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.

My next chapter – joining @MVPSchool, a school of inquiry, innovation, and impact #MVPSchool

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Beginning June 1, 2013, I will become a full-time member of the incredible team and family of people at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School! Today, on his Design Movement blog, Head of School Dr. Brett Jacobsen announced my appointment as Chief Learning and Innovation Officer.

To say that I am excited to join MVPS would be an enormous understatement. For a number of years, I have been following the transformative and innovative work of the MVPS faculty and leadership team. The number of educators there that I follow via Twitter and long-form blogs has continued to grow and grow as time has gone on. And the face-to-face time with MVPS folks always proves inspiring. In my research and practice, I yearn to find organizations that live on the frontier of engaging education and meaningful learning.

MVPS lives on that frontier.

On so many occasions, I have written about MVPS here on It’s About Learning, and I have tweeted and retweeted about their practices, because I think the school stands out as an exemplar in our current national landscape of educational transformation and innovation. During his cross-country #EdJourney tour of “schools of the future,” my friend Grant Lichtman published this post about Mount Vernon; clearly he sensed and observed the same energy that I have perceived emanating from the school.

At Unboundary, we talk of and partner with organizations that strive for significance – a strong indicator of alignment among identity, character, purpose, and impact. A truly significant organization has all kinds of people cheering for its success because it is making a positive difference in the world, and to a considerable degree.

For quite some time, I’ve been cheering for MVPS and the significant impact it makes in the lives of children, learners, educators, education, and the local-global spectrum of communities. I am deeply grateful that MVPS has invited me and welcomed me to their team and family. And I’m honored and invigorated to join in the work that MVPS forwards through inquiry, innovation, and impact.

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In my most recent chapter, being a part of Unboundary has been – and will continue to be – a life-changing experience. This studio of transformation designers and strategists engages the world with optimistic curiosity and profound wisdom about what it takes to purposefully design and successfully implement organizational change. Unboundary, its people, and its transformation-design work are in my blood, and I am thrilled to weave together this chapter with my next chapter at MVPS. How thrilling that design connects Unboundary and MVPS in such significant ways. I am eternally grateful to both places and teams of people. Thank you.

Classroom design for flexible movement and health #WhatIfWeekly

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With a bit more creativity and innovation, our school classrooms could do this, too.

A classroom of such flexible-use design would signal to learners that exercise, movement, and kinetics are invaluable parts of being and learning. I was inspired to think of such a classroom by reading this piece on FastCo Co.Design: “Sweating The Details: This Workstation Doubles As A Personal Gym.”

What if we reconfigured classroom furniture to use energy rather than squelch it?

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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

Translating productivity lessons to “learn-ivity” lessons #EdTransformation

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You see, the first wave of managers simply replaced their steam engines with electric motors, but they didn’t redesign the factories to take advantage of electricity’s flexibility. It fell to the next generation to invent new work processes, and then productivity soared, often doubling or even tripling in those factories.

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General purpose technologies drive most economic growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like lightbulbs and, yes, factory redesign. Is there a general purpose technology of our era? Sure. It’s the computer. But technology alone is not enough. Technology is not destiny.We shape our destiny, and just as the earlier generations of managers needed to redesign their factories, we’re going to need to reinvent our organizations….

Erik Brynjolfsson: The key to growth? Race with the machines, #TED

An adjacent possibility and a prediction of some future history-book paragraphs…

“You see the first wave of educators simply replaced their lectures with flipped classrooms and notebooks with iPads (etc.), but they didn’t redesign the curriculum or schools to take advantage of what we know is critical for innovation, engagement, and internally-motivated purpose. It fell to the next generation to invent new school processes, and then engagement and learning soared, often doubling or even tripling in those schools.

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General purpose pedagogies drive most learning growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like community-based challenges and integrated-discipline problem-solving. Is there a general purpose pedagogy of our era? Sure. It’s PBL. But PBL alone is not enough. PBL is not destiny.We shape our destiny, and just as the earlier generations of educators needed to redesign their schools, we’re going to need to reinvent our organizations….”

BLACK: My journey to yo-yo mastery #TED #GrowthMindset #PlayPassionPurpose

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A wonderful story of the Growth Mindset and the power of making room to pursue passion through play…

When I was 14 years old, I had low self-esteem. I felt I was not talented at anything.

One day, I bought a yo-yo. When I tried my first trick, it looked like this. I couldn’t even do the simplest trick, but it was very natural for me, because I was not dextrous, and hated all sports. But after one week of practicing, my throws became more like this. A bit better. I thought, the yo-yo is something for me to be good at, for the first time in my life. I found my passion. I was spending all my time practicing. It took me hours and hours a day to build my skills up to the next level.

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As a result of these efforts, and the help of many others,it happened.I won the World Yo-Yo Contest againin the artistic performance division.I passed an audition for Cirque du Soleil.Today, I am standing on the TED stagewith the yo-yo in front of you.

(Applause)

What I learned from the yo-yo is,if I make enough effort with huge passion,there is no impossible.