Dear Mr or Mrs Next US President,

Thank you for stopping during recess for a quick study session. 35 educators have collaborated to present this Carnival of Education as a useful lesson plan for you and your education policy team on what our real concerns and suggestions are.

In case this is your first visit to our SharpBrains blog, let me first of all point out some useful resources to stay sane during the rest of the campaign: selected Brain Teasers, a list of 21 great Brain Books, over a dozen interviews with leading scientists on learning and brain-based topics, and more.

Without further ado, let’s proceed to the issues raised. We hope they provide, at the very least, good mental stimulation for you and your advisors.

Education as a System

The movement to have US presidential candidates discuss Science and Technology in a devoted debate has been picking up steam. Date and place are scheduled: April 18th at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

- cosponsored by the AAAS, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and signed by over 100 leading American universities and other organizations

- Friday Business Week ran this story.

-  Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala have Read the rest of this entry »

That is the goal of Stanford University Media X: to foster deep collaborations between industry and academia, as highlighted in Business Week’s recent article The Virtual Meeting Room. The 5th Annual Media X Conference on Research, Collaboration, Innovation and Productivity served its purpose well for the last couple of days: very fun and insightful presentations by Stanford researchers (and a few external experts) and a great list of participants to get to know.

No doubt, a great source of mental stimulation for all of us. Charles House, Media X’s Executive Director, framed the dialogue as an effort to generate the right questions and then engage the best minds in answering them.

Some of (my) main take-aways

• “The world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex interdisciplinary challenges” (great quote by Dean John Hennessy)
• Personal Robotics is poised to explode soon-and software will be key (predicted by Paul Saffo)
• An inconvenient truth: Al Gore had to be convinced to bring his presentation into a movie, since he was very attached to each and every of his X hundred slides. We are happy it happened!
• Neuroscientists know what patterns in the brain indicate certain intentions-and are starting to use technologies to help immobilized patients communicate with external devices based merely on their thoughts
• We need to learn to embrace change- a lot of it is coming!

Now, some key points from several presentations (there were more than these, but I couldn’t attend all). I encourage you to visit the website of each presenter if you are interested in learning more about that topic.

a. Paul Saffo on Innovation

• It usually takes 20 years since basic science until applications reach inflection point and take the world by storm
• Next big thing: personal robotics. Indicators: Read the rest of this entry »