“I went to college, ” he said in his interview with Science, ” and I spent a lot of time there, but I flunked out many times. I have very severe dyslexia, and so I wasn’t able to do anything having to do with much reading. I wasn’t lazy or anything. I studied a lot, but I studied paleontology. I didn’t really study mathematics or chemistry or physics or anything else, and of course to get a degree at a university you have to have lots of other stuff.”

Horner says of his nontraditional education, “, for people like myself, all of our thinking is outside the box. And one of the things that puts a person inside the box is reading too much. Preconceived ideas are everywhere in science, but you can only have a preconceived idea if you read someone else’s idea of what is true. If you haven’t, then you don’t know what is “true” and you can basically ask any question. Most of the questions I ask are very simple, but they are questions that have never been asked before because everybody thinks they already have the answer.”

Horner could be a poster child for non-institutionalized learning and quite possibly another nail in the coffin of the esteemed “degree,” the value of which is increasingly being called into question.  The issue here is not of the value of learning, but of learning in an institutional setting.

As Science runs its interview with Jack Horner, a study reported on by the journal Nature this week  conducted by the Centre of Health Equity Studies and Jenny Torssander of the Swedish Institute for Social Research finds that people who complete at least nine years of education tend to live longer.  The study looked at the lives of 1.2 million Swedes and found that those ” who were exposed to nine years of education rather than eight had a lower mortality rate after age 40. ”  While there’s no direct cause and effect link established, the suggestion is pretty clear.  But does it matter where or how you get that nine years of education?

Studies on elderly mental health and acuity  have found that “keeping mentally fit through board games or reading may be the best way to preserve memory during late life.”

And a study by Sophie Von Stumm on the value of  ”The Hungry Mind” , which she expanded on a bit further in the first issue of LI4Es new magazine, The Curiosity Driven Life,  found that intellectual curiosity is a key determinant of both academic and individual achievement.

Certainly, a passionate curiosity about dinosaurs propelled Jack Horner’s successful career in his field, sans a degree.  And in fact, he cites passion – that pursuit of what you love with a “monastic obsession” that we recently profiled Henry Rollins talking about – as key to success.

“If you have passion and you are willing to take a risk and you’re willing to fail,” says Horner, ” then you will reach your desired place in life.”

Maybe the real skill we need to be teaching is passionate self-determination and the focus to achieve the ends we desire through curiosity and hard work.

For more on the topic:

• Acquiring Skills vs. Amassing Degrees
• Meet the Edupunks, Radical Self-Learners
• UnCollege
• Thiel Foundation
• Is College Worth It? – Pew Report
• Keeping Mentally Fit Through Mental Activities May Help Preserve Memory
• Learning for a Lifetime
• 100 Top Entrepreneurs Who Succeeded without a College Degree
• 11 High Paying Six Figure Jobs without a College Degree

In the latest in manifestation of the makerspace movement, GOOD reports on Brightworks, the Gever Tulley inspired alternative school located in San Francisco’s Mission District.   Essentially a makerspace for kids, Brightworks provides tools, time and resources for Brightworks students to explore their way to hands on knowledge and understanding.

The biggest drawback to Brightworks is the cost. At over $20,000 a year,  this is some pricey private school tinkering that puts it out of reach of most people. Learning is for Everyone is actively exploring makerspace possibilities in the Tampa Bay area, with a similar goal of providing real time hands on learning opportunities for youth and adults – but within a far more affordable framework.

The fact is, hands on learning is the most enduring and engaging learning of all – and providing people with tools, training and a safe environment to learn at their own pace is sound educational theory.  Makerspaces are good for individuals, and good for neighborhoods, providing community enhancing ways to repurpose unused or abandoned space, meaningful ways to teach employable and entrepreneurial skills, and lucrative ways to benefit from collaborative opportunities between area businesses and organizations who can reap the rewards of well-placed mentoring ranging from a better skilled workforce to locally developed products.

Additionally, makerspaces become community gathering places, putting capacity building and resource development into the hands of area residents who need it most,  empowering ordinary people to become extraordinary Makers of their future and Tampa Bay’s. We’ll be holding more conversations about  public community spaces to think, build, create, invent, collaborate. If you want to be part of the conversation, drop us a line, and let’s make it happen together!

For more reading:

• David A. Kolb on Experiential Learning
• What’s So Awesome about Makerspaces?
• The Library as Makerspace
• Making of Makerspace for open innovation, knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning

“If you have an idea of what you want to do in your future, you must go at it with almost monastic obsession be it music, the ballet or just a basic degree,” he says. ” You have to go at it single-mindedly and let nothing get in your way.  And that’s why you’re young.  That’s why you can survive on no sleep, Top Ramen noodles and dental floss and still look good. …”

For all the new grads out there – this one’s for you!

LIFE's FTC Team Duct Tape with 2 other FIRST Championship-bound teams, dent in the universe and Masquerade

Learning is for Everyone has been taking our search for the Curiosity Driven Life to into the community with renewed vigor and increasing success.  FIRST Tech Challenge Team Duct Tape, our award winning community-based youth robotics team, is heading to the FIRST Championshipin St. Louis next week, as

Working with a Mentor

one of the top three teams in the state, to compete with over 120 other top teams from around the world. The team continues to be a model community based learning program, tapping into community support and mentoring guidance with consistent success, year after year.

Our TEDxYouth@TampaBay program is now an annual event, showcasing the voice and vision of innovative, thoughtful and inspiring young people from Tampa Bay and beyond – giving them a forum to share their passions and insights and to inspire other young people to reach their full potential.

Our Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire , which the FTC team participated in, was also an enormous success, drawing over 300 people to first Maker Faire event ever held in Tampa Bay. The concept was new to the area, but lauded as a “science fair meet carnival” experience by the local media, it inspired the curiosity we strive to evoke in our programs, and a commensurate desire to learn more – and to do more and be more!

An exciting part of our Mini Maker Faire was our Makerspace Unconference, now a full fledged Makerspace Project .  Another new(ish) idea, the makerspace movement is gathering steam nationwide. We’ve reported on makerspaces, and similar informal learning environments before.   Makerspaces are the ultimate creative space,  providing community residents with the tools, training and resources to become active and empowered creators of their futures instead of passive consumers – of food, clothing, tools, toys, furniture, books, magazines, games, gadgets and more. The list is endless because the possibilities are endless.

It’s especially encouraging to begin seeing signs that ideas about innovative ways to live and learn are being noticed and supported. Just last night, Learning is for Everyone was named one of the top ten finalists in Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s 10/100/1000 Challenge of Big Ideas for our communities. Our idea? Makerspaces!  Something few people had ever heard of here before is starting to make its way into our everyday vernacular.

Tonight, we’re part of 83 Degrees Media’s Not Your Average Speaker Series ,  which hopes to engage the audience “in a community conversation about what’s working in Tampa Bay when it comes to talent.”

“Our goal is to create forums where people meet and learn from each other, discover opportunities for collaboration and take away energy for engaging in an ecosystem of success, ” says Diane Egner, 83 Degrees Media publisher and managing editor. “If we succeed in engaging a community conversation focused on what’s working rather than around what’s not working, the narrative about the Tampa Bay region will begin to shift from one of problems and challenges to one of solutions and opportunities that will help build a collective can-do attitude.”

While tonight’s conversation is focused on Tampa Bay, the topic can be generalized to any community – What’s working, and how can we keep it working and make it better? What kind of resources do communities need to nurture the innate talent of their citizens?  How do we retain talent, and most effectively train up new talent?

LI4E is delighted and honored to be an increasingly public voice for the value of the Curiosity Driven Life, and joyful that more people see its value as well!

There were robots to drive,  custom chess pieces to make, duct tape and paper crafts to create, patent searches to run, cool inventors to talk with, 3D printers to marvel at, great art, great food, and great people to share it all with!

Many, many thanks to all the great volunteers who helped make our event so successful, from the great FTC Team Duct Tape family that staffed our registration table all day to the wonderful University Area Community Development Corporation volunteers who helped guests and Makers and aided in the smooth and swift movement of Makers from the patio to the gym when the skies opened up.   It all went so smoothly, no one missed a beat in activities or fun!

We’ll share more photos and stories soon, and more about our effort to bring makerspaces to Tampa Bay.  And you can find more on the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire Facebook page, too.

Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire 2012 totally made our day, and we’re already planning for Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire 2013!

This has been an exciting project for us here at Learning is for Everyone, the perfect Curiosity Driven creative storm!  Our line up is an eclectic mix of tech and art, music and food, radios and robots (our World Championship bound FIRST robotics team, Team Duct Tape, will be there!) , and everything in between!  It’s a celebration of everything we hold dear about experiential living and learning, and we’re especially excited about our Makerspace Unconference that we’re holding at 2pm at the event.

There we’ll  be joined by folks experienced in the matter, from Familab in Orlando, and Fab Lab in Sarasota, and local collaborators fromMakerspace Tampa Bay  and the University Area Community Development Corporation . Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire attendees will be joining in, too, with their visions of what they’d like to see in a public makerspace – or several of them!  We’re also raising awareness of the makerspace concept  through Creative Loafing’s 10/100/1000 Challenge, in a bid to get support for makerspaces here in Tampa Bay.  (Please consider giving the project a vote!)

If you’re in the Tampa Bay area, there’s still time to get your discounted tickets at EventBrite . Just $5 prepaid and $8 at the door, for ages 5+ . We promise you won’t go home empty-handed, hungry or without new knowledge  - there’s toys to make, art to stencil, things to solder, swag to collect, great food to eat and an opportunity to enjoy a little taste of the Greatest Show (& Tell) on Earth!

The mentor told him, “They feel they need to take more AP classes so they can get into the college of their choice.”

“That comment broke my heart, “said Schmill. “But it also got me thinking. While college admissions officers, high school counselors, and parents will all advise students that quality is more important than quantity, what do the students see? They see other students who loaded up on AP classes and a million other activities get admitted to selective colleges. And there is the disconnect.”

In reflecting on the college admissions process, Schmill says, “while it is true that some students have the bandwidth to do a lot and be successful, it is never the quantity of classes or activities that was the deciding factor in a college’s decision to admit them. And we should remember that for most students, loading up will simply lead to burnout and decreased performance.

“There’s no doubt that we want students who have achieved good grades in a rigorous curriculum, but it doesn’t mean they need to take every rigorous class.  Calculus, advanced science? Yes, for sure (for MIT).  Every advanced science class? Not necessary. Human geography, psychology, and studio art? Again, only if you enjoy these subjects and the challenge they provide.  They’re not prerequisites, and they don’t add to any imaginary tally of APs.”

That’s not to say Schmill doesn’t understand student reluctance to take on a rigorous extracurricular program like FIRST. “It is a great example of an activity where you put in a huge amount of time and effort and you may not succeed with anything tangible. Your robot may not work and you will not receive a grade. But that risk is a telling one. It shows an understanding that it is the experience and not the trophy that is the reward. ”

That can be a hard thing to get across to students, and to some adults.  LI4E’s sponsored FIRST Tech Challenge team, Team Duct Tape, which recently earned a spot at the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis in April, has several student members who are take challenging AP and IB courses, although they’ve also taken up the challenge of being part of the experiential learning opportunities our FIRST team offers.    But caught up in “college readiness” accelerators like AP and IB (International Baccalaureate) programs, students will sometimes even forgo things like dual enrollment – which actually provides high school students with tuition free credit-bearing college enrollment experiences – out of some mistaken belief that the added high school work is somehow more important than actual hands on learning experiences’ that reading and writing about doing things and making things, is somehow more valuable than actually doing and making things.

“Rather than making FIRST an AP class, ” says Schmill, “let’s recognize that activities such as FIRST have as much, if not more, value than an AP class. And everyone involved needs to help give students the confidence to pursue them.”

Read the full editorial at http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/21/essay-questions-obsession-over-ap-courses

For more on College Readiness:

• US News: Is AP too Good to Be True?
• NY Times: The Advanced Placement Juggernaut
• eSN Special Report: Keeping students on a path to graduation
• Redefining College Readiness (PDF report, Educational Policy Improvement Center)

Learning is For Everyone, Inc. (LI4E) has openings on our Board of Directors for both officers, and members at large

LIFE believes that

• Education is a basic human right.
• Learning is a lifelong process.
• There should be equal access to all educational venues for all people.
• Everyone should be free to learn and live in the ways that suit each best.

Our services and programs include:

• Media: LI4E Online News, Forums & Resource Directory; The Curiosity Driven Life, the Magazine of Learning is for Everyone
• STEM Education: FIRST robotics programs, including sponsorship of the nationally recognized, award winning community based FTC Team Duct Tape
• Experiential Learning Events: TEDxYouth@Tampa Bay & Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire
• Arts & Culture: Picturing America loan program; Mentoring and more
• Community Learning:  Development of a Tampa Bay Makerspace ; Support of informal education through our LIFE of Tampa and LIFE of Florida support groups; and community learning programs like Spelling Bees and other programs.

To that end, Learning is For Everyone, Inc. seeks enthusiastic, talented,   project driven  board members on our all-volunteer board to help build stronger community resources to continue bringing innovative and enduring learning opportunities to more people statewide and nationally.   If you

• Care deeply about making a positive impact in your community;
• Are passionate about some creative aspect of life – arts, sciences, math, humanities, and more,
• Support freedom of choice in learning and living, and
• Believe that knowledge belongs to everyone equally,

And

• Can join us for four quarterly meetings (at least three in person, and one electronically),
• Promise to be an energetic, enthusiastic, responsible and responsive LI4E team member,
• Will commit to focused, dedicated work on at least one of our projects;
• Have skills or contacts in accounting, publicity,  grant procurement, special event fundraising, hosting workshops, writing or speaking, education, resource or information management, or anything else you think would forward our mission and goals…

We’d enjoy having you on our team.  If you’re interested or would like to know more, please contact us at info@Learningis4everyone.org  by March 15, 2012.

_____________________

Learning is for Everyone is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization. All contributions are tax deductible and completely support LIFEs mission of empowering learners through information, networking and support. Learning is for Everyone is registered with the Florida Division of Consumer Services. Our registration number is CH22867.*

We’ve also got some insightful thoughts from artist and motivational speaker, Herb Cohen, on the Power of Choice; a bid from Edutopia recognized educator, Rosemary Owens, to inspire students to action; an examination of the educational power of podcasts and learning with the iPod Touch, and a look at some student driven inventiveness.

We’re deeply grateful to the gifts of layout and design expertise of Studio 7  Communications for helping make our dream of publishing a magazine become a reality! We hope you enjoy The Curiosity Driven Life. We encourage you to share it with others and to consider contributing to upcoming issues.  In the meantime, enjoy your first issue, free!

The Curiosity Driven Life

By T. Willingham in LI4E Press

12 pages, published 4 FEB 2012

The Curiosity Driven Life is the most recent addition to the Learning is for Everyone (LI4E) family of learning resources, which includes a freshly redesigned website with an extensive Resource Directory, experiential learning events like TEDxYouth@TampaBay and the first ever Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire, and a history of advocacy and support for self-directed learning nationwide. Our magazine showcases:*Innovative , experiential learning ideas,…

Using the example of the 1,650 computers RIA employs in their centers to serve their communities, Molinari shows that the one to one model would only yield 1, 650 new users, while centers open long hours and serving 140,000 users yielded 34,000 digitally trained graduates from RIA.

We need to use technology, Molinari says, “as a means, not an end.”  Key to this more powerful use of technology is the creation of welcoming spaces that provide both electronic and real time social connectedness, valuable content and the training to use it; in short – focused hackerspaces for beginners that can evolve into true opportunities for the people who need them most.

“Technology is not going to save the world,” Molinari reminds us. “We are, and we can use technology to help us.”