This TED Video is from August 2006. Since then technology, on-demand publishing and digital tools have come a long way. Digital libraries, digital readers, web-books etc are more common place than ever with new developments happening everyday. Last week the ipad was launched and now we hear about a revolutionary new product (Mirus Schoolbook Convertible) that, by some, is expected to out-do the ipad.
See this video from 4 years ago for an outlook on the issues raised by technology including expectations from it. The issues and expectations are much the same today, but the world seems to have moved much closer to achieving the desired goals.
It is now a question of when, rather than if (digitized, customised and individualised textbooks will replace ordinary physical text-books)
Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.
Designer Tim Brown makes the point that 3 important components of creative design are:
1. Playful Exploration (go for quantity),
2. Playful Building (think with hands), and
3. Role Play (act it out).
Play is not anarchy, it has rules, especially if it is group play. When kids play they’re following a script that they’ve agreed to. And it’s this code negotiation that leads to productive play. Kids know how to play, but as they grow-up they forget. This be because as they grow-up the stimulus to play keeps getting reduced and/or societal norms no longer find play acceptable behaviour.
To be creative, some of what we knew as kids has to be re-learnt.
At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play — with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn’t).
