On Sunday, October 3, Golinkoff will be bringing her work to life in New York’s Central Park in the Ultimate Block Party, an event she co-founded that will transform the Naumburg Bandshell area into a playground with skyscraper building challenges, dance parties and other activities aimed at reinforcing the idea that play is learning.  We asked Dr. Golinkoff about the Block Party and why she sees nothing frivolous in play. (Full disclosure: Dr. Golinkoff is a family friend and I have followed her work for several years.) #

Dowser: Are kids truly not playing enough?
Golinkoff: Kids aren't getting enough play either at home or in school.  Do you remember how we loved to learn? That all started in play. Kids are spending gobs of time on electronic media and they are not being engaged in school but memorizing too much.  This is not what kids need to succeed in the new global economy. They need to understand what they are learning and to cultivate their creativity. All this starts in the sandbox! #

What can we expect to see at the Ultimate Block Party?
About 25 activities and events that kids will love. The key is that these activities are all based on a nugget of science.  We will be giving out a 75-page playbook for free that contains information on play and playful learning. The book will also have activities to continue to do at home. #

Can you tell me a little bit about Play for Tomorrow, the event organizers?
We are a small group of five who care deeply about our children's future and the future of our country.  This is a problem like global warming.  If we don't address it now then kids won't be prepared to be in the workforce in 2040. We will continue to fall behind. #

What do you see as the future of the Ultimate Block Party?
This is really the kick-off for a whole movement.  We will have an Ultimate Block Party each year in other states and countries, and a website called LEARN that will give away the science of learning. We will also have a publishing arm that will begin with the book, Becoming: The Genius of Child's Play, which will showcase well-known individuals and how they played. #

What do you see as the long-term goals of promoting play?
We want to change the way Americans think about play and about education.  We are not serving our children well -- as all the international indicators show -- and the answer is not drill and kill.  It's to help kids learn by becoming engaged and interested and not memorizing facts that will be out of date in a year.  The world is changing so fast that kids need skills to become life-long learners! #

What is it about play that if kids don't have it, they'll be unprepared to be a part of the workforce in 2040?
We used to think that all kids needed for success was the three R's [reading, writing and arithmetic]. But now, with the world the size of a walnut, and knowledge doubling every 2.5 years, kids need a set of skills to succeed that they didn't need as much in the past. #

We talk about the six C's: collaboration (teamwork, social skills); communication (speaking, writing, listening, taking another’s point of view); content (reading, math, history and science, arts and music, to name a few); critical thinking (evaluating and interpreting the breadth and depth of information available); creative innovation (moving beyond what is known); and confidence (risk taking, perseverance).  So if kids only get the 3 R's they will be unprepared to help us maintain our economic preeminence and our standard of living will decline.  And kids need these skills for their personal happiness as well. #

Event Details:
October 3, 2010, 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Naumburg Bandshell, New York City's Central Park #

This interview was edited and condensed. #

Photo: Hygiene Matters
#]]> http://dowser.org/roberta-golinkoff-on-play-and-learning-at-the-ultimate-block-party/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/lessons-from-the-unreasonable-institute-pierre-bataille-on-failure/ http://dowser.org/lessons-from-the-unreasonable-institute-pierre-bataille-on-failure/#comments Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:54:00 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=5659 We asked this year's Unreasonable Institute Fellows, who are in the early stages of developing innovative social ventures, to reflect on some key takeaways from the eight-week Summer Institute they attended. Here, Pierre Bataille, co-founder of Playable (formerly APAID), shares his experience. #

By Pierre Bataille #

Through the Unreasonable Institute, I have learned how to embrace failures and see them as concrete learning opportunities and leverage them to improve and achieve success. Things won’t work smoothly all the time (almost never!) so you’ve got to deal with it and be comfortable with failing. One mentor explained that once one of his colleagues blew $25K and therefore had a meeting with his boss about it. He was clearly expecting to be fired from the company but the director just answered, “Why would I fire you? I just invested $25K in your education!” The conclusion to that is, “Fail fast, fail often and enjoy it!” #

The power of relationships! This is the biggest message I bring back from the institute. At first, I thought I would bother people by talking about my business immediately. I thought they would think, “Why is this awkward guy with a weird accent coming to talk to me?” But as Daniel Epstein, President of the Unreasonable Institute, says, “Business is not business; business is people” - and he became my guru in this. We need to think that relationships are simply a social interaction between human beings and connecting on a personal level is important for successful networking. Having a coffee or sharing a meal with someone is the best way to share and exchange experiences. That is exactly what we do with the world-class mentors at the institute (e.g., Paul Jerde, Greg Miller, Marc Mathieu, David Bornstein… the list goes on forever). The conclusion to this is global networking is one of the keys to success. #

Click here to view the embedded video.

Photo: Pierre Bataille # #

When’s the last time you flew a kite? If it’s been a while, there’s an interesting event in New York City this weekend that could help fix that. #

FlyNY, drawing on last year’s success, returns for a full day of kite-flying festivities this Saturday, August 21. Co-hosted by the New York office of Architecture for Humanity and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, the day will be full of kite-making, live music and outdoor fun in Riverside Park. Kite-making supplies will be provided on Saturday as well. #

With Architecture for Humanity’s mission to promote “socially responsible design advocacy” and “innovative, sustainable, affordable solutions to humanitarian issues,” organizers hope this event will bring forth a sense of community, engage children in a dialogue about design, and celebrate the city's dynamic skyline. #

For the past six weeks, the New York branch of Architecture for Humanity has been accepting kite entries from professionals around the world for this contest. This Friday evening, at a private event at the Center for Architecture, a panel of experts will judge the kites based on craftsmanship, structure, artistry, ingenuity, and performance. The jury panel will also host a conversation about innovative design. Some of the winning kites will be auctioned to raise funds for Architecture for Humanity. #

It’s not all so exclusive, though; you'll have a chance to check out the winning kites in action on Saturday. @_FlyNY and others will be live-tweeting the event and interested parties around the world will be able to participate in the discussion using the hashtag #DesignDialogue. If you can’t make it out to Riverside Park for the big fly day on Saturday, it’ll be easy to follow along from afar via FlyNY's Twitter and Facebook accounts. #

FlyNY
Saturday, August 21
10:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Pier I @ Riverside Park South
70th Street and Hudson River, NYC #

Photo: girlwparasol #]]> http://dowser.org/go-fly-a-kite-no-really/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/the-ingenuity-series-part-3-how-to-boost-your-creativity/ http://dowser.org/the-ingenuity-series-part-3-how-to-boost-your-creativity/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:50:03 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=4552 Keeping with the creativity theme from last week, what can we do to augment our creative powers? #

One thing we know from the field of neuroscience is that, unlike computers, the brain is very slow at individual processing. In one second, a computer circuit can handle millions of instructions, but a neuron can fire only about two hundred times. That's why computers are so much faster than human beings at serial, computational tasks. #

But why can a child understand someone speaking with a lisp, or a foreign accent, better than the best voice recognition software? Why can a baby recognize facial expressions better than a supercomputer? #

The answer is that the brain is a massive parallel processor, with 100 billion neurons operating simultaneously, making it extraordinarily powerful at pattern recognition. Much of what our brains do is to pre-process information—we store up experience—and then, in real time, determine which patterns to apply to which circumstances. #

That's why business and law schools teach via case studies. It's why entrepreneurs are so fond of biographies. It's why religions teach morality through allegories. In each case, we load up our brains with examples that enhance our ability to spot patterns. Those patterns can later be summoned to help us manage unforeseeable situations. #

What are the implications? To boost your pattern-recognition abilities, give yourself exposures to a variety of experience bases. Don't limit yourself to one model of reality. Different fields -- the law, physics or religion, for example -- offer complimentary ways of understanding the world. Steve Jobs traced his invention of the Mac to a calligraphy course that gave him an aesthetic appreciation which he later fused with his technical know-how. Today, we see advances coming at the intersection of fields like biology and computer science, economics and psychology, finance and social entrepreneurship. If you want to be an effective problem-solver, gather experiences from different fields, sectors and cultures—and keep thinking about the patterns. #

Back to Part 2 #

Photo: Mrs McArthur's Blog #]]> http://dowser.org/the-ingenuity-series-part-3-how-to-boost-your-creativity/feed/ 1 http://dowser.org/the-ingenuity-series-part-2-make-sure-kids-have-the-confidence-to-try-out-their-ideas/ http://dowser.org/the-ingenuity-series-part-2-make-sure-kids-have-the-confidence-to-try-out-their-ideas/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:00:42 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=4497

Yesterday I wrote a post about the "creativity crisis" recently reported by Newsweek. Over the past 20 years, American children have steadily lost ground on a long-standing creativity assessment that's strongly associated with entrepreneurship and invention. This is a serious problem. #

I've spent the past 20 years interviewing social entrepreneurs in different countries and fields—and if there's one quality they all have in common, it's creativity. Not a specific talent like a flair for painting or writing poetry, but a generalizable kind of creativity that can be applied to many types of problems. #

This creativity has less to do with knowledge (although it requires knowledge) than with a willingness to ask unconventional questions, absorb new information, and try ideas out. It's both playful and bold. #

A society that does not nurture this kind of creativity is in trouble. #

The irony is that it is so easy to encourage. If you look at young children, they are continually experimenting. Most of their experiments are failures—in the sense that their efforts to control their environment usually backfire. A toddler quickly discovers that he can't stand on a ball. Or he pulls a glass of milk off the table and SMASH! Big mess. But the wonderful thing is that there are no penalties for those failures. #

There’s a robust and incredibly accelerated learning process in the first five years of life. And it can be a joy to witness. A first grader (who hasn't been suckered to think that he's really supposed to build the Star Wars ship featured on the Lego box) will concoct the most marvelous paracosm out of a bunch of Lego pieces, Pokemon cards, and plastic reptiles. #

Then you get to school and you discover that if you put up your hand and give a wrong answer, it doesn’t feel good. Maybe the other kids laugh at you or the teacher frowns. The impulse to experiment gets abruptly curtailed. How many students come to avoid failure more than they embrace learning? It depends on how much we value 'right' answers over self-directed learning. In this regard, testing can be a huge impediment. #

Schools can do much better to nurture the kind of creativity that helps children grow into powerful changemakers. In our new book, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, Susan Davis and I devote a chapter to this subject. Here's a brief excerpt: #

In their book The Scientist in the Crib, authors Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff and Patricia K. Kuhl observe that babies and toddlers from their earliest years “think, draw conclusions, make predictions, look for explanations, and even do experiments.” Children know far more about the world than adults imagine, and they seek to understand everything they touch and taste. During their first two years, they make extraordinary intellectual leaps. #

For most children, intellectual development slows dramatically within a few years. By the time they are in grade school, children have lost much of the curiosity and resourcefulness that a few years earlier made them incomparable explorers. As the educator Eleanor Duckworth explains in her book The Having of Wonderful Ideas, once children enroll in school, their natural enthusiasm and inquisitiveness becomes subordinated to the needs of adults enlisted to teach them. A young child who breaks something to see what it looks like inside, or asks a question that is socially embarrassing, or wants to discover how it feels to wear shoes on the wrong feet, will often be met with a discouraging glance or tone from an adult. #

Duckworth argues that educators should encourage and structure moments when children can have their own ideas and feel good for having them. Only if children honestly believe their ideas are valuable will they develop the interest, ability, and self-confidence to be lifelong learners and doers. “Having confidence in one’s ideas does not mean ‘I know my ideas are right,’" notes Duckworth. "[I]t means ‘I am willing to try out my ideas.’” #

#

If you're interested in children, education, social innovation, or, for that matter, the future of America, Newsweek's recent cover story on the "creativity crisis" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is a must read. It makes a powerful argument that our system of education, and perhaps our way of life, are diminishing children's imaginative capacities. #

Since 1990, measures of creativity among children from kindergarten through sixth grade have steadily declined—and the decrease is significant. This doesn't just mean we'll be producing fewer painters and pianists; it means we'll be producing fewer problem solvers and changemakers of all kinds. Creativity is defined as the ability to produce something "original and useful." And one way it's measured is by asking children questions about specific problems—how to improve a toy truck, for example—and seeing how many unique ideas they come up with and how they combine them. Children who come up with a lot of ideas are more likely to become entrepreneurs, inventors, authors, software developers, and so forth. #

In fact, Bronson and Merryman write that the "correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment" has been found to be "more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ." [My emphasis] #

Have American educators overlooked creativity? We now evaluate student success almost exclusively by performance on standardized tests that focus primarily on reading and math. In this context, the challenge of nurturing students' imaginations is a luxury many teachers and principals feel they can't afford. But educators in other countries see it differently. #

In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation, and pilot programs have begun using Torrance’s test [a leading creativity index] to assess their progress. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach. #

#

Parents can also do this at home by giving their children real-world challenges to work through. Quite a number of initiatives like Youth Venture, Do Something and the Girl Scout's Challenge and Change program specialize in helping young people generate and build their own solutions to social problems. Groups like Playworks, Peace First and Roots of Empathy bring child-led problem solving and conflict resolution into elementary school classrooms. These kinds of educational offerings are still seen as supplemental in many districts. But, in fact, they teach children the core skills they need—empathy, leadership, teamwork and the ability to shift perspective—to be creative agents in a world of change. #

Tomorrow: More on what schools and parents can do to nurture changemakers. #

Continue to Part 2 #

Photo: Nederlands Watermuseum #]]> http://dowser.org/the-ingenuity-series-part-1-how-to-reconstitute-childhood-and-the-american-imagination/feed/ 2 http://dowser.org/mini-case-study-how-kaboom-uses-the-web-to-teach-thousands-of-communities-to-build-their-own-playgrounds/ http://dowser.org/mini-case-study-how-kaboom-uses-the-web-to-teach-thousands-of-communities-to-build-their-own-playgrounds/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:56:55 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=3776 Social innovators can learn from each others' successes and failures. That's the idea behind Dowser's Mini Case Studies, real-world stories showing how changemakers confront practical challenges. From time to time, we'll add to the mix great studies from around the web. Here's one we've adapted (with permission): "Breaking New Ground: Using the Internet to Scale A Case Study of KaBOOM!" by Heather McLeod Grant and Katherine Fulton of The Monitor Institute. #

PROBLEM:
KaBOOM! aspires to create a “great place to play within walking distance of every child.” Founded by Darell Hammond in 1996, the DC-based organization grew steadily in its first decade, building hundreds of playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods around the U.S. Along the way, it helped to revolutionize the playground-building industry, making it less about making money and more about enlivening communities. #

In the early years, KaBOOM!'s model was to enlist and manage volunteers who would assemble playgrounds, while businesses picked up the tab. It worked well enough that KaBOOM! attracted a stable of high-profile corporate funders, including Home Depot and Ben & Jerry’s. #

But around 2004, KaBOOM! ran into the challenge that confounds ambitious social organizations: despite its growth, it couldn't come close to matching the scale of the problem it was tackling. “We were doing great on the core model,” said COO Bruce Bowman. “But the reality was we were only making a dent in the problem. We were building hundreds of playgrounds when we needed to be building thousands.” #

RESPONSE:
How to increase impact? KaBOOM! considered several options. Should the organization form local chapters or affiliates, self-financed but controlled by the main office? Should it evangelize its model and encourage others to follow suit? Should it assume more of an advocacy role, pushing for high level policy change? “We talked about different ideas,” recalled Kate Becker, who oversees playground building for KaBOOM! "Nothing resonated." #

Then, an idea surfaced that matched the ethos of an organization that, from day one, had counted on the generosity and initiative of strangers: Why not just give away the model for people to replicate on their own? So KaBOOM! assembled a step-by-step guide on its website explaining everything a community needs to do to build its own playgrounds. #

What's distinctive about KaBOOM!'s approach is that while plenty of organizations use the Web to solicit donations of money or time, relatively few have mastered the art of helping others to effectively organize themselves.

RESULTS:
It took a few years to refine the new strategy, but by 2009 it was yielding impressive results. In that year alone, KaBOOM! helped other groups construct 1,600 playgrounds around the U.S.--almost as many as it had built directly during its first 14 years. Today, local communities build 10 KaBOOM!-influenced playgrounds for each one KaBOOM! builds itself. #

The new model has brought new challenges. “We’ve probably made every mistake there is,” Bowman said. Ceding control to local communities meant changing the culture of the entire organization. It was particularly tough to find talented web developers who fully appreciated KaBOOM!'s mission. And the jury is still out on whether the new strategy is financially sustainable. (Funding so far has come mainly via a $14 million commitment from the Omidyar Network.)

"The idea of giving away a nonprofit model isn’t itself new," notes the Monitor study. "But KaBOOM! is one of the first to put this approach online, and bring it into the 21st century. In doing so, they have truly broken new ground." #

Photo: KaBOOM! #]]> http://dowser.org/mini-case-study-how-kaboom-uses-the-web-to-teach-thousands-of-communities-to-build-their-own-playgrounds/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/eric-d-dawson-on-how-to-create-world-peace-one-school-at-a-time/ http://dowser.org/eric-d-dawson-on-how-to-create-world-peace-one-school-at-a-time/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:02:07 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=3273 How would you go about creating a world where people live in peace? Rather than dismiss the question as hopelessly naive, think of it as a practical challenge. Where would you begin? Eric D. Dawson, the founder of Peace First, says the logical place is with children. If we can eradicate violence from our schools, we can build from there. #

Dawson says the first step is changing the way we view children. Typically, when fighting erupts in a school, the adults quickly assume command. They divide the kids into perpetrators, victims, and witnesses—and they mete out punishment. But they rarely engage the students as problem solvers, so little improves in the long run. #

Peace First's approach is to teach the students how to be peacemakers. Over the past decade and a half, the organization has taught techniques of nonviolence to tens of thousands of elementary and middle school kids in the U.S. and abroad. The results are impressive: Principals cite big improvements in "school culture," while graduates of the program say they're teased less and can walk away from fights without feeling like losers. #

Dawson, who founded Peace First (formerly Peace Games) while a freshman at Harvard, talked with us about his vision of building an international movement to teach peacemaking. #

Why did you start Peace First?
Peace First was created in response to the huge increase in youth violence and youth disengagement in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Most ‘solutions’ to those problems of school violence looked at young people as the problems. As a country, we were medicating kids, incarcerating kids, literally turning our schools into prisons with cops and metal detectors. Our big idea was, what if, instead of looking at kids as problems, we prepare them to be problem-solvers? #

What do we need to learn as a society to meet Peace First’s mission?
We need to let go of the myth that we’ve got a choice between either preparing thoughtful, kind, compassionate kids or churning out kids who do well academically, and recognize that those things are related. #

Schools weren’t created so that kids would do well on a test. They were created so that we would have a thoughtful, engaged, educated citizenry. #

How does Peace First work?
Kids get Peace First as a class every year from kindergarten to eighth grade taught by young adult mentors from the community. We do intensive work with classroom teachers to focus on their work with kids, [as well as] with the school principal to focus on the school culture and climate. #

They spend the first half of the year learning the concepts: fairness, perspective-taking, empathy. In the second half of the year, they apply it to community problem-solving. So by January we’ll have thousands of kids who will go out into their communities and make a difference. #

When it comes to fostering peace, what are children capable of that adults are not?
On one level, nothing. I refuse to give up on people. But one thing young people bring that makes it easier is creativity. #

What kind of creativity?
Last year I taught a group of third-graders at a school here in Boston. For the service project they created, the problem they identified were the eighth-graders. They said that the eighth-graders were under a lot of pressure, but really what they were saying was that the eighth-graders were picking on them. So the third-graders tried to figure out what they could do to help the eighth-graders feel less stressed, and they decided that they would organize yoga classes for them. #

Yoga classes?
Yeah. These kids had no idea what yoga was, but they knew it was something that relaxes people. The third-graders went out and recruited yoga teachers who taught the middle school students how to do yoga. #

Who would have thought of that? I mean, really, how many adults in a school setting would have done that? No, what you would get is, ‘Let’s suspend them, let’s take away their fun day,’ or whatever the punishment might be. #

What’s the funniest thing or most absurd thing you’ve seen in your work?
There was a young boy in my program, a third-grader. It was his second time in third grade. [That year] the kids learn the ABCD method of solving problems: you ask what the problem is, you brainstorm some solutions, you choose the best one, and then you do it. Their homework had been to use it at home, and this kid had never [before] raised his hand to share what he had done.

He had this wonderful look of satisfaction on his face that finally, finally he’s gotten something right. It was just this lovely reminder to me that real social change work is messy and complicated and it involves small steps and movements rather than transformative work. #

Do you have any advice for somebody aspiring to a career of social impact?
Don’t think just about the context of your work -- youth work, the environment, working with the elderly; but think about the content of your work -- what you want to do every day. #

I can’t tell you the number of people who have applied over the years to be our office manager, and [when] I ask them why they want this job, they say, ‘I love working with kids.’ And I say, ‘I can’t hire you.’ I want someone who loves working with fax machines and answering phones. Because ultimately our work is the tasks that we do, so make sure that you’re connecting the content of your daily tasks to your passions. #

This interview was edited and condensed. #

Photo: Julie Furbush for Dowser
#]]> http://dowser.org/eric-d-dawson-on-how-to-create-world-peace-one-school-at-a-time/feed/ 0 http://dowser.org/watch-david-bornstein-talks-about-storytelling-problem-solving-and-the-idea-behind-dowser/ http://dowser.org/watch-david-bornstein-talks-about-storytelling-problem-solving-and-the-idea-behind-dowser/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:41:17 +0000 Dowser http://dowser.org/?p=2714

Click here to view the embedded video.

We thought our readers might enjoy a recent talk given by our founder, David Bornstein, at the Good Experience Live (Gel) conference in New York. It sheds light on our motivations for launching Dowser. In the first two minutes, David speaks about storytelling and problem solving—the two life passions that led him to write about social entrepreneurship and later to create Dowser. # #