Impossible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_of_the_ImpossibleAlso Mentioned:Mary ShellyOrwellHuxleyKelnerNoam ChomskySartreFriedrich Nietzsche Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.