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Come to the Amazon with IDEA!

Posted by: Ross Laird in education nature travel 5 months ago

Visit the Amazon Rainforest of Colombia in June with IDEA. Experience first-hand the Calanoa Project which is working toward a model of sustainable living in the Amazon forest. Participate in a multitude of interdisciplinary and cultural experiences, and bring to your studies a renewed depth, purpose, and global awareness. View the gallery to see examples of the landscape, people, and ecology of this amazing region, and see the itinerary for examples of the kinds of activities we will do.

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Service and Reciprocity

Posted by: Ross Laird in education 6 months ago

Many years ago I made a commitment to service. The shape of that service has changed over the years: first it was to people suffering from pain and disability; later it took the form of addictions and trauma counselling; and now it focuses on learners in the educational system. But wherever my interests and activities have led me, I have (for a long time now, but not always) thought of my work as service to others. Beyond the uncertainties and surprising turns of my career, beneath the drive for my own success and recognition, I have felt fundamentally grounded in the spirit of service. For me, there seems to be no other worthwhile path.

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Your Life, Your Learning, Your Way

Posted by: Ross Laird in creativity development education 7 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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Twitter for Educators

Posted by: Ross Laird in education technology 8 months ago

Twitter is a map of the human imagination: changeable, inventive, sometimes strange, always surprising. And, like the imagination, it follows our intentions, impulses, proclivities, and whims. Twitter is much more than an online tool, much broader than the notion of a website, and much more interesting than it first seems -- at least to those who are not already immersed in social media and technology culture. For educators, Twitter can be a tool for communications with colleagues and students, a means of building online educational communities, a method of jump-starting research, and whatever else you want it to be. Here's how to get started.

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Building Education from Scratch

Posted by: Ross Laird in development education technology 9 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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