Monday, August 9, 2010
A blog post by education consultant Angela Maiers got me interested in Microsoft's Pivot, demonstrated in the video below. Pivot is a new way of sorting information that could possibly revolutionize how we organize and review data on the Internet.
After looking at several videos, reading about it and, ultimately, downloading and using Pivot, I got to thinking about the people who come up with these advanced technologies. The Pivot developers still don't know about the power that they may have at their fingertips. They are sort of building the airplane in flight, asking users to supply feedback on this really cool project.
At first look this approach appears reckless, but upon further review it seems quite progressive.
These folks are real designers, inventors if you will, in the Leonardo da Vinci mold. Somewhere along the way, no doubt, one or more teachers helped these designers of modern technology discover their talents. Yet virtually every study done today says American education is failing to produce tech-ready graduates.
It makes you wonder, are we inspiring our future designers or constraining them?
