Once again I am inexorably drawn to the root cause of our dissatisfaction with the current process of education. It remains deeply ensnared in a manufactured, assembly line design when our instincts as educators, our vision, our understanding of the information age, all tell us that we should attend to the lessons of the natural [...]
What is the nature of learning, as opposed to the nature of education? Holly Chesser, with SAIS, posted a story yesterday about a high school math student who, two weeks into the semester had already pretty much given up any future in math. She just was not grasping some foundational construct, and in math, you [...]
One school started the new academic year with back-to-school faculty professional growth day yesterday, and there is a good chance this school will never be the same. When Josie Holford, (@JosieHolford) head of K-12 Poughkeepsie Day School shot me an email two days ago about this, I could see a dense web of critical leadership [...]
My Prius has not even left the driveway on this fall’s Journey of Learning, yet the lessons and links are already stacking up. After posting in the last week about a new, creative approach to systems thinking at Townview Magnet in Dallas, and some extraordinary institutional steps to promote innovation at a major east coast [...]
Do you want to know the sounds and sights of real 21C innovation? How does a school with a long tradition of success begin to shift focus in recognition that the world we have prepared our students for in the past is rapidly fading away? Here are some snippets, thanks to a conversation I had [...]
Many of us are talking about the need to shift learning in the direction of creation, rather than consumption, of knowledge. Students and teachers have the capability to create and share in ways that they never have before in human history. I have proposed that the cognitasphere includes both the body of knowledge as it [...]
Yesterday Craig Dwyer @dwyerteacher reflected on Inquire Within about setting up a marvelous unit for his class, including a myriad of opportunities for collaboration, use of technology, reflection time, reaching out to students around the world and more. Yet at the end, here is his takeaway: “But, it was my inquiry. I planned it all out. I chose [...]
The core goal of education is to prepare students for their future. This means that a radical transformation of education is inevitable and irreversible; it is only a matter of how efficiently we get there. Education can no longer give students the knowledge they need for the “present known”, or even for the “near-future known”. [...]
Classic Skunk Works are hidden from curious eyes and ears; not so in our new world of connected educators! I had a great discussion with a young teacher, Aaron Baldridge at the Townview Magnet Center High School in Dallas, a unique setting where six public magnet schools are housed at one location. Aaron is a [...]
A year ago I trialed a method of project-based learning that incorporates a number of skills that we associate with critical collaboration, networking, and group communication skills. It strengthens student ownership of the process and the product and ensures that the students are working on problems that are meaningful to them, not just to the [...]