Most Likely to Succeed @ The Kildonan School

Poster for Most Likely to Succeed.  Promotional
advertisement provided and shared by permission
of mltsfilm.org.

Having completed the first month of the 2015-2016 school year, the students of The Kildonan School have realized a fundamental fact:  we (the faculty) spend a vast amount of time discovering how they learn best.  Our pupils engage in innumerable conversations with tutors, subject matter faculty, and administrators to design those conditions under which they can receive the greatest academic benefit.  In focusing on education at the individual level, the community ensures that our students experience success while developing their particular learning strengths.

Despite the benefits of this process, we occasionally forget to extend these specific thoughts toward larger questions.  Because they concern the nature and design of education on a fundamental level, these queries also deserve our attention:

• "What is school for?"
• "What does school look like right now? 
• "Going forward, what can school be? What should it be?"
• "What do students need to know in the 21st century?"
• "If we can agree that students need to know something, how should they learn that content/skill?"

Cover of Most Likely to Succeed (print version). 
Image located at amazon.com through
The Global Achievement Gap.

Fortunately, we did not need to invent the wheel in order to probe this conversation on-campus.  Spurred by an insightful analysis of 21st century learning that he co-authored with Dr. Tony Wagner (@DrTonyWagner), Expert in Residence at Harvard University's Innovation Lab (@innovationlab), entrepreneur Ted Dintersmith (@dintersmith) teamed up with American filmmaker Greg Whiteley to create a fresh perspective on American education in the form of a documentary:  Most Likely to Succeed (@MLTSfilm).  After MLtS gained recognition at notable festivals such as Sundance and Tribeca, interested educators, administrators, community members, and entrepreneurs began a movement to spur screenings (and conversations on innovation within education) nationwide.  Passionate about the philosophy contained within the film and excited to bring the conversation to the Mid-Hudson Valley, Kildonan signed up and applied for a screening during the summer.

Fast-forward to Friday, October 9th:  the beginning of "Parents' Weekend."  During this annual celebration, parents and family members join faculty and administrators in celebrating student work, raising money for the school, and discussing student progress.  This year, after observing all of their children's classes and meditating upon the day's information over a communal meal, parents and families sat down with administrators, students, and faculty to watch Most Likely to Succeed in its entirety.  Eighty-seven individuals brought eighty-seven different educational perspectives with them to our screening.  Though our distinctions remained to color our impressions of the documentary, they nevertheless fell away due to a shared sense of earnestness.  Indeed, our common threads, already exposed by the day's preceding events, tightened and manifested as an expectant hush.

(What occurs within the film, you may wonder? For that, we refer you to mltsfilm.org to request your own screening.)

Faculty, students, alumni, and administrator representatives on the MLtS panel. 
Picture taken and owned by The Kildonan School.

At the conclusion of the film, representatives of administrators, students, faculty, and alumni came together as a panel to help the community reflect upon the documentary.  They began by discussing their own school-based experiences with dyslexia as well as their thoughts towards the future of education.  They then meditated upon Kildonan's programs using the film as a lens.  They highlighted the innovative, project-based learning (PBL) approaches practiced by the Kodiaks and Middle Years Program (MYP).  Additionally, because a majority of the panel members are (or have been) affiliates of Edge, the panel then switched gears to consider questions of 21st century learning using the program as a reference point.  We explored questions concerning self-directed learning, interdisciplinary content, organic collaboration, marketability to colleges, and the future of the program in relation to Kildonan and its Orton-Gillingham (OG)-based tutoring approach.

Due to time constraints, we adjourned the screening to a complimentary sale of Wagner and Dintersmith's book (graciously supplied by a local bookstore, Oblong Books and Music).  However, as with any good film or striking news story, the conversations did not end there; they took on a life of their own.  More than one Kildonan parent has expressed gratitude for the film, claiming that it has helped them align themselves with the School's vision, maintain faith in the face of the college application process, and even negotiate parent-teacher conferences with Kildonan staff more effectively.  The immediate school community has seen changes, too.  One junior has cited the film as his inspiration in electing to join Edge.  A freshman, too, felt inspired to ask his Science teacher to continue working on a project because he wished to present the very best product (to himself and his parents).

Image of High Tech High student at work.  Promotional advertisement provided
and shared by permission of mltsfilm.org.

As our community continues to feel the positive reverberations of this film, let's thank everyone involved in this event.  Thank you panel members for your participation; your words towards the film, towards the strategies that allow your dyslexia to work to your advantage, and towards your educational histories served as great pivot points for discussions between students, faculty, and parents.  Thank you, Dr. Mary Taft and Kevin Pendergast, for assisting the book sale and supporting this project from its inception.  Thank you, Admissions Staff and Logistics, for helping to embed this event within an already busy day; we could not have done this without you! Thank you, Oblong Books and Music, for facilitating the purchase of books for the event and thereby extending the message of MLtS across media.  The entire MLtS staff (Nora Parent, in particular) have proven endlessly generous in helping us negotiate the finer details of the screening; thank you for your aspirations and your film! Finally, thank YOU...the student, the parent, the faculty member, the administrator, the staff member, or the reader for proving brave enough to advocate for a new vision of education.

Have thoughts on the movie? Please post in the comments section below!

(P.S. Curious to see the film yourself? If you would like to host your own screening, please sign-up via mltsfilm.org.  If you would like to purchase Wagner and Dintersmith's book, we refer you first to the proper page on Oblong's site.)

"Are You Leading Change or Building a Platform for Change?," by Bruce Dixon

Please enjoy another Educating Modern Learners (EML) article below.

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Co-founder of EML and edtech consultant, Bruce Dixon (@bruceadixon) published an article on EML entitled "Are You Leading Change or Building a Platform for Change" (March 26, 2015).  Within the piece, he reconceptualizes educational environments.  He assures us that school leaders and administrators are not responsible for - and should not take on the task of - implementing educational change unilaterally.  Instead, he argues, a leader must "build a change platform—one that allows anyone to initiate change, recruit confederates, suggest solutions, and launch experiments."

This approach is radically egalitarian.  As Dixon explains, "the essence is that you are letting the team work outside of the normal hierarchy with a direct reporting line to senior leadership for the change effort."  To nurture this fledgling framework, faculty and administrators must be willing to challenge more than just traditional communication networks.  They must also be willing to question the physical environment in which their students learn, the curricula guiding student learning, and the assumptions about learning that we have held dear for over a century and a half.

Is your school ready?

For Dixon's article, please click here.  Please post in the comments section to share your views.

Geoff Mulgan: "A short intro to the Studio School"

 
Director of the Young Foundation (@the_young_fdn) and UK government employee, Geoff Mulgan (@geoffmulgan) delivers a TED Talk on a powerful re-imagining of education:  Studio Schools.  Designed to "address the growing gap between the skills and knowledge that young people require to succeed, and those that the current education system provides," Studio Schools prepare young adults for the global economy and encourage them to take inquiry- and project-based learning to the next level (quoted content taken from the Studio Schools website).  Mulgan shares more details on these institutions below:

First of all, we wanted small schools -- about 300, 400 pupils -- 14- to 19-year-olds, and critically, about 80 percent of the curriculum done not through sitting in classrooms, but through real-life, practical projects, working on commission to businesses, NGO's and others. That every pupil would have a coach, as well as teachers, who would have timetables much more like a work environment in a business. And all of this will be done within the public system, funded by public money, but independently run. And all at no extra cost, no selection, and allowing the pupils the route into university, even if many of them would want to become entrepreneurs and have manual jobs as well. Underlying it was some very simple ideas that large numbers of teenagers learn best by doing things, they learn best in teams and they learn best by doing things for real -- all the opposite of what mainstream schooling actually does.

What do you think of the idea of Studio Schools? Do you think that they are needed? (Research exists to justify them.) Please post in the comments section below.

Description of image:  A mock-up of a Studio School.  Photo located at www.studioschooltrust.org.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the image above.

"This Is Genius," by Ryan Lotocki

What follows is a spoken word poem by student Ryan Lotocki (filmed by: Nick Stroczkowski and Kurt Schlewitt).  Rather than provide an introduction for this video, we will remain silent and allow it to speak for itself.

What did you think? Please post in the comments section.  * If you would like to consult a transcript, please see below: *

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School Sucks. Now don’t get me wrong I believe everyone should have a general education. But when I know how to solve quadratic equations with imaginary roots graphically and am not sure how that applies to life… Or better yet, learned Cleopatra slept around, but never heard the history of my own city- you've failed. Now I’m not trying to sound cruel, but we live in a generation that would much rather smoke a joint then show up to school and to be honest, I’m tired of placing all the blame on them. I mean are we just pawns in a chess game waiting to accept their fate? Could the whole point of High School simply be just to graduate? You tell us to follow our dreams but have a plan B and don’t you see? The more you try to protect the children in this way, the more you reject the gifts they are trying to portray. See, school is a project in which students never get the chance to project their abilities. Having to follow a curriculum and take required classes, while stereo-typically the kid with high grades and glasses will make it into college and is more intelligent. Well, how about the student whose “Ingenious”, “In ordinary”, “Innovative”, “Intellectual”, “Incalculable”, “Inquisitive”, and has good intentions to change the world with his passion. I believe educating him would be something along the lines of ineluctable.

Take a musician for example: See to him, a score on a math exam will never mean as much as the score in front of him. Why waste his time trying to count and measure when he can already count each measure with just the tap of his foot- See this is genius; watch as the bow grazes against the instrument and his fingers pluck and pull at each string appropriately that creates a sound that just makes his body sway. But if he is controlled by a bell that just rings I guess you could say the school’s pulling his strings.

Or how about the cook with only a seventh grade reading level. If his ingredient list is not written in MLA format I think he’ll do just fine. Does his grammar matter when where you choose to dine is on the line and I’m not talking about margin. But when it comes to margarine and butter he actually knows the difference. He couldn't care less about the sophisticated words coming out of his mouth and more about the food going into yours- See this is genius. And if that doesn't fill the Hunger Games appetite you couldn't even think the Grapes of Wrath might.

Some Brilliance is as simplistic as hitting a ball. It doesn't matter if her science grade is an atrocity because I've never seen anyone spike a ball with so much strength, precision, and velocity, and the only elements she need know are those of speed and surprise, but to her parents’ eyes sports are just a waste of time- See this is genius. Practicing for so long she has little time to study for chemistry the only question remaining is, why can’t you be more like your sister Emily? What’s the matter? Kind of ironic though because like life, when it comes to school versus education every things the matter.

Putting children on an assembly line that has checkpoints. Where there only goal is to get us from point A to point Z but if we only get to F then we've failed. Plus our values and gifts are locked up and jailed. And why do we take tests? To tell us we’re wrong? It’s a number, not my wife. There is so much more to life than a grade in a book and what even of the SAT I just took. Because we all receive a number or a grade if you will, but our answers are locked up in vaults. Was the point to learn, or the thrill? And Common Core won’t solve anything so take a chill pill. We are not here to memorize facts but figure our future; and if the future holds taking a test to see who’s the best I want no part in that, there’s a fact. Now while I’m speaking to adults, I’m relating to the youth. I’m not pointing out your faults, but showing you the truth. Stop labeling us by standards and put us all on an even playing field. But let us choose our positions based on our passions, values, and where we can be proactive. Make schooling less multiple choice and more... Interactive. Because maybe your exponential at math, but that’s not how he functions because we all don’t have the same mechanics. Or possibly, you rock at science but in her opinion she’d rather not fill her head with space.

We are all sculpted in a different way. All made with different values, ideas, and clay; and if during my day, the only offered opportunity is continuity I could never get the chance to say: I am genius.

Ramsey Musallam: "3 rules to spark learning"

 
As we enter the spring, the last months of the academic year hang blissful and ominous before us.  Will we have the energy to endure? Will our students succumb to senioritis?

Fortunately, an answer has come from our personal learning network in the form of Ramsey Musallam (@ramusallam).  Chemistry teacher at Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep in San Francisco, CA, Ed.D. recipient, and manager of the Cycles of Learning blog, Musallam has had time to consider this question across fifteen years of teaching.  In a TED Talk delivered in 2013, Musallam critiques contemporary trends in education and argues that teachers must assign themselves a very specific purpose:  cultivators of curiosity.

You know, questions and curiosity like Maddie's are magnets that draw us towards our teachers, and they transcend all technology or buzzwords in education. But if we place these technologies before student inquiry, we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest tool as teachers: our students' questions. For example, flipping a boring lecture from the classroom to the screen of a mobile device might save instructional time, but if it is the focus of our students' experience, it's the same dehumanizing chatter just wrapped up in fancy clothing. But if instead we have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions, through those questions, we as teachers have information that we can use to tailor robust and informed methods of blended instruction.

What did you think of Musallam's presentation? Please post in the comments section below.

Nikhil Goyal: "Why Kids Hate School?" @ TEDxBFS (2012)

At the age of 19, activist and author Nikhil Goyal (@nikhilgoya_l) has accomplished no small amount.  An activist and champion of self-directed learning, Goyal has spoken at Google (@google), MIT (@MIT), Yale (@Yale), Stanford (@Stanford), and the University of Cambridge (@Cambridge_Uni).  He has appeared on various news stations, has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and has even authored the book One Size Does Not Fit All:  A Student's Assessment of School.  In this #TED Talk delivered at the Brooklyn Free School (#TEDxBFS) in 2012, Goyal begins by speaking about the shortcomings of school.  Although he is perhaps too strident and jumps from topic to topic using quotes, he does offer an organic vision of education that considers not only educators, administrators, and parents but also students themselves as its policymakers.

'Education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.'  Let me say that one more time.  'Education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.'  ... Because we have to get over this notion of education prep and move to life prep.  We have to create an educational society where learning is democratized and where kids are natural learners.  Where we're tinkering with the world.  Where they're changing things, they're pushing the human race forward.
...
Around the world today we're watching millions of young people that are under the age of twenty-five collectively protest for self-expression, transparency, and the sweet taste of freedom.  What we're doing to them is we're not giving them a voice.  We're not letting them speak out.  We're putting them on the sidelines.  What I like to say about public education is that we have 'the kids table' and we have 'the adults table.'  At the adults table, that's where all the decisions are made.  It's like Thanksgiving; we're separated.  And really, that's how it is.  We need to have one table where we have kids and adults.  What we offer, most importantly, kids, is a fresh perspective.

Thoughts? Please post in the comments section below.

Sugata Mitra: "School in the Cloud: What Happened after TED Prize 2013" @ TEDxUFM

Two years ago, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences (@secls) at Newcastle University (@StudentsNCL) Sugata Mitra (@Sugatam) won the 2013 TED Prize.  In the following @TEDxUFM Talk (delivered at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala), Mitra speaks about the progress he has made over the past two years:  "I made a project for TED. ... I would build seven laboratories, seven learning laboratories.  Five of them would be in India, and two of them would be in England."  His insights remain provocative, and his passion for self-directed learning proves as infectious as ever.

Well, there are reports from all around the world that children are not asking questions to people.  Or at least if they have to ask a question to a person, they do that after they have asked their phones.  Children don't want to learn how to multiply, divide, add, and subtract because they say they already know how to do that.  It's done with phones.  Children don't want to particularly learn to read because they say there are things that can read out things to them even if they don't know how to read.  At the moment, they don't like to write by hand because they want to know why they should learn to write by hand.  Will ever do it in the rest of their lives? So what happens in a world where reading, writing, and arithmetic are treated in such a cavalier manner?

...

In Killingworth, this is a room:  it just looks like a nice lounge with computers and an XBox (@XBox)  And the teachers, when I built it, they said, 'Sugata, this is a bit too much.  Do you have any idea of what they will do with that XBox? They will do nothing else except play with the XBox.'  So I said, 'Well, that's our challenge, isn't it?' If you've gone in there to teach Geography and the students are playing with the XBox, it means that Geography is more boring than the XBox.  Then we should re-look at Geography, chuck it from the curriculum, or put it into the XBox.  Somehow.

Description of the 1st image:  Mitra's SOLE learning laboratory in Killingworth, England.  Photo located at blog.ted.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above image.

For a post discussing Mitra's "The child-driven education," please click here.

For a post discussing Mitra's "Build a School in the Cloud," please click here.

"The Radicalism of Conversation," by Jonathan Bisson

Let's begin on Friday, December 5th.  Ms. Charlap, myself, and Khaled (affectionately known as K.) had just settled down in the IP office to one of our formal meetings.  K. had just told us that he was researching children's literature a la J.R.R. Tolkien.  He had explained, like Tolkien, that there was no definable entity known as "children's literature."  All literature, he posited, possesses merit (even if certain stories, he went on to say, lack a certain sophistication that might relegate them to a sphere for children).  * To learn more about K.'s explorations in this area, please click here. *

All of a sudden, when I asked “why,” something erupted.  K. answered.  I, feeling dissatisfied, parried his argument.  He - looking positively ravenous - pulled up a chair, issuing forth a torrent of qualifications.  As we locked horns, I had the distinct impression of something irrevocable and fundamental shifting.  Fundamental to my expectations for the meeting, certainly, but to something else too.  Fundamental to education.  Fundamental to the behavioral expectations set forth in schools for decades.

Something died.  And we - student and educator - were to blame.  What happened?

On one hand, K. was still being “taught” at this moment.  He was gradually narrowing his conception of childishness to produce a specific definition of children’s literature and to explain how it might differ from “adult” literature.

On the other hand, however, he was coming to understand the radical notion that he could challenge conventional forms of authority.  And the source in this scenario? His teacher.  Me.  When he and I began our verbal battle, the traditional educational roles, that hierarchy between teacher and student, those weighted identities for which I had prepared myself at the beginning of the year as an educator new to the field…they proved untenable. 

I realized that I simply could not teach him. I began to understand that, at that moment and perhaps at every other moment before, K. and I did not occupy a space in which the roles of teacher and student made any sense.

So...where was the teacher at this moment?

Perhaps the question defies a single response.  Realistically, it seems rather silly, too, in its infantile grasping for some authority figure that can contextualize the situation. 
So...why not abandon that need altogether? Why not consider that the true authority of this moment rests with the act of #conversation itself?
Sure, it would be rash to say that “talking” is somehow innovative.  Having spent the last twenty years in various education systems myself, I remember receiving feedback on countless occasions.

But let me explain.

There is a distinct difference between talking to and talking with someone.  Students are often talked to in education; teachers do not advise but tell them, unequivocally, what opinions they should form, what questions they must consider, and what their learning objectives are.  Now, only now, are teachers beginning to alter that practice by talking with their pupils.  Only now are they beginning to allow their agendas to breathe, to speak not to dominate learners' arguments but out of a genuine interest in the ideas that they are formulating.

It is that domain, among others, that holds particular promise for the future of education.  As I walked away from that conversation with K., I felt consumed by the burning desire to know, to create more of those scenarios so that I could begin not only to understand my students on a "whole child" level but also to collaborate with my colleagues more meaningfully.  I left, too, with the enduring impression that conversation, real conversation, gloriously begins to separate "learning" from "schooling."  It begins to build that supreme level of engagement so sought after in classrooms; it works to instill personal passion.

Conversation, when distilled to its quintessence, builds stronger relationships.  To accomplish this, it cannot function divisively; it cannot preserve the traditional roles of "teacher" and "student."  Instead, it can only equalize.  Rapturously, it must only create "learners."

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For more reading on the power of dialogue in learning, please explore Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) and his two blog posts:  "Learning as dialogue" and "Teaching and learning through dialogue."

Description of 1st image:  A shot of the conversation between K., at left, and myself.  Photo taken by Ms. Charlap.

Description of 2nd image:  A roundtable consisting of teachers and students.  Photo located at www.vicsrc.org.au.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over this picture.

Shelley Wright: "The power of student-driven learning" @ TEDxWestVancouverED

A teacher/​education blogger living in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Shelley Wright (@wrightsroom) enjoyed a career-altering experience when a course on pedagogy opened her eyes to self-directed learning.  In a TED Talk delivered at TEDxWestVancouverED (@TEDxWestVanED) Wright relates that, one day, she created the space for her science class to independently launch a project.  They decided to raise money for a non-profit organization attempting to build schools for Ugandan refugees.  The goal of Wright's students? $20,000 in 45 days.

And so as I stood at the front of my room looking at my students, I said, 'If you could design school to be anything you wanted it to be, what would it look like? What would it sound like? What would I hear? What would I see? What would it feel like? What would you be doing?' And when they realized that I was serious, they began to write.
...
That day I learned to believe in my students.  To believe in what really, deeply matters to them.  And to remove whatever obstacles I can to try to make that happen.  More importantly, my students learned to believe in themselves.  They learned that they can make a difference.  They had a saying the entire forty-five days:  'We are not the future.  We are right now.'

"Octolaunch," by Sandy Charlap

John Seely Brown: "Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production" (2008)

In his A New Culture of Learning:  Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, researcher John Seely Brown (@jseelybrown) explores imagination, play, and innovation as they can influence current education paradigms.  In a brief video talk, he breaks down some of his theories:

What could we do better in schools today? ... We have to kind of find a way to get today's kids to embrace change.  We have to get them to want to constantly learn new types of things.  And the catch, to me, is somehow we have to find a way to get kids to play with knowledge.  To play with finding information.  To play with creating knowledge.  Not always believing that it's already known, but basically being willing to believe that maybe they should be able to create knowledge on the fly by experimenting with things.

And...

So I think we can construct new kinds of learning environments.  Not only are we learning with and from each other, not only are we teaching each other as well, but we're actually understanding that authority - to some extent - lies in whether or not this thing I've just built is as good as I think it could be ....

What suggestions do you have for students and teachers who wish to implement more "tinkering" and "playful" scenarios in the classroom and in life? Please post in the comments below.  For Maria Popova's (@brainpicker) article on A New Culture of Learning available on Brain Pickings (@brainpickings), please click here.

Description of image:  A child "tinkering" away.  Photo located at graphics8.nytimes.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above picture.

Donald Clark: "More pedagogic change in 10 years than last 1000 years" @ TEDxGlasgow

CEO and one of the founders of Epic Group PLC, Donald Clark (@DonaldClarke63) is committed to the idea that #technology does - and must - play a role in education (passages taken from Clark's bio).  Having spent "30 years experience in online learning, games, simulations, social media and mobile learning projects," Clark had this to say about technology in education during a 2012 @TEDxGlasgow event:

The real scalability in education comes with the Internet because it gives us a world of digital replication for free.  A world of digital abundance where some aspects of learning content are available for anyone, anywhere, at any time.  It absolutely frees us from the tyranny of time and location. ... And that's the trick:  freeing education from a place, from a specific time.

Now if - as is clearly the case - the Internet and #socialmedia can lead young people to change the tyrannical and corrupt governments, can we really say that social media will have no role in education? How do you think those kids in Tahrir Square (@3alTahrir) learned to avoid tear gas by using Pepsi Cola (@pepsi)? How do you think those revolutions arose first through blogging, then through Facebook, then through Twitter, then through YouTube, and the ubiquity of mobile devices? We'd be fools to ignore the pedagogic lessons that are right in front of our eyes, politically and in terms of education.

What do you think? How can we use social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube educationally? Please post in the comments below.

Description of image:  Various social media channels.  Picture located at cdn.socialmediaexaminer.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above graphic.

Cameron Herold: "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs" @ TEDxEdmonton

Speaker, author of Double, Double:  How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less, and an influential source in increasing the revenue of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? from $2 million to $106 million in just six years, Cameron Herold (@CameronHerold) is - first and foremost - an #entrepreneur.  Four years ago, he delivered a TED Talk (@TEDTalks) at TEDxEdmonton (@TEDxEdmonton) during which he called upon parents and teachers to alter their rearing and educational practices in one fundamental way:  by instilling entrepreneurial skills in ALL children.  Herold, after all, "has been a entrepreneurial innovator since launching his first company at the age of 21" (passage taken from Herold's bio); he began acquiring business strategies at a very young age, so he understands the importance of nurture AND nature in developing an entrepreneurial mindset.

Herold goes on to frame a sort of psychological and educational profile of entrepreneurs.  Does this sound familiar...?

I just came back from speaking in Barcelona at the YPO global conference, and everyone that I met over there who's an entrepreneur struggled with school. I have 18 out of the 19 signs of attention deficit disorder diagnosed. ... Attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder. Do you know that bipolar disorder is nicknamed the CEO disease? Ted Turner (@TedTurnerIII)'s got it. Steve Jobs has it. All three of the founders of Netscape had it. I could go on and on. Kids -- you can see these signs in kids. And what we're doing is we're giving them Ritalin and saying, 'Don't be an entrepreneurial type. Fit into this other system and try to become a student.' Sorry, entrepreneurs aren't students. We fast-track. We figure out the game.

Are our dyslexic students/​children predisposed to greater entrepreneurial prowess? Do you have a strategy, lesson plan, etc. to help our kids practice innovation in life and in the classroom? Please write in the comments section below.

Description of image:  Herold delivering his "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs" @ TEDxEdmonton.  Picture located at static.squarespace.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above photo.

Sir Ken Robinson: "How to escape education's death valley" @ TED Talks Education (2013)

More words from  English author, speaker and international advisor on education Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson):

Not far from where I live is a place called Death Valley. Death Valley is the hottest, driest place in America, and nothing grows there. Nothing grows there because it doesn't rain. Hence, Death Valley. In the winter of 2004, it rained in Death Valley. Seven inches of rain fell over a very short period. And in the spring of 2005, there was a phenomenon. The whole floor of Death Valley was carpeted in flowers for a while. What it proved is this: that Death Valley isn't dead. It's dormant. Right beneath the surface are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right conditions to come about, and with organic systems, if the conditions are right, life is inevitable. It happens all the time. You take an area, a school, a district, you change the conditions, give people a different sense of possibility, a different set of expectations, a broader range of opportunities, you cherish and value the relationships between teachers and learners, you offer people the discretion to be creative and to innovate in what they do, and schools that were once bereft spring to life.

For a post discussing Robinson's "RSA Animate:  Changing Education Paradigms," please click here.

For a post discussing Robinson's "How schools kill creativity," please click here. 

For a post discussing Robinson's "Bring on the learning revolution!," please click here.

Charles Bingham: "Why we should shred our diplomas" @TEDxSFU

Epistemenarchist, philosopher, and professor Charles Bingham (@bingbingham) offers an intriguing perspective on higher education (#highered) and the implications of a diploma.  Let these words be food for thought for all of our budding graduates:

I think the main way the myth of schooling continues is through a small piece of paper called the diploma.  The diploma has two lives, really.  On one hand, a diploma is that thing that we all know and love.  It's a sign that I graduated from high school, or college, or university.  On the other hand, with every diploma that's printed, the diploma says, 'Knowledge is scarce, and it's supposed to be obtained only at this or that school.'

Will Richardson at TEDxNYED (2011)

American educator, parent, author, speaker, blogger, and co-publisher of Educating Modern Learners (EML) Will Richardson (@willrich45) at @TEDxNYED.

For a post discussing Richardson's "Education Leadership" at TEDxMelbourne, please click here.

Will Richardson: "Education Leadership" at TEDxMelbourne

 
American educator, parent, author, speaker, blogger, and co-publisher of Educating Modern Learners (EML) Will Richardson (@willrich45) has been called "a trendsetter in education" by The New York Times.  He has spoken to tens of thousands of educators in more than a dozen countries about the value of online learning networks.  Two years ago, he presented at TEDxMelbourne (@TEDxMelbourne), an event that encouraged educators, parents, and students to think about the "changing nature of education and how technology can shape the future of learning" (passages taken from YouTube description of Richardson's talk).

Richardson raises some valid points that we in education must begin to discuss:

We have to start thinking differently about what school is. There's a great quote that I read by a guy by the name of Justin Reich (the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow, based in the Office of the President and Provost at Harvard University: @bjfr) who's a teacher at Harvard.  And he said, 'You know, the problem right now is that we're paying so much attention to the measurable part of learning that we risk neglecting the immeasurable part of learning."  And it's that immeasurable part that - right now, in a world where we have access to so much stuff - it's that immeasurable stuff, that hard-to-measure stuff that's much more important. It's that creativity, that gritty problem-solving, that persevering disposition that we have toward learning.  All that stuff that's really hard to measure? That's the stuff that our children need right now.

For a post discussing Richardson at TEDxNYED (2011), please click here.

Sugata Mitra: "Build a School in the Cloud" @ TED2013

 

One year ago, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences (@secls) at Newcastle University (@StudentsNCL) Sugata Mitra (@Sugatam) won the 2013 TED Prize (@TEDPrize).  At TED2013, he delivered his wish that the world help him "build a school in the cloud."  He essentially called upon educators, parents, and students to assist him in designing a learning experience whereby all children - located all over the world - can interact with technology and pursue meaningful questions in environments in which adults merely support and encourage them.  He also addressed these same populations to implement Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) (@schoolincloud) and to forward him the data to serve as the raw materials for upcoming publications.

What results has Mitra's "wish" engendered far? SOLE Central (@NCLsolecentral) and the beginning of classroom-based implementation of SOLEs.  

The learning revolution begins.  Will we soon see SOLE-based classrooms at Kildonan...?

So what's happening here? I think what we need to look at is ... learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It's not about making learning happen. It's about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens. I think that's what all this is pointing at.

For our previous post on Sugata Mitra's "The child-driven education," please click here.  For a link to Mitra's TED Book, Beyond the Hole in the Wall, please click here.

(SOLE Central, pictured above.  Photo located at ncl.ac.uk.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over this image.)  

For a post discussing Mitra's "The child-driven education," please click here.

For a post discussing Mitra's "School in the Cloud: What Happened after TED Prize 2013," please click here.

 

Sir Ken Robinson: "Bring on the learning revolution!" @ TED2010

Four or five years ago, English author, speaker and international advisor on education Sir Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) delivered a TED Talk in which he criticized the linear, factory model of education.  In such a system, Robinson explained, educators/​schools employ static curricula to lead students to a pre-determined "output" or skills base.  He went onto to assert that the world needs a supportive, agricultural framework of education that supports children as they organically formulate answers to their own questions using a personalized curriculum.

We have moved closer to Robinson's conception over the past five years.  BUT...have we enacted the revolution that he demands?

But, you see, there are things we're enthralled to in education. Let me give you a couple of examples. One of them is the idea of linearity: that it starts here and you go through a track and if you do everything right, you will end up set for the rest of your life. Everybody who's spoken at TED has told us implicitly, or sometimes explicitly, a different story: that life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the circumstances they help to create for us. But, you know, we have become obsessed with this linear narrative. And probably the pinnacle for education is getting you to college. I think we are obsessed with getting people to college. Certain sorts of college. I don't mean you shouldn't go to college, but not everybody needs to go and not everybody needs to go now. Maybe they go later, not right away.

...

There's been a lot of talk about dreams over the course of this few days. And I wanted to just very quickly ... I was very struck by Natalie Merchant's songs last night, recovering old poems. I wanted to read you a quick, very short poem from W. B. Yeats, who some of you may know. He wrote this to his love, Maud Gonne, and he was bewailing the fact that he couldn't really give her what he thought she wanted from him. And he says, 'I've got something else, but it may not be for you.' He says this: 'Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.' And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.

For a post discussing Robinson's "RSA Animate:  Changing Education Paradigms," please click here.

For a post discussing Robinson's "How schools kill creativity," please click here. 

For a post discussing Robinson's "How to escape education's death valley," please click here.

Peter Gray: "The decline of play" at TEDxNavesink

In following TEDx Talk, author, American psychologist, and research professor of psychology at Boston College (@BostonCollege) Dr. Peter Gray discusses play as well as our children's and students' access to it.  He suggests that, since the 1950s, there has been "a dramatic decline in children's freedom to play with other children" without the presence of adult supervision (passages taken from the YouTube (@YouTube) description offered by TEDx Talks).  He also notes a "dramatic increase in anxiety, depression, feelings of helplessness, suicide, and narcissism in children and adolescents" and hypothesizes that this trend is directly influenced by the decline of play.  Ultimately, he argues that "free play is essential for children's healthy social and emotional development."

The particularly chilling aspect of this talk is that Dr. Gray's message was delivered only six months ago.  Occasionally we are able to construct for ourselves a kind of barrier in which we are able to rationalize danger simply by measuring the passage of time.  For example, a person might be able to defuse the call-to-arms offered by a video concerned with antibiotic resistant strains of diseases merely because the video was released several years earlier.  Even if no measurable and substantial progress has been made, time in itself gives the viewer the illusion that things have improved.  But this video, so pivotal to the emotional states of our children and students as they learn in school right now, allows us no such buffer.  The question remains, then:  what can we do to change this? What plans can we immediately initiate to alleviate this problem and bring more unstructured free time back into the lives of young people?