The Kindness of Strangers: - Jessica Helfand, The Design Observer Group

The spring of my junior year in college, I decided that the ultimate fulfillment of my two passionate interests — Italian and graphic design — could only be met through the deft maneuvering of post-graduate study at the Politecnico in Milan. Heading into what was clearly an economic recession, I figured the other side of the pond held enormous potential for my newly-minted approximation of adult life: affordable food, cute guys, a 24-7 chance to practice my Italian and — oh yes — advanced study in my chosen profession. It was, by all indications, a win-win situation. Yet even more brazen than this was my decision to ask for advice outside the confines of my narrow, yet fairly solid pantheon of advisors. No, I didn't ask my parents, or my professors, or even a number of rather sensible grad students I knew at the time. Instead, I headed straight to the top, and wrote to Massimo Vignelli. And he wrote back.

Click to read more ...

The Trillion Dollar IQ Business and The Future of the Smarts - Rich Karlgaard:Forbes

At an August 6, 2010 conference in Lake Tahoe, the richest and smartest guy in the room, Bill Gates, offered his opinion on the next big thing. Ready? Toilets. All kinds of toilets. Broadband biffies that email PSA counts to your doctor. Do-gooder dumpers that save water in the third world. “[Toilets are] one of the greatest under investments,” Gates effused. “Not much money goes into that. You end up with the low IQ guys on the toilets.” If you know Gates — I once spent 5 days on the road with him — you’ll know he uses the term, IQ, a lot. Gates has always loved IQ. He loves it like a football coach loves 40-yard-dash speed. It never seems to occur to Gates that IQ has become a politically incorrect subject for many. Some 30% of American colleges have made the SAT test — a rough proxy for IQ — optional in the admissions process. Where the SAT is still considered, Asian and east Indian enrollment has soared.

Click to read more ...

Rethink Reform ReBuild Education - The Redu Initiative.

LET'S REDU from Redu on Vimeo.

We chose this video about REDU because it represents to us something more than just another important initiative. It spoke to us directly of the importance of the design of communication in an area such as education. The video is adult, yet playful, aesthetically pleasing, innovative stylistically and provokes the thought..if only we could believe the school of the future could be like this!!

John Seely Brown on the roots of informal learning

There’s a slight irony in that many non-specialists may find this discussion of the problems with abstraction in learning, well, a little abstract. But there is good stuff here, including the background to the Institute for Research on Learning, and what Jean Lave learnt from how people learn in Africa.

Never-Ending Drawing Machine: MIT's Collaborative Creativity Station | Design for Good | Big Think

Whether or not there is a creativity crisis may be up for debate, but one thing is clear: Our current education system is failing to create an environment that truly fosters creativity and engages the various components of its making – play, collaboration, flexibility, multi-modal stimulation. Now, a new application out of MIT Media Lab is aiming to address some of these issues.

The Never-Ending Drawing Machine is a collaborative creativity station, aimed primarily at kids, that allows users to digitally edit each other's analog, paper sketchbooks. Collaboration can take place either locally or remotely, as the system lives on the cloud. Designed by MIT grad student David Robert and colleagues, NEDM offers a promising platform for virtual co-creation not only within the classroom but also between classrooms around the world, offering yet another tool in our ever-growing arsenal for global, cross-cultural collaboration.

NEDM is built on TouchDesigner, a visual programming environment by realtime animation software provider Derivative, available for free for non-commercial personal and education use.

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine and Huffington Post, and spends a shameful amount of time on Twitter.