In high school, I had seen mathematics simply as a bunch of skills that were fun to master — but I had never thought of it as a journey and a universe to explore.
Large factories with a broad product line might have a bunch of skills in one place, but that would be pure production line work, with each worker doing a small set of tasks.
In high school, I had seen mathematics simply as a bunch of skills that were fun to master but I had never thought of it as a journey and a universe to explore.
"One of the things we're trying to set up with this workshop is kids will get partnered with a maker to collaborate with them for three to four months after the workshop to push the design even further," says Ganim. "Obviously five days is not a lot of time to learn about design, learn a whole bunch of skills, design something, and make a final something.
Be aware of how much that part of the media world is changing and develop a bunch of skills that you might not have needed ten years ago.
Instead of thinking of teaching and learning as a race to cover a bunch of skills, we put our own understanding and that of our students at the center of our thinking.
Students across the country think of math as a bunch of random skills to memorize and regurgitate.
They need to go out of the classroom, measure and estimate, and work out who's going to build the cafeteria, the gym, the science lab … what materials they should use – it requires collaboration and a bunch of different skills, including maths, art and design".
Take a bunch of people whose skill is solving problems (which is basically what programming is) and they will naturally tend towards what has been dubbed "solutionism", or the faintly messianic belief that everything can and should be fixed; as if the world were one giant program to be debugged.
Once upon a time, there was a guy who couldn't swing a sword and nearly peed his pants whenever he saw even a toddler-size dragon, so he went to law school, where he learned a bunch of very useful skills, and when he graduated he became a lawyer, and he was pretty O.K. at that, and it allowed him to build a life, try to build a life.
