Blog Re: Educate
By Bonnie Reese - April 4, 2011
We teamed with MTV and the College Board to help shepherd three finalists in the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge. Here’s what we learned in the process.
Recently, frog, MTV, the College Board, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation teamed up for a program called the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge. The goal was to get students to create an innovative technology to better understand the financial aid application process and help alleviate the financial burden of college. Three finalists were chosen, and frog helped shepherd the students through the process of refining their concepts. Today, President Bill Clinton announced the winner at his Clinton Global Initiative University. UNLV graduate Devin Valencia won with her “Connect Fund” app, which leverages a person’s Facebook profile to automatically generate relevant aid opportunities.
Blog Re: Educate
By Laura Seargeant Richardson - March 7, 2011
“The public now demands better education. It doesn't know what good education is, and it fears every particular manifestation of it, but it is so far committed that it will accept, if only for a while, a certain number of genuine reforms. When enough of these reforms have been adopted, the public will feel free to call it a day. The job, they will say, is done.”
Math Professor, Ralph A. Raimi on New Math, June 29, 1958
Blog Re: Educate
By Will Koehler, Allison Green, Allison McKeever, Rayna Wiles, Christian Egea and Eric Bailey - February 22, 2011
“In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living... If we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas – then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.”
— President Obama, from his 2011 State of the Union address.
The world has changed, and it’s no secret the education system in America needs help keeping up. Creative problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration are essential skills for citizens of the new world economy. Yet, our focus on standardized instruction and testing doesn’t prepare our children for success. These methods infer there is one right answer, that consulting your peers is against the rules, and that learners should conform to standards rather than apply unique thinking. It’s time for a change. The ways of the past won’t propel us into the future. This is why frog was thrilled to participate in the No Right Brain Left Behind (NRBLB) challenge.
Blog Re: Educate
By Laura Seargeant Richardson - September 22, 2010
“Warning: This book contains a live mind virus. Do not read further unless you are willing to be infected.” Richard Brodie, Virus of the Mind, The New Science of the Meme
Blog Re: Educate
By Rob Stokes - March 31, 2010
"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." —Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho," 1983
I won’t pretend to know a lot about Samuel Beckett or his writing, but the notion of "failing better" resonates very strongly with me. Design is all about failure. It's about taking an initial swag at something and seeing how it works. Does your design solve the problem? Does it create a delightful, intuitive experience? Not quite? Well, then tweak it. Rev it. Iterate it. The more you experiment, the more you iterate, the better.
Blog Re: Educate
By Laura Seargeant Richardson - March 10, 2010
Photo (cc) by Flickr user Leo Reynolds.
An open letter to the next generation of designers, part 1.
Blog Re: Educate
By Rob Stokes - January 11, 2010
A group of Austin designers is helping students at a local high school recreate their campus.
Designers, through training and experience, develop a different lens through which to see the world. They move through spaces, environments, and systems, making observations and developing insights about what works well and what doesn’t. They then use those observations and insights to create innovative solutions for everyday problems. If design is the crossroads of beauty and purpose, design thinking is the intersection of creative and analytical thinking.
But when do we learn how to think like a designer?
