Blogging live from the Friday Institute:

Audience is a cross-section of educators (primary-university), government, business.

Brave New Schools, How Computers Can Change Education - written by new director of Friday Inst.

Remarks from Katherine Moore, NC State College of Ed

• 1:1 pilot project started with 8th graders at Centennial MS

Remarks from Jim Goodnight, CEO SAS Institute

•  Spoke of the 21st Century belonging to Asia - US is not feeling the “clear and present danger” it needs to in the innovation/brain “war”.  We’ve got to teach to our technologically savvy kids!

Keynote Speaker - Alan Kay - Viewpoints Research Institute (non-profit dedicated to children and learning)

• “It’s the fundamental changes that make the big difference.”
• “If there was ever an air guitar nation, it’s the United States.”
• We don’t need more scientists and engineers, we need higher quality scientists/engineers.
• “Distracting Ourselves to Death” - whenever you reset what is “normal” it makes it difficult to allow constructive criticism
• “Science is a debugging process for our bad human brains.”
• Mentioned Francis Bacon and the beginnings of real science
• No reason to make a distinction between the STEM areas to/for children.  They should be interconnected.
• The Internet has killed criticism because there is so much out criticism out on the Internet.
• Believes that more knowledge is gained in Science through reading because you can’t experiment with everything in Science.
• $100 laptop includes Etoys (worldwide authoring tool)
• Adults who teach children generally lack sufficient fluency in math thinking.
• Squeakland.org
• Never give simulations that are already written, the child should be the one to create the variables and experiment with them.
• Must use phenomenon that are in the child’s world as part of the investigation.
• Lillian McDermott - physicist who studies how people learn science

Definitely need to spend some time with the above links!