The Tennessean<\/a> on July 5, 2012)<\/p>\nI\u2019ve been reading Walter Isaacson\u2019s biography of Steve Jobs and was very taken with Isaacson\u2019s portrayal of the Apple co-founder\u2019s early life.<\/p>\n
I was struck by the lengths Jobs\u2019 adoptive parents went to encourage his natural curiosity and to provide him with better educational opportunities. When Steve veered off course and misbehaved, they saw that it was because he wasn\u2019t being intellectually challenged. They didn\u2019t stigmatize him for his pranks.<\/p>\n
Most important, though, was the example set by Paul Jobs, Steve\u2019s father. A talented machinist, he was a passionate weekend auto mechanic who repaired a steady stream of automobiles in his home garage and sold them on the side.<\/p>\n
Early in Steve\u2019s life, Paul Jobs set up a workbench in the garage that was to be Steve\u2019s alone. Working side by side in that garage, Steve clearly absorbed from his father an attention to detail that carried through to the products he went on to create that have changed all of our lives.<\/p>\n
In time, Steve took charge of his own learning, choosing to focus on electronics rather than cars. Initiative certainly wasn\u2019t an issue. When he found he needed some parts he didn\u2019t hesitate to call the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, Bill Hewlett, at his home to ask for them. That phone call later led to a job.<\/p>\n
Isaacson\u2019s account reinforces a point we often forget. Children aren\u2019t just learning when they are in school, they are learning all the time. We may not all be fortunate enough to grow up in Silicon Valley, where many of the neighborhood fathers tinkered with electronics in their garages, but thanks to computers and the Internet, children do have access to many avenues for informal learning.<\/p>\n
Several professors at Peabody College are using computers to make learning feel less rote. Doug Clark, for example, builds on children\u2019s natural interest in games to find novel ways to teach science. Pratim Sengupta is developing a visual programming language that allows learners to model scientific ideas. Both seek to capitalize on children\u2019s intuitive understanding.<\/p>\n
Rogers Hall has been developing innovative ways to teach geometric ideas using large-scale outdoor projects and handheld devices. These same devices allow children to gather and analyze data about personal mobility, and even to make recommendations to city planners for changes like new bike lanes.<\/p>\n
Professor Kevin Leander is exploring the ways that computing technologies, communications tools like texting, and social networks can be used to bridge learning experiences in and out of the classroom. Some of these technologies are changing the very definition of what we mean by literacy.<\/p>\n
Parents make many sacrifices on behalf of their children\u2019s educations. Even Steve Jobs\u2019 parents moved to get him into a better school district. But school is only one feature of a child\u2019s education. Informal learning through hands-on projects, parental modeling and support, and pursuit of personal creative ideas are just as important, and sometimes more so.<\/p>\n
Camilla P. Benbow is Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University\u2019s Peabody College.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Camilla Benbow (Originally printed in The Tennessean on July 5, 2012) I\u2019ve been reading Walter Isaacson\u2019s biography of Steve Jobs and was very taken with Isaacson\u2019s portrayal of the Apple co-founder\u2019s early life. I was struck by the lengths Jobs\u2019 adoptive parents went to encourage his natural curiosity and to provide him with better…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":637,"featured_media":0,"parent":2,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-blog.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/147\/revisions\/504"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/camillabenbow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}