On Friday (1/23/09), the Franklin Institute hosted a panel for Educon 2.1 focused around the question, “What is the Purpose of School?” Here is my video of the panelists opening statements.

The quality isn’t that great. The video was taken with a Flip camera, in the dark.  I used the back of a seat to stabilize the camera. Unfortunately, I ran out of space and missed most of Joel Arquillos (Executive Director of 826LA) opening statement while I was busily deleting other video.

Dr. Squyres is a professor at Cornell and the Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers.

Prakash Nair is the Co-Founder, Fielding Nair International: Architects and Change Agents for Education

Dr. Molefi Asante is a professor of African American Studies at Temple and author of more than 60 books.


Kendall Crolius is  a founding partner of The Sulevia Group.

Jeff Han is the founder of Perceptive Pixel and inventor of the multi-touch screen