Inspiration Plus Creativity Equals Innovative Teaching And Learning

Source: ASIDE, 2015

Education is smack in the middle of an earth swell of change. No matter how hard the system tries to maintain a rigid set of evaluative assessments, something has to give. Otherwise, we will lose too many teachers over restrictions, and worse, too many young people who know that outside of school the freedom to learn, experiment, and create exists.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

Sure, we know that the fundamentals of reading and writing are key to understanding complex information. We are not advocates for throwing the baby out with the bath water. But perhaps the recent change in Finland to dump teaching subjects in favor of topics should send shockwaves through a system that constantly tries to reinvent itself with nothing more than new standards.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

One of our mantras over the last few years with our learners has been to, “Look at more stuff. Think about it harder.” We don’t claim to take this as our own, but recently we felt compelled to revisit one of our favorite books, Look At More: A Proven Approach to Innovation, Growth, and Change, by Andy Stefanovich.

While we know that schools are not businesses, we also know that the insights Stefanovich tries to bring to companies apply to any institution with the desire to promote innovative thinking. His ideas and concepts cross over into any discipline. His fundamental formula:

 I + C = I, or Inspiration + Creativity = Innovation

This equation also applies to education. We seek to inspire our learners to use creative thinking to come up with innovative ideas; likewise, we hope to do the same with our approach to teaching.

To inspire others is, after all, why we teach. We rely on inspiration as the fuel for engagement. Just like a business, we want to encourage an environment of productivity for learners. To do this, we can no longer sacrifice inspiration for efficiency.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

The framework behind LAMSTAIH includes five key drivers, including mood, mindset, mechanisms, measurement, and momentum to push the thinking and change the behavior in order to extract new ideas.

The concept behind each “M” not only provides a way for leadership to look at the needs of an institution, but it also helps to promote innovative ways of teaching and learning. Educational conversations circle around many of the same ideas.

So perhaps we could learn a thing or two by looking at more, including the insightful description of the three kinds of curators mentioned the book. On the one hand we have the traditionalist, who is the keeper of objects with the role of making sure that people of the future benefit from the collection of knowledge, and the Zeitgeist curator, who captures the essence of today and connects it to the not too distant future. This sounds like the role of the teacher. And then there is the hunter-gatherer curator, who constantly searches for anything that interests him or her and shares it with the world. Sound familiar? This represents most of the learners we teach.

Source: ASIDE, 2015

So where are teachers and learners as curators? More importantly, where do we want to be? At the moment, many educators are in the middle, yet our students outside of school are hunting and gathering.

Life-long learning is far more like the migrating hunter-gatherer, and technology has opened that door. We need to harness that energy, that inspiration, and that understanding of the power of connections to explore ideas. We can’t keep kids from exploring, connecting, and learning; we want them to be inspired, creative, and innovative.

The Power Of An Idea

Source: Amazon

There are wonderful picture books published every year, but sometimes there’s one that stands out from the crowd. What Do You Do With An Idea? by Kobi Yamada and illustrated by Mae Bosem is the one. This book is a wonderful story about a brilliant idea and the child who helps bring it to the world. As the idea grows, so does the confidence of the child. This inspirational tale is for anyone, of any age, who’s ever had an idea but may be reluctant to embrace it, because it might seem different, odd, or just a little too big.

The message in this book speaks volumes about giving ideas a place to grow and seeing what happens next. Ideas don’t disappear; they follow us. If we don’t allow them to develop in children as part of the learning process, we will continue to lose the spark of brilliance to rote compliance. Educators want the freedom to encourage kids to cultivate their ideas and bring them to fruition. Sadly, this is not the norm in classrooms today with enormous pressure on them to meet testing requirements.

Source: Amazon

We can talk all we want about “genius hours” and “authentic learning,” but unless the current evaluative system for schools, teachers, and students changes, it’s a moot point. The pendulum has swung so far away from the block areas and free play in kindergartens and toward learning “centers” that we are losing that inventive spirit in kids. They are less creative to think of ideas, and they constantly look for instruction on what to do next. Oddly enough, the successful and highly educated adults who try to initiate reform, who participate in open discussions on social media, and who publish commentary did not go through the school-testing mania, and they’re okay. So how did education get so off track? If we want kids to dream BIG, we need to let them.

Educators need flexibility with an evaluative process based on authentic learning experiences and the environments in which they take place. Would it hurt learning if kids were given "20 percent time" to develop ideas? We think not. Major corporations such as Pixar and IDEO pride their successes on creative work environments, and others like Google and 3M encourage employees to use 20 percent of their work time to play freely to stimulate the growth of new ideas. The upshot of this free time is the many products and services that are second nature to us today.

The more we review our own curricula, the more we see the importance of devoting time in class to allow students to cultivate their genius and creative thinking. To be fair, it should be in school, to give all students the same opportunity. Too many of them are overscheduled outside of school, and others who don’t have the means are at a disadvantage. While we applaud makerspaces and maker fairs, they require payment to attend and parents with time and interest to take their children. By bringing it into the classroom, we can promote a culture of collaboration, guide kids through mistakes along the way, and celebrate the natural growth of discovery.

Steve Jobs was allowed to tinker in his father's garage; Bill Gates played with computers from a young age. Need we say more? Their ideas changed the world, literally. What we want for our students is exactly what the child in the book discovers:

“Then, one day, something amazing happened. My idea changed right before my eyes. It spread its wings, took flight, and burst into the sky. And then, I realized what you can do with an idea… You change the world.”

We don't need to throw out structure and assessment; what we do need is a new system that supports student learning and allows for higher order teaching. With more choice, we can empower the brainchild in both.

Source: Amazon

Entrepreneurship And Schools

Source: Grasshopper

The recent discussion posted to the International Society For Technology In Education’s LinkedIn group via the Fishtree Blog asks the question, “Should entrepreneurship be taught at school?” Our answer is a resounding YES! It also reminds us of an excellent motion graphic called Entrepreneurs Can Change the World by the Grasshopper group. We’ve used it to kick off our interdisciplinary, fifth-grade entrepreneur project for the past three years with much success.

Ironically, the video starts off with “Remember when you were a kid…and you thought you could do anything.” If we want to tap the creative potential of our kids, we should provide more opportunities for them in school to develop an entrepreneurial spirit. We see no reason why it should wait. They are kids, and we want them to think they can do anything.

Source: Grasshopper

We’ve talked to our students about the many successful startups of products they know that began with kids in their teens, and some even earlier. Others such as the founders of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook were only in their early 20s when they developed their businesses.

The argument that you can’t teach someone to be an entrepreneur misses the point; opening opportunities to learn about the entrepreneurial process is the key. When we engage kids with the possibilities that their ideas could matter, or make a difference, we’ve already started planting the seeds to think differently and to discover. It’s not about success or failure, but using ingenuity to develop an idea. We should be tapping into this as educators.


If schools are looking to promote creativity and innovation, we need to encourage this from an early age.  Let's give kids more time to think things through with a critical eye and more flexibility to accomplish it. This can be achieved by incorporating entrepreneurship in age-appropriate ways to develop an understanding about real problem-solving. It also goes to the core of using design thinking and project-based learning in the classroom.

Source: Grasshopper

As educators, we want to open the minds of our youngest learners to the idea that they could change the world. We tell them you, too, can make a difference, and it’s rewarding to watch them try.

Inside-Outside - TEDxNYED 2013

Source: TEDxNYED

The theme for the fourth annual TEDxNYED conference was "Inside-Outside." Presented in the majestic 91-year-old auditorium of the Brooklyn Technical High School, on Saturday, April 27, 2013, the series of talks focused on learning inside and outside of the classroom. Or, to quote Jonathan Soma, one of the day's presenters, the motif can be flipped to view outward-facing education as earning grades for college and for parents, and inward-facing education as nurturing life-long hobbies and self-betterment.

TEDxNYED, April 27, 2013 -
Source: ASIDE

Each passionate speaker shared insights about a unique slice of modern learning. Some common strands, however, wove through all of the orations, including:

• Meaningful person-to-person interactions are essential, especially in the emerging world of automated education
• Experience is more important than content
• Motivated educators are carving out niches of hands-on discovery, despite the impediments against them

If you were unable to attend the gathering, the talks will soon be posted online. Here's our recap, which highlights just a few of the ideas that struck us as worth sharing. Also, be sure to check out the Twitter #TEDxNYED archive for a lively real-time record.

Sabrina Stevens, TEDxNYED, April 27, 2013 - Source: ASIDE

Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff) - "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now"
In a world that is constantly connected, we need to exploit a peer-to-peer culture of learning. Most digital interaction is based on scripted "Read Only" performances in what is actually a "Read-Write" world. One of the best roles of online learning is using computers to teach computers. Programming is about engineering, liberal arts, and culture.

Sabrina Stevens (@teachersabrina) - "On Love, Democracy, And Public Schools"
What makes you respected as an independent school educator makes you a dissident in a test-obsessed public school. We keep waiting for the "justice fairy" to fix our schools. This is the wish that "somebody" is to blame and "somebody" needs to do something. Disempowerment is a cooperative act, while empowerment is an act of love that requires teaching.

Ahmed Abdelqader & Jason Nadboy - "Math Matters"
Students teaching other students, from high schoolers to middle schoolers, can produce inspiration in math enrichment. An ambitious spirit can kindle curiosity through game theory, graph theory, and magic squares.

Trung Le (@lecannondesign) - "The Third Teacher"
A school's environment can be emblematic of a desire to inspire thinkers. The design of the physical space can enhance the ecology of learning. Many schools currently treat learning as separate buckets of paint, but life is a messy splatter of hues. With information free everywhere, the value of school is no longer the content but the experience. Deep learning powered by technology leads to transformation.

Trung Le, TEDxNYED, April 27, 2013 - Source: ASIDE

Gary Stager (@garystager) - "Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering In The Classroom"
Young people have a remarkable capacity for intensity. Why do schools, therefore, insist on whole-class instruction and full-frontal teaching, killing flow with too many transitions? "Settle-down" time really means "wait for the next instruction." Those who remember a time when classrooms included play, gerbils, and imagination have a responsibility to remind their colleagues and inform their students, starting immediately. Complexity is possible when we make simple things easy to do.

Stephanie Rivera (@stephrrivera) - "Teacher Under Construction"
When you dreamed of being a teacher, did you dream of being a doormat? How many educators have silently sent in their resignation letters? Don't ignore the negative stereotypes of teachers. Speak up, or others will speak for you. Learning is not a standard and teachers are not puppets.

Kristen Swanson (@kristenswanson) - "Viral Learning"
Viral ideas are small, infectious notions that replicate inside living organisms. If learning is participatory, personal, and powerful, it becomes shareable and spreadable. It takes on a feeling of epicness.

Jen Messier & Jonathan Soma (@bkbrains) - "Brooklyn Brainery"
If you throw a rock, you can find an enthusiast or expert on almost any topic. The challenge is convincing them they can be teachers. The only credentials necessary are passion and a connection to the audience. The surprising truth is that everyone is interested in everything. You just have to give them the avenue to learn it.

Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) - "The Laws Of Educational Robotics"
Robots today can do almost anything, but can they recognize human cognitive differences? Computers can automatically grade essays and assess understanding, but can they teach us how to learn? If computers read as well as humans, it's because we've taught humans to read like computers. With no rules to govern them, will educational robots harm our humanity?

Math Matters, TEDxNYED, April 27, 2013 - Source: ASIDE

Justin Lanier, Paul Salomon, & Anna Weitman (@mathmunch) - "Math Munch"
What is the nature of math discovery? Does it take a genius? Is the culture of math off-putting? We can draw kids into the creative experience with puzzles, art, and imagination. We can tell children that their mathematic, literary, and artistic works have a place in the greater world.

Maurya Couvares (@mauryacouvares) - "ScriptEd"
We must give low income students the options of careers in computers, where they can both use technology and create technology. Mentored by experts in the field, coders become creative. Kids cannot rely on a select group of insiders to design their futures. Children must be the creators in their communities.

Reshan Richards (@reshanrichards) - "Don't Control The Learning Experience"
Learning is spontaneous and complicated. Despite all those who try, it cannot be controlled. The biggest mistake in education is thinking grades are the same as assessment. Open-ended tools and user-designed applications can stretch the bounds of what is possible. We should not try to control the learning experience, but guide it.

Don Buckley (@donbuckley) - "Building A Culture Of Innovation"
To build a culture of innovation, you need the right people, the appropriate incentives, and a common language. Through design thinking and ideation, you can survey the landscape and find areas of opportunity. Schools can even build innovation "pop-ups" to share research and proposals that rethink lunch, homework, recess, and grading.

Math Munch, TEDxNYED, April 27, 2013 - Source: ASIDE

We'd like to thank all of the experts who made it worthwhile to spend an unseasonably sunny Saturday inside a dark theater. The event organizers, such as Patrick Honner (@mrhonner) and Basil Kolani (@bkolani), also deserve our appreciation for their hard work and unruffled manner. If you happen to be in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, we recommend the iced coffee at the charming Cammareri bakery.

Don Buckley, TEDxNYED, April 27, 2013 - Source: ASIDE

By the way, here's the rundown of last year's TEDxNYED 2012, if you want to compare the affairs.

Inspiring Entrepreneurship In Kids

Source: ASIDE, 2013

We are in the third year of our fifth grade entrepreneur program, and with each undertaking we get more inspired by our students’ interest, responsibility, and serious approach to the project. Their appetite for the challenge to think like an entrepreneur comes more easily each time.

This spring we were fortunate to have as our speaker Leonard Green, who is an entrepreneur as well as an adjunct lecturer at Babson College, which is ranked number one in the world for its entrepreneur program. To have Professor Green, therefore, as a guest lecturer at our school was quite an honor.  He was awe-inspiring for the students, and to watch him use college strategies with ten-year-old kids was professional development for us, too.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

Professor Green truly believes that all children are born entrepreneurs, but once kids enter school, we teach them rules that stifle creativity. He made no bones about this to the students. He told them that entrepreneurs “break the rules," and that they should find their passions. He let them know from the outset that he lost many jobs and flunked out of three colleges, but he knew he had ideas and kept at it. He was passionate and encouraged them to pursue their dreams. His closing words were “never be concerned about doing things.”

Source: ASIDE, 2013

Entrepreneurship goes to the heart of design thinking. Many of our students this year are practicing this idea at its core by identifying a problem that needs to be solved and coming up with solutions. We could not ask for more as teachers. With each new crop of young entrepreneurs, the excitement for the project builds. We truly believe we can raise every learner to think like one. The more we give kids the opportunity to try, the more it reinforces our belief in the process.

Things Americans Want From Higher Ed

Source: news@Northeastern

Northeastern University put together this infographic on the 5 Things People Want from Higher Education based on its recent national survey. The results were announced in November by Northeastern President, Joseph E. Aoun. Although the majority of Americans think higher education is critical to success, 83% believe the country's current system must innovate in order for it to remain competitive in a global leadership position. President Aoun stated,

"In over­whelming num­bers, they’re telling us that the system of today will not meet the chal­lenges of tomorrow. These find­ings are a wake-​​up call for those of us in higher edu­ca­tion to renew the social com­pact we have always had with Amer­i­cans by inno­vating across mul­tiple dimensions.”

What people want include global study/work opportunities, entrepreneurship, integration of professional work opportunities, hybrid courses, and lower cost. It is not only a wake-up call for higher education, but also for our K-12 system, particularly at the high school level.

Source: news@Northeastern

Century of the Child: Moving Forward

Source: MoMA

This summer, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened the Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900-2000 exhibition. The inspiration for this show was taken from Swedish designer and social theorist Ellen Key’s book, Century of the Child, published in 1900. Key saw the 20th century as a period of progressive thinking about the rights, development, and well-being of children as important to nurture in society.

Source: MoMA

As we get deeper into the 21st century, some of the same issues raised at the beginning of the last century are emerging today, particularly in the area of education. The exhibition examines “the material world of children from utopian dreams as citizens of the future to the dark realities of political conflict and exploitation.” Sound familiar? During the last century, modern architects and designers preoccupied themselves with childhood, including school architecture, clothing, playgrounds, toys, games, and a lot more. MoMA produced a wonderful interactive website to go along with this exhibit. The timeline walks the visitor through the objects on display by period, complete with detailed information and related works.

Source: Pat Kane, The Play Ethic

The exhibition starts at the turn of the last century when the kindergarten movement emerged. The "children's garden" was to be a place that valued a child’s enjoyment, creative process, and intuitive investigation of materials. This is not what many kindergartens look like today. Too often they are worksheet driven in preparation for testing. Ironically, the timeline ends with the quote by Pat Kane from his book The Play Ethic, featured here, on how play will be our dominant way of knowing, doing, and creating value. Perhaps we should send legislators and government officials on a field trip to this exhibition.

Historically, the notion of what’s best for children changed as events of the world and advancements in technology evolved. Similarly, the preoccupation with the best way to educate children is going through the same process today. Perhaps it’s because we’ve lost the focus on creativity and play in the classroom. For more than a decade, NCLB has pushed education into mediocrity, opting for a homogenized system to pass tests. We’ve taken the play out of learning, and as a result, children have disengaged in a flawed process to the tune of over a 35% dropout rate.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Today, free play to learn how to socialize, invent, and imagine is rare; instead, child's play is organized. Add in diminished recess, limited physical education, and worksheet-driven classrooms and we have a recipe for unimaginative kids who lack a passion for learning. It is no wonder that we have trouble getting kids to think creatively. If they can’t play, they can’t learn and certainly not innovate.

This is Tony Wagner’s point in his most recent book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. Innovation is interdisciplinary. We need to promote play, passion and purpose for it and break free of fixed silos of learning. Creating innovators is not part of mainstream, conventional education that is too focused on measuring assessments through one-right answer tests. Likewise, the Common Core with all its good intentions still forces the same evaluation of student performance and now teachers, too.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Like the modernist of the last century, we should see this as a push for progressive design thinking and advocate for the value of play, creativity, and design as intrinsic parts of student learning. The emergence of design thinking into the pedagogical milieu of educators toward long-range solutions is growing. If we combine this with a reformed and integrated approach to learning, doing, and making things, there’s no telling what could grow out of it.

Interestingly enough, the Century of the Child exhibition began with how “…the new pedagogy [kindergarten] prized authentic expression, the inspiration of the natural world, and the creative potential of every individual, every child.” Isn’t that what we want today? We think yes.

One Year, Self-Reflection, and Thank You

Source: ASIDE, 2012

One year ago, we launched our first post on Innovation, Design, and Education and our Mission Statement. We also jumped in feet first into the world of social media and began tweeting. As we look back over the past year, we’ve grown tremendously in the shared environment of other passionate educators. We learned more than we ever imagined doing the research for our posts, and perhaps more importantly, became better teachers as a result.

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who provided invaluable feedback on our work, who shared our research with others in the field, and who engaged and followed us in Twitter chats. The communication and collaboration with so many people from design to social awareness truly benefited us as educators.

Our goal was to create a forum for sharing ideas and best practices with others. It started with thinking of design as a process that infused all aspects of learning. We believe teachers, as well as students, are motivated by new and innovative approaches that change the process, and so we began our journey. We firmly believe that to share in designing the learning promotes responsibility, opportunity, and desire. This collaborative environment fosters the exchange of ideas and is closest to the skills needed now and in the future.
As we move into our second year, we hope to continue to bring our readers our best work on innovative design in education. Thank you again for all you have done for us as learners!

Connected. Instructed. Created. - TEDxNYED 2012

Source: TEDxNYED

It's hard to imagine a better professional Saturday than the invigorating time we spent at the third annual TEDxNYED conference. Hosted by the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, on April 28, 2012, this independently organized TED event was dedicated to teaching and learning. Fourteen rousing speakers shared their unique passions about educational "Ideas Worth Spreading."

Source: TEDxNYED

With a theme of "Connected. Instructed. Created.," the event featured an illuminating array of topics. Some common threads, however, ran through each talk, including:

• Welcoming failure as an iteration on the path toward learning
• Making and creating rather than listening and receiving
• Reinventing the school system to collaborate toward global entrepreneurship

If you were unable to attend, here's a small rundown. These blurbs are by no means summative. They are just take-aways from the experts themselves that we found particularly enlightening :

Juliette LaMontagne, TEDxNYED, April 28, 2012 - Source: ASIDE

Connected.

Jenny Buccos (@goodglobalcitz) - "Global Citizenship In The Classroom"
Most schools today incorporate global education only through international cuisine and world holidays. You can't opt out of humanity. The world can't afford to wait. We don't need more research and more studies. Cross-cultural conversation and open questioning end when students are worried about getting the "right answer."

Jose Luis Vilson (@TheJLV) - "Redefining Teacher Voice"
A teacher's luminescence glows through his or her voice. Never let anyone take your voice away from you, and always recognize that the students' voices come first. Rather than getting jaded by teacher evaluations and test scores, get active. Work harder for the kids, because the conditions for teaching are the same as the conditions for learning. We need to light up now.

Juliette LaMontagne (@jlamontagne) - "Project Breaker"
The design process and the entrepreneurial mindset can combine to solve problems and change the world. The real desire for learning lies in the marginal spaces of traditional schools, in the after-school programs and the one-on-one interactions that incubate future innovators. Kids need to be part of the solutions and not just learn about the problems. Most of all they need "permission to fail."

Jim Groom (@jimgroom) - "The Educational aPOPcalypse"
Teachers are being vilified by a shock doctrine and a doom narrative of the current education system in order to manufacture emergencies and usher in privatization by corporations. We need to get away from the crisis mantra and start investing in what it means for kids to create and produce their own learning.

Source: Sree Sreenivasan

Instructed.

Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) - "Connecting The Physical And The Digital: A Key To Getting Anything Done"
With social media, always be listening, not just broadcasting. We need to marry the virtual and the real-life to make things happen. The formula for success using social media should include one or more of the following attributes for every tweet or post: "helpful, useful, informative, relevant, practical, actionable, timely, generous, credible, brief, entertaining, fun, and occasionally funny."

Jaimie Cloud (@cloudinstitute) - "Educating For The Future We Want With The Brain In Mind - or It Takes A Child To Raise A Village"
Things change. Will we? How many new schools look exactly like the old ones, but in miniature? We cannot educate for sustainability if we are stuck in our thinking. Mindlessness is not stupidity; it is just the brain stuck in the past and ignoring the feedback. Mindfulness and learning how to learn are the cures to avoid having to rewire kids year after year.

Christopher Emdin (@chrisemdin) - "Hip-Hop Education"
Hip-hop education seeks to reach the marginalized population that does not have what it is expected to have. It's not just about listening to rhymes on headphones. Kids need places to write, space to move, and freedom to manipulate technology their way. It's not just about rap pedagogy, but instead it incorporates a robust culture: 

Heart, Inspiration, Power. Heal Oppressive Pedagogy.

Adam Bellow (@adambellow) - "Learning To Question The Rules Of Our System"
We have to stop talking about "fixing" education. What era exactly do we want to return to? We used to teach students to make stuff; now we just stuff them full of teaching. Real learning is the difference between eating and cooking. "College- and career-ready" is McEducation - you get what's in the box. The homework for teachers, in addition to passion and dedication, is "BE INFECTIOUS!"

Sophie Altcheck - "Concussion Awareness And Contact Sports"
Two concussions in 24 hours as a high-school soccer player can give a leader crucial perspective on the importance of brain trauma and education. Concussion awareness is to the student athlete as sex education is to the average teenager.

 

Patrick Honner, TEDxNYED, April 28, 2012 - Source: ASIDE

Created.

Tony Wagner (@drtonywagner) - "Creating Innovators: The Making Of Young People Who Will Change The World"
Knowledge is a commodity. The world cares not about what you know, but about what you can do with what you know. America has always been an innovative nation, but is that because of or in spite of our educational system? Innovating is interdisciplinary. Play + passion + purpose = innovation.

Bre Pettis (@bre) - "Making, Learning, And Power"
You cannot teach to a test and still teach creativity very well. When you make or fix things, you gain measurable skills and experience, resulting in tangible pride in your work. How many tools and machines go unused in schools, because the teacher is not allowed to mess with them?

Patrick Honner (@mrhonner) - "Let's Make Math"
Mathematics is a highly creative endeavor. Interactions are valuable to explore all the facets of math education. Sphere dressing, weaving, photography, and even writing can all exercise power over analytical ideas.

Frank Noschese (@fnoschese) - "Learning Science By Doing Science"
Teaching is not explaining. It's a way of creating meaning. What we see scientists do and what we see students do are currently not the same. We can build curiosity through hands-on connections and model-testing. Kids need to play with a purpose and high-five each other more in science class.

Jaymes Dec (@jaymesdec) - "Making @ School: What Did You Make Today?"
Every school should have a "maker space." Making is inherently pleasurable. If you let kids build, they'll be intrinsically motivated and won't disappoint. Creating a design is the ultimate interdisciplinary exercise. There is no failure, only perseverance and growth. Kids should be asked, "What did you 'make' in school today?" Then you will know what they learned.

Thanks to all of the speakers who put their time and charisma into planning their talks. Congratulations also to host Homa Tavangar (@growingupglobal), co-curator Karen Blumberg (@SpecialKRB), and the team of organizers who good-naturedly trouble-shot the technical difficulties. Livestream broadcast the event online, and each talk is now being posted in its entirety. Many attendees also added personal insights via Twitter, making the #TEDxNYED archive worth exploring. Finally, if you find yourself in the area, we recommend Studio Square around the corner for a relaxing post-inspiration conversation.

Entrepreneurship: Creativity & Ingenuity Now

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Building on our earlier posts about entrepreneurship in the elementary classroom and whether it is possible to raise entrepreneurs, we believe when kids are given the opportunity to be creative in their thinking and to actually take their idea to fruition, they begin to picture themselves as entrepreneurs. We can see the results this year with our current 6th graders who went through the entrepreneur project last year. We introduced the concept of social entrepreneurship with them, and they now are putting together their ideas to raise money for a cause, such as the school’s Pencils for Peace program, or are making a loan through the Kiva organization to help others around the world. What we noticed was that the 6th graders went straight to work on coming up with a concept for a project and could see the benefit from the work they went through the year before, because they knew exactly what to do.

Source: Kid Entrepreneurs

The process of trial and error to figure out problems with regard to construction, cost, and time makes kids think on their feet. It builds essential life skills that they need to know. It helps develop their ability to be creative problem solvers, work independently, and deal with the possibility of failure. Above all, it lets them think creatively, which is at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy. It is also at the top of the list for what Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) think, too. The IBM 2010 Global CEO Study surveyed 1500 CEOs in 60 countries and 33 industries from around the world. They ranked creativity as the most important factor for future success. Without this skill, it will be difficult to adapt to changes in a fast-paced, growing, complex world.

While many of the ideas that our students come up with are not totally new, it is the process of trying to develop a business from its first inkling to its final execution that’s important. Not everything needs to be new and original. Sometimes a simple improvement can change the way people think. In a recent Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition newspaper article, “Re-inventing Inventing,” Andy Jordan described how a new company called Quirky uses the power of the community to select new ideas to take from design to market.



It astonished our kids that the simple concept of changing an electrical power strip from rigid to flexible generated 22-year-old Jake Zien approximately $30,000 a month since his invention, Pivot Power, went on sale. It is stories like these that play a role in making real-world connections and inspiring kids to think differently. Sometimes a small change can make a huge difference. Best-selling author Peter Sims makes this point throughout his book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries.



Quirky is just one of a handful of online businesses that seek to make the invention process more open to amateurs with bright ideas. “Our job is to act as sort of shepherds of our inventions,” says Quirky’s 24-year-old founder, Ben Kaufman. “People will submit ideas to the site in various forms." For him, "Invention is just sort of ingrained in us as human beings. If you look at kids playing, they’re inventing,” says Kaufman. “And for some reason, just society or whatever it is just scrapes it all away from you, and makes you feel like you can’t do it.” (WSJ Classroom)

We want our students to be inventive with their approaches to learning new things, playing with ideas, and creating ways of seeing differently. We shepherd them daily through lessons, and so why not shepherd them as entrepreneurs?

Our goal is to carry entrepreneurship in some facet through our entire middle school to keep kids thinking that their ideas matter and could very well be the next big thing. We can't guarantee we can raise entrepreneurs, but we can definitely get them to think like ones.

A Year Without Worksheets

Each year ushers in resolutions – some bold, others timid, many chucked in ensuing weeks. This January we propose the following experiment. Amid all of the technologies, ideas, and resources currently available to teachers, we would like to live “A Year Without Worksheets.”

Nationwide, public districts and private administrations purchase "programs" to form the foundation of their math, reading, and language curricula. These off-the-shelf programs typically include a core textbook and supplementary worksheets. Some programs augment the formula with web resources or custom videos, but at their base, they rely on regimented worksheets to guide teachers and students through prescripted problems.

Worksheets are not inherently poor teaching tools. They allow children to practice skills in standardized, structured formats. Worksheets theoretically draw from outside experts and take the onus off of the teacher to create customized lesson materials.

These perceived "benefits," however, actually constitute the negative influences of worksheets in the classroom. Photocopied, bulk handouts push a "one size fits all" model of teaching, where every child, silently at her desk, dutifully mimics the regimen of her tutor. Worksheets represent a delivery-based model of instruction, where the teacher provides the pattern and the student conforms to the mold. “Good” worksheets do exist, inviting geographic analysis or document-based writing and including supporting images and informed designs. “Bad” worksheets, however, draw their inspiration from a commoditized view of student learning.

Source: ASIDE

Substandard worksheets ask nothing of the educator. They demand nothing more from a scholar than to manipulate a photocopier and pass out paper. They turn a teacher into a porter, not a professional. An over-reliance on simple worksheets obstructs creativity and collaboration. It refuses unique learning styles, and it denies differentiation and inspiration. On purpose, poorly designed worksheets relegate learners to workers. They dampen motivation and offer no outlet to the poets, astronomers, and dreamers among our children. Every modern educational theory champions music, play, dynamism, interaction, projects, technology, public-speaking, and problem-solving. Uniform worksheets allow none of these. They promote homogeneous learning for a heterogeneous America.

The basic philosophy of factory worksheets suggests that a consistent curriculum is important for educational quality, because teachers can't be trusted to devise lessons. It imagines teachers as ill-motivated to invent exceptional materials and stimulating seminars. Yet even the prairie matron in her one-room schoolhouse would never suggest passing out identical, dull lessons to her cottage of diverse pupils.

Realistically, we're not giving up on worksheets. We still value individual rehearsal and independent investigation. Many enriching, valuable worksheets can challenge the mind and reinforce core learning. But wouldn’t it be nice if we really could eschew photocopied learning all together? Wouldn’t it be liberating to jettison the piles of paper and unshackle ourselves from the Xerox machine, to join our students in freeing, hands-on, experiential learning?

What we’re hoping for, really, is moderation in worksheets. We can’t avoid printouts, but we do promise to think extra hard about every handout we distribute. In our resolution, we will take pains to include helpful illustrations, catchy layouts, and educational methodology into each worksheet we craft. Ultimately, it’s not the worksheet that’s the problem. It’s the stultifying design and the over-dependence that we're trying to dispel.

There are many ways to incorporate the positive aspects of worksheets – such as primary documents, mathematical practice, and grammar exercises – into hand-made, interactive, exciting lessons that utilize easily available technologies or old-fashioned circle times. For the record, the periodic table is not a worksheet. A paragraph response to a colonial diary is not a worksheet. An x/y coordinate graph or a hand-drawn menu in French is not a worksheet. Worksheets are those formulaic texts that measure learning by time quietly spent. They are the fill-in-the-blank chore of the "Do Now" and the crutch of delayed retirement.

For these reasons and more, we are proposing a year without worksheets. We are going to emphasize a year of personal teaching, original materials, innovative lessons, and imaginative activities. We will no doubt falter, in falling back on a Bill of Rights handout or a Census chart, and we will likely slip in a sheet or two for homework. But we will try, in bucking carbon-copied shortcuts, to hone in on layered, dynamic, self-pioneered worksheets that excite students with pictures and appeal. We will hopefully force ourselves to avoid the bluffing that comes with 30 minutes of "silent work at one's desk."

We invite you to join us in our initiative to design information for teaching that is not routine. If you have suggestions or ideas about how to make this worksheet-free dream a reality, please let us know. We anticipate needing as much help as possible to teach “A Year Without Worksheets.” Add your thoughts to your tweets about the topic. Use the hastag #AYWW.

THINK - The Imagination Age

Source: IBM, ASIDE

Leading educational thinkers have dubbed the current century the "Imagination Age," in which schools need practical approaches for teaching conceptual thinking. A project out of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, led by Rita J. King and Joshua Fouts, has assembled a laboratory of resources and ideas to aid educators in teaching imagination. GOOD magazine notes the directors' emphasis on "a time during which humanity must imagine and then create, together, the systems of the new global economy and culture." These rich lessons and tools aim to "create the future of education and work."

Source: IBM, ASIDE

In a similar vein, the IBM THINK exhibit, celebrating creativity and innovation, ended its month-long staging at Lincoln Center in New York City on Sunday, October 23. The modestly promoted presentation honored the company's 100th anniversary by attracting curious crowds to its free, multi-sensory experience. Euro-techies and whiz kids mingled with century-savvy seniors in equal appreciation of the on-going pioneering work done with data. IBM's mesmerizing three-part showcase made for a rapt hour of education and enjoyment. It reminded us of MOMA's riveting "Talk To Me" display in its stunning visuals and enlightening facts. If you missed IBM's show, here are the take-aways:

The exhibit unfolded in three successive parts: the data wall, the immersive film, and the interactive experience.



The data wall spanned the length of Jaffe Drive beside Avery Fisher Hall. In a benched alley, visitors could absorb streaming figures and extended visuals about air pollutants, boulevard flows, world nutritions, and other animated illustrations. Live sensors around the city – and around the world – collected statistics about exhaust and traffic to relay immediately to the enormous digital display. Much like starkness and immediacy make Washington, D.C.'s Vietnam Memorial an emotional experience, so, too, did the THINK wall ask humility in the face of everyday life.

Source: IBM, ASIDE

After soaking in the graphic wall, ticket holders moved to the inside immersive film. A ten-minute broadcast flashed piecemeal on separate screens, inviting the viewer to submerge himself within distinct scenes played out on different displays. The video chronicled the impact of emerging technologies in improving life-expectancy and life-quality. Specifically, the THINK engineers emphasized five modes of thinking toward human progress:

• Seeing
• Mapping
• Understanding
• Believing
• Acting

Source: IBM, ASIDE

Much like the new vocabulary for educators, IBM's notions are the essence of creativity. At the end of the IBM film, each panel transformed into a dynamic touch-screen, on which visitors could explore the nuances of each mode of progress. With five different types of visual interactions, people roamed the room to prod the various forms of visual mapping. They explored means of predicting wealth, weather, and viruses. Each optical panel prompted a poll for viewers to become part of the accumulation of human data.

Source: IBM, ASIDE

In all, the IBM THINK exhibit was noteworthy for its price (free), effort (considerable), and vision (progressive). The larger-than-life design of data made for captivating considerations of birth rates, agriculture, medicines, genomes, avenues, calendars, navigations, and energies. It was visual thinking in a democratic society. If every Fortune 500 company cheers its success with a similarly public commemoration, then we can applaud corporate karma.

Source: IBM, ASIDE

Source: IBM, ASIDE

For students, these lessons about the future of data usage offer thrilling conversations about energy, pollution, agriculture, and security. How to manipulate the world's mountains of information will define the nature of human progress. Teachers can nurture creativity and initiative within today's young people for them to emerge as generational leaders.

By the way, we have no affiliation with IBM. We just thought the exhibit was cool.