“If you would like to help us design school…” #MVPSchool #MVIFI

Posted on November 11, 2013 by boadams1

I love my school for so many reasons. Just this morning, I received an email that provided me with yet another reason. The email was sent to the entire Upper School student body, and I was copied. It was an email rich in design thinking. It was an email full of trust that honors the wisdom of the “student.” It was an email full of promise for the depths of design – at the intersection of creativity and functionality.

Design thinking is people-centered problem solving. It is fundamentally concerned with and connected to the users of the things being designed. It is full of empathy and creative, critical thinking applied to real-world issues and challenges.

The most ambitious school leaders are serious about the design of “school.” How could one not be in our current era – to continuously think, design, and act for the best learning experiences for our learners. To give anything less than such critical attention would be unthinkable. Even if one determined to leave school “as is,” it would be superb if such decision making stemmed from thoughtful research and design, rather than status quo or de facto operations.

So, here’s the email. What a glorious invitation. How grateful I am that such is commonplace where I work and learn!

All,

I hope you all had a great weekend.

If you would like to help us design school for the “Experiment” and “Produce” phases of the projects, we need your ideas and help.

I invite you to join me either for lunch Wednesday or for breakfast Friday (on me) to discuss how we might best design the school day to position you for success.

Click here to sign up. [active link in original email]

There are only 50 available slots this week, and there will [be] more opportunities in the near future.

Enjoy your day,

—

Tyler S. Thigpen

@tylerthigpen

Head of Upper School

Mount Vernon Presbyterian School

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

Posted on October 30, 2013 by boadams1

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!)?

Change the World… Change School

Posted on September 20, 2013 by boadams1

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

= = = = =

Human-Centered & Relational [A taste of how @MVPSchool is changing the world by changing school]
Could There Actually Be One C to Rule Them All?

Is School Enough? via PBS (HT @aenclade, @willrich45)

Posted on September 7, 2013 by boadams1

amanda enclade (@aenclade)
9/1/13, 4:12 PM
Preview of a soon to be released PBS video. Wondering: why can’t passions exist in school as well? buff.ly/18bFe2B via @willrich45

“Is School Enough?” Preview from PBS.

I’m curious: what role did school play for @JackAndraka

Posted on July 16, 2013 by boadams1

Jack Andraka discovered an early-detection method for pancreatic cancer. From all I can tell, he worked with great determination and persistence over a number of months. From the passion and project, he grew context and content mastery.

He was 15 years old. A ninth grader.

I just watched his TED talk (a #MustWatch), and I am inspired by his scientific and human contribution to the medical and health communities. To our world.

Of course, I am also deeply curious how much he was able to “work on this” in school. In the TED talk, there is mention of his biology class, and it’s a very interesting reference. Images in the talk show Internet searches at home and lab work at Johns Hopkins. Two of my hundreds of questions – did he earn credit at school for this work? What role did any teachers and admin play?

So, I’ve tweeted him, and I hope I’ll get a response.

I fully believe that we can redesign school – systemically – to enable more of the “Jack Andrakas” to surface and succeed. That would mean more success for all of us.