Is the term "design thinking" completely foreign to you? Sort of heard about it and sort of know what it is? Want to get your toes wet? In addition to following along here and on the Twitter feed for #fuse14 in the next few days, you might want to spend something less than an hour [...]
There is a great exchange going on this morning on the #fuse14 Twitter feed about the role of "new" educational tools like maker-spaces, design studios, and design thinking. Lisa Goochee, a 4th grade teacher at an international school in Brazil kicked it off by asking if the " 'making' fervor is missing the forest for [...]
Do you wish your professional development budget was larger? Great interactions, learning, and personal growth do not have to always include getting on an airplane. Here is another simple, great chance to expand your comfort and knowledge base with both design thinking and online collegial connections: There are more than 200 weekly Twitter chats hosted [...]
Are you a Twitter novice? Don't have a Twitter account? Want to but kind of weirded out or uncertain about it? OK; now is the time to give it a try, because you can connect, with zero pain, to a whole bunch of other educators who, just like you, a few months or years ago [...]
What if faculty and staff viewed their individual and collective affinities through the lenses of learning and pedagogy rather than the silos of class, department, division, or office? What if faculty, staff, students, parents, and trustees engaged in strategic-level thinking together, on a frequent basis, collaboratively and transparently aligning school resources directly in support of [...]
Design thinking is not a product, a deliverable, or a stand alone process. Used to maximum advantage it is a mindset, an approach, a system of practice. An analogy comes to mind: some see yoga as stretching or working out in a hot gym. Those who embrace the mindset of yogic practice reap greater rewards than [...]
What would schools look like if educators could challenge, change, or discard something significant at their school? As many of you know I have challenged a wide variety of educators to contributed to a crowd-sourced knowledge base by asking "What if...?" questions that reflect this kind of expansive thinking. Over the last 15 months I [...]
In just 12 months, The Martin Institute, operating out of one small office in a modest-sized boy's school in Memphis, arguably one of the most economically challenged mid-sized cities in America, has hosted three major educational learning events for a total of 2,000+ educators from all over the country. For some, these have been the first [...]
What is the balance between academic freedom for teachers to choose their own pathways in their own classrooms, and ensuring a strong collective all-school vision? How does the effective leader find this balance? Many (most?) teachers are extremely protective of how they choose to carry out their role in the classroom. In both public and [...]
What would we think if our school leader stood up and admitted, “We have always said we really trust all of our faculty and staff, but the fact is that we don’t”? What if our schools are fundamentally organized in ways that conflict with our most basic wishes and aspirations? What if we knew that [...]