AndoverMagazineFrontWinter2013

WINTER 2013
Volume 106 Number 2
PUBLISHER
Tracy M. Sweet
Director of Academy Communications
EDITOR
Sally V. Holm
Director of Publications
DESIGNER
Ken Puleo
Art Director
ASSISTANT EDITORS
Jill Clerkin
Kristin Bair O’Keeffe
CLASS NOTES DESIGNER
Sally Abugov
CLASS NOTES COORDINATOR
Laura MacHugh
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Daniel Adler ’05; David Chase; MJ Engel ’13; Carlos
Hoyt; Carmen Muñoz-Fernandez; Debby Murphy ’86;
Amy Patel, MD; Nate Scott ’05; Rabbi Michael Swarttz;
Frank Tipton; Paula Trespas; Chris Walter; Sarah Zobel
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Kezi Barry ’02, Neil Evans, John Hurley, Michael Lutch,
Michael Malyszko, Debby Murphy ’86, Paul Murphy ’84,
Beth O’Connor, Len Rubenstein, John Spaulding,
Damian Strohmeyer, Tracy Sweet, Gil Talbot,
Peter Vanderwarker ’65, Dave White
© 2013 Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.
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Front cover: Maine-based artist Wade Zahares
created this mind-mapping style abstraction of the
concept of connected learning, our cover story. He
teamed with PA Art Director Ken Puleo to add the
words. Recent alumni will recognize Zahares’s style
from the large mural he painted in the Smith Center
when it served as “Uncommons” during the Paresky
Commons 2 renovation. Andover | Winter 2013
FRoM tHe eDItoR
The Hill, since early September, has been a-buzz with a somewhat cumbersome new
phrase. Connected Learning. While the concept of employing new tools to enhance
our students’ learning certainly is not new, the term and its currency arrived with
our new head of school, the über-connected John Palfrey. The movement from
largely didactic to more multisourced, experiential, participatory learning has been
going on at Andover for some time. And now, more students and faculty are eagerly
experimenting. Our cover story is an effort to define and explain the ever-expanding
concept and its growing influence on Andover pedagogy.
Over the years, we all have encountered connected learning and all benefited from
it, whether we knew it had a name or not. A late bloomer, I remember first thinking
concretely about it in the spring of 2011, watching Peter Neissa’s Spanish 520 class
reach out to the Hispanic corporate world looking for information and investment
opportunities for their $10 million in virtual funds. There were no texts, of course.
The world—via the Web—was their hornbook. To Neissa’s astonishment, one of
his groups had even gotten the CFO of a large Spanish clean energy company on the
phone to amplify their research. Very connected learning, indeed.
The audacious task of giving shape to this concept for the magazine was assigned
to Kristin Bair O’Keeffe—a recent addition to our staff as class notes editor—who
is a published novelist, writer, teacher of writing, and public speaker steeped in
connected learning. Attacking her topic with characteristic enthusiasm, Kristin
has successfully, I think, described, deciphered, and embraced something of an
amorphous and constantly shapeshifting beast.
Then came the equally daunting challenge: how to visually define this shapeshifter
to make a cover? We took the problem to Maine-based artist Wade Zahares whose
jaunty, abstract style and uncommon perspective we knew from his Smith Center
mural, painted in 2008. Drawing on mind-mapping examples, we hammered out a
tendriled nebula of learning terms, tools, technologies, and ideas emanating from our
hilltop cloister. Wade brought the beast to life before our eyes.
And it is here to stay. So woven into the fabric of our society is this modern
communication and learning mode that we can only win by embracing it with
enthusiasm and all the creativity we can muster. There is absolutely nothing to fear.
It is making us smarter, wiser, faster, deeper, and more broadly knowledgeable every
day. It is building community and bridging silos. It may even help Robert Putnam
sleep at night. So make room, Gunga. Another beast roams the Hill and beyond. It
would be good to get to know her.
—Sally V. Holm