Author Archives: boadams1

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About boadams1

Learner. Husband. Dad. Mountaineer. Head of School at Mackintosh Academy - Boulder, in Boulder, Colorado. Have worked in transformation design, educational innovation, and school leadership for 30+ years.

Rosalind Torres on 21C #Leadership – Defined and Evidenced by 3 Questions

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Rosalinde Torres: What it takes to be a great leader. TED.com

In a 21st-century world, which is more global, digitally enabled and transparent, with faster speeds of information flow and innovation, and where nothing big gets done without some kind of a complex matrix, relying on traditional development practices will stunt your growth as a leader. In fact, traditional assessments like narrow 360 surveys or outdated performance criteria will give you false positives, lulling you into thinking that you are more prepared than you really are. Leadership in the 21st century is defined and evidenced by three questions.

  • “Where are you looking to anticipate change?”
  • “What is the diversity measure of your network?”
  • “Are you courageous enough to abandon the past?”

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

From educational institutions to learning flows @iftf #FutureOfEd

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The transformation from educational institutions to learning flows is profound and disruptive, and no existing institution will have the luxury of remaining unchanged. Such transformation requires us to rethink all of the assumptions, structures, and principles that have worked thus far. It also raises a new set of questions and challenges that educational institutions, learners, and our society as a whole will have to grapple with.

Download 5-page PDF and Map from IFTF

Inside the Black Box. Simple and Profound Transformations. #Questions #FormativeAssessment

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On wait time, the nature of questions, visible thinking, formative assessment and deeper learning:

A particular feature of the talk between teacher and pupils is the asking of questions by the teacher. This natural and direct way of checking on learning is often un-productive. One common problem is that teachers do not allow enough quiet time so that pupils can think out and offer an answer. Where, as often happens, a teacher answers her or his own question after only two or three seconds, and where a minute (say) of silent thought is not tolerable, there is no possibility that a pupil can think out what to say. There are then two consequences. One is that, because the only questions that can produce answers in such a short time are questions of fact, these predominate. The other is that pupils don’t even try to think out a response—if you know that the answer, or another question, will come along in a few seconds, there is no point in trying. It is also common that only a few pupils in a class answer teachers’ questions. The rest then leave it to these few, knowing that they cannot respond as quickly and being unwilling to risk making mistakes in public. So the teacher, by lowering the level of questions and by accepting answers from a few, can keep the lesson going but is actually out of touch with the understanding of most of the class—the question-answer dialogue becomes a ritual, one in which all connive and thoughtful involvement suffers.

There are several ways to break this particular cycle. They involve giving pupils time to respond, asking them to discuss their thinking in pairs or in small groups so that a respondent is speaking on behalf of others, giving pupils a choice between different possible answers and asking them to vote on the options, asking all to write down an answer and then reading out a selected few, and so on. What is essential is that any dialogue should evoke thoughtful reflection in which all pupils can be encouraged to take part, for only then can the formative process start to work.

Inside the Black Box
Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment
Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam

In those few sentences above, one can find some of the simplest and easiest methods to transform teaching and learning in significant and profound ways.

If you spend time visiting and observing classrooms in this country, you know that we all can improve on the methods suggested above.

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NOTE: Just about everything that I have read about assessment in the last decade references and/or connects in some way to Black & Wiliam’s article “Inside the Black Box.” Yet I wonder how many educators have taken the time to read it, study it, and strive to implement it. And, I do not mean to sound accusatorial. I genuinely wonder.

Paper or plastic? Work that blurs the lines between school and real life. #Synergy #iDiploma

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If school is supposed to prepare kids for real life, then why doesn’t school look more like real life?

This question lives at the heart of my research for the past decade. This question largely drives my work.

Many people ask me, “So, Bo, what do you mean by ‘real life?'”

Well, one aspect of blurring the lines between school and real life involves reimagining the kind of work that students engage in during their school experience. What if more of the student work had real-life application? What if more of the student work were aimed at targets well beyond the grade-book columns and end-of-year locker clean outs?

For example, what about the question, “Paper or plastic?” You know – at the grocery store. How should we respond to that question at the conveyor-belted check-out counter? (If, of course, we don’t bring our own reusable bags.)

From that question, a group of student designers and solution seekers might find themselves on a path leading to the investigation of the refrigerator and the crisper drawer.

“What?!” You might ask. What if student-learners actually worked on product design for such things as refrigerators, water boilers, etc.? What if students really knew the best answers to “Paper or plastic?”

Watch this TED talk from Leyla Acaroglu, and you might just see what I’m talking about – what I dream about…

Student-learners engaging in real-life work that goes well beyond a grade in a grade book and provides the weave-work and relevancy hooks that integrate and amplify the core purposes of our school-segregated subject areas. Work that recognizes and respects the systems of which our products and our persons are all parts of the whole…

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Innovation Diploma @MVPSchool