siegelblog

Why We Work

Science Education Family

I am posting from one of the ballrooms of the Omni Shoreham hotel at a meeting of people who are leading science education programs funded by the National Science Foundation.

Lots of concerns about funding of course. But the most conspicuous sense is the fact that this is a community of creative and thoughtful people who share a common vocabulary and set of concerns.

On a social and deeper personal level, this is why we work. We work to create a sense of purpose for ourselves, to have some actual impact on the world around us, but maybe above all to build a community.

I know this is not specific to our field, look at all the sitcoms that are about work communities, from the Dick Van Dyke Show—where Rob’s work family was at least as important as his home family—to 30 Rock, where a major theme of the show is that the characters only have their work family to rely on (maybe comedy shows are more intensely familial?)

I think it is worth considering what each of us do to strengthen our work communities, to foster a sense of participation and belonging for people new to the community, and to let ourselves be nourished and buoyed by our colleagues and friends.

Last night I found myself at a table of 15 colleagues sitting outside at an Italian restaurant in DC, and listening to the stories that people had about their work and their lives. I don’t claim that we are a particularly special community (though of course I think we are), I imagined that there are thousands of conversations like these in restaurants all through DC, home to associations of all kinds.

I really am grateful for work that is done collaboratively, and for the web of relationships that have evolved over the years.

how I feel frequently, but much slower (captured at 1000fps on the amazing casio hi speed camera) http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/06/casios-burst-recordin-ex-fc100-pocket-cam-reviewed/

Isaacson's Jobs bio in 10 Rules »

Save yourself hours. This guy distills it into one page of 10 rules. Really nails them too.

He left one off, I guess: scare the hell out of everyone you work with.

But there is plenty of juice in these simple rules.

Disability and culture

In the course of doing the exhibition Human +, we have worked with people with disabilities and spent a lot of time talking about how we think of disability. My daughter Lili, a sophomore at Smith College who has CP, is an advisor to the project. She sent us a link to a paper that is very powerful. Here is the link

http://www.centerwomenpolicy.org/pdfs/DIS2.pdf

“Disability, then, is the unorthodox made flesh, refusing to be normalized, neutralized, or homogenized. More important, in an era governed by the abstract principle of universal equality, disability signals that the body cannot be universalized. Shaped by history, defined by particularity, and at odds with its environment, disability confounds any notion of a generalizable, stable physical state of being. The cripple before the stairs, the blind person before the printed page, the deaf person before the radio, the amputee before the typewriter, and the dwarf before the counter are all proof that the myriad structures and practices of material, daily life enforce the cultural standard of a universal human being with a narrow range of bodily and mental variation.”

Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out

The MacArthur Foundation does more than just anoint underappreciated geniuses every year. For the past several years, the Foundation has been cultivating and promoting a pretty radical approach to learning among teens that goes under the rubric “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out” (or HOMAGO, as they call it).

I just came back from a couple of days in Chicago with a group of people funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the MacArthur Foundation to create “learning labs” in museums and libraries. Though way too much of the time was spent listening to people talk (don’t they realize that we are informal learning people because we don’t learn well by listening to others talk?), there were several revelatory moments.

The MacArthur Foundation has decided, at least for the moment to focus on out of school learning. Like the Internet, which famously routes around obstructions, the MacArthur folks found liberation in focusing on the majority of the time that young people spend with their friends, their families, their computers, and other virtual and meatspace companions. They commissioned a book, a kind of ethnography of teen’s informal learning lives, called Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out. You can grab the book here.

Its a compelling read in its way, way more descriptive than prescriptive. The gist of it is that kids learn along this kind of axis or overlapping venn diagram that includes the most casual (Hanging Out), proceeds to a more active and engaged, if still very diffuse mode (Messing Around), to a more focused and productive mode (Geeking Out.) They are at great pains to say that these aren’t a linear progression, that this is not a hierarchy where you want kids geeking out…again, it is more descriptive than prescriptive.

An example might be: a bunch of you go to a friends house to watch tv (hanging around), you might decide to do each others fingernails or throw a nerfball around (Messing Around), and a

This is a playlist of videos I made playing my new 1957 Gibson L 12. It is a great old instrument, and has encouraged me to work on chord melody jazz arrangements.