Design. Learn. Solve.

Learning from Google’s Creative Lab

Google’s Creative Lab has been around for a few years but the concept has been a transformative one for the company and a model that schools should consider.

The Creative Lab

Google, which had been known more for their search than their advertising, has made a large impact in the digital media scene over the past few years. Their multi-disciplinary team in the Creative Lab has been responsible for some very critically acclaimed work including, their “Google Chrome Speed Tests”, “Wilderness Downtown”, and “Parisian Love”.

Projects like these have transformed Google’s image. The Creative Lab has been an opportunity to infuse creative talent into an Internet company while also training the “creatives” on the power of Google. Those who work in the Creative Lab stay for a year or two before being sent back into their respective industries. By following such a model, Google has been able not only train up and coming designers and writers on the power of Google but reap the benefits of their talent.

Bringing the Creative Lab to schools

The power of the Creative Lab has been in the fact that it has helped transform Google into a force in the digital media world.

Why can’t the same be done in schools?

It could be a “Teach For America” for creatives. Innovators and designers will spend two years working within a school to help bring innovation and an understanding of design thinking into schools while in turn they are trained as educators. The schools benefit by having access to amazing creatives who can help transform the experience of learning in an academic institution while the creatives benefit by being trained as educators. After a stint in a school, the creatives return to their professional worlds with an understanding of education that many dedicated to helping lack.

Far too often I meet very creative people who want to make a difference in the world of education but do not understand schools. By developing a program like this, a school will give those passionate creatives an opportunity to make a difference the world of education and in turn become a much more informed public. This type of work would provide an opportunity to solve two problems:

1. The need for schools to truly embrace a different way of thinking when it comes to learning


2. Create more informed social entrepreneurs, innovators, and designers

The Google Creative Lab has transformed Google into a powerful player in the advertising and media space. Schools can benefit from the same approach. Design and innovation are becoming more important in our schools and this is a great opportunity to create more “teachers” while benefiting from the power of creativity and innovation.

If anyone is interested in such an idea, let me know and lets dream this up together.

Why we need a new conversation

Twitter is full of education hashtags. Those symbols of community bring educators from around the world together. One hashtag in particular is very powerful within the our community. #edchat has become a beacon for many educators. It has connected them, it has enabled them to share ideas, resources, and stories. I believe that hashtags like #edchat are critical to create a sense of community for educators, many whom feel isolated in their schools or districts.

I will not speak poorly of #edchat. As I mentioned, it has played an important role in connecting and enabling many educators. I value what the creators and curators of #edchat are doing to unite and support educators around the globe.

BUT

I believe we must move beyond #edchat.

While it plays an important role, I believe we need to hear new voices. Many educators are stuck in an echo chamber. Rather than learning about another web 2.0 tool or rehashing futile debates, I want us to be inspired. I want us to be challenged. I want to extend us to extend our thinking about what is possible in the world of education.

For the past few years I have been seeking inspiration and connections among my fellow educators but also reaching out to innovators, designers, and visionaries. This has led to some eye opening experiences and connections that are transforming the way I work and in turn helping others understand how to engage with educators.

For educators to move beyond the echo chamber, It is necessary for us to engage in conversations with people outside the world of education We should be reading more Fast Company and GOOD, just to name two, and fewer teacher blogs, including mine. Educators are not the only ones who want to improve the status of education. Very smart and creative people are looking to help. They are looking to make a difference. We should be engaging these innovators and designers to dream up ways to improve where, how, and when learning happens.

To make this happen, not only do we need to create conversations that kill the echo chamber but educators should attend events that have nothing to do with their specific discipline. True innovation comes when there are disruptors. For changes to be made at a national level, we must do a better job at engaging innovators in other industries. Those innovators can help us think differently about how our schools function, we can build partnerships, and in turn we can help educate a non educators about the real challenges we face.

Schools like the REALM Charter School in Berkeley, CA, or Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA are examples of how this can be done. They are being very particular and creating a close relationship with institutions and companies that provide educators and students an opportunity to connect the worlds between education and innovation.

Educators have the chance to change the conversation by reaching out to their communities and build relationships with individuals, companies, and organizations who want to make a difference.

We can learn from the amazing creatives who are rethinking so many different industries. If educators do not engage these people, if they do not join these conversations and build these relationships, a huge opportunity will be lost.

You should still continue to be a part of #edchat and the myriad of other education hashtags but all I ask is that you also join a conversation in a completely different field. Be madly curious. Go engage and by doing so you’ll be able to transform your practice and open your students up to a world of new opportunities.

Links:
REALM Charter School
Science Leadership Academy
#edchat
Fast Company
GOOD

I’m an educator, I mean designer, I mean…

I had the chance to attend CompostModern this past weekend. It is a conference for designers by designers.

As an educator, I was not exactly sure what to expect. I initially felt as though I would be the odd man out. I mean, I was no where near as fashionable as 99% of the attendees and at no point have I or will I pretend to be an artist. Just ask my old students, I was the master of the stick figure.

That being said, I do consider myself a designer. In my mind all educators are. The bonds that unite “designers” and “educators” are far deeper than you would expect.

Both are asked to solve problems. Both deal with clients who don’t necessarily like their ideas. Both must find ways to sell their ideas and, if they are good, will use images to do so.

Far too often, I see teachers simply consider themselves to be content experts and get caught up in data and numbers. Rather than focusing purely on statistics, let us, as “educators”, think as designers:

• How can you use a story to solve your problem? (i.e. help your students learn)


• How can you visualize the learning process?


• How can you ensure that you stay true to your vision (i.e. the content) while meeting your client (i.e. the student) where they are as well?

What really hit me while at CompostModern, a conference on sustainability and design, was the fact that so many designers want to make a difference. Many of those designers want to help or be educators. This became obvious when I offered an unconference session on education and design and it was attended by over 30 people. As educators, we cannot ignore this. We must look to designers for help as we have a lot to learn on how as Dan Meyer put it, “sell a product the consumer doesn’t want to buy”.

The power of design, story, and imagery have changed the world. Images and story have helped shape our culture. In an age of abundance and information overload it is becoming every more apparent that what we as educators need to do is think more like designers.

It doesn’t matter how many gadgets or gizmos you throw at a classroom, they will not make a difference unless the story behind the material is compelling, unless the process is visual, and unless you engage your students differently.

So I ask you, from one educator to another, to think about the following:

• Are you presenting your students with a clear and relevant problem?


• Is the material clear and telling a story?


• Is your approach visual?

If you are answering yes to all three, then you are more of a designer than you think. If you did not answer yes to the questions, then think about how you could change reconstruct your approach.

What we teach must take design into consideration. The days of just buying a shoe are over. Consumers want a story (TOMS) they can believe in. Education is no different. Designers are itching to make a difference. If you are not comfortable with this transition, reach out to someone who can help.

In short, designers can be educators and educators can be designers.

Photo credit: Active Free

Time Perspectives and Education

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Yesterday I watched this talk given by Phillip Zimbardo, a psychologist and professor at Stanford University. In the talk, he focuses on how cultures are divided by perspectives of time and uses education as a case study. He broke it down the differences into being “past oriented” or “future oriented”.

Past Oriented

Zimbardo states that our current model of education is a “past oriented” one: a culture that connects to adults and what they needed in order to function based upon their understanding of time. While this model was successful in the past, it has not successful for students today and is leading to a student dropout rate of one student every nine seconds.

Future Oriented

Current students on the other hand, are growing up in a digital age and are “future oriented”. Students are living in a world where they create and play. They are using digital technologies, playing video games, and their sense of time and what is important to them is vastly different from that of adults. Young adults are struggling with the current model of education, as their brains have been “digitally rewired”.

Conflict of Time Perspectives

As we deal with these two orientations, Zimbardo suggests that we do our best to balance this conflict of time perspectives. When thinking of the current education system, it is our job as educational innovators to do the following:

1. Do everything we can to help “past oriented” folks understand the shifts that are taking place and why they matter to how we teach;

2. work with our administrations and teachers to examine alternative paths that reach the “future oriented” students;

3. and find a balance so both “past oriented” teachers and “future oriented” students are successful.

If we can find that balance between the “past oriented” and “future oriented” cultures, our students will be more engaged and will want to be in school. Speak to your administrators, show them this video, and have frank conversations about what approaches work for your school’s culture and moves you closer to addressing the needs of a “future oriented” student body.

See below for examples of some schools that are implementing a different approach to address this problem. Hopefully these examples will help as you try to address the conflict of time perspectives at your respective school.

Links

• Philip Zimbardo


• Quest to Learn


• New York Harbor School


• Think Global School

Hacking Secondary Education

A great deal has been written about education reform. It seems as though there are as many approaches to reforming school as there are reformers. This is as true in secondary education as it is in higher education. To a certain degree, the principles behind reforming or “hacking” the educational system are uniform. In an era where technology is completely transforming how we connect, collaborate and create, the world of education is struggling to deal with this shift. In my mind there seem to be three areas where secondary educators can “hack” classroom and curriculum design.

Independent Learning

In an era where information is everywhere, educators must reexamine how and from where content is obtained. Students should receive a Google Reader account rather than a textbook. Information is no longer static, we should no longer be willing to accept that a textbook offers us the best option. Access to RSS feeds and direction from a teacher on what to look for, allows students to become curators of their own learning. When we empower students with the opportunity to learn on their own, while helping them understand what to look for, they take ownership of their learning and it inherently becomes more meaningful. In addition, using micro-blogging platforms like Twitter or creating using social bookmarking sites like Diigo allows the emphasis to be put on the students as curators of information rather than the teachers as the distrubtors of knowledge. When a student takes ownership of his or her learning, not only do we disrupt the current model but we create students who see begin to see the value of learning.

Authentic Learning

The end result of learning does not have to be a multiple choice test. When learning can be directly connected to something real, something tangible, something meaningful, students will rise to the occasion. This is not a unrealistic goal. With the advent of mobile devices like the iPhone, learning does not have to be restricted to the classroom. Using a number of applications on their phone, Math students learning about geometry could develop a greenhouse for their school. Following the CrisisCommons model and aiding their local community, a History class could learn about the 1950’s atomic culture by documenting all the public emergency locations on a Google Map and releasing it to the public. No matter the discipline, there are opportunities to make learning a real and meaningful experience that goes beyond the test.

Styles of Learning

To truly hack the secondary educational system, we need to have multiple tracks for students to take based upon their learning style. If a student is not a morning person, then he or she should be given the opportunity to take the majority of his or her core classes online at their leisure while coming into the physical school in the afternoon for labs or collaborative planning sessions. Online learning not only allows flexible schedules but also provides opportunities for students to learn through their strengths. Auditory learners can listen to recorded podcasts on any given topic. Visual learners could access a repository of videos. Online media can become an opportunity for students to master content on their own terms. Learning outcomes that are developed when a student is learning in his or her comfort zone will lead to a deeper understanding.

Conclusion

New technologies are transforming the way we operate on a daily basis. Many traditional institutions are struggling as they adapt. Secondary education is no different. The opportunities are there, the platforms are online, the information is available. It is now up to us to take the and ensure that our schools understand their options and realize that the status quo is not good enough as we move further into the 21st century and our students need to be prepared for an entirely different world.

Banning social media is a bad call

Last night I found this article. It is about Anthony Orsini, a principal in New Jersey, who is asking parents to ban all social media from their children. In a letter to parents Orsini wrote:

Please do the following: sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today!Let them know that you will at some point every week be checking their text messages online! You have the ability to do this through your cell phone provider.

Let them know that you will be installing Parental Control Software so you can tell every place they have visited online, and everything they have instant messaged or written to a friend. Don’t install it behind their back, but install it!

It is leadership like this that is misguided and more dangerous than prohibiting the technologies from the students. By banning social media you create a us vs. them scenario that is destined to create a greater rift between students and parents and schools.

Social media is not going away. If schools turn their head to the ubiquity of social media in our students lives not only will we push them away but we will be doing them a disservice as they will not be prepared for a world where connectivity drives all industries.

The only viable approach we can take is to educate our students, faculty and parents on the potential and danger with social technologies. To turn a blind eye to how our students communicate is dangerous but so is to ban all technologies. It is our responsibility to adapt to changes, understand how we can utilize them to best prepare our students while teaching them of the dangers as well.



For good or bad our students have grown up with screens in front of their faces. To remove those from our students and expect them to politely oblige is foolish. Schools must adapt and accept that we must educate rather than ban. Orsini states,

Over 90% of all homework does not require the internet, or even a computer. Do not allow them to have a computer in their room, there is no need.

If schools maintain the approach of avoiding the power of technology we will only push out students away from wanting to learn. The idea of developing curious and inquisitive life long learners will only come if we meet our students half way. Every school must work to understand this and work to develop programs that help understand the potential of new media.

For those looking to explore how to begin to educate your community on proper social media use in and out of the classroom, start by checking out these sites:

Net Family News

Common Sense Media

Safe and Secure

and

NUMMI and School Change

Learners - In all shapes and sizes

Drive: The Two Questions That Can Change Your Life

A Model For Learning

For the past several weeks I have been mulling over the idea of participation, transparency, and connectivism. All ideas that I believe are the corner stones to the next big shift in education. Several people have been influential in helping me reach this point. I have been reading work from the likes of Henry Jenkins from Project New Media Literacies, Mike Wesch from Kansas State, David Wiley from BYU, and George Siemens and Stephen Downes from Canada.

Today I went to a conference at MIT hosted by Project New Media Literacies. The focus of the conference was on participatory culture in education. As the day went on I began to piece together some things.

Our students participate. They want to be involved. They are connected, ALL the time. If we ignore that fact we will lose our students. Henry Jenkins alluded to this fact in his 2006 white paper on participatory culture. It is vitally important that our students create, circulate, connect, and collaborate. Research by Project New Media Literacies highlights this point. But not only will this participatory model be useful in engaging our students, it is an opportunity to teach ethical behavior when working with digital media.

If schools follow a participatory model, using open education resources to examine real issues through our curriculum, while using a framework that promotes collaboration and discussion, we can change the game.

The idea is based upon what I heard today and have read from Mike Wesch, Stephen Downes, David Wiley, as well as countless others.

This is what I have in mind for a grade 6 through 12 school:

The Framework

All course content is free using Open Education Reources (OER) available via online resources.  All disciplines would frame their course curriculum around the free materials. This would not only cut costs for a school but also lend itself to opening the class to the online community.

Individual courses, their syllabi and resources would be housed on a Course Management System (CMS) like Moodle, Wikispaces, or EduCommons. Having the platform online would allow the class to include participants from around the world.

All student work would be created and managed via a blog based e-portfolio. This system would be build off of Wordpress Mu. Every student would have a blog. This would be their home for all written work, digital media, and presentations. It is an opportunity to not only record a student’s work but have their voice be a part of a larger conversation. The work would be separated by tag and each class would have a site where the aggregated feeds for the class appropriate posts and comments as well as all relevant information would be posted.

Here is the Google Doc of the proposal I created.

The Participation

Create

If students create online content, whether written or media, that is a part of a larger conversation, the work takes on a new meaning. Students who can express their ideas and produce something concrete that they can publish, will be more more engaged.

Connect

If there is anything I have learned in the past few days, it is that to make a model like this work, it MUST connect to our students. There must be relevance and it must mean something. Whether it is a Biology class creating HIV/AIDS PSAs for a local AIDS center or working to develop tutorials on algorithms for a village school in Ghana, if curriculum can not only teach content but connect students to something bigger, it will make an impact.

Collaborate

At the heart of this model is collaboration. When the curriculum is designed to have students work with experts outside the classroom, community organizations, or other classes around the world, the learning becomes real. When a student’s blog entry on civil rights gets comments from a community leader who the class had been working with, the connections becomes real, the work meaningful. These collaborations can take place in many forms: Second Life, Skype, Elluminate, uStream, on a wiki, or Google Doc, or in real life. No matter the venue, what makes the work engaging and relevant is the collaborations and relationships that stem from creation of the content.

Circulate

The blog becomes a platform for the circulation of student created content. It a means to promote not only writing but all digital content created by a student would be available online. Here, the e-portfolio plays a role. Now all of the work that a student produces over four years is housed online on one site. The ability for a student to simply send a URL to a friend, family member, or potential college and show their work speaks to the true nature of the platform. Their works is now accessible to the world.

This model does not only support the ideas of transparency, participation, and connectivism, but it teaches another important lesson: digital citizenship. Using a platform like this, digital literacy and the ethical use of digital content becomes interwoven into each class. Students will become aware of fair use and copyright not because they read a case study but because all their work is online.

I borrowed a lot of ideas from people much smarter than me who have been proving this model in higher education but I believe this is an idea that could work in a grade 6-12 environment.

This is a very rough outline of what I am envisioning but to be true to the idea of participation, please leave your comments and criticisms. They will be extremely helpful as I improve this model.

Photo Credit: Today Is A Good Day