What if you could organize your school governance structure to align with forward-leaning principles of learning? What if you had a blank slate, with no or few legacy assumptions or restrictions? What would that look like? How would we "do" school differently? That is the opportunity and challenge we have at Design 39 Campus in [...]
Breaking silos is key to a new era of strategic thinking. That is exactly the leverage offered by a unique collaboration I am honored to lead in partnership with the National Business Officers Association and the Online School for Girls. Strange group? No! I won't reprise the whole program offering here: you can read about [...]
I was one of a small group attending in person a Google Hangout this morning hosted by OpenIDEO to discuss their current Open Challenge: How might we inspire young people to cultivate their creative confidence? Open IDEO has created a number of these challenges, where educators are invited to post inspirational events, ideas, connections, and [...]
Did I contemplate the values of grit many years ago and not know it? Angela Duckworth has drawn such a clean picture of this trait we now call grit, and how it impacts success. She says that grit has a lot to do with the tendency to sustain interest in long term goals in the [...]
Yesterday's Twitter #satchatwc (which got moved to #satchat due to spamming) was full of innovative ways to amplify the unique time we may each year for Back to School Night. Rather than seven minute silos for each teacher to hand out the syllabus and review expectations, or "get to know you" (which is absurd with [...]
Could we create a valuable college BA degree for $10K? And what might that mean for K-12 education? Anya Kamenetz has written an important article that argues we can create that vastly more affordable experience in college. (Thanks Will Richardson for Tweeting it out.) I have skimmed it and now am going back to review [...]
I rarely re-post, but it almost exactly a year ago since I wrote this post, and the lessons of Merchant, Zuboff, Gorbis, Rinne, and others are increasingly vital to educators: Taking advantage of sitting at the Toyota dealership in beautiful Hays, Kansas as they replace something called in inverter cooling pump. $600. Catching up on blog [...]
Public schools face an array of daunting challenges, each a reason that change is hard: won't work, won't improve outcomes, can't afford it, teachers will rebel, flavor-of-the-month. Taken together these=inertia that prevent us from scrapping the Industrial Age assembly line and back-flipping to the passion and engagement of Dewey+connectivity that will prepare our students for [...]
Like many of you I follow Tom Friedman, one of the clearest, most honest voices of our generation. The great thing about Friedman is that he always seems to articulate a future that is founded in our present and past. I remember that after The World is Flat came out in 2005, I thought "I [...]
I need an assist from the power of social media! I have essentially finished the full draft of my book based on #EdJourney last fall. Sending blind proposals to publishers will be time-consuming and, well, blind. So I need your help: do you know a publishing editor, or a publishing agent who might know an [...]