"Finally launched and available in the iOS App Store! [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drift/id524083174 ]

Drift helps you get lost in familiar places by guiding you on a walk using randomly assembled instructions. Each instruction will ask you to move in a specific direction and, using the compass, look for something normally hidden or unnoticed in our everyday experiences.

As you find these hidden or unnoticed things, you will be asked to document them with the camera, creating a photographic record of you walk. Drift also keeps track of where and when you took the photos and makes your documentation optionally available for others to view through the Drift website.

Drift was made possible with the generous support from the Ontario Arts Council Media Arts Grant for Emerging Artists.

Drift was developed by Justin Langlois in collaboration with Broken City Lab.

This project was generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council Media Arts Grant for Emerging Artists."

"The Unknown Fields Division is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on annual expeditions to the ends of the earth exploring unreal and forgotten landscapes, alien terrains and obsolete ecologies. Join the Division as each year we navigate a different global cross section and map the complex and contradictory realities of the present as a site of strange and extraordinary futures.
 
Here we are both visionaries and reporters, part documentarians and part science fiction soothsayers as the otherworldly sites we encounter afford us a distanced viewpoint from which to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological scenarios."

[Blog: http://www.unknownfieldsdivision.com/blog/ ]

"This document that this excerpt is from is one story of the everyday treasures of a rainy day walk. It is part of a broader and slightly wonky research and practice agenda on the hand made, everyday creativity, play, and usable environments.

What is the child-scale? How can we begin to understand it? How can this experience inform building and design ideas and practice?

Play is intensely important. Start developing an idea of (non)designing for playing. The walk that this extract depicts brought forth ideas of grain/granularity of street surfaces (materials), balance and tracing (paths, curbs), humble events, routine/ritual, liquid (refreshment, ballistics, power)… for a start."

"A world is more than a space, more than a place; it is something to inhabit & be inhabited by. What you infuse a space w/ to make it habitable, to make it memorable (since memory is profoundly spatial), gives the place its character, its soul…

Zelda would be better if it had no story…no plot to structure the adventure…first Zs barely had any plot…were better for it. With plot, sequence matters too much…early Zs had situations, worlds & scenarios that framed action, gaps to be filled in by player, sequences to be broken. Optimal paths & shortcuts weren’t a given; they had to be earned. Items were the most prominent plot devices, & even they were not unduly strict about order. You could be slow & steady or blast straight through with a little know-how…basic rules of the gameworld were what bound you, not some artificial necessity imposed for the sake of plot."

…a world is not for you. A world needs a substance, independence, sense that it doesn’t just disappear when you turn around."

"When you think about it, relying on the likes of Google, YouTube, Facebook et al stand up for the niche and the curious is pretty naive. Where their interests coincide they will side with the mainstream, and those interests will coincide more and more. We can’t rely on large Internet companies to look after this stuff – Yahoo’s half-arsed custody of Flickr should have taught us that. If we’re going to have an infrastructure that enables the spirit of the cyberflaneur to thrive we’re going to have to build and maintain it ourselves, above and beyond the financial blinkers of the mainstream.

One of the most surprising things about the Internet is how people think there’s a single monolithic culture. There used to be, back when access was difficult and determined by circumstance. But it’s not like that now. The Internet is for everything and everyone, which means it’s like everything else, prone to mediocrity and abuses of power…"

"Explore – Below you will find 50 psychogeographic observations. Go out and explore. Rediscover one of the observations. Document it in pictures or text and mark its number.

Get bingo - You get bingo when you fill any column, row or diagonal.

Profit - Document your bingo observations in the comments of this blog. Provide pictures if possible. Do this before 1-1-2012. We will try to send the first few winners a random book from the Rotterdam secondhand book market. It may be in Dutch but then it will have pictures."

[All posts on the blog tagged 'psychogeography': http://uair01.blogspot.com/search/label/psychogeography ]

"…part of life is finding new things to love and new ways to love things more deeply, and understanding the creative arts —their scope, history, contemporary contexts, intentionality— opens them up for ever-deeper appreciation. But the most obvious way to learn an art is to become a practitioner of that art, a time-consuming and difficult task, and one impossible to pursue across all fields.

Fields that make such demands have a high barrier to audience entry.

…when I talk to people who find jazz musically intimidating, or unintelligible in its refusal to be as repetitive as popular music, I sometimes tell them to try to hear in the solos little musical structures, any one of which could be a song in itself, but each of which is built, explored, and discarded with breakneck speed. Popular music relies on the ecstasy of trance: repetition of what resonates. Jazz relies more on restless exploration."

"The Colors of Berlin is for tourists and Berliners. The book is a unique tool for urban exploration, serving both as inspiration for a personal vision and documentation of the city. It is a declaration of love to Berlin. It helps the flaneur and the city-lover see and experience the urban landscape in a new way. Stadtblind’s aim is to create a distance from that which is familiar, to re-frame the familiar in such a way that it becomes fresh, worthy of attention and affection. We present the everyday spaces, objects and surfaces of contemporary Berlin ina manner that provides a new means of perceiving cities. It is precisely the everyday aspects of our lives that are most often overlooked; and it is precisely the everyday that most constitutes our lived experience of cities."

[via: http://youarehere2011.wordpress.com/suggested-reading/ ]

[Again, too much to quote, so just a clip.]

"Neoliberalism is totalising: it is justified only if everyone participates in its markets, and if all human inter-relatedness becomes mercantile transactions. Hence, we get the agenda for "widening participation", but for widening participation in a market, not in a university education. In that market, the university's "product" needs its own measurements and standards. Everything is now a commodity; and anything that is not obviously a commodity is either eradicated or officially ignored: it goes underground. And the Quality Assurance Agency will measure; but it will measure and validate only that which is official or transparent, only that which it can call a commodity.

The QAA, a key driver of the Transparent-Information mythology, makes one basic error: it confounds a concern for standards (meaning quality) with a demand for standardisation (assured by quantity-measurement); and this drives the sector steadily towards homogenisation."

"Some of the most talented and prolific people I know have dozens of interests and hobbies. When I ask them about this, the response is usually something like “I love to learn.” I think the new discoveries and joys of learning are the crux of this beginner thing I’ve been thinking about. Sure, when you’ve mastered something it’s valuable, but then part of your journey is over — you’ve arrived, and the trick is to find something you’ll always have a sense of wonder about. I think this is why scientists and artists, who are usually experts, love what they do: there is always something new ahead. It’s possible to be an expert but still retain the mind of a beginner. It’s hard, but the best experts can do it. In making things, in art, in science, in engineering, you can always be a beginner about something you’re doing — the fields are too vast to know it all."

"Environmental enrichment typically improves learning, increases cortical thickness and hippocampal neurogenesis, reduces anxiety, and reduces stereotypic behaviour, yet sometimes such effects are absent or even reversed. We investigated whether neophobia governs how mice interact with enrichments, since this could explain why enrichments vary in impact. Female C57BL/6 mice, previously screened for neophobia, had free access to enriched cages connected to their standard cages. The relative consumption of food in each cage revealed approximate dwelling times; the use of two enrichments was also measured. High neophobia significantly predicted reduced use of the enriched cage. Thus even within this homogeneous population, provided with identical enrichments, differential neophobia predicted differential enrichment use."

"Teachers themselves need to learn a new way of learning, and in addition to new ways of helping others learn. This also means a massive shift in the role of the teacher and in all structural aspects of the school system…

…Nobody really knows how to do that. In a way all of us need to go on an expedition. And that makes a lot of people feel helpless, clueless, even ängstlich. Teachers and other educators particularly don’t like being clueless, as their traditional role is to be in the know and to impart knowledge…

Teachers are hardly ever asked what they already know and can do, what experiences they bring, which problems they woud like to tackle…

If I were to change one thing in teacher education, I’d shift the main learning style to self-directed, project-based learning with experiments and expeditions."

"But here’s a question: should a 14-year-old who is forced to take a required class in poetry be subjected to a process of certification?

Given their brain development and the fact that traditional schooling places kids in required activities, should a 14-year-old—or an 8-year-old, or 16-year-old—be subjected to a process of certification for anything?

There are profound differences between the developmental needs of kids in K-12 versus those in higher education. Young kids need to be in environments in which they can try new things, experiment, grow up, discover who they are.

They need teachers to draw out the genius within them. Higher education, for those who choose that path, is a place where that genius can get refined into certified expertise."

"At Brightworks, a K-12 private school set to open in San Francisco this fall, there will be no tests, grades, or transcripts.<br />
<br />
Instead, students will participate in activities and interact with professionals in various fields, design a project that they bring to fruition themselves, and produce a multimedia portfolio that they’ll share with the school, the community, and – via the Brightworks website – the world…<br />
<br />
<br />
…curriculum with three phases: 1) exploration, 2) expression, & 3) exposition.<br />
…year’s theme is “wind” for instance…<br />
Sure, there are only 30 students aged 6 through 12 starting in September (though there are a few slots still open for 12-year-old girls) and the teacher-to-student ratio at Brightworks is a minimum of 1 to 6. The program is resource and labor-intensive. “We don’t scale well at all,” says Welch."

"The Lone Ranger is dead.<br />
<br />
We are a generation that no longer rides alone into the sunset. We are an era of collaborators, a union of communities. We are redefining what it is to be.<br />
<br />
But the frontier is still here, it has always been here; it is the only constant. It is we who are changing, redefining, re-articulating.<br />
<br />
So I ask you: What is the frontier?<br />
<br />
THIS IS A COLLABORATION.<br />
<br />
You can do one or both of the following:<br />
<br />
OPTION ONE: Submit a word or phrase which answers the above question. When you participate, you will see other efforts of this kind. If you leave an address, I will send you a piece of our collaboration.<br />
<br />
OPTION TWO: Click HERE and see what others have submitted. You can choose a word or phrase that someone else has submitted, maybe something that you resonate with, maybe not, and make something with it. There are examples. The idea is to redefine, articulate, invent an discover."<br />
<br />
[Videos hosted here: http://vimeo.com/10357234 ]

"So imagine a commitment to learning that involved making regular learning walks with high school students as a normal part of the "school" day. Now, these learning walks should not be confused with walking tours, which are designed based on planned outcomes. One walks to point X in order to see object or artifact Y. The points are predetermined, hierarchical in design.<br />
<br />
Instead, learning walks are rhizomatic. They are inherently about being in the middle of things and coming to learn what could not been predetermined. Learning walks are part of the "curriculum" for instructional seminar (which I described here)."

[My comments cross-posted here: http://robertogreco.tumblr.com/post/7182110515/walking-and-learning ]

"…an experiment…to create a new kind of university…large space in…London; community of itinerant thinkers & precarious scholars; & desire to create the conditions for learning & inquiry which we have found too rarely in our current institutions.
…we will experiment w/ new ways of organising & supporting cultivation of knowledge…

…spaces of learning which are open to whoever values them, not only those who can pay.
…conditions under which deep thinking, careful scholarship & new ideas can flourish.
…space of reflection & exploration, not a production line for units of knowledge.
…to bring our whole selves…
…to treat material & economic conditions of university as a ground for research, experimentation, learning & play — rather than necessary evil we have to deal w/ every now & then.
…university in which we learn how to make a life for ourselves, not just how to market our skills to employers.
…share what we learn freely…
…learning in atmosphere of collaboration & friendship."

"Where Selvadurai is interested in the space between two human cultural identities, I suppose I am interested in the space where human and artificial cultures overlap. (“Artificial” is wrong; feels—what? Prejudiced? Colonial? Anthropocentric? Carboncentric?)<br />
<br />
There are no digital natives but the devices themselves; no digital immigrants but the devices too. They are a diaspora, tentatively reaching out into the world to understand it and themselves, and across the network to find and touch one another. This mapping is a byproduct, part of the process by which any of us, separate and indistinct so long, find a place in the world."

"Robot Flâneur is an explorer for Google Street View. Select a city to start exploring.<br />
<br />
Follow the instructions or just go full screen for an urban screensaver of your choice."

"Life is Not Standardized:<br />
<br />
One of the most powerful sentiments expressed by these students was that “life is not standardized nor should education” and it links many of the common threads from the presentations about the experience that students desire and feel are needed in education:<br />
<br />
Engaged; Learner-Centered and Participatory; Passion-Based; Personalized; Customized; Intrinsically Motivated; Exploratory and Inquiry-Based; Real World, Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning; Community and Change Focused; Collaborative and Cooperative Learning; Creative and Critical Thinking…<br />
<br />
…students wanting to find ways to de-emphasize grading and shift our focus to intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation…<br />
<br />
…[students] cut right through the idea [of flipping the classroom] and saw it as nothing more than the same ol’ homework assignment dressed up in new media…"

"Welcome to Drift Deck, a different sort of city guide. Think of it as a set of playing cards that help you playfully find your own, untouristy way through city streets. It's a set of simple cues, clues, actions, and provocations to see your way about the city, looking at it from a different angle. It will make you an active part of your own romp around.

Drift Deck will help you capture and share your discoveries. You'll be able to share your journey through the maps you make and the photos you take. Share your Drifts with others around the world! Be active, not passive. Enjoy."

"If you’re ever looking for inspiration, take a dive into the Wikipedia hole. I’ll be sitting here imagining a universe built of subatomic ducks."

"And when I first saw one of those [banyan] trees, I thought, “That is how I think.” Little thoughts just sprout off and drip down and take root, and then they end up supporting more and more tendrils of thought, until it all coheres into one thing, but it’s still rickety-looking and spooky. I like to think that my tangents have a point. I do love a tangent. I think part of it is inherent within the discipline of non-fiction.<br />
I always found that when I was a college student and researching my papers always the night before—and this was before the Internet—I’d be in the library and I’d find one thing, and see something else and want to follow that, which now is how the Internet has taught us to think, to click on link after link after link. But there is something inherent in research that fosters that way of thinking, and then there’s this other interesting thing, and that builds and builds…"

"CITYterm, a semester program for thirty intellectually adventuresome juniors and seniors in high school, makes New York City its Laboratory and Classroom.<br />
At CITYterm you will explore the city. You will immerse yourself in the city's five boroughs, connecting with them. You will meet authors, city officials, historians, urban planners, the homeless. you will come to understand New York City, its inhabitants and your own learning potential, returning to your home school ready to embark upon new adventures."

"Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our century. Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around. Do not jog. Do not run. Forget about blood pressure and arthritis, cardiovascular rejuvenation and weight reduction. Instead pay attention to everything that abuts the rural road, the city street, the suburban boulevard. Walk. Stroll. Saunter. Ride a bike, and coast along a lot. Explore.<br />
<br />
Abandon, even momentarily, the sleek modern technology that consumes so much time and money now, and seek out the resting place of a technology almost forgotten. Go outside and walk a bit, long enough to forget programming, long enough to take in and record new surroundings.<br />
<br />
Flex the mind, a little at first, then a lot. Savor something special. Enjoy the best-kept secret around--the ordinary, everyday landscape that rewards any explorer, that touches any explorer with magic."

"The desire to explore never leaves us despite the classrooms and cubicles we are stuffed into. Babies are the model of how we learn—not by passive reaction to the environment but by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion. Babies methodically do experiments on objects, for example, to see what they will do.<br />
<br />
Google takes to heart the power of exploration. For 20 percent of their time, employees may go where their mind asks them to go. The proof is in the bottom line: fully 50 percent of new products, including Gmail and Google News, came from “20 percent time.”"

[via: http://twitter.com/adversarian/status/29358290395725824 ]

"I felt I was on the ship the first time I glanced at this evocative scene  and, so, set off on an exploration.<br />
<br />
The photo was taken at sunrise at an eight miles distance on the 1898 German Valdivia expedition w/ Carl Chun and water colored by F. Winter.  Can you see that the center of the island is the ice-filled crater of an inactive volcano? The expedition did not land.<br />
<br />
The Wikipedia entry reads like flash fiction. This chunk of rock and ice has many stories, an unused Internet country code top-level domain (.bv) and a path to this little bit of humor.<br />
<br />
I wish I had never read a history textbook."

"The Future of Play will explore the concept of play as transformative, in terms of four key aspects: Social Play (including community and communication); Action Play (sports, gaming, etc.); Mental and Emotional Play (including exploration, adventure and imagination); and Sound Play."

"They are driven by passion…have a love of learning…want you to know school isn’t best place to learn lessons on socialization…are happy…have interesting careers they enjoy…are artistic…creative…have a concern for environment…consider learning in the world far more authentic & valuable then learning in school world…deeply consider whether college is right choice for them rather than it being a given…have no problem getting in to college…appreciate some aspects of formalized schooling in college if they’ve decided to attend…advocate for themselves & their right to meaningful curriculum in college…don’t believe they are an exception because they are especially self motivated, driven, or smart…shrug off the criticism that they won’t be able to function in the real world…don’t expect learning to come just from a parent, adult, authority or teacher…are often defending the fact that they were unschooled…are adventurous…are grateful they were unschooled"

"One of the more enjoyable aspects of watching an infant in her first year is that the smallest everyday tasks are filled with adventure…walking beside her on path of discovery also stimulates her parents’ aging neurons otherwise dulled by repetition & apparent insight. For her everything is new, fresh…For the professional observer it is like signing up to a year long workshop on everyday life…<br />
<br />
…I grew w/ assumption that a birth day was a fixed entity – but over the years…I’ve come across many examples of parents shifting children’s DoB both formally & informally w/ motivations for change ranging from getting child into particular school year; obtaining benefits; increasing likelihood of being signed up for professional football team.<br />
How will emerging technologies affect rituals & traditions in celebrating birth days? & parent’s ability to change date formally or informally?…<br />
<br />
What happens when you’re inherently aware, reminded of not only the birthday but the birthsecond?"

"Project Aether is a program designed to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, explorers, and dreamers.   We collaborate with schools to teach students physics concepts, experimental research skills, and to demonstrate low-cost, accessible space exploration through high altitude balloon launches equipped with HD cameras."

"Miyamoto has told variations on the cave story a few times over the years, in order to emphasize the extent to which he was surrounded by nature, as a child, and also to claim his youthful explorations as a source of his aptitude and enthusiasm for inventing and designing video games."

"The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga, in his classic 1938 study “Homo Ludens” (“Man the Player”), argued that play was one of the essential components of culture—that it in fact predates culture, because even animals play. His definition of play is instructive. One, play is free—it must be voluntary. Prisoners of war forced to play Russian roulette are not at play. Two, it is separate; it takes place outside the realm of ordinary life and is unserious, in terms of its consequences. A game of chess has no bearing on your survival (unless the opponent is Death). Three, it is unproductive; nothing comes of it—nothing of material value, anyway. Plastic trophies, plush stuffed animals, and bragging rights cannot be monetized. Four, it follows an established set of parameters and rules, and requires some artificial boundary of time and space. Tennis requires lines and a net and the agreement of its participants to abide by the conceit that those boundaries matter. Five, it is uncertain; the outcome is unknown, and uncertainty can create opportunities for discretion and improvisation. In Hyrule, you may or may not get past the Deku Babas, and you can slay them with your own particular panache.

The French intellectual Roger Caillois, in a 1958 response to Huizinga entitled “Man, Play and Games,” called play “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money.” Therein lies its utility, as a simulation that exists outside regular life. Caillois divides play into four categories: agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), and ilinx (vertigo). Super Mario has all four. You are competing against the game, trying to predict the seemingly random flurry of impediments it sets in your way, and pretending to be a bouncy Italian plumber in a realm of mushrooms and bricks. As for vertigo, what Caillois has in mind is the surrender of stability and the embrace of panic, such as you might experience while skiing. Mario’s dizzying rate of passage through whatever world he’s in—the onslaught of enemies and options—confers a kind of vertigo on the gaming experience. Like skiing, it requires a certain degree of mastery, a countervailing ability to contend with the panic and reassert a measure of stability. In short, the game requires participation, and so you can call it play.

Caillois also introduces the idea that games range along a continuum between two modes: ludus, “the taste for gratuitous difficulty,” and paidia, “the power of improvisation and joy.” A crossword puzzle is ludus. Kill the Carrier is paidia (unless you’re the carrier). Super Mario and Zelda seem to be perched right between the two."

"The most powerful engine for exploration and discovery in middle grades schools is neither top-down state policies nor school-wide curriculum frameworks; it is the grassroots efforts of creative, committed middle grades educators who approach exploration as an attitude—a curricular stance—and not as a curricular add-on. The middle grades literature is rich with examples of educators who create curricula and instructional plans that equally embrace exploration and academic rigor. These educators think differently about curriculum, instruction, and assessment. They allow students to play with ideas and pursue answers to such important questions as: What am I good at doing? and What do I enjoy doing? When educators enact these principles across the curriculum, they help to fulfill the vision for developmentally responsive middle grades programs."

"Play is our greatest natural resource, so how do we make sure that our kids are playing in the right way?"

"Like De Matteo, all adults ultimately need to re-imagine how we can enable and support these future “change agents.” The answer may lie in four foundational pillars of play: open environments, flexible tools, modifiable rules, and superpowers."

"It is a flexible and forgiving, an open system of design, and construction that encourages relentless testing, exploration and collaboration. Very much like our landscape weaving projects (here and here), the material itself is so disassociating to the design-builder that one is likely to drop their conceptions of possibility and the formal notions of space that they have accumulated over their lifetime. We’ve repeatedly seen in our own work how although the final structures may not be permanent, this type of design-build process is incredibly valuable as a piece of a larger learning or design process for getting groups of kids or community members to drop their assumptions and fully, openly explore the possibility of an idea or space."

"rigid scripting of childhood & adolescence has made young Americans risk- & failure-averse. Shying away from endeavors at which they might not do well, they consider pointless anything w/out clear application or defined goal. Consequently, growing numbers of college students focus on higher ed’s vocational value at expense of meaningful personal, experiential, & intellectual exploration. Too many students arrive at college committed to pre-professional program or major they believe will lead directly to employment after graduation; often they are reluctant to investigate unfamiliar or “impractical”, a pejorative typically used to refer to liberal arts…Ironically, in rush to study fields w/ clear career applications, students may be shortchanging themselves. Change now occurs more rapidly than ever before & boundaries separating professional & academic disciplines constantly shift, making flexibility & creativity of thought that a lib arts education fosters a tremendous asset…"

"The San Diego Space Society (“SD Space”) was founded in 2008 with the purpose of raising awareness and educating the general public to the benefits of human exploration of space and San Diego’s role in space development, as well as to the idea of creating a spacefaring civilization within our lifetimes.<br />
<br />
General meetings are held regularly at the Serra Mesa library, and SD Space members participate in many other local space events. Details of each meeting will be posted to the calendar. The general public is welcome to attend any meeting or event listed on this site.<br />
SD Space is headquartered at the Space Travelers Emporium [http://emporium.sdspace.org/], a storefront and workshop in the South Park neighborhood."

"Serendipitor is an alternative navigation app for the iPhone that helps you find something by looking for something else. The app combines directions generated by a routing service (in this case, the Google Maps API) with instructions for action and movement inspired by Fluxus, Vito Acconci, and Yoko Ono, among others. Enter an origin and a destination, and the app maps a route between the two. You can increase or decrease the complexity of this route, depending how much time you have to play with. As you navigate your route, suggestions for possible actions to take at a given location appear within step-by-step directions designed to introduce small slippages and minor displacements within an otherwise optimized and efficient route. You can take photos along the way and, upon reaching your destination, send an email sharing with friends your route and the steps you took."

"Somewhere in your childhood is a gaping hole. Fill this hole…best things I did in college all involved explorations"<br />
<br />
"Remember to take some time away from campus"<br />
<br />
"When you leave your room for class, leave laptop behind. In a lecture, you’ll only waste your time & parents’ money, disrespect professor & annoy whomever is trying to pay attention…by spending the hour on Facebook.<br />
<br />
You don’t need a computer to take notes—good note-taking is not transcribing. All that clack, clack, clacking…you’re a student, not a court reporter. And in seminar or discussion sections, get used to being around a table with a dozen other humans, a few books & your ideas. After all, you have the rest of your life to hide behind a screen during meetings."<br />
<br />
"when my drawing teacher invited several of us students to dinner at her house, I was still worried that I was out of my league. But in this casual setting, everyone opened up, & I was able to talk about art in the most relaxed & personal way."

"Tonight, while working on a design project for school I had crumpled up some sketches that weren’t great ideas and tossed them into the trash. I then had the idea of using a crumpled up sheet of paper as the actual logo and quickly realized that it was too detailed for that.<br />
<br />
I decided to scan it — this is the first result — after a bit of help from Photoshop.<br />
<br />
To me, the image is visually beautiful. And conceptually for me it represents the idea of play, exploration, experimentation, and of process, especially since that is how the image came to be in the first place."

"During course of designing & facilitating teacher inquiry workshops, concerns voiced by participants, & reinforced by research literature, led to evolution of inquiry model that addresses many reservations teachers express about using inquiry as a teaching strategy…specifically addresses issues of control over content & curriculum goals; teachers' need to "lecture" to make sure students ''get it"; & control over safety, time, & materials. The coupled inquiry cycle endeavors to balance these needs, while still adhering to vision of true student-centered "full" inquiry, by combining or "coupling" together "teacher guided" inquiries w/ "open" inquiries that are completely student-driven. These "coupled inquiries" are embedded in cycle based on traditional learning cycle models, such as 5E model of Bybee (1997) & problem solving models, such as Search, Solve, Create, & Share (SSCS) model (Pizzini, 1989). A description of the components of the coupled inquiry cycle is as follows:…"

"This video (taken from the Win/Fail Physics collection) is the beginning and the end of a mini learning cycle during my projectile motion unit. At the beginning of the unit, it’s the hook. At the end of the unit, it’s the assessment."

"Sets of selected primary sources on specific topics, available as easy-to-print PDFs. Also, background material and tools to guide student analysis" [See also the "For Teachers" page: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/ AND "Using Primary Sources" http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/ AND "Classroom Materials" http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/ among other school-specific resources available through the Library of Congress website]

"There is an ideology that they are attached to...westward frontier expansion, Myth of West, westward expansion of US btwn 1804 (start of Lewis & Clark expedition) & 1880 (closing of American frontier). Leaving aside matter of dispossession & murder of indigenous peoples, I tend to feel some sympathy for grandchildren of this legend: it's potent metaphor for freedom from social constraint combined w/ opportunity to strike it rich by sweat of one's brow & they've grown up in shadow of this legend in progressively more regulated & complex society.

"“The faculty are interested in providing an environment of collaboration where faculty and learners will identify topics of mutual interest and act as partners in the exploration of those topics.”

"Now is the time to reflect on the reasons for students' disengagement from science and technology subjects. We need to treat STEM as a pedagogical approach and design an environment to support this new way of teaching. Brian Greene, a best-selling author and theoretical physicist best known for his work in string theory, talks passionately about how we have educated the curiosity out of the math and sciences. Greene says that we have paralyzed our children with the fear of being wrong. Risk-taking and making mistakes are critical to the scientific process. This fear of being wrong has resulted in disengagement from science and mathematics: learning science and math is a drag! He makes a convincing assessment of the problems with our current science education system and stops just short of demanding a new pedagogy to bring excitement and relevance back to the learning of science and math."

[from a series: http://www.fastcodesign.com/users/tle ]

"We need to build new environments that support experiential, creative & individualized learning. School of One...exemplifies this personalized approach to learning. Via tech-based platforms, students are given personalized lists of learning objectives, which allows all learners to achieve their daily learning objectives at their own pace. Better yet, the school supports students’ multiple intelligences thanks to a diversity of teaching strategies, which include virtual tutoring & video game-based learning."

[part of a series: http://www.fastcodesign.com/users/tle ]

"We will learn in the future by

* following rhythms of inquiry and learning rather than rhythms of compartmentalised structures and times,
* moving away from memorising and teaching towards exploring and learning by doing,
* turning away from sitting and listening passively to constructing and collaborating actively,
* facilitating learning from failure instead of punishing every little mistake,
* accepting uncertainty as the only certainty there is within the complexity of learning,
* relating learning and living in ways that are fruitful and enriching both ways,
* not teaching what to learn and think, but by teaching how to learn and think,
* inventing and facilitating new and integrated learning formats, combining subjects and approaches,
* turning away from instruction and control towards facilitation and support,
* moving away from spaces controlled by educators towards spaces controlled by learners,
* providing encouragement and support instead of criticism and barriers.

Admittedly, this list is generic—quite possibly, too generic—but it’s a start. Wir fangen schon mal an."

[via: http://twitter.com/cervus/status/16081012365 ]

"Want to inspire the kids of tomorrow? Forget the heroic myths. That kind of inspiration is over. “Anyone can be the President.” No they can’t. We all know it.

"Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.[1][2][3] The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum.[4] Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February, 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to a lot of ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.""

See also: http://www.csun.edu/~aee52628/NCSS/Popular%20culture%20index.html

"Geohashing is an outdoor locating activity which involves visiting a set of coordinates generated by a hashing algorithm. It was invented by Randall Munroe, and first mentioned in the form of its algorithm in the xkcd webcomic, #426 in May 2008."

"previous posting...evidence supporting following claims: (1) Children's instincts to play & explore on their own provided foundation for education during our long history as hunter-gatherers (2) Children today can & do educate themselves very well, w/out coercion or adult prodding or direction, if provided w/ an environment that supports instincts to play & explore (3) Conventional schools are what they are today because of historical circumstances that led people to devalue play, believe that children's willfulness must be broken, & believe that everything useful, including learning, requires toil. Today, many people understand the educative value of free play & exploration, regret that children are provided relatively little opportunity for such activities, & believe that children's willfulness is a positive force for their development, education, and enjoyment of life. Yet schools continue on, as before...Why is it so difficult to institute fundamental changes w/in school system?"

"I rapped with reformed archaeologist Bradley L. Garrett regarding his recent visual ethnographic fieldwork about urban exploration. Here’s what we talked about, all images are his."

"Students love to explore. They ask questions, they are curious.

"Schools around the country have been planting gardens and planning ever more elaborate field trips in hopes of reconnecting children with nature. The forest kindergarten at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs is one of a handful in the United States that are taking that concept to another level: its 23 pupils, ages 3 ½ to 6, spend three hours each day outside regardless of the weather. This in a place where winter is marked by snowdrifts and temperatures that regularly dip below freezing."

via: http://io9.com/5379374/50-years-200-missions-one-enormous-map

"That’s what I want out of schools. I want them to create more opportunities for teachable moments, more chances for kids to follow their passions and interests, more pathways and more flexibility. I want schools orchestrating chances for serendipity.

"But this is nothing compared with the food and water we need to embark for some parts of our journey where we will not meet a soul or a waterhole for up to 14 days. This part could weights up to approximately 150Kg.

"I’ve probably come across...as something of a tech geek, [but] in day-to-day life I still tend to organize my worldview not by what I can find on Wikipedia, but on what I’ve found...on the real highway...Most of our school buildings are made for the Industrial Age...meant as incubators of local society, which is precisely why folks like Woody Guthrie & Jack Kerouac resonated with the sorts of kids for whom that localized industrial structure just didn’t cut it...What we need is to put the power of mobile media into their hands, teach them how to use it & then send them out into the world to engage with both their physical & online selves. We need to stop complaining about the time away from classroom learning that fieldtrips represent & start complaining about the time away from fieldtrips that classroom learning represents...We need to get away from the school building mentality. This doesn’t mean we don’t need school buildings, but...that we need to re-evaluate their function."

Just a few clips: "In support of both of those ideas, we are working with a homeschooling (both unschooling, and curriculum-based) group in Santa Rosa, California who are allowing us to experiment with their children (cue cartoon-ominous laugh). ... If we are to change public policy around testing, we will have to show that not-testing works better. Tinkering School is an experiment in one aspect of that, but their are some courageous efforts out there like the Sudbury Valley schools that have been creating an unschooling-like experience in a school-like facility for more than 30 years -- and showing that it works. Almost 90 percent of kids from those schools go on to higher education after graduating -- and that's after never haven taken a test in their lives."

"Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a rollercoaster!"

"Childhood is a branch of cartography... Most great stories of adventure ... come furnished with a map... traveler soon learns that the only way to come to know a city ... is to visit it alone, preferably on foot, ... become as lost as one possibly can. ... our children have become cult objects to us, too precious to be risked. At the same time they have become fetishes, the objects of an unhealthy and diseased fixation. And once something is fetishized, capitalism steps in and finds a way to sell it. What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? ... Should I send my children out to play? ... Even if I do send them out, will there be anyone to play with? Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted—not taught—to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?"

"This year the MIT class ring, the Brass Rat, hides a hackers’ diagram of a subterranean campus wide tunnel network.

"I have in the past compared formal learning with exploring a city by being kidnapped and forcibly driven around a city, and informal learning with exploring a city in any other way: by joining a tour group, using a city map, riding a city bus, traveling with a friend, or (my favorite) wandering aimlessly without a map and only the vaguest idea of a destination. People, as Ignatia suggests, laugh at the concept of informal learning - but most would never explore a city any other way but informally."

"Yet in recent years archeologists have begun to find evidence of what Fawcett had always claimed: ancient ruins buried deep in the Amazon, in places ranging from the Bolivian flood plains to the Brazilian forests. These ruins include enormous man-made earth mounds, plazas, geometrically aligned causeways, bridges, elaborately engineered canal systems, and even an apparent astronomical observatory tower made of huge granite rocks that has been dubbed "the Stonehenge of the Amazon."

"I want to talk about cities, and “practical city magic” City Magic is a phrase I use a lot - I have a whole bunch of things tagged with ‘City Magic’ on delicious. Where next? It comes from a comic book I love called “The Invisibles” by Grant Morrison... Where next?"

"grew up on dusty, rural road ... occasional ride to nearest city, Las Vegas, was a 2-hour special event...smog, sprawling stores, slums & soaring signs of Strip were best of urban life that I knew...visiting the big library at the UNLV feels like arriving at the Library of Alexandria & being anointed with knowledge, olive oil & cool water from a half-functioning drinking fountain. I didn't understand what I was missing until one morning when, as a 16 year old boy, I landed in Paris. My perspective on LV changed dramatically, as did my perspective on most things in my life... walking or driving through a city — and especially, doing so in multiple cities — is like walking or riding through one's own mind...like reading literature...Giles Gunn has suggested that literature enables two functions: to speak what is unspeakable and to experience feelings which have been forgotten. When one reads about faraway lands in a book, one simultaneously visits strange feelings w/in oneself."

"a directory of ways to participate in space exploration. interact + connect with the space community."

"curated by catherine beaugrand, 'sugoroku' is a city wide game which portrays the area of saint-étienne with

"At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't)." see also: http://blog.ted.com/2008/11/the_story_of_se.php (more info about the Serious Play Conference)

"Things have certainly changed. How far did you roam as a child? How far did your parents and grandparents roam? Would be happy to read your own stories…

"I'm all about kids running around, experimenting, and getting hurt and learning from it. Maybe, a reality check or a small dose of survival of the fittest? Enough coddling. Enough of this arrested development, already. We all need a little trauma to help us grow as people!...The Tinkering School sounds refreshing in a world where too many kids' lives are governed by fear. We know free range chickens are healthier than their caged counterparts. So why not encourage free range kids too? Please don't rob your children of the important early independence and exploratory phase of their lives."

"suggests that we start looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and out past Neptune, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. He talks about what such life would be like -- and how we might find it."

"Can decay be something more than sentimental? Can it ever be beautiful? Can it just be respected for what it is, and not further corrupted by our emotions? And what is it that draws us to ruination? Why do some of us find it so compelling?"

see also: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostamerica/

see also: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostamerica/

"When I was 13 my family went on a road trip...I wandered that town alone for hours, slack-jawed at the thought that people would just walk away from furnished houses and businesses, a whole city, and never come back. I was hooked for life."

"Rabbits, opossums, raccoons & occasional deer ramble through this urban landscape as though they owned it. We’ve gone canoeing along Detroit’s storied Rouge River canal...climbed abandoned 37-story building to get up-close view of peregrine falcon ne

"takes us on a mindbending trip to hidden worlds underwater, where he and other researchers are finding unexpected life, resources, even new mountains. He makes a case for serious exploration and mapping. Google Ocean, anyone?"