Imagining MOOCs For a Developing World
By Jonathan Haber
No presentation by the leader of a major MOOC organizations would be complete without the tale of a student dodging bullets or walking from a remote village to a slightly less remote school to participate in a massive online course (with extra points for inspiration when these tales end with said students finishing at the top of their global class).
The thing is, these…
Who Are Our Teachers? – Education’s Transformation
Dear Readers,
Education is a universal human right, though sadly still a dream for many. We are all learners.
Beyond this, everything we 'know' about education seems to be changing, or is at least being challenged: What is the purpose of education? How do we learn best? And maybe most fundamentally, Who Are Our Teachers?
We begin with a Reader’s Essay from the current issue of Kosmos by…
How the Maker Movement is Transforming Education
By Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager
The Maker Movement, a technological and creative learning revolution underway around the globe, has exciting and vast implications for the world of education. New tools and technology, such as 3D printing, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computing, e-textiles, “smart” materials, and programming languages are being invented at an unprecedented…
The Mycelium Learning Journey
By Kosmos Staff
Everything is interconnected. Why then do we tend to treat education as the accumulation of discreet bits of information? Learning is a process and the purpose of learning is to engage in the world, to participate in its unfolding. In this view, everyone and everything becomes the teacher and we are all constantly learning together.
The word mycelium refers to the mycelium…
Search For Purpose And Meaning: A Global Quest
By Geri Marr Burdman
While studying at the University of Puerto Rico in the late 1960s, I jumped at a life-altering opportunity when I learned that Dr. Viktor Frankl had traveled from his home in Austria to offer a series of seminars. Dashing between classes on the hibiscus-laden campus, I paused to scan some ads on a cluttered bulletin board. A hand-written note caught my eye:
Dr. Viktor…
A New Theory of Growth
By Esko Kilpi Oy
For most of human history, creativity was held to be a privilege of supreme beings, initially, the gods who shaped the heavens and the earth, and then it was human beings who were the creators and not the helpless, dependent subjects of the wrath of the gods. We switched our views as we began to understand how the world worked. Whether this will help the human race or cause its…
Arts and Culture: Integral to Transition
By now, most people are acutely aware of the need for change. Yet cultural change comes slowly. How will we shift the values of people and institutions quickly enough to avert the ecological and economic disasters we hear predicted daily. Can it be done in one generation? Two? Where will the inspiration for global transformation come from?
This week, the full moon on Thursday marks World…
Kosmos Journal Featured Portfolio: A Soft Gaze into the Natural World
Artist: Cameron Davis
The waxwing veil drawings were inspired by an encounter with a flock of cedar waxwings one late February. It was one of those despairing mornings. My mind was deep in thoughts of global climate change and watching the vitality drain out of the woods. Suddenly, I was surrounded by what seemed like a thousand cedar waxwings. They were splashing in puddles at my feet,…
Featured in Kosmos Journal: International Cultural Engagement
By Alain Ruche
Part One: Are We at the Tipping Point?
Culture has been described as the social programming of minds. Recent collective and global transformative events have expanded participation in public and cultural activities to include interactions among individuals, non-profit organizations, corporations and many other entities. Many are calling this phenomenon international cultural…
Art and Life Essay: Provocation
By Tim Kasser
The potential of engagement in arts & culture to encourage values that support well-being, social justice, and ecological sustainability
Over the last three decades, psychologists have conducted studies on thousands of people in dozens of nations around the world in an attempt to understand what humans value and how they prioritise different aims in life. These studies…