I apologize for largely ignoring by blogging duties for the last month or more. I have been nose-down in a semi-final draft of my new book, which is on schedule to be published by Jossey-Bass in September. Now that is turned in, I will try to be a more regular writer in this space!
Next week at the Chandler School in Pasadena, we am going to use a new tool, a template created by Mt. Vernon Institute for Innovation to help bring our ideas about the future to life. It is critical that schools get the order of innovation right; we can’t effectively change what we are doing unless we know what we want those changes to bring about. So we use tools like “What if?” and “How might we?” and writing headlines for the future, and the Four Futures protocol developed by the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.
MVIFI’s new “Future Frame” template promises to add to this trove of thinking: what would a web page, or a series of pages, about just one program or grade level, or about your whole school-of-the-future look like? What images would you see in this crystal ball? What headlines and blog posts? Imagine: next week with about 70 people in the room, and people working in un-siloed pairs and small groups, we might end up with 20-30 “paintings” of that future…with about 40 minutes of work.
Once we know where we want to go, it is a lot easier to get there. We will let you know how it goes!
Leave A Comment