Education Week: Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready
Schools Should Be In The Wisdom Business « The Learning Pond
Structure of school inhibits learning | What I Learned Today
How Biomimicry is Inspiring Human Innovation | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine
H.M.W.
How might we…?
A powerful, three-word intro to pre-brainstorming.
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How might we…design a more student-centered school?
How might we…create more learning-focused schools?
How might we…make school mirror “real life” more closely?
[Many thanks to Kimberly Douglas of Firefly Facilitation for sending this video to me by way of her e-newsletter.]
I just received the following email from Duke. I am thrilled that my university is taking such a step to engage writers with authentic-audience readers.
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Dear James,
I am Celia Mellinger, the Program Coordinator for the Duke Reader Project, an initiative of the Thompson Writing Program in collaboration with Alumni Affairs. The Reader Project offers Duke Students the opportunity to get feedback on a class writing project from someone outside the classroom setting who has professional experience relevant to their project. The readers get a chance to positively interact with current Duke Students, and the students get to hear how their writing sounds to a member of their target audience. Working with the Duke Alumni Association, we thought you might be interested in volunteering for one of these courses this semester:
In each course, the student is working on a writing project involving multiple drafts. Giving feedback on their writing should be a simple response from your professional perspective: Does it include useful information? Is the analysis and argument compelling? Which parts are presented according to professional norms, and which not? Etc. We encourage most of the feedback to be “face-to-face,” using webcams if the reader is too far from campus for a meeting. Volunteer commitment is around 5 hours total over the course of the semester, distributed between late Sept and early Dec. If you are interested in helping our current cohort of Duke students improve their scholarly writing skills, please reply, indicating which course(s) you are interested in, and include a short bio of your experience and relationship to Duke, to help us match you with the right student. You will receive more information about the course and a match, if possible, after the students sign up in late-September. Feel free to contact me with any questions and visit our website for more information about the project and the courses offered this semester. Thank you so much for taking the time to engage with our students! Sincerely,
Celia Mellinger
Coordinator, Duke Reader Project
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In just a few short days, my friend and colleague Grant Lichtman, author of The Falconer: What We Wished We Had Learned In School, will begin a three-month, cross-country trek to visit more than fifty schools – schools that are navigating their own journeys through the transforming landscape of education.
You can follow Grant’s adventure by tuning into his blog, The Learning Pond. Grant will also be tweeting to #EdJourney. Most recently, on September 5, Grant provided a T-3 Days countdown to his trip’s beginnings.
In the spirit of innovating and learning-by-doing, Grant and I are trying a little experiment to accompany his travels. As Grant ventures from school to school, I plan to do my best impression of Daniel Pink’s Office Hours and interview Grant about a few highlights from the week. This morning, we captured episode #1 of Grant Lichtman’s #EdJourney Videocast. We hope you’ll follow along as Grant gathers insights about the ways in which different schools are addressing the issues that surround “schools of the future” and the “future of schools.”
Two emails and a nearby creek have me giddy about #PBL possibilities. Yep, that’s right – I said giddy. I admit that I have an issue – whatever it is I think I see… becomes a PBL to me.
Giddy-up #1: Soccket! Yesterday, my long-time co-teacher and learning partner @jgough sent me a link to this amazing invention – a soccer ball that functions as a generator. Incredible – Uncharted Play: Innovate. Play. Empower. Watch the video, at least!
Giddy-up #2: Hopscotch Detroit! Thanks to a subscription to The Daily Good, I was invited into a story about a community building the largest hopscotch court in history. The goal – to encourage a city to find communion in playing with each other.
Giddy-up #3: Seeing students in Peachtree Creek. I wish I could give you a link to this one. As I was driving to work this morning, I noticed a school activity vehicle (a.k.a. “bus”) stopped near Memorial Park. It appeared that high school students were collecting water samples in Peachtree Creek. Yes! I have dreamed for a few years that more schools would engage our city creeks in such a way. I only with I knew who it was; I’d love to talk with them about what they’re trying to accomplish.
So, when I read and see these examples, I imagine a cohort of students posing questions and curiosities to a facilitator (known as a teacher in the olden days). Through expert contextual guiding, the facilitator enables the students to pursue their own passions. One group is interested in energy, and one of the team members had recently read about using a piece of playground equipment to pump water in an African village. Another team member wondered what other play things could be turned into energy generators. The soccket – or something like it – is born. In another group, the student-learners are crazed at thinking that they can turn the city streets into something like an adult playground. Perhaps they’ve watched Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk about teaching kids to take charge, or maybe they’ve seen the video about turning steps into piano keys. They are inspired by the Indian children’s zebra-stripping and the feet symphonies of subway exiters, and they want to go large scale to with a Hopscotch Detroit idea. And a third group feels passionate about improving the water quality of the creek that runs in front of their Atlanta homes. They decide to do something about it, and their facilitator organizes an activity vehicle to cart them to the shores of the waste-ladden waters.
Oh, the possibilities! There’s science, math, English and language arts, history, sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, design and city planning, architecture, prototyping, community interviewing and communication, making a difference with things that matter and affecting real audiences.
It’s not 50 minutes of math, 50 minutes of science, 50 minutes of English, and homework to check and grade the next day. It’s as much transformational as informational. It’s not unstructured and loose; it’s hyper-structured and necessarily tight. It requires more of technology as field equipment than just a digital replacement for a notebook. It’s engaging and inspirational. And it’s highly and gloriously doable.
But more schools could be doing it.
Just imagine…
No, don’t stop there. Get started…
What’s your school’s pedagogical master plan? Will your students systemically have such experiences?
They could be.
it's about learning 