Monday, February 6, 2012 at 10:00AM | 1 Commenttagged Courtney Kuhlman, Geoff Dutton | in Education
Courtney Kuhlman, Geoff Dutton | in EducationThe Harvard Lab: "A Passionate Will to Effect Change"
... is how the founder of a unique Harvard teaching project described the motivation for his new spring semester 2009 course, Engineering Sciences 147:
Idea Translation: Effecting Change through the Arts and Sciences is a fall term class that focuses on how "idea creations evolve from a passionate will to effect change" (now offered as ES20).
Professor David Edwards' popular course coalesced interest in creating a collaborative space for solving human and environmental problems. That space became known as The Laboratory at Harvard (or simply The Lab). It occupies the basement floor of a new science building on the Cambridge Campus, featuring a huge skylit atrium where many gatherings take place. Sponsored by the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Graduate School of Design, and other university divisions, The Lab is now in its third year of harnessing student's imaginations and already has an outpost in Paris and another in Cape Town.
Ideas that collaborative teams of students generate don't end up as term papers. The ES20 blurb and video describe,
Ideas generated in the course aim to become profitable companies, non-profit organizations or major works of art. They build on a strong tradition of past class successes, including: Medicine in Need (MEND), Le Whif (a new way of consuming chocolate, coffee and vitamins by breathing that has now become Breathable Foods and led do the creation of Aeroshot), the Pumpkin (a new way of carrying water inspired by a biological cell), and Soccket (a soccer ball that captures kinetic energy from being kicked around that can be harvested for electricity).
Last spring, ES20 students developed ideas on the theme "the future of water": sourcing it, purifying it, conserving it, and living on it. This spring, the course focus is on "the future of virtual worlds."
The lab is a social, educational, technological and entrepreneurial experiment. This year, Harvard's faculty and administration will review its work to see if it merits a more permanent status. If the Lab is any indication of the future of education, let's hope it's here to stay.
By Geoff Dutton
Illustration by Courtney Kuhlman
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 10:00AM | 1 Comment
In the next 8 years we will be 'prompted' by the Universe into more of an Arcosanti style development. It may take centuries for this to come to full fruition as the climate and solar changes will continue manifesting on our planet. You guys at Fearless will be part of this emerging model.
Blessings~