Another great #satchatwc twitter chat yesterday focusing on our roles as leaders in schools, an outpouring of ideas and ideals about the importance of leadership. There was a lot of good advice and many poster quotes. But I left feeling that sometimes we miss one of the main points; there is still an enormous amount of implication [...]
Why is Silicon Valley the Magic Kingdom of innovation, and what lessons can K-12 schools learn about how innovation succeeds in times of rapid change? I have been pondering and studying this and will write a series of short blogs based on the findings of some long-standing experts from the Valley, translated into ideas and [...]
"If school change is not systematic and systemic, it is interesting, appealing, and maybe exciting, but not, ultimately, important." I just sent out that Tweet, and it can sound as if little changes don't matter, as if I fail to recognize that small changes, taken together, are the pioneering elements of systemic change. That is [...]
How might we engage community stakeholders more deeply in what happens at school? It is a critical question regardless of where your community lies on social and economic curves. Take this short story I heard this week and translate it into something powerful for your school. We visited Vista Innovation and Design Academy this week. Last [...]
The 1884 novella Flatland explores the perspective, movements, and relationships of human-like creatures who might inhabit worlds with different numbers of dimensions. It is the stuff of social satire and science fiction, what often provoke us to radical or disruptive thinking. What if the universe in which we live is actually very different from the one we perceive [...]
Have we crossed a tipping point towards the death of the American Dream? It is a sad, perhaps even horrifying thought to those whose historical window largely spans the last 75 years, or perhaps sees the genesis of that Dream in the almost miraculous prescience of the founding American generation of the late 18th century. The latest book [...]
How do the most creative, big-thinking, successful people you know learn? Obviously not by sitting at a desk in a room listening to someone talk at them for seven hours a day. Where do the best, most innovative educators in your school community go to grow, learn, and create? Not to the faculty lounge. What [...]
As we search, dig, and devise ways to make K-12 education more relevant to the demands of the 21st Century, do we overlook what has been working for the last 100 years? Are the answers right in front of us? Many of us argue that this is, indeed, the case, but few have made the case [...]
How are we doing on the path to deeper learning? At the ASCD gathering in Houston I sat in on a presentation by McRel International, the large education consulting group out of Denver. They shared some fascinating data, and with their permission I am sharing some highlights with you. Over the last decade, McRel consultants have [...]
Many schools are thinking about the function of a library. Some are focusing on changing the library to an innovation lab or makerspace or combination of those. Before rushing to this REALLY big, expensive decision, schools should think deeply about what purpose libraries have served in the past, and how those functions will manifest in [...]