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“What company today doesn’t put innovation at the top of the agenda? Yet how many companies have devoted the energy and resources it takes to build innovation into the values, processes, and practices that rule everyday activity and behavior? Not many, as we argued when we launched the Innovating Innovation Challenge in October.
That disconnect isn’t due to lack of human ingenuity or resources. It’s a product of organizational DNA. Productivity, predictability, and alignment are embedded in the marrow of our management systems. Experimentation, risk-taking, and variety are the enemy of the efficiency machine that is the “modern” corporation. Of course, it’s variety (and the daring to be different) that produces game-changing innovation.”
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Andreas Schleicher: Use data to build better schools | Video on TED.com
“How can we measure what makes a school system work? Andreas Schleicher walks us through the PISA test, a global measurement that ranks countries against one another — then uses that same data to help schools improve. Watch to find out where your country stacks up, and learn the single factor that makes some systems outperform others.”
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Andreas Schleicher: Use data to build better schools | Video on TED.com
“How can we measure what makes a school system work? Andreas Schleicher walks us through the PISA test, a global measurement that ranks countries against one another — then uses that same data to help schools improve. Watch to find out where your country stacks up, and learn the single factor that makes some systems outperform others.”
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Empowering Students Through Empathy and Collaboration | Edutopia
“Decades if not a full century later, we’re still struggling with how to give students that ownership. Doing so takes lots of work, but if this generation of teachers lays the groundwork for the how, then the students will be the teachers who build upon that. Let’s do it right.”
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Pas de Deux: On Public & Private School Partnership in EdLeader21 | chris.thinnes.me
“I found out that public school districts had not only answered those questions, but they had done so several years beforehand. And they had implemented concrete solutions for the benefit of tens of thousands of learners, in each case. Since then, I have consistently seen more intentional cultures of deeper learning, more startling examples of transformational assessment practice, and more inspiring examples of engaged students at EdLeader21 public schools, than I have seen in all but the most exceptional independent schools.”
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Google Looks to Make Its Computer Glasses Stylish – NYTimes.com
As technology has helped drive the innovations in education, how might Google Glass play a next role? Will students be sitting in class able to pull information without even touching a keyboard or screen? Will teachers use the glasses to see dashboards of student profiles as each face is recognized in the viewer? Much is coming!
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If students designed their own school… it would look like this
““It’s crazy that in a system that is meant to teach and help the youth there is no voice from the youth at all.” That’s the opening line in a video called “If students designed their own schools,” about The Independent Project, a high school semester designed and implemented entirely by students.” [HT @ezraadams]
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Death To Core Competency: Lessons From Nike, Apple, Netflix | Fast Company
“Business models are not meant to be static,” he explains. “In the world we live in today, you have to adapt and change. One of my fears is being this big, slow, constipated, bureaucratic company that’s happy with its success. That will wind up being your death in the end.”
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The Learning Potential | The Creativity Post
“In other words, if schools functioned for one reason, it should be to help us all discover our “learning potential.” To learn one’s own constraints, skills, and possibility, and be able to articulate that in whichever literacy you are inclined to use — be it digital or visual or oral. To learn to embrace one’s own neurodiversity as it fits or does not fit in with others, is perhaps one of the most empowering foundations to build a career of learning, living, and growing on. If we all left high school knowing fully and deeply our “learning potential,” we would be well ahead of the game of life.”
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To Disrupt Education, First Shift the Balance of Power | EdSurge News
“The education ecosystem is rigid and in a state of deep equilibrium – it is nearly impossible to shift, and even successful efforts are ephemeral, with the system trending back toward the status quo in short order. Although there are many “spot solutions”, examples of education excellence in isolated instances, the system as a whole resists the spread of such innovations.”
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I struggle: lessons I’ve learned from being an inquiry teacher | Wright’sRoom
“I struggle. I struggle with where I am & what I’m doing. I struggle with the educational system as we know it. I struggle with the painfully slow pace of change. I struggle with people in power who say they care about kids, but don’t do the hard things to make a really huge difference in creating a learning environment that matters. With all the research that exists, we know what’s good for kids. Let’s not pretend otherwise. I’m tired of all of the talking and very little of the doing.”
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PopTech : PopCasts : Amanda Ripley: Ask the kids
“Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist who writes about human behavior and public policy. For Time Magazine and the Atlantic, she has chronicled the stories of American kids and teachers alongside groundbreaking new research into education reform. “Kids have strong opinions about school. We forget as adults how much time they sit there contemplating their situation.””
Category Archives: #MustRead Shares – Weekly Reading
#MustRead Shares (weekly)
#MustRead Shares (weekly)
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“In the pursuit of innovation, leaders are often faced with three critical decisions: what to follow versus what to ignore, what to leave in versus what to leave out, and what to do versus what not to do.
“Many of the most original innovators tend to focus far more on the second half of each choice. They adopt a “less is best” approach to innovation, removing just the right things in just the right way in order to achieve the maximum effect through minimum means and deliver what everyone wants: a memorable and meaningful experience.
“It’s the art of subtraction, defined simply as the process of removing anything excessive, confusing, wasteful, hazardous, or hard to use—and perhaps building the discipline to refrain from adding it in the first place. These six rules help guide that discipline.”
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Why Inquiry Learning is Worth the Trouble | MindShift
“Lehmann’s 90-minute question-and-answer session tackled coming to terms with the impact of a shift to inquiry-driven learning by defining three steps: the enigmatic meaning of inquiry-based learning; the visible changes that signal a shift to that approach; and the potential drawbacks that shift may surface.”
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Video: “The Future Will Not be Multiple Choice” | MindShift
“McGrath and Davies argue that school needs to keep up with the times by promoting creativity, entrepreneurship, design thinking and hands on skills. McGrath’s experience teaching design problems has convinced him that the approach includes all learning styles, brings the best of project-based learning, encourages cooperation and integrates subject matter horizontally. But mostly, McGrath and Davies are impressed at the cool stuff kids design.”
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solving mysteries « orgtheory.net
Is school reform about solving a puzzle or a mystery?
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Is “Complicated” To “Complex” As “Puzzle” Is To “Mystery”? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
Is school reform a puzzle or a mystery?
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gladwell dot com – open secrets
Is school reform a puzzle or a mystery?
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The distinction is not trivial. If you consider the motivation and methods behind the attacks of September 11th to be mainly a puzzle, for instance, then the logical response is to increase the collection of intelligence, recruit more spies, add to the volume of information we have about Al Qaeda. If you consider September 11th a mystery, though, you’d have to wonder whether adding to the volume of information will only make things worse. You’d want to improve the analysis within the intelligence community; you’d want more thoughtful and skeptical people with the skills to look more closely at what we already know about Al Qaeda. You’d want to send the counterterrorism team from the C.I.A. on a golfing trip twice a month with the counterterrorism teams from the F.B.I. and the N.S.A. and the Defense Department, so they could get to know one another and compare notes.
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Puzzles are “transmitter-dependent”; they turn on what we are told. Mysteries are “receiver dependent”; they turn on the skills of the listener
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principal elements of the puzzle—all require the application of energy and persistence, which are the virtues of youth. Mysteries demand experience and insight.
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In the case of puzzles, we put the offending target, the C.E.O., in jail for twenty-four years and assume that our work is done. Mysteries require that we revisit our list of culprits and be willing to spread the blame a little more broadly. Because if you can’t find the truth in a —even a mystery shrouded in propaganda—it’s not just the fault of the propagandist. It’s your fault as well.
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Researchers Recommend Core Changes in Education | DML Hub
“Close the gap between the no-frills learning that too often happens in-school and the interactive, hands-on learning that usually takes place out of school. Take advantage of the Internet’s ability to help youth develop knowledge, expertise, skills and important new literacies. Use digital technology to combat the increasing reality of the haves and have-nots in education.
“Those are among a series of recommendations outlined in a new report released today by the Connected Learning Research Network, an interdisciplinary research network dedicated to reimagining learning for the 21st century.”
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A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age | EdSurge News
From EdSurge newsletter 23 Jan 2013: “About a month ago, a group of educators, entrepreneurs and a couple of us from the fourth estate gathered in a room to discuss how digital technologies are reshaping learning–both now and in the years to come. None of us have crystal balls. But it didn’t take long for the conversation to begin to focus squarely on students. We wound up writing what we called a “Bill of Rights & Principles for Learning in the Digital Age” and here it is.”
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The Philosophy of Data – NYTimes.com
“Over the next year, I’m hoping to get a better grip on some of the questions raised by the data revolution: In what situations should we rely on intuitive pattern recognition and in which situations should we ignore intuition and follow the data?”
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1 | Infographic: The Intricate Anatomy Of UX Design | Co.Design: business + innovation + design
How might we improve the UX of school? I find it so helpful to think of school as a UX for students, teachers, parents, community, etc. Innovation, then, is primarily about enhancing the UX of school.
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A Revolution Begins in Teacher Prep | Stanford Social Innovation Review
“But will this new generation of programs actually bring transformational change to the field? As chancellor of the 23-campus California State University, Barry Munitz oversaw a system that prepares about 60 percent of the teachers in the state and 12 percent of the teachers in the country. (I took teacher prep courses at California State University, Los Angeles on his watch.) Munitz is optimistic about the potential of these new teacher prep organizations to spark change—but argues the training itself is only part of what we need to get right. Like many of the startup revolutionaries, Munitz says improved training must be part of an overall move to bring a new professionalism to teaching—starting with recruiting outstanding candidates. In addition, he argues that teacher salaries must reflect the real value of teaching to society, in an age when well-educated, ambitious young women—once forced into low-paying teaching jobs by limited career opportunities—now have a world of choices. “We have to make the teaching profession an attractive, prestigious, and therefore well-paid position,” he says. Innovative teacher prep faces a substantial list of problems, Munitz says, that must be solved “on an emergency basis.””
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Teaching, she remarks, is the only profession where a first-time practitioner is expected “to have the same skill set as a 10-year veteran.”
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The new generation of teacher prep programs offer new solutions to an old problem and are committed not to fixing schools of ed, but to reinventing them. Most emerge not from universities, but from autonomous, typically nonprofit organizations. They move the locus of much of their training to the school building, aiming to be more practical and clinical in approach than their traditional forebears.
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new generation of teacher preparation programs as a welcome force on the horizon. He says they bring two crucial innovations: The programs take an urgent interest in teachers’ impact on student learning, and they offer a hands-on, clinical approach to developing teachers’ skills.
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The emphasis is on practice | Much of the learning takes place in real schools.
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Accomplished teachers serve as models, coaches, and mentors
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Progress and success in the program are dependent on performance in the classroom
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Rigor matters
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Teachers, arguably, have the most important job in the United States, yet we do a lousy job of helping them learn to teach. We can do better.
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UbD and serendipity: why planning helps rather than hinders creativity « Granted, but…
“I find it odd that so many teachers think that merely liberating students from constraints is the key to creative expression and true learning. Dewey lamented this endlessly, because many of the proponents of progressive education fell into this mistake and hurt the cause. On the contrary, creativity requires working with and through constraints: think of haiku and architecture – not to mention genuinely creative experimental science. Perhaps teachers who talk this way are simply compensating for the micro-management kids often face today at home and in school. But quality work rarely comes from just being given free time and no guidance or standards.”
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7 Essential Principles of Innovative Learning | MindShift
“Researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched the Innovative Learning Environments project to turn an academic lens on the project of identifying concrete traits that mark innovative learning environments. They sifted through and categorized the research on learning science, documented case studies, and compiled policy recommendations they hope will transform the current system.”
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Seth’s Blog: Paracosms, loyalty and reality in the pursuit of creative problem solving
Using paracosm of school so that we can build its future. It’s not disloyal to “school” to imagine a world without it. Such imagining helps us ensure relevance for learners!
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Teachers and Policy Makers: Troubling Disconnect – NYTimes.com
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Is Your Company Ready for the Circular Economy? – Eric Hellweg – Harvard Business Review
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“What kind of community could I create to help students think that they were capable of helping others? What kind of process could I teach that helped students to think that they could collaboratively tackle the messiest and more daunting problems such as our obesity epidemic, failing schools, and polluted waters?” (HT @SAISNews)
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Introducing our Newest Cause: #sugarkills – The Tempered Radical
“One of the questions that I’m asked time and time again is, “How can teachers use technology to motivate our students?”
And if you’ve spent any time reading Radical posts, you probably know my answer already: Technology DOESN’T motivate students. Making a difference in the world does.
Technology just enables students to tackle the kinds of meaningful issues that once would have been out of their reach. “
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“The world is much more interesting than any one discipline.”
How might our silos and labels of school be re-examined so that we empower seeing rather than limit vision?
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TEDx — TEDx Talks Roundup: 4 fascinating talks on education
Mary Esselman at TEDxSarasota
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”