Deborah Meier works with young teachers
Constructing Modern Knowledge 2013 is committed to making connections between child-centered learning theories and the creative construction of knowledge with computers. In addition to providing a rich sandbox where educators enjoy the luxury of time to work on personally rewarding projects, there are occasional opportunities to interact with some of the greatest educational minds of our time.
Jonathan Kozol explores a project created at CMK 2011
A best-selling historian helps with a robotics project
We want CMK participants to return home able to say, “I spent time with one of my heroes,” or “My favorite education author helped with my project,” rather than “I heard X speak.”
We are unbelievably excited by this year’s guest speakers! Their knowledge, insight, experience, passion and commitment to social justice are unrivaled.
You will never ever again have the opportunity to work with Casey Neistat, Mark Frauenfelder, Lilian Katz and Super-Awesome Sylvia. This is only possible at Constructing Modern Knowledge 2013, July 9-12, 2013. Register today!
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Dale Dougherty
Proclaimed a “Champion of Change” by the White House, Dale Dougherty is the founder of Make magazine and the creator of the rapidly growing global phenomenon known as Maker Faire. He is currently publisher of Make and general manager of the Maker Media division of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Maker Faire is the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth—a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. Part science fair, part county fair, and part something entirely new, Maker Faire brings together a highly diversified group of individuals who are bound by a common thread to create. Through making, meeting, and sharing comes something very magical that leads to inspiration, education, innovation, and the next best thing. Dale Dougherty co-founded O’Reilly Media, a technical publisher and conference organizer known for its advocacy of Open Source and the Web. He coined the term “Web 2.0″ while developing the Web 2.0 Conference. He was the developer and publisher of Global Network Navigator (GNN), the first commercial Web site which launched in 1993 and was sold to AOL in 1995. Dale was developer and publisher of Web Review, the online magazine for Web designers, and he was O’Reilly’s first editor. Dougherty developed the Hacks series of books to “reclaim the term ‘hacking’ for the good guys,” and he’s the author of Sed & Awk. |
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Tod MachoverTod Machover has been called “America’s most wired composer” by the Los Angeles Times. He is widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments which he launched in 1986. Machover studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris. He has been Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab since it was founded in 1985, and is Director of the Lab’s Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future research groups. Since 2006, Machover has also been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. A recent focus of Machover’s group has been on Music, Mind and Health, which marshals the power of music to promote well-being. Working with long-term patients at facilities such as Tewksbury Hospital, north of Boston, the group’s goal is to develop personal musical activities that adapt to the particular skills and needs of each individual. In this way, the path to health becomes as rewarding as learning an instrument, composing a symphony, or premiering at Carnegie Hall.Tod Machover’s music has been acclaimed for breaking traditional artistic and cultural boundaries, offering a unique and innovative synthesis of acoustic and electronic sound, of symphony orchestras and interactive computers, and of operatic arias and rock songs. Machover’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world’s most prestigious ensembles and soloists, including the Ensemble InterContemporain, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Speculum Musicae, BBC Scottish Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Houston Grand Opera, Bunkamura (Tokyo), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Collage New Music, Speculum Musicae, Ars Electronica, Casa da Musica (Porto), American Composers Orchestra, Tokyo String Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Ying Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Kim Kashkahian, David Starobin, Matt Haimovitz, and many more. His work has been awarded numerous prizes and honors, among others from from the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Culture Ministry, and the French Culture Ministry, which named him a Chevalier de l’Order des Arts et des Lettres. In 2007 he was awarded the Steinmetz Prize from the IEEE. He was the first recipient of the World Technology Award for the Arts, in 2010, and was Finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music.Machover has been particularly noted for his operatic compositions, which include: VALIS (1987), a science fiction opera – called ‘the first opera of the 21st century” by The New York Times – commissioned for the tenth anniversary of the Centre Georges Pompidou; Media/Medium (1994), a “magic” opera for magicians Penn & Teller; the audience-interactive Brain Opera (1996/8), commissioned for the first Lincoln Center Festival, toured worldwide, and permanently installed at the Haus der Musik in Vienna since 2000; Resurrection (1999), based on Tolstoy’s last novel and commissioned by Houston Grand Opera; Skellig (2008) based on the award-winning novel by David Almond and commissioned by the Sage Gateshead (UK); and Death and the Powers (2010), a “robotic” opera with an original libretto by U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky and directed by Diane Paulus (powers.media.mit.edu). In addition, Machover has created numerous large-scale music installations for the general public, including the building-size underground art experience Meteorite (2000-2005) in Essen, Germany, a collaboration with media entrepreneur Andre Heller.Tod Machover has invented many new technologies for music, most notably his Hyperinstruments that use smart computers to augment musical expression and creativity. He has designed these hyperinstruments for some of the world’s greatest musicians, from Yo-Yo Ma to Prince, as well as for the general public and for children, as in his Toy Symphony project (www.toysymphony.net) – called “a vast, celebratory ode to the joy of music and its power to bring young and old together, diversity into unity (Boston Globe)” – which has been touring worldwide since 2002. Machover’s Hyperinstrument research has long been supported by major companies such as Yamaha, and several of his Music Toys have recently been made commercially available by Fisher-Price and others. Many of Machover’s principles about “active participation” in music are exemplified in Guitar Hero, which grew out of his lab.
In addition, the music composition software Hyperscore – originally developed by his team at the MIT Media Lab for children in the context of Toy Symphony – is fast gaining worldwide recognition as a popular creative tool for people of all ages and backgrounds. In awarding Machover the first Kurzweil Prize in Music and Technology in 2003, celebrated inventor and entrepreneur Raymond Kurzweil wrote: “Tod Machover is the only person I am aware of who contributes on a world-class level to both the technology of music creation and to music itself. Even within these two distinct areas, his contributions are remarkably diverse, and of exquisite quality.” Machover is currently working on a new commission for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, for which he has invited the entire city of Toronto to collaborate (toronto.media.mit.edu). A Toronto Symphony will be premiered at the orchestra’s New Creations Festival in March 2013, for which Machover is the curator. Machover’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes and Ricordi Editions, and has been recorded on the Bridge, Oxingale, Erato, Albany and New World labels. Most of his music is also available via iTunes. |
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Eleanor Duckworth, Ph.D.A former student and translator of Jean Piaget, Eleanor Duckworth grounds her work in Piaget and Inhelder’s insights into the nature and development of understanding and in their research method, which she has developed as a teaching/research approach, Critical Exploration in the Classroom. She seeks to bring a Freirean approach to any classroom, valuing the learners’ experience and insights. Her interest is in the experiences of teaching and learning of people of all ages, both in and out of schools. Duckworth is a former elementary school teacher and has worked in curriculum development, teacher education, and program evaluation in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and her native Canada. She is a coordinator for Cambridge United for Justice with Peace, and is a performing modern dancer.
Dr. Duckworth’s seminal books, include:
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Deborah MeierDeborah W. Meier is currently on the faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, as senior scholar and adjunct professor as well as Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools.Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and headstart teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools. During this period she founded a local Coalition center, which networked approximately fifty small Coalition-style K-12 schools in the city.Between 1992-96 she also served as co-director of a project (Coalition Campus Project) that successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools. She was an advisor to New York City’s Annenberg Challenge and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 1995-1997.From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180 children in the Roxbury community.
The schools she has helped create serve predominantly low-income African-American and Latino students, and include a typical range of students in terms of academic skills, special needs, etc. There are no entrance requirements. These schools are considered exemplars of reform nationally and affiliates of the national Coalition of Essential Schools founded by Dr. Ted Sizer and currently led by Lewis Cohen. A learning theorist, she encourages new approaches that enhance democracy and equity in public education. Meier is on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, The Nation and the Harvard Education Letter. She is a Board member of the Educational Alliance, the Association of Union Democracy, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Panasonic Foundation, and a founding member of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation and the Forum for Democracy and Education, among others. Meier was born in New York City; she attended Antioch College (1949-51) and received an MA in History from the University of Chicago (1955). She has received honorary degrees from Bank Street College of Education, Brown, Bard, Clark, Teachers College of Columbia University, Dartmouth, Harvard, Hebrew Union College, Hofstra, The New School, Lesley College, SUNY Albany, UMASS Lowell, and Yale. She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1987. Her books, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004), Many Children Left Behind (2004), Ms. Meier’s weekly blog, Bridging Differences, a collaboration with Diane Ravitch and now Pedro Noguera, is a must-read for educators and those serious about the future of American democracy. |
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To be announced – stay tuned! |
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Gary S. Stager, Ph.D. Founder & Host: Constructing Modern Knowledge Gary Stager, an internationally recognized educator, speaker and consultant, is the Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium. Since 1982, Gary has helped learners of all ages on six continents embrace the power of computers as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self-expression. He led professional development in the world’s first laptop schools (1990), has designed online graduate school programs since the mid-90s, was a collaborator in the MIT Media Lab’s Future of Learning Group and a member of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s Learning Team. When Jean Piaget wanted to better understand how children learn mathematics, he hired Seymour Papert. When Dr. Papert wanted to create a high-tech alternative learning environment for incarcerated at-risk teens, he hired Gary Stager. This work was the basis for Gary’s doctoral dissertation and documented Papert’s most-recent institutional research project. Gary’s recent work has included teaching and mentoring some of Australia’s “most troubled” public schools, launching 1:1 computing in a Korean International School beginning in the first grade, media appearances in Peru and serving as a school S.T.E.M. Director. He was a Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University and Senior Editor of District Administration Magazine. His advocacy on behalf of creativity, computing and children led to the creation of the Constructivist Consortium and the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. In 1999, Converge Magazine named Gary a “shaper of our future and inventor of our destiny.” The National School Boards Association recognized Dr. Stager with the distinction of “20 Leaders to Watch” in 2007. The June 2010 issue of Tech & Learning Magazine named Gary Stager as “one of today’s leaders who are changing the landscape of edtech through innovation and leadership.” CUE presented Gary with its 2012 Technology in Learning Leadership Award. A popular speaker, Dr. Stager was a keynote speaker at the 2009 National Educational Computing Conference and at major conferences around the world. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College on several occasions. Gary was the new media producer for The Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri Project – Simpatíco, 2007 Grammy Award Winner for Best Latin Jazz Album of the Year. Dr. Stager is also a contributor to The Huffington Post and a Senior S.T.E.M. and Education Consultant to leading school architecture firm, Fielding Nair International. Gary also works with teachers and students as S.T.E.M. Director at The Oaks School in Hollywood, California. . |
News Feed
This is for Lella.
I’ve lost your email address…
Want to invite you to speak at a Montessori conference in Beijing in August 2011.
Please email me.
Subject: Constructing Modern Knowledge 2012
To: “Brian C. Smith”
Hello Gary and Brian,
Gary, This year my school has agreed to pick up the tab for the registration! I hope that the P.O. for the CMK 2012 has reached you so that I can plan ahead for the session. I don’t know how to check on this!
Brian, I hope that you were able to teach overseas. That is what you were in the process of pursuing as the Constructivist Seminar ended July of last year. Will you be helping at the seminar this year?
For both of you, perhaps you can share with me your thoughts about this major project I took on and haven’t yet finished:
Last year I’d just finished building a Makerbot 3d printer but hadn’t got it working yet. I was a little reluctant to bring it to the seminar because I wanted to be open to whatever the workshops would bring. I still haven’t had time to get it working well enough to print out decent prints and I have bought some alternative parts to switch out over the past winter. Do you think that it would be a good thing to bring to work on this year or do you feel it would be a distraction? I have many student files that can be printed. These were done in Google (now Trimble’s) Sketchup and were designs for Mini-skateboards, USB stick enclosures, brick/blocks and doorknobs and were created as part of a 7th grade invention and innovation curriculum: http://www.danbury.k12.ct.us/midweb/rpms/teched.html
I would love to share the Makerbot with all participants who want to see how this could work for our students and for our own joy in learning. There are many 3d printers out there now and I’m sure that Mark Fraunfelder will be mentioning several. You may be planning on having a few of them available. I have some coils of plastic for printing but not enough to print for everyone at this time. Please let me know if you would mind me bringing this one that I desperately need to finish making!
Thanks for your thoughts!
Susan Margolis, IDSA
Technology Education & Art
Danbury Public High School
Danbury, CT 06810
Home: 203-438-7346