Category Archives: Education – School 3.0

How are you thinking about the “package” we call “school?” #MVIFI

Posted on by
4

Do you ever wish you could choose the particular cable (or satellite) TV channels that you most want? Instead of having to buy the package service that comes with 361 channels or 902 channels, you could autonomously select, a la carte, the specific channels that you want to view.

Well, I’ve wanted to do that.

Listening to NPR’s Planet Money “Episode 488: The Secret History of Your Cable Bill” on a recent morning walk, I started to wonder how traditional school is like cable or satellite TV. Will student learners always have to “buy the entire package” of this class of math and that class of science, this class of English and that class of social studies? Or will we soon see student learners able to individualize their school subscription bundles?

It’s happened in music. We no longer have to purchase the entire album or CD. We can just buy the particular song we want and create our own playlists. It’s happened in news and broadcast journalism, and we now have the ability to create personal news stations and narrowcast our own story collections.

And it’s going to happen in schools. Well, it IS happening around schools. Think Khan Academy. Think Coursera and Udacity (Hat tip to EdSurge). Think Mozilla OpenBadges project. Think Juliette LaMontagne’s Breaker. Think Seth Godin’s Krypton Community College. Think of the future mashup of those ideas and ventures!

It’s highly likely that my 9 and 6 year-old sons will be able to autonomously aggregate courses and experiences (with badges and endorsements like on LinkedIn) and bundle their own “College Degree,” which I hope will include some residential, face-to-face relationship building in a particular physical community, too. (I imagine that it will.) But who knows?!

Learners entering MIT, Stanford, etc., will more and more be able to enter with NUMEROUS courses from those institutions already IN their digital portfolios. Will our schools require the seat-time, residential equivalents of those MOOCs? Or will they we build on the increased capacity that’s already been built when the learners reach them us?

How are you thinking about the way we package and bundle “school” in an age where people can increasingly pull and self-package the content-and-experience streams that best work for them, their passions, their interests, and their needs (with mentorship, of course!)?

GET INVOLVED as a #SolutionSeeker @colabsummit #colab13

Posted on by
Reply
Screen Shot 2013-09-22 at 8.14.12 AM

A day-and-a-half summit, where today’s executives and tomorrow’s leaders from our business, education and civic communities connect, communicate and collaborate on issues vital to a thriving Atlanta region.

And YOU CAN GET INVOLVED! [The following is from a @colabsummit email blast.]

For this inaugural summit, we’re launching a social innovation experiment through our LABS, to capture the ideas, dreams and hopes of what we want the future of greater Atlanta to be. And we’re asking for your help.

We need your vision, your dreams, and your ideas (lots of them) on how to solve six challenges directly related to our three main themes at (co)lab: Attracting & Retaining Talent, Cultivating Innovation and Transforming Education.

To get us started, dozens of local thought leaders, content experts and storytellers have spent weeks framing these six challenges, writing compelling briefs and creating powerful videos that will make you laugh and cry.

Here’s how you can help.

At this moment, you have immediate access to IdeaString, a digital collaborative ideation platform where together we can solve six core challenges facing the Atlanta region. We encourage you to learn about these challenges, login to IdeaString, and contribute your best ideas.

The top ideas posted onto IdeaString will be presented at (co)lab during the closing keynote, following Thomas Friedman. And all ideas will be collected into a final report that will be sent to all (co)lab partners, attendees and change agents across the greater Atlanta region.

Our goal is to catalyze great thinking and bold solutions that none of us working independently could achieve. So get in there, add your brilliant ideas and help us transform our greatest challenges into exciting opportunities. Together, we can dream and build a truly greater Atlanta region.

To access IdeaString: [as a non-attendee, AND as a powerful solution seeker!]

We invite you to share IdeaString with friends, peers, co-workers and other passionate citizens. If they are not registered for (co)lab, have them fill out this quick form to be added to IdeaString: IdeaString registration

CHALLENGES

  1. How might we design our communities to attract and retain the creative class?
  2. How might we better celebrate and amplify our arts and cultural assets?
  3. How might we foster partnerships among business, universities and governments to spark innovation and entrepreneurship?
  4. How might we make our cities and our region smarter, more efficient, more connected and more collaborative through technology?
  5. How might we raise Metro Atlanta’s current High School graduation rate to 90%
  6. How might communities rally around our students to help develop the next generation of leaders?

Mathematical Revolutions with @JoBoaler and @ProfKeithDevlin

Posted on by
1

Mathematics is everywhere, and it’s truly beautiful. Yet, “school” tends to approach mathematics instruction from an imbalanced procedural, algorithmic and computational angle.

Thankfully a number of educators are trying to revolutionize the ways that mathematics is typically taught in school. Two of these incredible revolutionaries are at Stanford University – Dr. Jo Boaler (@JoBoaler) and Dr. Keith Devlin (@profkeithdevlin).

For the past two months, I have learned mightily from participating in a MOOC with Dr. Boaler – EDU115N “How to Learn Math.” And just this morning, I listened to a podcast of Krista Tippett interviewing Dr. Devlin. When I returned from my morning walk with Lucy, I had an email from Dr. Boaler announcing her new non-profit for revolutionizing mathematics teaching and learning – YouCubed.

Of course, I wanted to share these strands and do my part for mathematical evangelism.

Mathematical equations are like sonnets says Keith Devlin. What most of us learn in school, he says, doesn’t begin to convey what mathematics is. And technology may free more of us to discover the wonder of mathematical thinking — as a reflection of the inner world of our minds. – See more at: On Being

Screen Shot 2013-09-21 at 7.01.03 AM

Screen Shot 2013-09-21 at 7.04.08 AM

Change the World… Change School

Posted on by
Reply

From “Young People Are the Geniuses Who Change the World,” Angela Maiers, Switch & Shift: Human Side of Business, 7/28/2013 [HT Angél Kytle]

At Choose2Matter, our opening line in speaking to young adults is “You Are a Genius, and the World Needs Your Contribution.” Next, we tell them they can change the world.

Why do we say this?

Because studies show that, at the age of five, 100% of students believe they can, and will, change the world. When I visit with first-graders, they always confirm this by enthusiastically charging the stage en masse when I invite them to share their genius and tell me their ambitions for changing the world.

By the age of 9, only half of students believe they are geniuses who can change the world.

By the age of 16, just 2% of students believe they are geniuses who can change the world.

When I visit high schools, I see something very different than I do in elementary schools. The genius is still there, but it’s buried under years of schooling. How? I’ve actually had educators and parents comment on my posts that we shouldn’t tell students they can change the world, because it sets unrealistic expectations. My response: unrealistic for whom?

An incredible post that then highlights nine young people who are changing the world. One of the people is Jack Andraka, whom I spotlighted on my own blog before. And there are eight more.

Correction. There are THOUSANDS more! MANY THOUSANDS!

A few more of the many – all whom I’ve met thanks to TEDxAtlanta:

Brittany Wenger – post and TEDxAtlanta Profile and Talk

Brittany Wenger, a high-school senior, is well on her way to making the diagnosis of breast cancer less painful and more accurate.

Clare O’Connell – TEDxAtlanta Profile and Talk

At age 20, Claire O’Connell is a co-founder of EyeWire, an online game / “citizen science initiative” that’s helping to map the human brain by mapping the connections between retinal neurons.

Hannah Salwen – TEDxAtlanta Profile and Talk

Kevin Salwen is a writer and entrepreneur. With his 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, he is co-author of The Power of Half. The book is the story of a eureka moment by Hannah that resulted in the Salwen family’s commitment to reduce their consumption by half — started by selling their house and moving into one half its size.

School is not just preparation for real life. School is real life. And real life could be school.

Einstein said, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Survives.

How might we enable curiosity to THRIVE in formal education?

By helping school become more about the “business” of real-life, relevant work. There are armies and armies of young people who care and want to change the world. A few will demonstrate the initiative to do so in spite of the rigidity of an industrial-age school system. But how many more might be activated, inspired, and motivated IF school were structured to nurture such inherent passion for wanting to make the world a better place – while the learners are IN school?

Recently, at our school, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School, faculty T.J. Edwards (@TJEdwards62) and Mary Cantwell (@SciTechyEDU) have invited and enlisted others in our ranks who might want to work on OpenIDEO’s Creative Confidence Challenge.

What if we ALL participated?!

#RipplesInAnEndlessPond

#ItsAboutLearning

#ItsAboutMakingADifference

= = = = =

Related Posts:

Human-Centered and Relational

Posted on by
1

From Dr. Lee-Anne Gray, “Making Education More Like Real Life Through Design Thinking,” Huffington Post, 9/18/2013

Design thinking asks students to become investigators in their world, attempt to solve problems, bridge gaps of knowledge independently, collaboratively, and resourcefully.

From Tyler Thigpen, “Taking a Relationship-Centered Approach to Education,” Education Week, 9/10/2013

What if schools used real-world scenarios to teach? What if learning were tied to complex problem-solving? What if students graduated from high school knowing how to negotiate peace treaties, stimulate depressed economies, and reduce obesity rates in America?

Now imagine a school where students and teachers decided collaboratively that the future of energy, the problem of inadequate access to safe drinking water, and the issues surrounding genetically modified organisms were among the topics of study. In this model, students would be taught to use skills and knowledge from the traditional disciplines—math, science, English, social studies, and so on—to take steps toward scaling and solving aspects of these complex issues. Teachers would work together, leveraging their content expertise in service of a problem. Students would navigate complex, unpredictable situations using a multitude of educational resources. This real-world problem-solving approach would partner with expert field practitioners, community members, research scientists, political leaders, and business owners, all showing students ways of addressing the pressing problems facing the world, from the local to the global.

“Design Thinking” and “Transdisciplinary Education” may be called buzzwords and trends by some. For me, they are long overdue innovations in the school world that promote and empower relevant, real-world solution seeking as the foundations and trunk lines of time spent in school. School should be life. School is life.

At their core, #DT and #TDed are about the corps. The people. Design thinking and transdisciplinary education are human centered and relational. They are about inquiry, empathy, and impact.

@MVPSchool is about #DT and #TDed. #ILoveMySchool

What an honor it has been to see the core/corps of our school discussed in Education Week and The Huffington Post these past few days. Thank you.