I am proud and honored to help announce the launch of a unique 9-month collaboration amongst leaders of independent schools to take a new approach to the issue of long-term financial and market sustainability in these times of dramatic change. I have been asked by the partnership of the National Business Officers Association (NBOA) and [...]
Every Wednesday evening (9 PM Eastern; 6 PM Pacific) a group of creative, energetic, risk-taking educators gathers for #DTK12chat, a virtual meeting on Twitter about the role and use of design thinking (DT) in K12 education. The pace and quality of the discussion is outstanding, including many links to resources to help others use the [...]
The team from Design 39 Campus in Poway Unified is in the SF Bay Area this week visiting schools, Google, and IDEO. I will be with them tomorrow when we gather with teams from Los Altos and Milpitas School Districts to share forward leaning innovations at all three districts. I will post several blogs this [...]
Last spring I wrote three posts in response to extensive research that proves that the bell-shaped curve of human performance is wrong. (I was reminded of it by watching Malcolm Gladwell's talk about the distribution of performance by students at a range of universities.) The Gaussian distribution lies at the absolute heart of school assessment, [...]
Does your school mission statement sound pretty much like every other school mission statement? Try this, posted during #satchatwc today by Carrie Ann Gehringer, teacher and coach in Ft. Bragg, CA. She did not mean it to be a mission statement, but I think it would make a GREAT one! Carrie, am so going to [...]
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 [...]
What if you could organize your school governance structure to align with forward-leaning principles of learning? What if you had a blank slate, with no or few legacy assumptions or restrictions? What would that look like? How would we "do" school differently? That is the opportunity and challenge we have at Design 39 Campus in [...]
Breaking silos is key to a new era of strategic thinking. That is exactly the leverage offered by a unique collaboration I am honored to lead in partnership with the National Business Officers Association and the Online School for Girls. Strange group? No! I won't reprise the whole program offering here: you can read about [...]
I was one of a small group attending in person a Google Hangout this morning hosted by OpenIDEO to discuss their current Open Challenge: How might we inspire young people to cultivate their creative confidence? Open IDEO has created a number of these challenges, where educators are invited to post inspirational events, ideas, connections, and [...]