Wk 2 - Free Choice (ADE Institute Planning)

I'm sitting at Phoenix's airport reflecting on a powerful weekend of collaboration as I write this. The past 48 hours have been fast-paced, exhilarating, and exhausting. I flew into Arizona to meet with 10 other educators to plan the Apple Distinguished Educator Summer Institute for 2011. It is being hosted at ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Dave Cornelius demonstrating one of their many labs. Photo by Paul Devoto

When a group of passionate educators get together, a lot gets done quickly. It was incredible not only to participate as a contributing member, but also to observe the methods utilized by Maxx Judd to lead the brainstorming sessions.

In addition to the institute planning, I was able to join Robert Brock on a quick tour of his school, the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences. I am simply amazed that school's like this exist. It's basically like Full Sail if Full Sail only focused on audio.

Robert Brock showing us one of the rooms at CRAS. Photo by Paul Devoto.

Having experiences like these keep me excited about the future of education.

My Comment to Paul

Wow Paul! Great post! What an amazing and rewarding experience! It is so motivating to think that at least in some parts of the world education is allowing other experiences to students that need this type of focus in order to improve and develop their skills if they have this type of intelligence.  A lot of kids are just waiting to get to college to find out what they are good at or what they want to do in life.  Providing this type of education is a benefit for students with musical or production talent, and they don't have to wait until they get to college to prove that they are actually good at it and to decide that's what they really want to do as a profession. Thanks for sharing this is experience, we definitely need more schools like this one.