Low Tech Silicon Valley School Eschews
Computers
The Waldorf School of the Peninsula, in Los Altos, California, is one of 160 Waldorf schools in the country that sub- scribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. The New York Times reports that the chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to this nine-classroom institution, as do employ- ees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. Yet, the school’s main teaching tools are anything but high-tech, comprising pen and paper, knitting needles and occasion- ally, mud. No computers or screens of any kind are allowed in the classroom, and the school frowns on their use at home. Educators that endorse this ap- proach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interac- tion and attention spans. Alan Eagle, a communications executive at Google, whose daughter attends the school, says, “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”
Source: The New York Times
Vanishing Species Counting our Natural Blessings
A study by Canada’s Dalhousie University postulates that as many as 86 percent of Earth’s species are still unknown, and millions of organisms will remain undiscovered as extinc- tions accelerate worldwide at 10 to 100 times their natural rate. If, as the study’s co-author Boris Worm suggests, our planet is home to 8.7 million species, it means scientists have cataloged fewer than 15 percent of spe- cies now alive. Many unknown
organisms will wink out of existence before they can even be recorded. Although the catalog of mammals and birds may be nearly com- plete, inventories of other classes of life are far behind. Only 7 per- cent of the predicted number of fungi and fewer than 10 percent of all ocean life forms have been identified.
Categorizing a new organism is more complicated than discovering one. “It’s a long process,” Worm explains. “Most scientists will describe dozens of species in their lifetime, if they’re really lucky. What’s been dis- covered so far are those things that are easy to find, that are conspicuous, that are relatively large. There is an age of discovery ahead of us when we could find out so much more of what lives with us on this planet.”
Source: National Geographic
natural awakenings
February 2012
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