Producerism —and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur

I love this word – PRODUCERISM! “Producerism,” we can call this, by analogy with consumerism. What we’re now persuaded to consume, most conspicuously, are the means to create. And the democratization of taste ensures that no one has the right (or inclination) to tell us when our work is bad. A universal grade inflation now……

How To Create a Personal Learning Environment to Stay Relevant

I have been looking at the terminology that describes what I do in the classroom with my students. Here are some of the things students will do in a typical course I teach: Get a twitter account, use tweet deck to follow different hashtags (#) as a way of doing research. Set up a wordpress blog, and……

Hunting Wajima Project

The Hunting Wajima Project responds to the brief from CHL to design furniture for manufacture in Timor Leste. The name, Hunting Wajima, refers to two aspects of the brief – to develop timber furniture and to develop furniture craft skills in the workforce. CHL – Community Housing Limited Hunting visually connects the project to the values……

A Masters in Social Design

I get the news today on Facebook that Ambedkar University Delhi is open for admissions to its masters program in Social Design. I resist the temptation to add an ‘at last’ to the title and move on. You can see the Program announcement here – http://www.aud.ac.in/academic/programs/masters_programmes-2/ma_in_social_design-582 I go into my blog to find the posts I……

Can we link Design and Poverty?

Angharad Thomas seems to think so. Here is another post in the series of “Is Design about …”. Design, Poverty, and Sustainable Development, Angharad Thomas Design in a poor context, or for the alleviation of poverty, has received little or no attention. An informal discourse analysis shows that design and poverty have not been linked,……

What is grassroots Dad?

My daughter had a homework assignment that was a quote from an article by Anita Roddick. The task was to identify which were the ‘persuasive’ words and which were ’emotive’ words. I read the article and got excited by the text – and so got my daughter to see on the internet – RAN, Anita……

World Changing

An Idea of a course: The book – world changing – links its lineage to the whole earth catalog. Reason enough for the book to be a must read for designers. And wouldn’t this area of exploration completely and totally charge up an idealist student? People’s desire to do good has been called many things……

12 Free Online Quiz Makers to Create Online Quizzes | Training & E-Learning Zone for Quizzes

I often receive a lot of questions about how to make online quizzes for free. Here is a collection of 12 free online quiz making applications I collect after days’ collection. These apps will help you make quizzes for online use for free. Do you know of any other free online quiz makers that can……

School Uses Video Games To Teach Thinking Skills : NPR

A novel public school in New York City has taken the video game as its model for how to teach. Students use video games and design them as part of their classes. As Quest to Learn is wrapping up its first year, those behind the program say game-based learning is integral to 21st century literacy.……

The NODE Chair

IDEO and Steelcase Unveil a School Desk for the Future of Teaching [UPDATED] | Fast Company … the Node chair, which was designed by IDEO and produced by Steelcase, a Michigan-based furniture company. The details betray a remarkable thoughtfulness: The seat is a generously sized bucket, so that students can shift around and adapt their……