PROCESS POST: Comprehensive plans vs. Campus master plans #PedagogicalMasterPlanning

Posted on October 30, 2012 by boadams1

It was the presence of this mysterious thing called a campus master plan that first sparked my interest. In 1996, as the new director of transportation for Virginia Tech, I was wrestling with the increasing demand for parking spaces. I wanted to know if the university had formally stated a priority for specific modes of transportation (pedestrian, bicyclist, transit or car) and was pleased to discover this issue was addressed in the university’s master plan. At the same time I was surprised to see some obvious differences between the campus master plan and the scope and content of the adjacent town’s comprehensive plan (Blacksburg, VA). Being also new to working at universities I had assumed, erroneously, that master plans were merely comprehensive plans for campuses. My knowledge of comprehensive plans led me to believe they had been sufficiently refined over the years to adequately meet the needs of their communities. As I looked at past master plans at Virginia Tech and then master plans at other universities I realized the documents varied widely in scope, content, purpose, and intent. It was the difference in the documents that caused me to wonder what was in a campus master plan.

– from Steven Lou Mouras, 2004 white paper

I am awed by this sentence: “I wanted to know if the university had formally stated a priority for specific modes of transportation (pedestrian, bicyclist, transit or car) and was pleased to discover this issue was addressed in the university’s master plan.” All from a curiosity about parking spaces, of all things.

Aren’t schools, at least some, formally stating preferences for certain types of instruction and learning? Project-based learning. Formative assessment. Gamification. Design-thinking. Achieving the 6Cs of 21st century skills. (Certainly these are at least as important as parking spaces!)

But how are these schools developing and designing the plans that will coordinate and collectivize these complex systems of interrelated methods and approaches? Are any organizations actually making tangible, viewable plans so that a community of learners can point at a set of “architectural renderings” and realize that all…many…some…few are on the same page, the same sheet of music? How might we create methods for constructing such designs in ways that make specific the strategies, tactics, and capacity-building exercises required to successfully innovate such incubator ideas and experiments?

PROCESS POST: Translating campus master planning into #pedagogicalmasterplanning

Posted on October 30, 2012 by boadams1

Most often, campus master planning consists of updating plans for existing university campuses. This process includes the analysis and conservation of the structures, open spaces, and buildings, all of which represent the history, the present and the future of the institution. However, an equally important part of this process is identifying opportunities for new sites, which are often on the periphery of the existing campus. Thus, the relationship of the campus to an adjoining community becomes a critical consideration in the campus master plan exercise.

Read more: http://mithun.com/knowledge/article/some_observations_on_campus_planning/#ixzz2AoBKHe9S

Translating for #PedagogicalMasterPlanning – testing some ideas and language:

Pedagogical master planning consists of strategically designing plans and structures for evolving, school curriculum and instruction, as well as all of the intersecting educational domains, such as professional learning and development, assessment, learning environments, stakeholder communications, etc. This process includes the inventory and analysis of existing structures, methods, and pedagogies, all of which represent the history and the present of the institution. However, an equally important part of this process is identifying opportunities for emerging and innovative practices, which are often on the periphery and margins of the existing learning complex. Thus, the relationship of the current reality to an adjacent possible becomes a critical consideration in the pedagogical master plan exercise.

Guns and butter, production possibilities frontiers, and students doing real-life work #WhatIfWeekly

Posted on October 30, 2012 by boadams1

I believe the most underutilized resource in our nation is our young people in schools. As an economics major in college, and as a long-time teacher of 8th graders enrolled in economics, I studied “production possibilities frontiers.” You may remember them as “guns and butter” graphs, if you’ve studied any introductory econ.

Perhaps the school application is “20th century learners” and “21st century learners,” instead of guns and butter. Regardless, to work below the frontier is to underutilize resources – to waste available capacity. I believe we are wasting a good bit of the capacity of our student learners.

I believe students are perfectly capable and willing and eager to work on real-world issues. I love finding examples of such work, partly because I think it’s like the Bannister 4-minute mile. Once we know it’s possible, more people will do it! If you read here regularly, you’ll likely remember previous examples that I have highlighted about students doing real-life work. Kiran Bir Sethi’s Riverside School. Geoff Mulgan’s Studio Schools. Brittany Wenger. There are many examples.

Recently, I’ve discovered a few more examples of students doing work that goes beyond just handing it in to a teacher for grading and “recycling.” They’re doing work for a larger scope. For a bigger cause.

Adobe has created The Adobe Educators’ Choice Awards: Honoring the work of innovative educators. The finalists in the primary and secondary-school categories are fabulous. Tagature and the study of graffiti tags combined with classics literature…turned into a book that you can acquire. A partnership among students and Powerhouse Factories to create gig posters for the band Belle Histoire. The Digital Voices project for understanding cultures (see the actual class website here). The work does not stop with the teacher and the classroom walls. The work extends well into the real world.
Recently, TED released “Beau Lotto + Amy O’Toole: Science is for everyone, kids included.” The story they share is about 10 year olds who become the youngest people ever to publish a peer-reviewded science paper. As the talk begins, Lotto shares that “perception is grounded in our experience… Now if perception is grounded in our history, it means we’re only ever responding according to what we’ve done before. But actually, it’s a tremendous problem, because how can we ever see differently?” We must see “students” differently. They CAN work on real-world challenges. They WANT to work on real-world challenges. They SHOULD be working on real-world challenges. We adults are too often the greatest limitations to helping them reach their production possibilities frontier…exceed it even! What if more of us inspired and enabled such work and play for our students?!

I’m getting into stand-up comedy to help spread the word about educational innovation

Posted on October 29, 2012 by boadams1

I’m thinking of adding stand-up comedian to my repertoire and resume. Because people think I’m so funny. Not. But I figure I really only have one way to go…and that’s to get funnier.

Seriously, I am thinking about stand-up comedy, especially that incredible skill of great stand-up comedians to help us to see what we have come to take for granted and what we are neglecting to see or think about any longer.

This weekend, on a long walk with Lucy (my dog), I was listening to the podcast “Seeing in the Dark” on RadioLab. At the end of the podcast, in some NPR fund-raising, the hosts explain that they are touring with comedian Demetri Martin. They play a bit of his recent release “Stand-Up Comedian.” I don’t have the exact transcript right, so please forgive the quotes, but I have most of the essence. Demetri Martin is pointing out the amusing idiocy of how we introduce people…

“This is Frank. Sounds pretty normal but when you think about it. This. Walk up with a person. This. This stuff right here is Frank.”

“Excuse me, what is this?”

“This? Oh, this is Frank.”

“When you call someone. You have to say, ‘Hey. This is Demetri.’ But when you go up to someone in person, the rule flips. You have to say I. ‘Hey. I’m Demetri.’ You can’t say, ‘This is Demetri’ about yourself.”

So, that got me thinking about my stand-up comedy routine. How might I use stand-up comedy to help others see what we have come to take for granted and neglect relative to school and education? I think it will start with something like this…

“Hey. Yeah. I’ve just started this new job. I’m the Director of Educational Innovation. Sometimes I think what it would be like to have this job and title 150 years ago.

“So, we’ve been studying the way children naturally learn. You know, they explore, investigate, inquire, play. That sort of stuff. We want school to be a natural extension of the natural amazingness of human, child learning. I mean, the word education comes from the Latin educatio and educare which mean to draw out from what is normal. So, we’re proposing having the kids sit in desks for about 13 years and listen to adults mostly talk. And when the kids ask questions a lot, we’re telling the adults to say that they don’t have time to answer that right now…there’s too much material to cover.

“And, we want formal education to prepare people for what life’s like after school. We know that most people work in situations in which they don’t have precise answers, and they tend to work in project-mode on complex things that are ambiguous and hard to define. Big challenges and messy issues that need serious solution finding. And empathy.

So, we thought we would mimic that in school by teaching kids about all the stuff we think we already know the answers to. Projects? Oh, of course, we’ll do projects. We’ll have the kids make posters of their latest book report, and we’ll ask them to do it at home with lots of parent ego involved so that the kid’s poster will be the prettiest on Monday morning. And, we’re gonna have them take a lot of multiple choice tests because those hit you all the time in the real world – we take standardized, multiple-choice tests all the time in the real world. So should kids. We think that will really prepare young people for the world they’re gonna face when they get to work.

I think people’s sides will split. Hilarious, don’t you think?

Step 7: Failure and Redemption. @GrantLichtman #EdJourney, Episode 8

Posted on October 28, 2012 by boadams1

In “Step 7: Failure and Redemption,” near the end of The Falconer, Grant Lichtman wrote:

“What is it that you want that you have failed to attain?”

“Clarity. A unified theory. The sense that, after a full life of trying, I got it right.”

“To truly consider yourself a warrior,” says Sunny, “you must set your personal bar very high. If the challenges are not great enough, you either must raise the bar, or cease to consider yourself a true warrior. Guaranteed success means you have set the bar too low. Things like clarity and a unified theory…I would say those are fairly high bars.

“At some point, you are going to fail, not at a simple task or at solving a problem. You are going to fail in your fundamental goals, your belief system, your moral foundation, or your self-view. It is an inevitable result of setting the bar higher and higher.

“But failure, as you have taught your Children, is inevitable in your own model. You cannot be more perfect than the people you encounter every day. You may be able to set higher philosophical goals or more complex personal challenges, but you cannot escape failure.

“So for your model to be complete, there must be a last step, one that recognizes the inevitability of failure and allows us to move on towards our goal of happiness. The question is, for you, how can you overcome this feeling of failure? What will allow you to step back into the ring and try again?”

Mr. Usher gazes deeply at his friend without blinking. Sunny has never seen him this intent.

“If I knew the answer to that, I would not be in this funk.”

“I will answer it for you then,” says Sunny. “You need to know that you have both the right and the responsibility to try again. This is your redemption. This is the warrior’s redemption: another chance; the chance to be wrong in what we do, but right in the passion with which we try.

“Redemption comes from trying, despite the sure knowledge that you will fail.”

I continue to be convinced that whole schools must adopt an experimenter’s mindset…a mindset of trial and error that leads to long-term growth, but with some inevitable short-term frustration and angst. We can model persistence and life-long learning by striving to find those uncomfortable places where deep learning occurs.

In this week’s #EdJourney video-cast interview, Grant Lichtman and I explore a few questions related to this school-wide searching, exploring, and self-evolving.