Tinkering School

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Jun 30, 2009, 10:51 AM

"Our goal is to ensure that they leave with a better sense that they
can make things when they leave as when they arrived . . .and kids
learn that all things go awry, and every step in a project is closer to
success or gleeful calamity. . . . Failures are celebrated and
analyzed." --Gever Tulley, at TED.

All education should be like this!!!     Watch the TED talk by Gever Tulley.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_ac...

What is an "Age"?

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Sep 23, 2008, 08:40 AM
HASTAC Scholar Whitney Trettien of MIT raised important questions of historicity in a comment on my previous blog posting, "The Historian's Dilemma and the Question of Generations": http://www.hastac.org/node/1666 I'd like to follow up with some thoughts that respond to her question and take up historian Robert Darnton's idea that we are living in the "fourth great information age": http://www.hastac.org/node/1662

The Historian's Dilemma and the Question of Generations

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Sep 21, 2008, 09:21 AM
Siva Vaidhyanathan just published "Generational Myth: Not All Young People are Tech-Savvy" in the Chronicle of Higher Education Review. http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=cyR8ms385ZjjcHcyWC5drKsJZckwxjkz I've already written to him to let him know how much I like this piece . . . And it also makes me antsy. As a historian of technology, I often find myself vacillating between generalization and specificity. Well, there's that one diary . . . and on the other there is the category of persons that one diarist represents. Ah, yes. Representation. Again.
Red Coat Reenactors

Aimless On Leave

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Dec 24, 2007, 02:28 PM
Time. That's what a leave is for. Sometimes it is for escaping media, new and old. And sometimes it is for escaping into media, new and old.
Picture 040

400 Million Wasted Vacation Days

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Jul 09, 2007, 05:21 PM
What does it mean that the average American forfeited three vacation days last year---and we already take far less vacation than in many other industrial nations?