Design. Learn. Solve.

Thirty Conversations on Design

“Thirty Conversations on Design” documents what some of the most creative professionals think of design. While there were a number of great talks, and I suggest you take a look, there were a few that stood out to me

This included a talk by Emily Pilloton, who describes how learning can be reshaped by using design principles. She runs Project H Design, which is dedicated to “the re-thinking of environments, products, experiences, and curricula for K-12 education institutions in the US.”

Another education related talk was Dan Pink, who discusses using design to reshape systems.  In particular, he focuses on how we should not be optimizing current systems, which has been the traditional practice but rather use design thinking to create new approaches to solving our biggest problems within education and other systems like health care.

If you believe we must rethink how we approach what, how and where students learn, I challenge you to take a deeper look into design thinking and how it can be a catalyst for actual reform within systems like education.

To learn more, visit

K-12 Lab @ Standford’s d.school

Project H Design

Nueva School

Requirements for change

The word change has different connotations depending upon who you are. For some, it incites fear. For others, it is thrilling and the focus of their work. In my experience, leadership is about harnessing an ability to be visionary and anticipate change while also being able to understand your colleagues, their predispositions towards change, meet them where they are and be persistent in the support of your vision in order to successfully implement that change.

Vision

For many leaders, this is the easy part. Vision is an ability to see possibilities, to envision a better school through certain changes, understanding that like every other industry, your world changes and to stay relevant you must be able to adapt to that change. When a leader is able to look forward and has a clear vision to what school must include, she is taking the first step. There are many school leaders that embody this idea but a couple that stand out are Chris Lehmann and George Couros. If you want to understand why vision is so important, read up on these men. They are true visionaries.

Understanding

Almost more importantly, understanding your faculty and their inclinations towards change is vital to a successful implementation of a clear vision. While you should not limit your vision because your faculty may not all be supportive, you must understand where your faculty are and be able to find a path for them to reach your vision on their own terms. For a school leader to be able to implement her vision, she must be able to find methods that meet their faculty half way. Understanding and acknowledging  their biases while giving them incentive to think forward will lead to a greater chance of success.

Instituting mandates to create change will not work. Ensure that you create a cohort of supporters who will readily test your vision in order to provide you data. In addition, provide your reluctant adopters the time and support to explore your vision on their own terms. They may not value your vision at first but that’s where persistence comes into play.

Persistence

To ensure a successful change in a school, a leader must be persistent. When a leader does not give up and makes an idea the cornerstone of her success, the faculty will understand that it will not simply go away. That being said, keep the idea manageable. Ensure that your faculty will not be biting off more than they can chew at one time. If the vision is powerful yet manageable and your support for it is persistent, the faculty will understand that they cannot simply avoid it. In turn, the vision will begin to receive traction, data will begin to be collected to validate and if successful, the idea will become accepted by the community.

Change will initially be met by challenges but a leader who has a clear vision, understands her faculty, maps out a clear path to meet them half way and is persistent in continuing to stick to the vision will ultimately find success.

Photo Credit: Scott McLeod

Starting with Education Futures

This is a week late but better late than never, right?

I am starting the Open Course in Education Futures with George Siemens and Dave Cormier because I am not content with the status quo in education. While I consider myself to be ahead of the curve regarding implementing new practices or technologies in my classroom, I am only one person. In the past, I have worked to help my colleagues to understand current trends but I hope that this course will help improve my impact as an educational futurist.

Based upon our first reading, this course will be dedicated to understanding how to anticipate trends, plan for different scenarios, map out a vision and mission, create goals and implement strategies to ensure schools will be prepared for future challenges and changes.

Learning about and preparing for our educational futures is something that EVERY school must do. My hope is that this course will help me understand how to prepare for the massive changes we will continue to face. I want to be able to help a school prepare for the changes, draft a vision that a whole school can support  and help a school adjust to those changes while still embracing their particular culture.

Change is inevitable and if we are not properly prepared for it our schools will struggle to adapt. As I begin this course, my hope is that once I finish I will be able to extend my understanding of future trends and be better prepared to help a school adjust and be prepared for those potential futures.

If you feel the same way, you should join the class. We are only two weeks in.

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

The case for mobile phones in education

Mobile phones are ubiquitous.  Whether you like it or not, your students have them and are probably texting or on Facebook while in your class.  Some may see these tools as a massive problem for teachers but mobile phones are the one technology that has the most potential to improve education around the world.

There are many initiatives to improve educational opportunities for students.  Laptop programs have been extremely popular for the past few years.  While laptops provide access to information and offer the opportunity to engage the world, they are expensive and not every student can afford one.

Mobile phones, on the other hand, are less expensive and provide many of the same opportunities to extend the classroom for learning.  We need to find a way to provide quality education for all people around the world and at this point mobile phones are our best bet.

To support this argument, I have listed below a number of very useful blog posts, presentations, or websites that examine the power of mobile phones in the classroom.  At the end of the day, mobile phones will not change what we need to teach but they can improve how our students learn.

Post: Please turn on your cell phone

Presentation:  Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools

Website: Cell Phones in Learning

Wiki: Cell Phones in Learning

Wiki: K-12 Cell Phone Projects

Delicious: Articles on cell phones in education

Website: MoblieActive

Photo Credit: Quinn.Anya

The Next Step

I have been thinking a lot lately about where teaching will go next. As mobile and cloud computing become more ubiquitous and globalization increases, collaboration and communication will define the success of an educational institution.  In the 2009 Horizon report, the authors state that some of the future trends in educational technology will only enhance these principles.

3 C’s

While at Educon 2.1, Kendall Crolius, founding partner of The Sulevia Group, stated that the purpose of school is based upon the three C’s: Creativity, Collaboration, and Courage.  Those three C’s are the basis of what students need to learn and how we need to teach.  If our teaching does not address these three C’s and I would add a fourth, Communication, we are doing our students a disservice.

Globalization

As our world becomes smaller and folks in New York must work live with their peers in Bejing, it is imperative that education help students develop the skills necessary to be prepared for the scope of collaboration needed for success.

The majority of our classrooms are not built for this kind of learning.  We must force our students to see beyond hardbound books and multiple choice tests to have them prepared for the world they will face after school.

How To Get There

If we are to maximize the global collaboration and communication stated in the Horizon Report, we must focus on developing programs like the Horizon Project 2008. The project brings schools from all over the world together to work on a common goal.  Programs like Skype, Ning, and Google Docs allow the ability to design an environment where students from around the world can communicate and work together.  It is this type of communication that will build a community and it is that community that will build the skills and understanding that our students require as they look ahead to their future.

Our model of education is outdated, are we ready to address this on the macro level?  I sure hope so.

The Educational Impact Of Our Inauguration Trip

I write this from Worcester, MA the day after returning from Washington, D.C. and our Inauguration trip. While in Washington, 11 students from Worcester Academy worked three 18 hour days, conducting interviews, producing videos, and writing blog entires examining the Inauguration. While it is obvious that experiencing the Inauguration alone is monumental, it is the work that the students have done and their intrinsic motivation that stands out in my mind.

Ever since this project was developed, the idea behind it was two fold.  My co-director, Pete Smith and I wanted our students to experience the Inauguration but just as important, was the educational potential the trip provided.  This trip was about giving our students the opportunity to document history and express themselves and their perspectives.  Watching my students wake up at 6am and for some to work until 1am the next morning was awe inspiring.  These students put their all into collecting and producing quality content about the Inauguration.  They spent time developing strong articles on real issues surrounding the Inauguration.  They had to develop questions and interview tactics for everyone from Dee Meyers, President Clinton’s Press Secretary and Congressman James McGovern, to high school students.  The challenges they faced are one’s journalists face on a daily basis and the work they created added a valuable perspective. The students recognized that they were not only witnessing history, they were documenting it and people were interested in what they had to say.

The Educational Impact

Our 11 students’ focus and dedication that developed from this trip drives at the idea that the way students learn no longer can fit into a 19th century or even 20th century model.  The value of the students taking ownership of this trip to produce a quality article, image, video, or twitter update (tweet), outweighs any learning they would have gained through a lecture.  Brian, one of the students on the trip, stated the following on his Twitter account:

no it was a lot of work but it was much more fun than the work back here…..soooo maybe it was a vacation?

Today’s students are capable and ready but we must engage them.  We must get them interested in learning.  This trip did that but it does not have to be the exception to the rule.

No matter the topic, whether it is the Inauguration or Geometry, when students can produce and share something of value, their willingness to really invest their time and energy will dramatically increase.  If we really want to find out how you can get your students to want to learn and be engaged, find a way to have them take ownership of the material.

Students today are surrounded by an amazing array of media tools.  These can be used by classes in any discipline to get your students to synthesize learned content and produce a something of value that highlights their understanding.  A student’s education is not about simply learning facts but rather understanding the concepts.  If you want your students to really understand the content, they need to see its worth, they need to produce something of value connected to that content.  Regurgitating information does not work.

While social media was our medium for this, there are many ways and methods for a class to accomplish this concept.  Student driven learning is possible and necessary.  As the technology becomes more ubiquitous, we must prepare our students to understand that the tools they use on a personal level can produce quality content of value.

I witnessed history and I will never forget that but what will always stay with me was the dedication and efforts put forth by our students.  Their work is proof that student driven or project based learning is valuable and worthwhile.  As my memories of the Inauguration fade, it will be the dedication and hard work that our students put into producing their work on this trip that will always stay with me.

Photo Credit: Brandy Agerbeck

A cross-posting from http://wainauguration.org

Teaching In A Cognitive Age

A Shift in Thinking

I have read a few articles over the last few days that deal with cognition and how our world is evolving in the 21st century. The articles by David Brooks of the New York Times, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Wayne Hodgins all focus on the development our cognitive abilities as a requirement for success in the 21st century. The argument all three state is that our economic struggles and potential successes are not based upon globalization and the expansion of China and India, but rather it is a matter of building and supporting our ability to think. Wayne Hodgins, a “strategic futurist” states,

The future is about putting more and more focus on leveraging and augmenting our cognitive abilities

Teaching and Cognition

Much like I mentioned in my last post about Dan Pink and Johnny Bunko, our success as a nation is dependent upon teaching our students to develop their abilities to think, solve problems and be invested in their work. It is not about memorization or regurgitation. We have computers that do that for us. Sites like Wikipedia make the lecture based classroom obsolete. The teacher is no longer the sole holder of knowledge. Whether you like this or not, the fact of the matter is that we have machines to retain information. For our students to succeed in today’s marketplace, we must prepare them for the “cognitive age”. The skills we teach and the ability to process information and develop solutions will be much more valuable than the simple memorization of dates or formulas.

Our future success as a nation, rather as a globe, is dependent upon our ability to synthesize information and focus on problem solving. Not only will we be preparing our students for a flattened marketplace but in teaching the ability to think and be creative, our teaching will become rewarding for our students. If the students can see the value of what we are teaching, they will become intrinsically invested. If our students become invested they will be motivated to do well.

It is a linear progression. If we teach cognitive skills to our students, they will be prepared to handle the problems facing businesses in today’s global economy. If the students see the relevance of their work and enjoy what they are doing, they in turn are motivated to work hard and do well.

When examining the question of teaching in this cognitive age, we must understand that we can not do justice to our students with traditional methods. Our students must be prepared and that will only come from having them become invested in learning how to solve problems to the topics they face.

With the advancement of technology and a flattened playing field, employers now require their workers to be highly skilled problem solvers. This ability will only be developed by moving away from memorization of facts and teach how to think and problem solve using those facts. If we do not address this gap in our teaching we will do a disservice to our students and our nation’s future success.

photo credit: symic and mark(s)elliot

Welcome

I have recently been hired as the Director of Academic Technology at Worcester Academy and this is my first entry on my new site. In this role I will be integrating technology at both the departmental and classroom levels. I will help faculty, staff, and students understand and utilize the technologies available to assist the learning process.

Previously, I was solely teaching World History and the focus of my thinking was on incorporating technology into the history classroom. This blog and my future entries will go beyond simply the humanities. I will investigate the state of education and how we can improve and support it with creative and innovative teaching methods across all disciplines. This blog will not simply identify potential technologies, rather the goal is to bring awareness to how technology as well as creative and innovative teaching methods are improving our profession. Topics will range from learning environments to lesson plans.