Healthy Wellthy U welcomes Dr. Ann McCormick, a pioneer educator, software developer, entrepreneur and advisor in the field of education for more than 50 years. She will talk about one of the secrets of inspiring learning: curiosity.
Our brains are one of the most powerful forces in the world and one of the most overlooked. When we truly harness our mind’s power, we can create incredible change in our lives. Curiosity is something we all have but it is not something we don’t give much thought. It is something in the background, like the air we breathe. But we couldn’t live life without it – and it certainly makes life more interesting.
Curiosity is essential to survival because it drives learning. All creatures need a certain amount of curiosity to figure out how to survive in the world. This relationship between curiosity and learning is key, because if we understand how to motivate curiosity, we can also understand how to spark learning in real and meaningful ways.
How does curiosity work? How can we develop it in our children and in ourselves? What hampers our curiosity and learning? And what are the impacts of our current approaches to education? This, and more, in today’s episode.
About Dr. Ann McCormick
Dr. Ann McCormick has been a pioneer educator, software developer, entrepreneur and advisor in the field of education for more than 50 years. She founded The Learning Company, which created the reading software Reader Rabbit and Rocky’s Boots, and was one of the first people to emphasize the importance of fun and the interactive experience in learning software.
She has been a consultant in Education and Technology to the governments of 15 countries. She demonstrated her software for leaders at the US Library of Congress and the Special Office of the President, for Members of the British parliament, at the Congress of the Latin Americas in Sao Paolo and for a Minister of Education from Beijing. Her software has been used throughout the world.
The Learning Company became a Harvard Business School Case alongside Apple. Steve Jobs founded the Apple Education Foundation where Ann was among the first recipients, then she won the Apple Foundation Program and Design Excellence Award for her first title. She has been interviewed by Fortune, the NY Times, Business Week, Scientific American, the London Times, Psychology Today and hundreds of other publications and given appearances on PBS, Donahue and other shows.
She has been on the Board of innovative schools, most recently Synapse School in Silicon Valley, which was founded as a laboratory school for social and emotional learning.
Her current set of apps for iPad, Reader Bee, has earned a Parents’ Choice Gold Award, a Children’s Technology Review Award for Excellence in Design, a National Parenting Center Seal of Approval, Dr. Toy 10 Best Technology Toys, and 7 other National awards.
She was given an award for “Reshaping the Small Business Landscape” by the California Legislative Assembly. Her work has been acknowledged in books such as Women, Technology and Power, and she was honored at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester NY as a Woman in Games featured speaker
Her websites and apps include:
https://www.readerbee.com/Reader-Bee-Story-Tree
Big Old Tree on Skyline
https://www.bigoldtreeonskyline.com and
Misty of Chincoteague
http://www.mistyofchincoteague.org.
And she is on the Board of this pioneering school that she discusses in the episode:
