Quest to Learn is an AWESOME new age school for grades 6-12 that uses digital media and game design as the primary means of education, with video games at the center of all classes and learning experiences. This doesn’t mean that its students sit around playing Farmville all day, with the occasional break to pwn n00bs at Halo 3, however. These are  games created to bridge old and new literacies to help students learn about the world as a set of interconnected systems. Design and complex problem-solving are two big ideas of the school, as is immersing students in real life-based situations that help them think like designers, inventors, mathematicians and more. Each student has a laptop and homework is managed on a social networking site called BeingMe, where students can collaborate and critique each other’s work, with support from adult mentors.

A brain child of the Institute of Play, I think this school model is completely brilliant, as it situates learning in a familiar way that compels children to want to do it, versus just going through the motions, which makes all the difference in the world. Katie Salen, the director of the school and a speaker at 2006 PUSH, says that

“The design of Quest to Learn has purposely responded not only to the growing evidence that digital media and games offer powerful models for reconsidering how and where young people learn, but that access for all students to these opportunities is critical.”

As I said in a previous post, the brain never stops reorganizing itself in response to the world. This generation of children are digital natives … video games and digital media are what they grew up with and what they’re interested in. It makes sense that the way we teach them needs to evolve as well. School systems need to catch up with the 21st century and embrace the technologies that are ubiquitous in these kids’ lives instead of avoiding, or even forbidding, them. Quest to Learn might not be a perfect solution to our country’s education problems, but it is an interesting step in the right direction toward turning students into thoughtful, well-informed citizens who are literate in the technologies and skills needed for success in the 21st century.

Katie Salen, the school’s Executive Director, on Kid Culture:

(Side note: it’s odd to include a ‘u’ when typing ‘colour,’ but I like it enough to pretend to be British for the rest of this post.)

Dulux has gathered together a team of volunteers who have traveled to London, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Jodhpur so far this year in search of drab, dreary neighborhoods to rejuvenate with vivid, eye-popping coats of paint. They prioritize local participation and collaboration in shaping communities, as “Mandating things to people feels a bit old fashioned. People want to collaborate, people want to create content to share with the world.”

Rather than being just another lifeless, corporate PR campaign, the Let’s Colour project is absolutely charming, combining a simple, powerful mission, an enthusiastic team and a lasting, beautiful end result. Their YouTube page features videos showing the passion sparked in local communities involved with the metamorphosis of their formerly dull, grey, oppressive public spaces. Two little girls in India declare that their favorite colours are rainbow and pink, and that they are VERY excited to paint their school. Some young men in Aulnay, France say that participating in the project makes them feel like they’re bringing joy to their city.

My favorite video, however, came from Benito Berretta, a marketing director, who shared his thoughts on colour and how it reflects who we are as individuals and communities:

“There is a relationship between the colours and the soul of the community. Colours are the language of the community. They reveal a lot of things about they communicate and interact with life, how they see the future and how they enjoy the present. “

“This language is very important to understand because it will tell you a lot about how to start a dialogue with the communities. It’s about understanding that we are all different, but that at the same time we all have similar things, one of them being that when you paint, there is a future for you. Communities that are painting have a brighter future; they have hope – for improving, for bringing new things.”

Beautiful. To go along with that, I recently stumbled across an infographic that charts the varying symbolism of colours around the world, from purple and flamboyance to brown and loyalty.

Red symbolizes love in American and Japanese culture. Hindus, however, associate that feeling with the colour green, while Native Americans use yellow and African culture ties love in with the colour blue.

This chart just goes to show that while differing from culture to culture, colour really does help us make sense of the world around us. It’s such a powerful, important part of human expression and if Dulux is on a mission to rid communities of grey and gloom, more power to them.

The platform — founded by a team of ex- World Bank and United Nations workers — connects individual supporters, technology providers and the local organizations worldwide who need those technologies. A humanitarian three-way of sorts, if you will.

Projects like self-adjustable glasses for refugees with zero access to eye care, rollable water containers for women in East Timor and computer skills training programs for rural Ugandans have been amazingly effective and show how well the platform works.

Microfinance, a type of banking service designed to provide low income people with a means of saving money, borrowing money, and insurance is not a new concept by any means. Best known through the Grameen Bank model, microfinance has been extraordinarily successful because it gives people an opportunity to become entrepreneurial and self-sufficient, helping them help themselves. Iqbal Quadir, a speaker at the 2005 PUSH conference and Director of the fantastic Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, is the founder of the GrameenPhone, a perfect example of the impact that empowering the citizens of poor countries can have.

In a great TEDTalk, Quadir said that he believes far more in the power of individuals, even those whose only resources are their minds and imaginations, than in the power of the state. He charges that foreign aid has failed to improve living standards because “aid empowers authorities, not citizens.” If we can start promoting businesses and connectivity in these areas, it can have a much greater impact on people’s lives than all the aid we can imagine. Quadir had a vision that creating universal access to telephone service in his home country of Bangladesh would greatly improve efficiency, connect villages to the world, create business opportunities and generate a culture of entrepreneurship over time. Quadir used the Grameen Bank model to implement his distribution scheme in which village entrepreneurs, backed by micro-loans, could retail telephone services to their surrounding areas. This model worked and GrameenPhone currently provides telephone access to over 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh, improving economic efficiency immensely.

Iqbal Quadir goes by the motto “Connectivity is productivity,” which is where Kopernik comes in. Kiva took the Grameen Bank model a step further by allowing anyone who wants to participate in microfinance to lend money all over the world. Donors can start a Kiva account and then browse among possible borrowers and causes to figure out whom to lend money to. Kopernik is the next step — it shows that not only can everyone can be involved in microfinance, but that we can do this even more effectively. It provides a model that could potentially fill the disconnect between people who dream up world-changing technologies and the people who actually need them. The team behind Kopernik is planning to eventually expand beyond crowdfunding proposals into developing their own products with DIY and open-source instructions that local communities can use to build technologies on their own. Microfinance is the new tool and philosophy of how change is effective. Kopernik is simply taking that model and adding an organizational piece to it – in effect, shifting the the structure Copernicus-style, while focusing on the idea that connectivity really is productivity.

I want people to feel as though this is the most important issue of our time. It is possible to give every kid a great education and they can do something about it. Driving by and worrying is not enough. Unless each one of us takes a step to make change, our schools won’t get any better.

-Davis Guggenheim, director of Waiting for Superman

A much-anticipated documentary premiered January 22^nd at the Sundance Film Festival.  Waiting for Superman (incidentally, the name of a Flaming Lips cover I love, but I digress) examines the crisis of public education in the United States through multiple interlocking stories – from a handful of students and their families whose futures hang in the balance, to the educators and reformers trying to find real and lasting solutions within a dysfunctional system. Directed by Oscar-winning Davis Guggenheim (of An Inconvenient Truth fame) and supported by an impressive cast of characters including Bill Gates, Geoffrey Canada (founder of the fantastic Harlem Children’s Zone), John Legend and Michelle Rhee (the chancellor of the D.C. public schools system), the film is meant to be a call to action for public schools the way An Inconvenient Truth was for global warming.

The film examines efforts by innovative educators to turn around failing school systems in Washington, D.C., Harlem, Los Angeles and other places where many schools have come to be known as “dropout factories” and “academic sinkholes”. It isn’t trying to prove that the public school system of the United States is in crisis – that’s been fairly well-documented, despite increased spending and the promise of politicians that no child will be left behind. We spend more money per student than any other nation in the world, but the test scores of American students have fallen from near the top to rock bottom among developed nations. Sure, money is always a problem, but by no means is it the only one. Waiting for Superman argues that teachers are the solution to our country’s education problem. Decades of research and test data indicate that the primary factor determining a school performance is not its budget, physical plant, curriculum, student population or income level of its district. It is teaching.

The main premise of Waiting for Superman is that improvement in our school systems requires major improvement in both our teachers themselves and in the way they are treated. It “requires demanding our teachers get deep in the trenches, be allowed to be flexible and innovative, persist, and to be held accountable.” Some of the main culprits identified as holding schools back are self-interested education bureaucracies and teachers unions, and the ways they prevent administrators from getting rid of poor instructors. One particularly irritating practice brought up is the $65 million-a-year “Rubber Room” in which bad New York teachers draw full salaries while waiting idly for the school district to prove misconduct charges. The film proposes a teacher compensation model based off what Michelle Rhee is already working on in Washington D.C. – a system that evaluates teachers based on a combination of their students’ test scores, academic gains, and classroom observations from third-party evaluators. The system would reward successful teachers with a higher salary while flushing out ineffective ones and weakening tenure. Charter schools (schools that receive public funding but are free from many of the rules and regulations that apply to regular public schools) are identified as the future of our education system. Guggenheim offers hope by looking at education reformers and schools that are already reshaping the culture and refusing to leave children behind.

No matter what your political beliefs, this movie is important because it brings the issue of our country’s education system to a level that everyone can understand — telling them how it works and why they should care. When values become shared, when an issue becomes personal, when a large group of people starts to get it — this is the catalyst for innovative solutions and changes to actually occur.  Not having seen the documentary yet (Paramount plans to distribute it in the fall), I can’t offer my opinion on the exact changes that these educators want to make to the system. I can, however, offer my opinion that things need to change and that it needs to be a group movement; it’s impossible for a few revolutionary teachers to change a system on their own that’s been around forever. There are thousands of children in our country who, despite promises that they won’t be, are being left behind and are desperately in need of a Superman (or two or fifty). Hopefully this documentary stirs the souls and the hearts of the people in this country and makes them believe that it is possible to give every kid a great education.

“Synthetic biology has been called the science of the 21st century. Rewriting the genetic information of micro organisms allows scientists to create new genetic machines that can perform extraordinary tasks.”

And, perched at the crossroads of biology and engineering is the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition wherein multi-disciplinary teams of undergraduate students from all over the world (112 teams this year) come together to dabble in scientific exploration of synthetic biology concepts with an eye toward real world applications.

According to the iGEM site, student teams are given a “kit of biological parts” meted out from an official Registry of Standard Biological Parts (yikes!) which they use as components to “specify, design, build and test simple biological systems.” Participants present their findings in an annual Championship Jamboree/finale forum.

Beakers, lab coats and pocket protectors aside, this is no activity for lightweights. Successful involvement in this impressive competition requires a winning combination of funding, equipment, research space, expertise, leadership, team work and commitment.

“As the premiere undergraduate teaching program in Synthetic Biology, iGEM attracts the current and future leaders in the field. The competition format is highly motivating and fosters hands-on, interdisciplinary education. Biology students learn engineering approaches and tools to organize, model, and assemble complex systems, while engineering students are able to immerse themselves in applied molecular biology… Students are given access to some of the most advanced synthetic biology tools currently available in the hopes of developing students into the best genetic engineers of tomorrow.”

The 2009 Jamboree took place last week at MIT and the Grand Prize winner of the Biobrick Trophy was the Cambridge team for their work on sensitivity tuners and color-generating devices that can detect and measure levels of contaminants in the environment. An eclectic group of graduate fellows, researchers, and honorary lab rats from the London School of Economics, the Royal College of Art, (and a guy whose “work on synthetic meat was recently featured in Wired magazine”), served in an advisory capacity to the Cambridge team.

Students participated in a series of workshops designed to “catch everyone up on the details of Synthetic biology” (I know I’m a little rusty), brainstorm, hone presentation skills, and encourage thinking around bioethical issues such as the far-reaching implications of a project involving live bacteria.

Daisy Ginsburg and James King from the Royal College of Art, organized a Colors Future workshop, exposing students to the behavior of various pigments from the natural world. The group explored many interesting scenarios around the use of pigmentation as an environmental indicator, engineering E. coli to be sensitive to “environmentally significant compounds,” including arsenic, mercury, lead, cyanide, etc. These genetically engineered biosensors worked on a color “dipstick” model wherein live bacteria changed color when exposed to various chemical pollutants.

“We envisioned a marketable product that reports the concentration of an inducer by colour. Each strain is sensitive to a different concentration of the inducer. The concentration of the inducer in the test solution can be determined by reading the pattern of pigmentation. Think litmus paper using live bacteria as the color change agent.  “Colour can be a meaningful but simple output solution for biosensors, adapting nature’s idea of warning colouration.“

The simple sensing mechanism created by the Cambridge iGEM team came about as a result of  multidisciplinary thinking at the juncture between science, technology and art. Their discovery has the potential to change the lives of tens of thousands of people living in remote areas of developing countries where pollution looms as an increasingly significant threat.

You’ve been warned.

Luckily for all of us, there are people out there enlightening those around them with more than the special edition of C.H.U.D.

One of them is George Ayittey, champion of Radio Free Africa – a non-profit organization with the goal of facilitating the flow of information on the continent. Specifically, the group is most interested in the sharing of ideas and supporting public watchdogs to expose criminal and political wrongdoing. Though an equally large undertaking is the creation of a viable network for spreading said information.

Knowledge is the ability to create change – voice is the ability to share it. Opening the lines of communication leads to the ultimate open source community. Only, instead of building iPhone apps, it’s building the future. The iPhone app store is a good example, though, in the sense that it shows how the empowered masses will always move things forward more quickly than the entrusted few.

I remember taking “The History of Mass Communication” in college (almost as stuffy as it sounds) and discussing the role of the colonial press in the birth of the nation. It’s hard to imagine this rebel press as a very big deal because we already have things like Consumerist.com and FactCheck.org. At this point, we truly seem to live in a country where the watchdog is thriving.

In fact, I can barely picture a world where I don’t have access to the outside through my computer, iPhone, coworker … etc. I am empowered and the fact that I’m even writing this post is proof that I have the potential to spark change, or at least Diggs, outside of my own, immediate sphere.

Radio Free Africa is picking things up at a different stage because this freedom of information – this flow of ideas – does not exist in Africa, or at least not to the extent that it does here.

Radio Free Africa is currently focused on:

• collecting current events and news articles relating to free press and violations against it
• collecting information on similar grassroots programs
• academic and policy review
• legislative outreach
• technology outreach – penetrating hard-to-reach locales through the use of tools like mobile phones and services like SMS, in order to create a framework for engagement and free media
• identifying areas where free speech is under attack and developing plans to intervene

In short, the visionaries at Radio Free Africa are building the reservoir, developing the pipeline and determining where to plant wells.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Luis Soriano Bohorquez and his donkey have worked out a system that – while not quite as expansive – is no less inspiring. Instead of connecting a continent through free media, Luis gets on his “biblioburro” every weekend in order to deliver books to the surrounding towns and villages.

With a few thousand books haphazardly piled in his home and at friends’ houses, it’s a little hard fill requests. And to think I groaned at having to use a card catalog once!

But, in the same way Radio Free Africa is seeking to open the lines of communication to and build community, Luis is broadening the horizons of the children around him. The children are becoming stronger readers – developing the tools to communicate on a much broader level.

Said one child, “It’s important because, when your parents ask you to read them a letter that they don’t understand, you can read it to them.”

Not only are they developing technical skills, but they are learning how to dream bigger, and through these books, they are allowed to step outside of their own worlds.

There’s a good chance that I’ll never see half the places I’ve visited in books. But I’m certainly better for all the places I’ve dreamed. It’s a question of scope. It allows me to dream bigger in the world I do exist in.

If we believe that change literacy is written in the language of dreams, then both Luis Soriano Bohorquez and George Ayittey should be thanked in the dedication.

Without their faith and support, this [insert dream/change/invention/cure/work of art/etc.] would not have been possible.

Eager to continue his education any way he could, he spent a considerable amount of time at the library where, one day, he picked up a tattered U.S. textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.

Malawi is short on many resources, but they do have an abundant supply of wind. Thinking “If somebody did this thing, I can also do it,” Kamkwamba set out to build his very own windmill. To get supplies for it, he salvaged all sorts of junk (another man’s treasure) from his father’s broken bike to old tractor pieces and was often greeted with “Ah, look, the madman has come with his garbage.” Several people thought he was smoking marijuana to which he replied that he was “only making something for juju [magic].”

The garbage-collecting madman succeeded in making magic when he managed to hack together a functioning windmill from strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees.

Originally, all he wanted to do was power a small light bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset. That dream got bigger in a hurry and one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.

TEDGlobal heard about him, invited him to speak at their conference, and inspired by William, started a non-profit called the Moving Windmills Project. Moving Windmills supports Malawian-run rural economic development and education projects in Malawi, with the goals of community economic independence and self-sustainability; food, water and health security; and educational success.

All this from a tattered library book, a few old bicycle parts and a boy with a seemingly impossible dream. Juju indeed.

(William will be a guest on The Daily Show tonight!)

My first impression of Neave.com was that I had mistakenly stumbled across an online playground for stoners – the lights, the sounds, the painfully over done British banter complete with bizarre references to elephants named Dave – huh?

Paul Neave, the London-based interactive designer behind Neave.com explains his flash-design software such: “I love trying to dissolve the boundaries between code and design and exploring ways of making technology seem less scary and geeky, but more fun and human.” Undoubtedly, the site is amusing, but when it comes to dissolving boundaries – I have to disagree.  Neave’s flash graphics are fun, but in his attempts to make them more “human”, it’s hard to miss the irony that his use of technology is actually driving us away from the very definition of humanity: interaction with each other and the outside world.

Take for example, any of the following: Imagination, Bounce, Dandelion, or Flash Earth. Immediately upon opening the Flash Imagination screen, I am met with memories of playing Ribbon Dancer in my driveway. Bounce reminds me of the ball pits that I would bury myself in at Chuck-E-Cheese, the blowing of the dandelion seeds in Dandelion is a practice that I still indulge in, and Flash Earth or Planetarium – well, walk outside your front door and you can behold the real deal.

It is interesting to think that the catalyst behind Neave’s playful flash design is the nostalgia of our own childhood. It works for most of us now, but what about the next generation of kids? With the introduction of computers coming earlier and earlier in life, their first exposure to these games might actually be Neave.com’s version instead of real thing. Will the flash games still engage them if they have no previous, more tangible memories to build upon for their understanding of fun? How do “real play” and “virtual play” overlap? Must one precede the other in order to be effective or can we be engaged in a continual exchange?

Neave.com toys with this concept in a clever way. Paul Neave takes delight in his ability to use his flash-tech savvy to have fun at work, but I think we’re better off taking him up on his parting advice:

“Turn off the computer and go outside. Go hang with your friends. Make lots of new friends. Count your blessings. Smile like an idiot. Don’t think too much. Don’t worry about the future. Don’t take life too seriously. Don’t pay attention to word I say.”  – Done!

Music is an explosive expression of humanity. – Billy Joel

The past few years, veiled by the secrecy of night, street pianos emblazoned with the phrase “Play me, I’m yours.” have been appearing in cities across the world. Located in skate parks, industrial estates, laundromats, precincts, bus shelters and train stations, outside pubs and football grounds, the pianos are for any member of the public to enjoy and claim temporary ownership of. London was the most recent city to be hit with an influx of these mysterious musical instruments and the positive results have been overwhelming.

The 30 brightly decorated pianos scattered across the UK’s capital are part of an art installation by artist Luke Jerram, designed to act as a catalyst for strangers who regularly occupy the same space, to talk and connect with one another. Disrupting people’s negotiation of their city, the pianos are also meant to provoke citizens into engaging, activating and claiming ownership of their urban landscape. Along with creating a sense of unity and whimsy in the street, the installation serves a practical purpose by providing access to musical instruments to those who ordinarily might not have the privilege. When Play Me, I’m Yours was in São Paolo, Brazil, people traveled for hours just to play the pianos that are normally so scarce and precious that they cost a year’s income. After the 3 week installation is up, the pianos are donated to local schools and community centers.

Characteristically of the Web 2.0 world we live in, a website was created that allows people to upload videos and pictures of the various pianos in use across the city. The responses were overwhelming, ranging from a homeless man teaching the son of a street worker how to play to a duo who played 24 of the pianos in 8 hours to a massive crowd singing Hey Jude on Carnaby Street. I spent far too much time looking at these pictures  and was amazed by the impact such a simple idea had on the demeanor of complete strangers on the street. Place a few pianos on the street here and there and voila!, detached passerbys normally glued to their technological devices transform into living, breathing human beings who sing and laugh and play piano and connect with both the people and the city around them. I love the idea of the fine arts being moved from private venues such as museums and concert halls to the public space (defined by Wikipedia as an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level.) where everyone reaps the benefits. What could happen to both urban landscapes and the way strangers interact with each other if there was enough funding to spread this project to hundreds of cities worldwide? Imagine.

World Pulse was founded in 2003 by Jensine Larsen, a young journalist covering indigenous movements and ethnic cleansing in South America and Southeast Asia, with a commitment to address international women’s issues. “We deliver a message of empowerment,” Casas explains. “We have no political agenda, nor are we are a humanitarian agency…We are simply a venue for the voices of women across the world to be heard.”

Though many national feminist magazines exist such as Ms. Magazine and B*tch (another popular Portland export), World Pulse seeks to fill the international niche. Their Voices of the Future initiative operates similar to Global Voices or WITNESS, two sites that use videos, blog, and other technology to expose issues and sectors of society that might otherwise be left silent, but World Pulse caters specifically to women. Not only do they provide a platform to be heard – they provide the training as well. In partnership with the Empowerment Institute, the Press Institute, and the Op-Ed Project, World Pulse has initiated the help of approximately 30 life coaches/editorial advisors across the world to serve as mentors to 31 international, grassroots correspondents from over 21 nations. Because World Pulse primarily seeks first-person narratives for their stories, the women who are willing to speak may not always have a journalism background. Fortunately, they will have coaches available to guide them towards success and improvement within their writing careers and their lives.

In addition to their bi-annual print magazine and regular online content, World Pulse has developed PulseWire, a social networking tool that can be used for women’s global empowerment. It is a space where you can tell your story, post an offering or need, collaborate in groups, and ideally – build a movement. “We have a lot of new platforms in the works, but we’re saving our big media launch until 2010,” Casas says. “We’re hoping to introduce a membership model for our magazine to help with our funding. We would also like to organize an international delegation where our women writers and other influential figures in women’s issues can come together to workshop and strengthen their solidarity.”

As I flip through the Winter/Spring 09 edition of World Pulse, I am greeted by faces and voices incredibly different from my own, yet also so profoundly similar. My encounter with World Pulse was a wonderful way to come back into and reconnect with this world.

The Summer/Fall 2009 print edition of World Pulse will be hitting newsstands soon. Look for it at Barnes and Noble and independent bookstores across the nation.