The New York Times published a terrific Magazine this Sunday on education. The cover reads: “Teachers just want to teach but the classroom has become a battleground.” I’m not sure that’s exactly “news” this fall but it is absolutely true. Two of the articles in particular were worth reading and reflecting on as we start … Read more
On October 17, 2014, we are launching the Andover Institute at Phillips Academy. The Institute will be a hub for innovation at PA, where our students, faculty, and others come together to explore new ideas in teaching and learning at the secondary school level. The idea is to have a “Bell Labs” here at Andover … Read more
The Web turns 25 years old this year. What has changed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN in Switzerland, released this gift to the world in 1989? The easier question to answer might be to ask what hasn’t changed. The widespread use of the Web in communities all around the world has touched … Read more
We have the great privilege today of Chris Hughes‘ visit to Andover. Chris graduated from Phillips Academy in 2002. He returns today to teach a master-class with me, to give the All School Meeting address, and to meet with various groups on campus. The master class takes as its starting point a text: Hannah Arendt’s … Read more
I am teaching a winter-term seminar course at Phillips Academy to ten seniors entitled “Hacking: A Course in Experiments.” I had a great time teaching it last year as well with ten students (I miss them!), and now have the privilege of repeating it for a new group of students. We are starting today. The … Read more
Sal Khan and his traveling team of six teachers and developers from Khan Academy are on campus at Phillips Academy this morning. We are delighted to welcome them to a special faculty meeting. We are pleased to welcome friends from the Andover public schools ( Superintendent Marinel McGrath and AHS Principal Christopher Lord), the Lawrence … Read more
Today is the kick-off for the brand-new Harvard Initiative on Learning and Teaching (HILT). This is an extraordinary day at Harvard, part symposium and part working session to get HILT underway in earnest. The background: President Drew Faust and two of the university’s most loyal friends, Rita and Gustave Hauser, dreamed up a major new … Read more
We are just thrilled to have William Rawn and his colleague Cliff Gayley of William Rawn Associates in our Bibliotheca class (which I’m co-teaching with Jeffrey Schnapp) at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design this morning. They’ve designed the Cambridge Public Library’s main building, as well as the Rochester Public Library. They are also discussing two … Read more
I’m having a huge amount of fun teaching a class at the Harvard Graduate School of Design with my friend Jeffrey Schnapp on the history, present, and future of libraries, called Bibliotheca. The students are fantastic: twenty or so, mostly studying design and architecture, though there are graduate students in other fields. We’re holding the … Read more
I had the pleasure of teaching in the Research Symposium for Spanish and Latin American Academics, held at Harvard University this August. As part of a three-hour session on learning with technologies, I assigned an exercise in which groups of teachers (mostly at the university level; a few teaching younger students) had to work together … Read more