I’ve always been impressed with home-grown technological solutions. This Streetuse website has some great ones. Note the different categories in the left hand menu. I remember seeing a TV episode on a design contest between MIT students and members of some Amazon village. They were given certain tasks to do, and provided certain scrap materials. The MIT kids were blown out of the water by the ingenuity and time to completion of the solutions.
It reminds me of my growing years in a little Arab village outside of Jerusalem. There was a blacksmith/scrapmetal guy at the the bottom of our hill who could make or repair anything we ever needed. Sorry Home Depot, your people have disappointed me over and over again when I come to them with a challenging task. Hint: The solution ain’t got a SKU number or RFID tag, and few employees (not all) can seem to think outside of even their assigned aisle or department.
Not to pull esteemed readers away from this fine site, but I have been posting on my blog fairly regularly lately. It has evolved, and reflects what I’ve been thinking about most lately–the changing educational landscape brought about by technology (specifically web 2.0 technologies) and a growing culture of multiliterate learners (digital natives/net generation).
Personally, I’ve been wondering what I need to do and be thinking about to help meet the changing expectations of this new demographic–in terms of teaching and learning. I do believe the changes are significant, but come at a(n unknown) price. I’m also concerned about the rapidly growing societal divide between the connected/participating, and the disconnected/nonparticipating.
Anyway, hop on over, take a look, add me to your blog roll, and write me a comment or two. I continue to pull in some good presentations and posts from other sites on my aggregator feed that can be found on the right hand side. Enjoy.
