Education

 It may be in a days work for me as a transport planner, but how to explain the complex interrelatedness of all the aspects of transportation, and how it shapes our world? Land use, air quality, mode shares, travel times - how we move around is affected by and affects many other things. The Transportation Research Board gave out some awards for web site and other things that did the best job of helping to educate people on what transportation means in their lives. Transportation Town, the winner, is an interesting, small-scale planning sort of thing that allows people to make choices and see what happens. Always a good thing.

I guess it really is true - if you think that you can do something, then you probably can. Or, maybe, if you haven't been told that you can't - if you have the correct mindset that you have the ability to do whatever you set yourself to, regardless of your "innate" talents, then you can. Psychology professor Carol Dweck has a book out about this, and some good research (and lots of people who would probably say that it's true and they don't need research to convince them) to back her up.

An interesting aspect of this, and the lead to the story is how knowing you're smart can supposedly hold you back. If you're told that you're smart, then you lose the incentive to develop your brain, and you just attempt to "act" smart. Seems like she should write a book for parents on how to motivate their kids, how to give them the proper mindset.

Stanford Magazine has a good dual-viewpoint article on the question of how good or how bad the American education system is doing today. Personally, I tend to put more faith in the second viewpoint -- that the spite all the negative hype, American children are actually doing pretty well. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, more kids are graduating, more kids are going to college (especially more females), and while our schools are by no means perfect, we are certainly not in a "crisis."

Stanford Magazine has a good dual-viewpoint article on the question of how good or how bad the American education system is doing today. Personally, I tend to put more faith in the second viewpoint -- that the spite all the negative hype, American children are actually doing pretty well. Compared to 20 or 30 years ago, more kids are graduating, more kids are going to college (especially more females), and while our schools are by no means perfect, we are certainly not in a "crisis."

I just noticed that the Hunter College news page has an item about the studio I was in (link is to item above it), we assisted the Bronx River Arts Center.

Interesting article in Scientific American Mind, courtesy of noise between stations:

Kraft makes the argument that we are born with this creativity — young children are invention machines — but 20 years of convergent-thinking education strengthens the left brain’s domination over the right brain.

Stanford has up some well designed pages for their: d.school | multidisciplinary design innovation center. They have run multidisciplinary product design classes out of the Mechanical Engineering Department for a long time that were very popular, with a focus on usability and sustainability. It is nice to see a full curriculum developed in this interesting area. (From noisebetweenstations)