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Parent Presentations on Technology and Addictions

Posted by: Ross Laird in addictions development mentorship technology 1 week, 5 days ago

Parents are increasingly worried about the endless challenges of technology in the lives of their kids: texting, social media, inappropriate content, distraction, sleeplessness, gaming — the list goes on. The sheer volume of screen time seems to be edging out so much of what used to be fundamental to family and adolescent development: chats in the car with parents, conversations over dinner, shared activities outside. And kids are worried too. They're sleeping less, on devices more (much more), and stuck in a loop of constant digital immersion.

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Your Life, Your Learning, Your Way

Posted by: Ross Laird in creativity development education 6 months ago

Interdisciplinary Expressive Arts (IDEA) courses ask foundational questions and pursue meaningful answers. Through learner-designed projects, individualized curriculum, purposeful play, and many other innovative approaches, IDEA courses create collaborative learning environments in which learners discover their own paths and purposes. We build communities of real inquiry, creative engagement, and personal development within and beyond the classroom. We promote university experiences that are reflective, individualized, and joyful. We recognize that beneath academic cultures and traditions lies the authentic search for knowledge, wisdom, and personal connection. IDEA courses support that search and encourage learners to follow it — wherever it may lead.

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Containment and Protection for Difficult Situations

Posted by: Ross Laird in creativity development mentorship 7 months, 1 week ago

I've received several inquiries lately from people searching for a visualization exercise that once appeared on my site but was removed during one of the more recent updates. It's an exercise that has been adapted from Tibetan Buddhism and Bodynamics and which many people have found to be useful in dealing with situations of conflict, tension, or boundary violation. So, at popular request, here are the details:

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Building Education from Scratch

Posted by: Ross Laird in development education technology 8 months, 1 week ago

Educators have spent a good deal of time over the past few years thinking about (and wringing their hands over) the future of schools and education. We’ve focused mostly on technology, on the distribution of scarce economic resources, and on the changes wrought by an increasingly strategic and business-like approach to teaching and learning. We now have innumerable educational startups, alternative funding models, and methods of supporting or subverting (depending on your point of view) corporate interests. We’ve wrangled with these issues online, in our communities of scholarship, and in the public sphere. And we all agree on one thing: education is due for serious renewal and reinvigoration. But what that looks like is anyone’s guess. We just don’t know how the changes that lie before us will play themselves out, and this fundamental uncertainty has us either grappling toward a vision of total transformation or reaching back toward vanishing modes and practices (depending on your point of view). We are well and truly at sea.

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On Homelessness and Compassion

Posted by: Ross Laird in addictions development 8 months, 1 week ago

Typically I don’t get fired up about online conversations. I’m busy (aren’t we all?), I have actual conversations to attend to, and I prefer not to be drawn too far down the infinitely deep well of digital discourse. But recently, a question on Quora — Should homeless people be allowed to have children? — provoked me into a lengthy rant:

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