If any of you still don't follow my friend and colleague Bo Adams, just do it. Bo and I presented a session at #NAISAC14, and for part of it I felt like the proud god-parent at a new child's baptism. Bo introduced us to work he and others are doing at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School [...]
I have studied problem solving and the arts of strategy for decades, and their application to schools for more than 15 years. Simply, school organizations have gotten strategy wrong; we have been active but ineffective problem solvers. During times of relative stasis, that is a condition we can live with; during times of dynamic change [...]
Last night Bo Adams and I were honored to chat about the nature and strengths of design thinking and its role in K-12 education. This Fireside Chat was organized under the auspices of the weekly #DTk12Chat on Twitter which takes place on Wednesdays at 9 PM ET/6 PM PT. It is routinely attended by dozens [...]
If we always think within the frame of the known, we never get outside the frame. This holds for classrooms as well as organizations. Teachers, don't stop reading just because the word 'strategy' appears; you are strategic leaders! I was editing a chapter for my book and wanted to share this bit, prompted by school [...]
Can your school afford to take two weeks off from normal classes and still meet your learning objectives? Most schools have trouble finding a spare 15 minutes a week in their busy schedule. Two weeks? Not possible. Yet it is, and Pomfret School is proving it right now. The entire school is taking the time [...]
Words matter. The first time I saw the word “ecosystem” used to describe a process of learning more attuned to the future needs of our students was by Thomas and Seeley-Brown in “A New Culture of Learning”. It resonated with me; they described the teacher as a farmer who sets out the boundary fences of inquiry [...]
“You made my head hurt”, the 10th grader told me during reflection of our three-hour learning block on how to observe, analyze, understand, and communicate about systems. He assured me he meant it in a good way, and that comment immediately went into my top-five all time moments as a teacher. It was my honor [...]
In two weeks I get to teach a morning lesson in systems thinking to sophomores at All Saints' Episcopal School. It's time to brush up on my own writing, Step 3 in The Falconer. The simple steps of systems thinking are so similar to what many of us are now incorporating as design thinking in [...]
I rarely post a prequel of a school visit, but I am so STOKED about the day I get to spend at All Saints Episcopal School in Ft. Worth later this month. When we find schools and school leaders that are really taking a new tack in learning, we need so share and celebrate. Plenty [...]
Katrina Schwartz (@kschwart) on Mindshift reports on the annual Software and Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 2013 Vision K-20 survey of use of technology in education. I always look for the dissonance as the place to start solving problems, so this bit shouted out to me: Almost half of all secondary schools allow students to bring their own devices now and [...]