PROCESS POST: Content = Solute; Context = Solvent; Curriculum = Solution (finding)

We believe that students learn best when they are . . .

  • essential members of a vibrant, diverse learning community,
  • immersed in challenging, real-life experiences that make a difference,
  • exploring ideas, questions, and projects that are meaningful and relevant to them,
  • collaborating with inspiring adults who know them well,
  • given real responsibility for their education, and
  • in touch with their innate wisdom and capacity for insight.

from Watershed School

Re-listening to outgoing NAIS president Pat Bassett’s TEDxSaintGeorgesSchool – Schools of the Future, I heard him say that one of his grandchildren attends The Watershed School. At 18:30, Bassett explains the way 7th graders start the school year at Watershed – with an expedition to the source of the Colorado River. Learning is based on exploration and discovery, problem finding and problem solving – real-life context in which the content is solute dissolving in solvent to form a solution.

What does your school believe helps students learn best? How are you realizing those beliefs?

Building further from this post: “Could there actually be one “C” to rule them all?!”

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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

Real-life learning lessons from an article about the Intel Science Talent Contest #WhatIfWeekly

First, a few quotes:

  • “The program, said Valerie Holmes, one of its teachers, encourages students to find a subject with which they have a personal connection.”
  • “At Stuyvesant she continued to explore what she describes as “how interdisciplinary science can be.””
  • “Part of what the research program teaches students, Ms. Holmes said, is tenacity; Dan and his advisers approached 30 to 40 potential mentors before finding one who would take him on.”
  • “From there she taught herself cellphone software coding and electrical engineering techniques, using “breadboards” and a soldering iron. “Engineering is the field that worships impact,” she said of her choice to enter it, “and to have the greatest impact, it has to be in the developing world.””

[All emphasis mine.]

From “A Laboratory Grows Young Scientists,” By ETHAN HAUSER, NYTimes.com, Published: March 11, 2013.

When students are encouraged and empowered to engage in real-life learning, for which they can see the relevance now, strong progress and achievement is made. And not just for the students, but for the larger world of which they are a part.

From the quotes above, one can see five key components of “real-life learning,” something I write about often here. These traits make for some great education. Schooling could be enhanced to facilitate more of this kind of learning.

  • personal connection
  • interdisciplinary
  • tenacity
  • taught herself
  • to have the greatest impact

What if school possessed more of the characteristics of scientific research, investigation, and exploration? And I don’t just mean that school should “do more science.” I mean that the very culture and foundation of school could look more like the culture and foundations of science – observing, questioning, hypothesizing, experimenting, reflecting, repeating with additional insights from testing, etc. Sounds a lot like innovating, too.

I’ve rarely (never) been to a lab where the scientists spent most of their time in rows and columns of desks receiving content for much of the day, day after day.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

  • A great example of the intersection of corporate practice, social entrepreneurship, and education. Law schools are opening law firms to serve graduates and low- and moderate-income clients. Also a great example of “outside perspective” – law schools borrowing catalyst from teaching hospitals.

    tags: #MustRead Education3pt0 law schools

  • “Who should lead innovation in education—teachers or entrepreneurs? That key question was in the air here at this year’s South by Southwest Edu conference, which brought together a mix of entrepreneurs and educators for four days of panels and a competition for education start-ups.”

    ME: What if we stopped seeing school change and ed transformation as a competition and we worked together? Education should be everybody’s business, and ALL efforts should begin with inviting in the voices and expertise of educators. But if we started by thinking of business, social entrepreneurship, and education as parts of the same team, we would do better for our learners – from cradle to grave.

    tags: SXSWedu #MustRead

  • “When discussing strategy, executives often invoke some version of a vision, a mission, a purpose, a plan, or a set of goals. I call these “the corporate five” (see exhibit, below). Each is important in driving execution, no doubt, but none should be mistaken for a strategy. The corporate five may help bring your strategy to life, but they do not give you a strategy to begin with.

    Nevertheless, they are often mistaken for strategy—and when that happens, real damage can ensue. If the corporate five are the cart and strategy is the horse, leaders who put the cart first often end up with no horse at all.

    Before they get to the corporate five, companies need to address five much more fundamental, and difficult, questions. Let’s call them the “the strategic five”:

    1. What business or businesses should you be in?
    2. How do you add value to your businesses?
    3. Who are the target customers for your businesses?
    4. What are your value propositions to those target customers?
    5. What capabilities are essential to adding value to your businesses and differentiating their value propositions?”

    tags: strategy vision purpose goals mission plan #MustRead

  • Since children differ in their motivations, interests, and backgrounds, and learn at different speeds in different subjects, there will never be a victory for either traditional or progressive teaching and learning. The fact is that no single best way for teachers to teach and for children to learn can fit all situations. Both traditional and progressive ways of teaching and learning need to be part of a school’s approach to children. Smart teachers and principals have carefully constructed hybrid classrooms and schools that reflect the diversities of children. Alas, that lesson remains to be learned by the policymakers, educators, and parents of each generation.

    tags: open-classroom progressive education student centered #MustRead

  • “The subject of independent schools and inequality is rife with contradictions. In some ways, independent schools work to ameliorate inequities. In other ways, they reinforce and exacerbate them. Those in independent schools who work on social justice, equity, and diversity issues deal with these contradictions every day. Most believe, most of the time, that the good done by independent schools outweighs the bad, but sometimes it is not clear this is the case.”

    tags: income gap 1% problem equity #MustRead finland

  • “I lunched with the faculty of The Children’s School and they stressed the importance of emergent curriculum that is developmentally appropriate for students. Three years ago I visited the school and observed an extraordinary unit on Shakespeare in Kate Miller’s fourth grade classroom. When I returned, I was hoping to go back to Kate’s class and learn more about the unit. But, when I asked Pam if the Shakespeare unit had begun yet, she answered, “No, the kids have not yet decided what they want to study.” Instead of repeating a successful unit year after year as so many teachers do, TCS faculty listen, wait patiently, and develop units arising out of the current interests and passions of their students. It is teaching at its most challenging and, in my view, very progressive.”

    tags: progressive education emergent curriculum PBL Kohn #MustRead

  • tags: progressive education #MustRead

  • “large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolated intervention of individual organizations. Evidence of the effectiveness of this approach is still limited, but these examples suggest that substantially greater progress could be made in alleviating many of our most serious and complex social problems if nonprofits, governments, businesses, and the public were brought together around a common agenda to create collective impact. It doesn’t happen often, not because it is impossible, but because it is so rarely attempted. Funders and nonprofits alike overlook the potential for collective impact because they are used to focusing on independent action as the primary vehicle for social change.”

    tags: collaboration education impact #MustRead social_change

  • “This forecast previews five disruptions that will reshape learning over the next decade. Responding to them with creativity rather than fear will be critical to preparing all learners for an uncertain future.”

    HT to Mark Hale for sharing this KnowledgeWorks Forecast 3.0 and the work of Andrea Saveri

    tags: future forecast Knowledgeworks #MustRead

  • tags: learning failure TED #MustRead #MustSee

  • tags: Independent Project PBL #MustRead

  • “It is not about a world where designers do their thing and MBAs do theirs, but rather where both recognize and value the power of a successful collaboration, built on solid communication, that brings the strengths of business and design thinking together to drive business innovation by design.”

    tags: design business innovation #MustRead

  • “Instead, we talk about the “Brand of Me” and coach our kids on proactively managing their online identity and on becoming good digital citizens, for the reasons Will Richardson talks about.”

    tags: brand digital citizenship digital_citizenship Online_learning #MustRead

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