children can teach each other and themselves

In case you are wondering what is going on with this initiative, I’m happy to say that it is alive and well. I’ve been receiving ideas and advice from many of you and have been doing much thinking. I’m working on a manifesto that I’ll be sharing with you very soon.

One area of particular interest and fascination for me is education but more specifically how kids learn. My young kids have shown me things on the computer or my mobile phone that I didn’t know existed. How can this possibly be? This summer they learned Flash and created a short cartoon in less 16 hours including instruction and creation. They also learned claymation and created a short movie … again in less than 16 hours. We (at least I) clearly underestimate what children can do and how much top down guidance they need.

Even more interesting and extremely relevant to what I aim to build is the way in which kids can work together to learn and teach each other. Check out this fascinating video and think about the implications. I would love to hear what you think. (note that the video takes a bit of time to get going but the lessons are worthwhile).