Worth Reading

Wanted to share some interesting articles, posts and videos I came across.  All are welcomed to comment.

1. Teacher As Travel Agent (21st Century Collaborative)

Learning is personal knowledge construction fueled socially where we schematically connect ideas and concepts as we do things and discuss them with others. Just like we shouldn’t eat until we are hungry, I believe learning should be natural and likewise fueled. Give children a rich, interesting environment or scenario filled with beautiful literature, authentic problems to solve, and places to explore or create a journey and you will have kids who are motivated to learn and engaged. A steady diet of force fed content with no authentic application goes against the natural way were designed to learn. The way we learned in Kindergarten.

2. The Six Myths of Creativity (Fast Company)- A new study (2004) will change how you generate ideas and decide who's really creative in your company. 

The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation -- people who are turned on by their work often work creatively -- is especially critical.

3.  Young at Heart: How to be an innovator for life (Stanford d. School)- Tom Kelley, general manager at the world-renowned design firm, IDEO, presents five core practices that enhance creativity.

4. Olin College SCOPE Program (Olin College)-

SCOPE is the culmination of Olin’s project-based curriculum.  Seniors work in multidisciplinary teams of 5-7 students on challenging, full-year engineering projects for partnering corporate sponsors.  Olin works closely with companies and technology clients to develop SCOPE projects that provide exceptional value to the sponsors while providing an important educational experience for our students.

  

5. JR: One year of turning the world inside out (Ted Talk)- Street artist JR made a wish in 2011: Join me in a worldwide photo project to show the world its true face. Now, a year after his TED Prize wish, he shows how giant posters of human faces, pasted in public, are connecting communities, making change, and turning the world inside out.

6. Make It Count- two guys, one camera and a bunch of airline food

 

Creating Innovators

I wanted to share highlights from Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators: the Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.

The solution to our economic and social challenges is the same: creating a viable and sustainable economy that creates good jobs without polluting the planet. And there is general agreement as to what that new economy must be based on. One word: innovation

And 77 percent agreed, “the greatest innovations of the 21st century will be those that have helped to address human needs more than those that had created the most profit

Disruptive or transformative innovation, on the other hand, is about creating a new or fundamentally different product or service that disrupts existing markets and displaces formerly dominant technologies

Finally, Brown writes that design thinkers are, above all, collaborators: “The increasing complexity of products, services, and experiences has replaced the myth of the lone creative genius with the reality of the enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborator.

People who are successful at Google also have a bias towards action—you see something broken and you fix it. You are smart enough to spot problems, but you don’t whine about them or wait for somebody else to fix them. You ask, ‘How can I make things better?’ And collaboration is so essential to everything that we do—we prize the ability to recognize and learn from people around you, who have very different kinds of expertise.

 Too many teachers and employers still reward the “old school” behaviors of deference to authority and striving for “success,” conventionally defined—and count on carrots and sticks for motivation. The result is that many in the Innovation Generation are skeptical of adult authority and the institutions that their elders have presided over. School is a game the Innovation Generation knows they have to play to get “credentialed,” but they do it with as little effort as possible

The sense of purpose can take many forms. But the one that emerged most frequently in my interviews and in the interviews by the authors of “the Innovator’s DNA” is the desire to somehow “make a difference” 

“To me, empowerment means students can go out and apply what they’ve learned to the problems that they’ve never seen before with parts that they’ve never used before.” 

Apple is run like a start-up. It is a company that is continuously innovating, through rapid prototyping and iterating. Rethinking what the future will be. Yes, you have to make a profit to build a successful company, but real success means putting that profit back into continuous innovation. 

The D-Lab philosophy is very much experiential—real projects for real people and real feedback on your projects. Too often students don’t get meaningful feedback on their work. In terms of design, our focus is on people who live on less than two dollars per day. We also believe in building the capacity of people we work with in the developing world—foster the belief that they are creators, designers—and that our students should value indigenous knowledge. 

Instead, we need to encourage students to give voice to their beliefs and to support their intrinsic empathy and commitment to justice 

But I don’t see these young innovators buying into being the “twice as” generation. They are defining their own, different American Dream—one that values passion and purpose, in which their priority is making a difference more than making money. As one young innovator said, “I want to live a meaningful life with just enough money to support myself and a family. 

    

Thinking About Homework

I wanted to share a recurring conversation from this past week. I am in the process of reviewing 504 Plans.  A determination has to be made as to whether or not a plan will continue into next year and if so, do we need to revise accommodations to better address needs and the academic environment.  To ensure that an informed decision is reached data is collected from various stakeholders.  Included in the data collection process is a meeting with parents and students.  We ask parents to come in and share their own observations about what transpires after the school day ends.  On several occasions the conversation drifted towards a discussion of homework.

For a variety of reasons, several students struggled to hand in homework assignments. Unfortunately, students were receiving zeros on these assignments.  Overall grades were being adversely impacted by a failure to complete homework.  What was interesting is that a majority of these students performed well on formal summative assessments. In a fair amount of cases there was disconnect between homework grades and summative assessments.

This disconnect has been a recurring theme throughout this year both in discussions about 504 Plans and with other young learners I routinely work with.  I work with bright and creative students who perform well on tests and performance-based tasks.  However, a progress or marking period report grade does not mirror this high level of academic achievement and a comment often refers to a problem with homework.

The concern I have is why, at high school, we still attach weight to the completion of homework.  I fail to see the value in assigning points to homework assignments.  It seems that weight should be directed towards measures that assess growth over an extended period of time as opposed to a quick turnaround between instructional sessions.  Moreover, homework or work completed outside of class presents an opportunity to cultivate a sense of ownership amongst students.  In contrast to dictating to students what should be accomplished, an avenue could be established where learners are making critical decisions about work flow and how to address specific needs.  The definition of homework  should change as we further distance instruction from the industrial model of schooling.

In my conversation with families from last week I tried to draw distinction between compliance and performance.  The idea is simple we should acknowledge growth and comment on performance and refrain from assigning academic rigor to compliance. For work to be meaningful there needs to be a sense of personal onwership and empowerment as well as motivation that is intrinsic and not solely extrinsic

Highlights from Imagine

Sharing some personal highlights from Jonah Lehrer's Imagine: How Creativity Works.

The invention of the Swiffer is a tale of creativity. It’s the story of a few engineers coming up with an entirely new cleaning tool while watching someone sweep up some coffee grounds. In that flash of thought, Harry West and his team managed to think differently about something we all do every day. They were able to see the world as it was—a frustrating place filled with tedious chores—and then envision the world as it might be if only there were a better mop. That insight changed floor cleaning forever

It’s often only at this point, after we’ve stopped searching for the answer, that the answer arrives. (The imagination has a wicked sense of irony.) And when a solution does appear, it doesn’t come in dribs and drabs; the puzzle isn’t solved one piece at a time. Rather, the solution is shocking in its completeness.

Surprisingly, those students diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) got significantly higher scores. White then measured levels of creative achievement in the real world, asking the students if they’d ever won prizes at juried art shows or been honored at science fairs. In every single domain, from drama to engineering, the students with ADHD had achieved more. Their attention deficit turned out to be a creative blessing.

Insights, after all, come from the overlap between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted 

The benefit of such circulation is that it increases conceptual blending, allowing people to look at their most frustrating problems from a fresh perspective. Instead of trying to invent a new tack, imagine a roll of sticky paper; instead of trying to improve the battery performance of a laptop, think about the refractory properties of its light bulbs.

People need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work  

This helps explain why young children are so effortlessly creative: their censors don’t yet exist. But then the brain matures and we become too self-conscious to improvise, too worried about saying the wrong thing, or playing the wrong note, or falling off the surfboard. It’s at this point that the infamous “fourth-grade slump” in creativity sets in, as students suddenly stop wanting to make art in the classroom   

But sometimes that’s not enough: we need to leave behind everything. One of the most surprising (and pleasurable) ways of cultivating an outsider perspective is through travel, getting away from the places we spend most of our time. The reason travel is so useful for creativity involves a quirk of cognition in which problems that feel close get contemplated in a more literal manner. This means that when we are physically near the source of the problem, our thoughts are automatically constricted, bound by a more limited set of associations. While this habit can be helpful—it allows us to focus on the facts at hand—it also inhibits the imagination.

Furthermore, there’s evidence that group creativity is becoming more necessary. Because we live in a world of very hard problems—all the low-hanging fruit is gone—many of the most important challenges exceed the capabilities of the individual imagination. As a result, we can find solutions only by working with other people.  

When children are allowed to create, they’re able to develop the sophisticated talents that are required for success in the real world. Instead of learning how to pass a standardized test, they learn how to cope with complexity and connect ideas, how to bridge disciplines and improve their first drafts 

We Do Love Schools

Next installment of my not so weekly podcast series.  This podcast stems from the following post by Will Richardson, "We Love Schools."  Say It.  Will Richardson's post was inspired by a Lawrence Lessig presentation.  

As always your thoughts are welcomed.

   

   
   
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Worth Reading

Sharing a few gems I came across in the past week.

1 Coaching, Care and Kids (Lehman)- questions why administrators are not allowed to coach or lead certain extracurricular activities but also brings up the point that educators should find a way to get involved in activities that transpire outside of the classroom

Having that incredible relationship where we, as educators, really have the opportunity to care for kids and have that transactional relationship where both teacher / coach / mentor and student make a difference in each other's lives, is a big part of what makes teaching such a profound profession.

 2. Complexity and Constructing Community Knowledge in the Classroom (Reilly)- building community knowledge in the classroom.  This post serves as another reminder about the need to build a community or network of learners in the classroom.

Constructing community knowledge is very much connected to individual agency.  Brent Davis and Elaine Simmt (2003) suggest that five conditions are present in complex learning systems: internal diversity, redundancy, decentralized control, organized randomness, and neighbor interactions. These conditions are the basis upon which a team, such as PLC, or a classroom of students and a teacher build community knowledge that is rich and larger than any one individual. We can understand these co-specifying conditions in the following way.

 3. Gaming for Understanding (Brathwaite)- It's never easy to get across the magnitude of complex tragedies -- so when Brenda Brathwite's daughter came home from school asking about slavery, she did what she does for a living -- she designed a game. At TEDxPhoenix she describes the surprising effectiveness of this game, and others, in helping the player really understand the story.

4. Texting That Saves Lives (Lublin)- When Nancy Lublin started texting teenagers to help with her social advocacy organization, what she found was shocking -- they started texting back about their own problems, from bullying to depression to abuse. So she's setting up a text-only crisis line, and the results might be even more important than she expected.

 

I Must Be Missing Something

On the way in to work this morning I saw an article in the Star Ledger about plans to increase the number of tests high school students in New Jersey would need to pass to receive a diploma.  The proposal  unveiled by Governor Christie and acting Education Commissioner Cerf could hold high school students accountable to pass 12 end of the year exams.  The tests are seen as a way to ensure college and career readiness.  I did not have a chance to read through the article, but I gleaned enough from a skim to be skeptical of the proposal and its intended outcomes.

I sort of forgot about the article as other events from the day overshadowed the Governor's proposal.  I was, however, reminded of the Ledger article at dinner.  Towards the end of family dinner, the conversation drifted from the generic question about how school was to a specific inquiry about the NJASK.  I have two third graders and they are scheduled to sit for the NJASK next week.  One of the twins brushed off the series of exams, while the other shared that she was nervous.  We asked why and she responded by saying how important the tests are and that there were a lot of red "X's" on a recent ASK Prep assignment.  It seemed as if her nerves and confidence were conspiring to cause angst for next week's exams.

It was not surprising that of the two who shared concerns.  At times she lacks confidence and it would be safe to say that she is a much better person than student (as a side I'm happy this is the case).  My wife and I spent a few minutes reassuring her that she would do fine and that her best effort was all anyone could ask for.

I just wonder what is the point when a third grader is stressed about an upcoming assessment.  What can be that important about school when you are 8 years old?  I cannot help but think about the conversation at dinner and the idea to "ramp up" high stakes testing in New Jersey. The concept that the sum of all knowledge and competence can be contained in a single event just does not seem right.  I'm concerned that a child such as my own who is kind, considerate, creative, passionate reflective and intelligent is headed for a future based on how you do on a series state generated assessments.  I just hope that before moving forward with the proposal a wider audience is invited in to offer an opinion.  Both as a parent and high school educator I have to question how delivering 12 exams is the answer to any question about education and also, accurately assesses the growth of a child.