Props to Tony Wagner

            Last night I started to read Tony Wagner’s Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. I am not yet far enough into it to give a fair review, but I have to salute Wagner right away.

          In November 2010 I posted a piece titled “Reading--By Book or By Nook or By...?”. It was some musing on the future of the book and what it may become.

                With the encouragement and work of Robert Compton, Wagner’s book contains qr codes and hyperlinks that lead to videos which augment the text. If you are reading the hardback version, for instance, you can scan a code with your smartphone and watch a video. On an ereader, you can follow the links or purchase a version with the videos embedded. At least so far, the videos don’t really add that much depth, but it’s still quite cool and suggests great possibilities.

                I’ve been to plenty of conferences and presentations about innovation and teamwork and cooperative learning and brain-based, active learning and Socratic dialogue…all presented via the traditional lecture.

                We will see how this affects the reading experience. No matter what, Wagner deserves credit for practicing what he preaches.