I love learning new things and have written about learning on this blog several times before. But I am also a fan of observing mastery. I seem to remember reading in Gladwell’s Outliers, that mastery requires at least 10,000 hours of doing something. This makes it unlikely that I will achieve mastery in most of the things I am doing outside my professional live. That doesn’t prevent me from deeply enjoying the effortlessness displayed by masters. Three very different recent examples come to m...

I am going to my kids’ school this morning to meet with the head of the computer lab, the principal and the district’s main computer person to talk about Scratch (that is assuming it stops snowing!). The school is beginning to take first steps in teaching Scratch and I want to convince them to step up the pace. I firmly believe that learning how to make computers/robots do things (rather than just do things with computers/robots) will be a critical skill going forward. Scratch is wonderful fo...

I love learning new things and have written about learning on this blog several times before. But I am also a fan of observing mastery. I seem to remember reading in Gladwell’s Outliers, that mastery requires at least 10,000 hours of doing something. This makes it unlikely that I will achieve mastery in most of the things I am doing outside my professional live. That doesn’t prevent me from deeply enjoying the effortlessness displayed by masters. Three very different recent examples come to m...

I am going to my kids’ school this morning to meet with the head of the computer lab, the principal and the district’s main computer person to talk about Scratch (that is assuming it stops snowing!). The school is beginning to take first steps in teaching Scratch and I want to convince them to step up the pace. I firmly believe that learning how to make computers/robots do things (rather than just do things with computers/robots) will be a critical skill going forward. Scratch is wonderful fo...

Yesterday, I had a fascinating lunch with some very bright folks from the Gates Foundation. In addition to public health, the Gates Foundation appears to be ramping up its activities in education. A key topic at the lunch was the impact of the web on education. The discussion really helped clarify my own thinking about what the critical missing element is (at least so far): scale. Scale on the web is unlike anything that we have seen before. Facebook recently announced that they crossed 300 m...

Yesterday, I had a fascinating lunch with some very bright folks from the Gates Foundation. In addition to public health, the Gates Foundation appears to be ramping up its activities in education. A key topic at the lunch was the impact of the web on education. The discussion really helped clarify my own thinking about what the critical missing element is (at least so far): scale. Scale on the web is unlike anything that we have seen before. Facebook recently announced that they crossed 300 m...

Disrupting Class is a book by Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson and Michael Horn that applies Christensen’s theories around disruptive innovation to schools. First up a confession: I started this book twice and did not get past the first chapter! But after having read the two books mentioned in yesterday’s post, I decided to give it another whirl. As soon as I got into the second chapter I really began to enjoy it and from there on it was a quick read. The basic premise of the book is that ...

Disrupting Class is a book by Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson and Michael Horn that applies Christensen’s theories around disruptive innovation to schools. First up a confession: I started this book twice and did not get past the first chapter! But after having read the two books mentioned in yesterday’s post, I decided to give it another whirl. As soon as I got into the second chapter I really began to enjoy it and from there on it was a quick read. The basic premise of the book is that ...

I have been having a great time thinking about education and learning. My interest in this topic started with a blog post I wrote on the Union Square Ventures blog about the transformative power of the Internet. The process that unfolded from there is illustrative of what is possible today. The initial post and subsequent ones (including ones by Fred) attracted a lot of comments which pointed to interesting resources on the web. Through the comments I also discovered several books that otherw...

I have been having a great time thinking about education and learning. My interest in this topic started with a blog post I wrote on the Union Square Ventures blog about the transformative power of the Internet. The process that unfolded from there is illustrative of what is possible today. The initial post and subsequent ones (including ones by Fred) attracted a lot of comments which pointed to interesting resources on the web. Through the comments I also discovered several books that otherw...

We don't do very well with predicting the future because we fail to anticipate non-linearity. This is apparent almost anywhere you look. Most people when they hear that the average temperature of the earth might rise by a couple of degrees, seem to have a mental image of a slightly warmer summer and maybe a bit less snow in winter (if you live in a place that has snow in winter). Very few people associate such a seemingly small change with the possibility of deserts in places that are lu...

We don't do very well with predicting the future because we fail to anticipate non-linearity. This is apparent almost anywhere you look. Most people when they hear that the average temperature of the earth might rise by a couple of degrees, seem to have a mental image of a slightly warmer summer and maybe a bit less snow in winter (if you live in a place that has snow in winter). Very few people associate such a seemingly small change with the possibility of deserts in places that are lu...

At the DLD panel on education – which was moderated well by Simon Levine from Accel – there was an interesting discussion about the role of teachers and motivation in learning. On one side was Shai Reshef, an education entrepreneur, who is preparing to launch a free online “University of the People." On the other was Alexander Olek, who has helped create a successful school program in Germany that is similar to the KIPP program in the US in that it emphasizes in school learning (longer days, ...

At the DLD panel on education – which was moderated well by Simon Levine from Accel – there was an interesting discussion about the role of teachers and motivation in learning. On one side was Shai Reshef, an education entrepreneur, who is preparing to launch a free online “University of the People." On the other was Alexander Olek, who has helped create a successful school program in Germany that is similar to the KIPP program in the US in that it emphasizes in school learning (longer days, ...