Category Archives: Education – School 3.0

Learning architecture #dtk12

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And the problem is that, like a lot of design professions, we got fixated on the idea of providing a particular kind of consumer product, and I don’t think that needs to be the case anymore.

– Alastair Parvin: Architecture for the people by the people, TED

Clothed in the vestments of “architecture,” at its core, this talk is more universally about design thinking. And while I know that I have trained myself to suffer/benefit from the affliction/blessing I call “How-Does-This-Apply-To-School-And-Education?,” Parvin’s talk has profound implications for those in education who are willing and able to think about our design challenges for Education 3.0.

How have we in education gotten fixated on the idea of providing a certain kind of structure and experience called “school?” How might we examine and re-examine those fixations and “lead up” to what could be better for our learners and our citizenry?

How are you willing or not willing to rethink what we do as “school?” How might we use our knowledge and wisdom as learning architects to reconsider what we do and how we do it?

PROCESS POST: What’s your “moonshot” at your school?

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Some dots in my mind are forming stronger connections among them. All of these particular dots relate to the visioning and implementing processes that schools undertake.

In my research and practice, and in my work at Unboundary, I’ve called it Pedagogical Master Planning. Essentially, PMP utilizes strategic transformation design to engage a school/learning community in the construction of “as-built blueprints” and transformation plans for it’s teaching and learning core – its pedagogical ecosystem (purpose, leadership, professional learning, instruction, curriculum, assessment, and learning environments). It’s like campus master planning or design-build architecture, but for the system that really makes a school a school  – not the buildings but the teaching and learning core/corp.

My close friend and colleague Grant Lichtman has recently coined the term and led workshop experiences around Zero-Based Strategic Thinking. On May 11, he wrote about it here. Like zero-based budgeting, Zero-Based Strategic Planning takes on more of a “start from scratch” mindset. Instead of assuming the present condition and tweaking it slightly for next year, it assumes a future-back mindset and builds to systemically accomplish that ideal future state.

Another friend and colleague Chris Thinnes may be the most beautiful writer about this moment of transition and transformation in education. The beauty, for me, resides in the creation of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and pieces that lend poetic turns to very deep thinking about the crossroads we face as school leaders and educators. As just one example, Chris writes here about “Alves, Dewey, & Rinaldi on Our ‘Season of Design.”

A third, even more recent, stretcher of my thinking is Thomas Steele-Maley. On May 14, he published “On Mutation in Education.” He provokes us readers to consider the dynamic ecology composed largely of education, content, and hours. And he reminds us that “the individual is the kernal of energy for educational design.” I wonder which individual? If I might be so bold, much of the structure of school seems to be based more on the adult individual efficiencies and conveniences than on the “user experience” or “user interface” of the student learners. (As just one test of that – find me an adult workplace, other than school, that is organized in time schedule and content structure like a school.)

Also on May 14, Scott D. Anthony and Mark Johnson published an HRR Blog Network piece titled, “What a Good Moonshot is Really For.” It’s been a serious mental-marble ringer for me in the last 24 hours.

Organizations should have their moonshots. They’re a keystone of what we call a “future-back” approach to strategy, which unlike the “present forward” nature of most strategic-planning processes, doesn’t operate under the assumption that tomorrow will be pretty much like today, and the day after pretty much more of the same. In stable times, present-forward approaches help optimize resource allocation. But in turbulent times, these approaches can lead companies to miss critical market inflection points.

At the heart of the future-back process is a consensus view of your company’s desired future state.This isn’t scenario planning, where you consider a range of possibilities. This is putting a stake in the ground — specifying what you want your core business to look like, what adjacent markets you want to edge into, and the moonshots you’ll try for. And, as Kennedy did, a good future-back strategy goes well beyond the three-year planning horizons that typify most corporate strategy efforts.

Anthony and Johnson go on to explain that a moonshot has three traits: 1) it inspires, 2) it’s credible, and 3) it’s imaginative. But to me, the very most important insight from them – “At the heart of the future-back process is a consensus view of your company’s desired future state.” Do you want compliance or commitment to realizing your vision as an organization? If we want purposeful commitment, we have to devote tireless energy to establishing the consensus view. In PMP, this is why I stress the power of the visualization in the design. It enables a community to exercise collective voice in creating the desired future state and it enables them to SEE a common understanding of what they intend to build and create. It’s why architectural blueprints are so effective for building and renovation. The various sub-contractors can SEE all of the sub-systems and how they interact and connect with each other.

Finally (this is just a 10-minute time-limit process post), I am convinced I need to do a deep-dive study into Otto Sharmer’s Theory U. An executive summary lives here.

My time’s up. We need a MOONSHOT in schools. And it needs to come from backwards design of the future we want for our citizenry and learners and the wisdom we have about brain science, engagement, psychology, flow, play, passion, and purpose… and the challenges we face as a society and the degree of commitment we have to innovating and creating toward the resolutions of those challenges.

What’s your moonshot at your school? I’m quickly growing to believe that new schools have them, and existing schools mostly lack them.

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.

= = =

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.

= = =

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….”

Do we give our students enough credit? #WhatIfWeekly

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Do we give our students enough credit?

What are the traits and characteristics that we hope students develop most deeply? What knowledge and understanding?

Certainly, those schools that have engaged in exercises like “Portrait of a Graduate” have wrestled with such considerations as an entire community. A number even work to structure program and experience in such ways that there is intentionality around the development of the graduate, not only the delivering of a curriculum.

Are these some of the attributes you would name?

  • Curiosity
  • Development of a passionate pursuit and constructive interest
  • Persistence and deep practice
  • Responsibility
  • Creativity
  • Multi-media communication skills and language competency
  • Enthusiastic connection with joy-producing activity
  • Autonomy and initiative
  • Scientific knowledge and understanding
  • Presentation capabilities

What do we credit?

Do all of the credits awarded by a school – to determine successful completion – have to be curated and generated by the school, and only by the school?

Certainly, when a student enters a school from another school, credits can be granted by the receiving school – credits that the student actually earned elsewhere, namely, the previous school.

Occasionally, at the school where I worked last, we awarded credit for summer study, particularly for programs earmarked “Talented” or “Gifted Youth.”

With the rising tide of Khan Academy, badgification, MOOCs, and online learning, surely the time is not too far away that a school will award a seventh grader or eleventh grader credit for completing a physics course via Coursera or Udacity or iTunes U.

Even independent study is not too far afield from what I’m about to ask next – I mean, many schools have systems for students pursuing “independent study.”

So what would it say about a school if the school granted credit for a body of work that a student created on his or her own? Something not originally located in the course catalog. With all of the talk and movement around “student-centered learning” and “student-directed learning,” I would hope and imagine that at least a few schools are contemplating how they might formally recognize student learning pursuits that don’t necessarily arise from the school itself as originator or curator.

Don’t we want to give credit to those students who can show evidence of developing the traits and characteristics named above, even if the body of work in the “course” was not created by a faculty member or administrator? Isn’t that the whole point in the first place – to nurture life-long learners who self-initiate curious pursuits of persistent development of brain cells and heart cells?

Three Quick Examples

One

When I moved back to Atlanta to teach middle school, a high schooler had converted his Ford truck to run on used cooking grease. He would go to local fast food stores and ask if he could transfer their waste grease to his tank in the back of his truck. He had modified his truck so that it was actually fueled by this recycled material.

Today, why would we not grant credit for such demonstrated learning?

Two

A high school sophomore earned his student pilot’s license for single-engine aircraft. See one of the articles here. In addition to joyfully pursuing an interest, the accomplishment demonstrates admirable persistence, commitment, and strong knowledge in a variety of scientific topics.

What if the student could apply – if he wanted to do so – and receive credit for this work in a way that would result in its listing being included on a transcript?

Three

Another high school sophomore writes, directs, produces, and hosts a cooking show called the SWAGourmet! Along with the multiple episodes bundled on YouTube, the SWAGourmet also maintains a blog, from which people can link to the show, request recipes, and connect to related news stories.

When I saw this former student of mine last December at a Sunday brunch, SWAGourmet was the first thing he mentioned when I asked how he was doing. I loved hearing that genuine and non-bragadocious pride in his voice. And, I now love following his work, thanks to his multi-media  sharing.

Anticipated Criticism

“But if we absorb that personal-hobby stuff into the credit system, we’ll set a precedent we don’t want to be burdened with. We’ll have to credit anything and everything.”

“Making it for-credit will remove some of the joy from the activity. You know, Bo, not everything has to earn quantified credits.”

“Does that mean that students could forego the course requirements in the course catalog and replace or substitute the entire curriculum with their personal interests? You’ve lost your mind, Adams.”

“Sure, Bo, and we’ll give credit for going to the bathroom, too. And holding the door open for someone… and taking out the trash. … No, that’s not ‘school’ and it shouldn’t be.”

“But what about the NCAA clearinghouse? What about the colleges and universities? They don’t want to see such ‘soft’ work on the transcripts. We’d never get that passed.”

I’m sure there are other criticisms. Those above are just the ones I’ve already heard from actual educators as I brought up the topic in casual conversation – as I was just pursuing my own curiosity.

Yes, and…!

And there were others that loved the idea. They immediately started to think about how such a system could work in conjunction with the current offerings – just like MOOCs, online academy offerings, summer credit, independent studies, etc.

The dreamers seemed to believe that by organizing such a system – granting credit for work not included in a school’s official course catalog – a school community could communicate to students that their self-curated learning and persistent pursuits MATTER. Such a hybrid could show students that their voices and myriad interests can equally contribute to the development of those “Portrait of a Graduate” traits and characteristics. One person I spoke to even suggested that a committee of faculty, parents, admin, and students formulate the process by which a school could launch such a program.

And we all enjoy getting a little credit, now and then, for things that we are excited about doing and becoming, don’t we?

#JustWondering

#FutureLearningEnvironments

“A Radically Practical Vision of Education” via @EdSurge @patwater #MustRead

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A #MustRead of #MustReads in my humble opinion…

In a world that’s changing so rapidly, why wouldn’t you build our education system around what we don’t know rather than around what we do?

Patrick Atwater in EdSurge 4.2.2013

“What inquiry-based education could look like in the year 2025–and how we get there.”

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-04-02-a-radically-practical-vision-of-education

I think we could get there much more nimbly and quickly than 2025. It would require those who are serious about purposefully using design to work the problem to achieve these new models…in existing schools, not just new start ups. It would require the courage to lead before we reach a place of more crisis-management change motivation. It would require those who want this vision for kids and learners right now.