We’re born learners…
Onstage at TED2013, Sugata Mitra makes his bold TED Prize wish: Help me design the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can explore and learn from each other — using resources and mentoring from the cloud. Hear his inspiring vision for Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE), and learn more at tedprize.org.
Will we achieve meaningful school reform with independent efforts that are not designed as interdependent wholes?
Not long ago, I received an email from a group that I highly respect and admire. In the email, they advertised a number of courses for educators, such as:
To be clear, I am a “fan” of many, if not all, of these practices, standards, and approaches. And I am certainly not criticizing the educators who enroll in these courses to enhance their practices and work with student learners. I’m all for adult learning and improved instruction.
But where is the school-level approach to enhancement and improvement in these reform practices? Are schools architecting and blueprinting the systemic transformation of which these practices are parts of a whole? How will the “renovations” named above fit into a master plan that harmonizes the curriculum, instruction, assessment, and learning environments that function together as the ecosystem of a school’s teaching and learning core? Is it enough to have “independent contractors” at various schools enrolling in such courses and enhancing their individual practices? Would schools renovate their physical campuses in the same manner in which they are remodeling their pedagogical constructions?
What about the user experience of the student learners who are enrolled in the schools for which these adult learners work? What’s it like for them to live in their school houses when the rooms and the sub-systems of the home don’t seem to be undergoing remodeling that is planned, coordinated, and orchestrated as a connected whole – from a common set of well-crafted designs?
#PedagogicalMasterPlanning
“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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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!
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]
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.””
Panel moderated by Thomas Friedman:
About an hour long. Great insights about what is and is not revolutionizing education via the online world.
[H/T @bikecobb for making sure I viewed this piece.]
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.
TED – “Andreas Schleicher: Use data to build better schools”
These are not direct quotes from the end of the talk, but I tried to capture the basic messages (the TED transcript is not posted yet):
Range of factors true of high-performing PISA schools:
- Leaders have convinced citizens to value education more than consumerism – consumption today.
- Belief and practices that all children are capable of success. Expect all children to succeed.
- Growth mindsets.
- Diversified and differentiated instruction. Personalized learning.
- Clear and ambitious standards that are known, understood and pursued.
- High quality, highly trained, collaborative teachers. Intelligent pathways for growth.
- Clear on good performance, and enable teachers level of autonomy to reach those performance standards. Not prescribed what to teach. Autonomy is not independence, though.
- Shift from delivered knowledge to enabling user-generated wisdom.
- Moved from administrative forms of accountability and control to professional forms of work organizations. Provide development for pedagogical innovation.
- Looking outwards.
- Achievement across entire system. Every school is part of success – it’s systemic.
- Align policies and make them coherent. Consistent implementation.
A truly great talk. Schleicher admits that there are no “copy and paste” approaches to school innovation and transformation, and I love his use of the data and analysis to inspire thinking about what can work for other schools. It’s not the usual “country competition” talk using PISA. It’s so much more.
