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.

Learning is the constant. An intersection at #TEDx Blvd and #EduCon / #EduCon25 Drive

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Do you really believe that all students can learn? At high levels?

Do you see learning as the constant… and time and support as the variables? Or do you still see time and support as relatively fixed, so learning must then vary? (Think As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Fs – learning variability in alphabetic symbols.)

Are you willing to rethink entire educational structures in order to facilitate high-level learning for ALL children?

Is all of the above worth at least a half hour of your time – if only to stretch your thinking about what’s possible?

Then, please watch these two TEDx talks.

Beyond the Book: Mary Esselman at TEDxSarasota [total time – 12:33]

Esselman explains her experience with blowing up the construct of age-grouping and re-imagining school such that students of current understanding are “grouped” regardless of their chronological age.

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We must invest in research and development in education: Jim Shelton at TEDxMidAtlantic [total time – 14:24]

Shelton shows examples of modern one-on-one tutoring that make new learners as cognitively agile as veterans – even more so. And he makes a strong case that echoes recent words from Sir Ken Robinson – that schools should be asking students, “How are you smart?” not “How smart are you?”

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The two talks above come from TEDx Talks Roundup: 4 Fascinating Talk about Education. The other two talks are well worth the views, too. A hat tip to @cannonball31 for passing the blog post to me.

Also, another hat tip to @GregBamford for helping me to think a bit deeper about educational structure (versus individual scapegoating) after I participated in his #EduCon session on organizational development – “Teaching Frameworks for Creative Collaboration.”

Lemme See Your Tootsie Roll – I Mean, PBL! Encienda #EduCon #EduCon25

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How might schools nurture curiosity, imagination, and humanity to a greater degree? It might be as “easy” as being intentional and purposeful about practicing those traits.

On Saturday, I was honored to share an Encienda presentation at EduCon 2.5. Encienda is EduCon’s version of an Ignite slide deck – 20 slides, all set to auto-advance every 15 seconds. Here’s my slide deck as a PDF with my slide notes:

The entire round of Encienda was fabulous. Unintentionally, the trend was definitely about PBL – project-based learning – and engaging learners in real-life issues and problem solving.

Now, we just have to Go. Do. Make it so.

Added 1-30-13:

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  • Why Advertising Agencies Must Disrupt Themselves | LinkedIn

    How might this apply to schools and education:

    “How can an existing company cope in this environment? Disrupt your own brand. That’s what Andy Grove did years ago by creating Intel’s own low-end disruptor: the Celeron chip (on the advice of Clay Christensen, by the way).

    To take it one step further, Christensen believed that ultimately the only way a entrenched company can avoid being disrupted is to set up a small separate venture – located away from headquarters — that functions like a new company. This venture must not be held to the same income and profit expectations as the mother ship, but should be run like a start up. Importantly, the new venture cannot be a “division” of the established incumbent, operating under the corporate umbrella. It must have complete independence to implement its own structure and business model.”

    tags: disruptive innovation #MustRead

  • The Space-Makers Part 1, #102 – Design Movement

    ““Space is the body language of your organization.” Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft, Co-Directors of the Environments Collaborative at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (d.school) join Design Movement to discuss their book, Make Space: How to set the stage for creative collaboration.”

    tags: design learning environment #MustRead podcasts

  • PRINCIPALLY SPEAKING: Are we ready to do the hard stuff?

    “The hard stuff, the essential stuff comes from whether we can develop empathy in our kids, so that they can work tirelessly to promote justice and fairness in our society.”

    tags: real-world PBL #MustRead tootsieroll

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

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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

A Golden Rule of School Reform… Okay, Maybe a Few Golden Rules #WhatIfWeekly

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From “Why Not Ask Teachers How They Would Improve Our Schools?,” Kenneth Bernstein, Nation of Change, 17 January 2013 (emphasis mine) —

We teachers are aware that our influence can be both positive and negative. To be certain that it is positive, we need to have our voices heard as educational policy is being formed. And yet, for too long, teachers have been forced when they are allowed to speak to do so in a frame that is not authentic. In my conversation with the reporter, she began a question by framing it in terms of “accountability,” and I immediately stopped her. Those of us who take teaching seriously dislike that word because it implies that we would not care nor act responsibly towards our students absent some outside measure. To a teacher, that is a wrong mindset, an improper frame that loses sight of the students for whom we are responsible.

Just to be clear, I agree with Bernstein – educational reform MUST include the voices of educators. But this post is not about my agreement with Bernstein.

This post is about the statement in bold above and repeated here – “Those of us who take teaching seriously dislike that word [accountability] because it implies that we would not care nor act responsibly towards our students absent some outside measure.”

But isn’t this exactly what many of us do to our students? We assume – intentionally or unintentionally – that they “would not care nor act responsibly” towards the curricula “absent of some outside measure.”

#GoldenRuleOfSchooling…
“Let’s do unto our student learners as we would want done to us.”

#ImaginingLearning…
Let’s ask students what they want and need from their schooling reforms as well!

…and parents

…and various industry leaders

…and real-world problem solvers

…and …

#WeShouldAllWorkTogetherOnEducation

What if… we did.

[Hat tip to Charles McNair for passing along the article to me.]