Innovative schools, innovative students for nais new
1. "Please stop
waiting for a map.
We reward those
who
draw maps, not
those who follow
them.“
Seth Godin,
Poke the Box
Innovative Schools, Innovative Students
Jonathan E. Martin
Head of School, St. Gregory College Preparatory School (AZ)
www.21k12blog.net
10. “Think about the path of evolution as the
continual exploration of the adjacent possible.”
(Where Good Ideas Come From, SBJ)
11.
12. 1. Leverage the Adjacent
Possible
2. Exploit Liquid Networks
3. Cultivate Slow Hunches
4. Seek Serendipity
5. Embrace Error
6. Employ Exaptation
7. Play on Platforms
13. the answers to our
dilemmas are not to be
found on Twitter. They
Solitude can only be found
William within—without
& Deresiewicz
Leadership distractions, in
solitude.
14. Twitter is a “coral reef”
for nurturing creativity.
Steven Johnson
only_point_five
15. Video is the
Killer App.
Don’t write me.
Tell me.
Show me.
Chris Anderson:
Crowd
Accelerated
Innovation
Ted Talk, 9:16-11:23
16. “You can track innovation
online by looking at the
moment a community was
first able to share its talents
digitally.”
Chris Anderson, Crowd
Accelerated Innovation.
18. Innovation is everyone’s
job. “the Think
Different campaign at
Apple targeted Apple’s
employees as much as its
customers.”
Steve Jobs explained:
“The whole purpose of
the Think Different
campaign was that people
had forgotten what Apple
stood for, including its
employees.”
20. Essential Ed. Elements
1.Hands on projects
solve a real problem
2.Collaboration:
Working in Teams
3.Creating
4.Multi-disciplinary
learning
5.Trial and Error
Play Passion Purpose
21. Seven Strategies for Innovation
1. Be opportunistic
2. Take Time to Mess Around
3. Learn to Fail
4. Think in Metaphors
5. Go to Extremes
6. Look for Crossroads
7. Stand on Other’s Shoulders
22. “Good Ideas are not
conjured out of thin air–
they are built of a collection
of existing parts.” (SBJ)
23. Suggestions for Innovative Schools and
Innovative Students
1. Highlight, Spotlight, Model, & Embed
LEAD 2. Provide the Time & Space
3. Collect & Use the Data Which Matter
4. Network
CONNECT 5. Collaborate
6. Inter and Multi Disciplinary Learning
7. Mess about and Play
8. Fail, Prototype, and Iterate
DO
9. Learn by Doing: Project-Based Learning
10. Use Tech, especially Web 2.0 & Digital Video
29. The Innovation Diploma
Declare your intent, take a core course, accumulate credits, and complete a major project.
Submit a Declaration of Intent freshman or sophomore year.
Complete a core L/I course freshman or sophomore year.
Leadership, Design/Build, or other courses to be named later.
Meet quarterly with Program Director.
Update on requirements, check progress.
Brainstorm opportunities, give feedback.
Earn 5 leadership credits between 9th and 12th grades.
Serve in a leadership role in a school extracurricular and reflect on accomplishments. (Required for one
unit).
Use things you’d be already doing anyway, but choose to set goals and reflect upon them.
Use Academic Experiences for Credit: Write a research paper on a L/I topic; pursue an extra-credit
laboratory project on L/I; etc. (Maximum 2 units)
Complete a “capstone project” junior or senior year.
Complete a 20 hour project (can count toward Comm/Serve or be part of another involvement, such as
student council) and write a 400 word reflection. This can be, but doesn’t have to be, done as part of the
peer leadership program in 12th grade.
30.
31. I have opportunities to be
creative in the classroom
Percentage Strongly Agreeing
90
86
75
STG 2009 STG 2010 All Schools (Averaged)
Collect the right data
32. New Creativity Assessments
Coming Soon
Grant Wiggins: Educators sometimes say
that they shy from assessing creative
thought for fear of inhibiting students, but
this is a grave error in my view
33. We regularly discuss questions
with no clear answers
92
82
72
All Schools St. Gregory 09 St. Gregory 10
34. What Excites & Engages Me?
All HSSSE students
65
60
55
28
Lecture Discussion and Group Projects Projects Involving
Debate Technology
35. Authentically Measuring Critical
Thinking & Effective Problem Solving
CWRA/CLA median percentile,
College Freshman Normed
97
67
50
All College Freshmen St. Gregory Freshmen St. Gregory Seniors
38. No medium in history has ever offered
such unlikely trails of connection in such
an accessible form… An online
newspaper, [compared to a dead-tree
paper], is ten times more serendipitous.
(SJB)
39. “Environments
that block or
limit new
combinations–
by punishing
experimentation
or by obscuring
certain branches
of
possibility, will, o
n
average, genera
te and circulate
fewer
innovations than
environments
that encourage
exploration.”
SJB
40. I use twitter to mine for
teachable
moments, interesting
activities, and ways to
broaden my thinking about
teaching and learning.
If I have questions...there are
people in my PLN who can
help me. It has been a fun
and interesting experiment
for me.
41. “Decades of educational research have
demonstrated that unstructured group
discussion has the potential to teach students
the sort of group creativity that the new
economy demands.” Keith Sawyer, quoted in
Jerald, Defining a 21st century education
Economics, yes, though I know this bothers people. But what I love is that the things I want for our students anyway, creativity and innovative problem solving, are what the economy wants too– what a win-win combination. Dan Pink’s book Whole New Mind first revealed this to me, and I am forever in his debt.But not just for economics.
Hate the phrase? Many do, I am not sure if I do. But hate the phrase or not, Obama and Friedman are right– We are in a battle (we always have been, and probably always will be), a battle fierce challenges to making the world a better place– and the only way we can possibly win this battle, and win a more positive future, is by identifying better ways of doing things– by innovation.
We know from Chick sent me hi that flow is the greatest source of happiness and fulfillment, and we know from him too that creativity and innovation is a terrific source of happiness.
But independent schools are often not innovativeJust show the quote
It was my own experience, visiting 21 schools in the fall of 2008, that the independent schools were far less innovative.
We can daunt ourselves if we think it only something that happens in the most expensive R&D labs–
It lies instead in the “adjacent possible.” SJ
What is exciting is how many great and accessible thinkers there are right now to inspire and inform us: including Dan Pink, the Heath brothers, Carol Dweck, and for me especially Steven Johnson and Chris Anderson of TED. However, we can’t teach it. We can only create cultures which make it more possible.
Some disagree. This essay in the American Scholar last year received a lot of attention, and has been much cited. Read the quote. I think he is so wrong– not to say that solitude is a bad thing, but to say that the answers can only be found within– I can’t begin to accept.
The sharing of ideas in general is often best done through direct speech—we’ve evolved over eons to subconsciously grasp the subtleties of a face-to-face conversation. In all these cases, for remote audiences video is the killer app. Don’t write me. Tell me. Show me.
I want to share with you 7 “existing parts” we have available to us in our schools by which we can better build good ideas. These 8 are not at all limiting; there are certainly many others. I should warn you that only a few are specifically technology related, but that is OK, because I think technologydirectors are, more than anyone else in our schools, our innovation directors generally, even if they lack that name. I am only going to offer a few specific suggestions, but I am going to ask you to consider for yourself applications, and then on my blog I am posting a set of slides of the implications.
We’ve made it a priority for our school in the way we think about and talk about ourselves, and I myself as Head of School make it job one.
Go 1:1.
Also a major theme of Christensen’s– to be more innovative we must plug into networks, help our teachers and students plug into networksSuzie Boss also writes about Looking for the crossroads and standing on shoulders