Worth Reading...

Sharing a few highlights from this week's collection.

1. We Need More Curious Dreamers, Tinkerers, and Makers (Fryer)- several great embedded videos and links.

all it takes is a dreamer. Can you imagine the Wright Brothers if one was a lawyer and one was an accountant? Why are you going to build this stupid airplane? It only carries one person. Who’s going to buy it? What kind of a profit margin are we going to get? We’ve got forty percent on bicycles. What are we doing this for? Think about the liability! Everybody can sue us! It’s a bad idea. Yeah, let’s not do it. As long as we have that opinion, we’re stuck. What you have to say is, “Gosh it’s something no one has ever done before. Let’s try it.

2. Denis Dutton: A Darwinian Theory of Beauty- TED collaborates with animator Andrew Park to illustrate Denis Dutton's theory on beauty- that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply "in the eye of the beholder," are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.



3. Looks aren't everything.  Believe me, I'm a model (Russell)-



4. A Radical Rethink of School (Educating Modern Learners)- Jim Calhoun, the principal of Castle View High School in Castle Rock, CO, talks about a school within a school he has helped develop.

5. Maker-Centered Learning and the Development of Self (Agency by Design)- a white paper presented by the Agency by Design.  Identifies beliefs of maker-centered learning for young people.

Bliss of Intrinsic Learning

Vision and Mission statement from the Mosaic Collective which is part of Castle View High School in Colorado.  Short, to the point and enjoy the phrase, "the bliss of intrinsic learning".

Born from experience, frustration, curiosity, and a sense of educational righteousness, the Mosaic Collective exists to promote the bliss of intrinsic learning and a strong focus on community by intentionally practicing and reflecting on what is good for learners – of all ages and backgrounds.

Worth Viewing

Sharing a few videos worth viewing.  To some extent, each video asks the "what it" or "what could be question"about schools and education and forces the viewer to consider whether the current paradigm is successful.


1.  The Surprising Truth About Learning in Schools (Richardson)


2. The Rhizomatic Lense: Seeing Learning From the Perspective of Abundance (Cormier)



3. Innovation Specialist Don Wettrick on Unlearning



4. Building Children's Writing Skills Through Learning Through Play

Building children's writing skills through learning through play from LEGO Foundation on Vimeo.

Future Wise

Sharing a few highlights from Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World by David Perkins.

Likely to matter in the lives learners are likely to live: that’s a very useful phrase, but it’s also a bit of a mouthful. So let’s attach a single word to it: lifeworthy, that is, likely to matter in the lives learners are likely to live

The hard fact is that our minds hold on only to knowledge we have occasion to use in some corner of our lives—personal, artistic, civic, something else. Overwhelmingly knowledge unused is forgotten. It’s gone. Whatever its intrinsic value might be, it can’t be lifeworthy unless it’s there

Opportunity cost makes a fundamental point about decision making: when we decide in favor of one course of action, we forgo others that might have generated certain benefits. A cost of the path we choose is loss of benefits from the abandoned paths. With quadratic equations as with anything else, we have to ask not just whether they are nice to understand in themselves but what might have been learned instead

Meanwhile, biological research into the fundamental dynamics of life holds strong prospects of extending the human life span considerably in the course of the next fifty years. What sense would a K–12 or K–16 education make in a world where people live to be, say, 150 years old? Today we speak casually of lifelong learning, but in a few decades, it will likely be so much the norm as hardly to require its own label. Cycles of formal learning as well as enriched processes of on-the-job learning seem destined to become routine

To generalize, multiyear curricula tend to be constructed as journeys toward expertise, with little effort to ask what topics within the discipline speak most powerfully and directly to the lives learners are likely to live.

The bottom line is hardly subtle: the traditional hierarchical structure of education is a rather clumsy vehicle for engaging the rich information and communication affordances of the contemporary world and preparing today’s learners to thrive in that world. In contrast, a flexible network structure embraces the opportunities in a much more expansive and generative manner

We need to ask, for everything from democracy to quadratic equations and for many themes not typically taught at all, “Is this knowledge likely to go somewhere in learners’ lives?” We need to ask, when this topic comes up, “Does it offer insight, does it inform action, and does it inspire ethics?” And as to opportunity, “Is this topic likely to come up often and importantly rather than rarely and trivially

Thus, wondering at provides us with an inspiration and a compass for wondering about the unknown. After all, the unknown has no top and no bottom, no border to the North, South, West, or East

Understanding something means being able to think with what you know about it, not just to know standard answers or do routine procedures accurately and fluently

Second Machine Age Highlights

Sharing a few highlights from The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee.

Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power—the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments—what the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power

We’re heading into an era that won’t just be different; it will be better, because we’ll be able to increase both the variety and the volume of our consumption. When we phrase it that way—in the dry vocabulary of economics—it almost sounds unappealing. Who wants to consume more and more all the time? But we don’t just consume calories and gasoline. We also consume information from books and friends, entertainment from superstars and amateurs, expertise from teachers and doctors, and countless other things that are not made of atoms.

Progress on some of the oldest and toughest challenges associated with computers, robots, and other digital gear was gradual for a long time. Then in the past few years it became sudden; digital gear started racing ahead, accomplishing tasks it had always been lousy at and displaying skills it was not supposed to acquire anytime soon.

As Moore’s Law works over time on processors, memory, sensors, and many other elements of computer hardware (a notable exception is batteries, which haven’t improved their performance at an exponential rate because they’re essentially chemical devices, not digital ones), it does more than just make computing devices faster, cheaper, smaller, and lighter. It also allows them to do things that previously seemed out of reach.

The old business saying is that “time is money,” but what’s amazing about the modern Internet is how many people are willing to devote their time to producing online content without seeking any money in return

Another school of thought, though, holds that the true work of innovation is not coming up with something big and new, but instead recombining things that already exist. And the more closely we look at how major steps forward in our knowledge and ability to accomplish things have actually occurred, the more this recombinant view makes sense.

Perhaps the most important ideas of all are meta-ideas—ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas.

The theory of recombinant innovation stresses how important it is to have more eyeballs looking at challenges and more brains thinking about how existing building blocks can be rearranged to meet them

Advances in technology, especially digital technologies, are driving an unprecedented reallocation of wealth and income. Digital technologies can replicate valuable ideas, insights, and innovations at very low cost. This creates bounty for society and wealth for innovators, but diminishes the demand for previously important types of labor, which can leave many people with reduced incomes

What's Your Focus

Just love the following explanation form the Spark Truck:

Are you focused on STEM? Do you want to encourage kids to go into engineering fields?

We have nothing against STEM or engineering, but no, this is not our primary focus. We want kids to develop confidence in their ability to creatively tackle any problem. If a child’s passion lies in engineering, then we’re happy that our having shown them laser cutters and 3D printers was able to reinforce that, but we think that this mindset is equally applicable to whatever career a child will choose—be it science, arts, or the humanities. We don’t want to take someone whose talents and passions destined her to be a world-famous composer, and convince her that she should be a physicist instead. We want kids to form the courage to pursue their curiosity into whatever field it might lead. Since our background happens to lie in design, we are most familiar with the tools and methods of the design field, and teach using those tools and methods, but we can just as easily imagine a truck going around teaching baking, or improv theater, with the same creative neurological benefits.

Most Likely to Succeed

Sharing a few highlights from Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids For the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith.  

It’s quite striking that, almost without exception, the great contributors to civilization were educated as apprentices, not as note-takers

In short, the United States picked the wrong goal and failed at it. We opted to chase South Korea and Singapore on standardized test performance (a race we never had a chance of winning against children who spend every waking hour cramming for the tests) instead of educating our youth for a world of innovation and opportunity (a race that plays to our strengths)

Albert Einstein, who had his share of struggles with school, said, “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution.” As administrators, faculty, boards, and parents debate strategic goals,In short, the United States picked the wrong goal and failed at it. We opted to chase South Korea and Singapore on standardized test performance (a race we never had a chance of winning against children who spend every waking hour cramming for the tests) instead of educating our youth for a world of innovation and opportunity (a race that plays to our strengths) they generally dive into issues around the importance of the goals listed in Question 1 above and the precise wording of their mission statement. In so doing, they skip over a more fundamental step in the process: Is our teaching approach one that actually helps our students to learn

Even better, imagine if the school looked for skills where a student could achieve excellence, and then set out on a path to create definitive life advantages for that student applicable across a broad range of careers

two of the most important skills in the innovation economy are in thinking critically (about problems, situations, markets, ideas) and then the ability to communicate (an idea, a recommendation, a plan forward) in a way that is not only thoughtful and compelling but also in a way that influences others to take action

Today, when kids have ready access to an enormous range of written material, we should encourage them to become great readers by devouring everything they can that’s aligned with their passion—whether it’s nature, sports, or Harry Potter. But if you’re designing tests, there’s no way to standardize based on students reading mostly what interests them. Once again, the education model revolves around what makes life easy for test designers, not what’s best for kids

“The key to our philosophy is to speak, and speak, and speak some more. Programs and curricula that emphasize speaking and ‘living’ the culture from the get go can create a genuine learning atmosphere (using a variety of techniques) that will acclimate students and generate a feeling of ‘being there.

Annmarie Neal is the former chief talent officer at Cisco Systems and author of Leading From the Edge. She continues to consult to senior leadership in Fortune 100 companies all over the world, and here’s what she told us in a recent conversation: Even the most elite schools do not prepare students for the reality of work as it is today, let alone what it will become in the future. Most large organizations are undergoing massive transformations as they move from industrial to innovation-economy business models. The students that thrive within today’s education systems are achievement driven, rule-oriented, compliant, linear, singular in focus (i.e., a business or engineering major). The world of work today requires future leaders to be relationship or collaboration driven, rule-defining, creative and innovative, lateral and polymathic in focus

We need to reimagine education. We have to put ourselves in the shoes of the Committee of Ten who, back in 1893, said, “Gee, we need to train millions of kids for a growing number of rote jobs in our burgeoning industrial economy.” The Committee of Ten came up with a good solution for their era. Today, we need to educate millions of kids (and adults) for the innovation era. How do we do that?