Future Forwards Volume 7: Exploring frontiers in education

Today ASB published the final volume of Future Forwards. The online edition is available at this link. Future Forwards is a collection of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions, and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning. The focus of this volume is on prototyping.  This fits in nicely with my current reading on innovation, as in the introduction Shabbi and Scot write:
Prototyping results in new tangible innovations that educators, schools and school systems can see, try, evaluate and learn from as they focus on creating something new and better to meet the needs of their students in their schools.

In Volume 7 of Future Forwards you will read about a prototype in elementary school to address the gender achievement gap in maths, developing "glocal" mindsets based on the ISTE standard Global Collaborator, self motivated learning projects in a middle school, ASB's teacher training programme for local educational institutions (my joy - probably the most rewarding thing I've done over the past 6 years), closing the gender gap in STEM in the high school, and developing mobile apps in the middle school.

In his book The Innovator's Mindset, George Couros asks the question "Would I want to be a learner in my own classroom?" I think with our R&D task forces we asked ourselves "How can I be a learner in my own classroom?"  As George writes, "the innovator's mindset starts with empathy for our students ... but equally important is the desire to create something better."  What we have done on R&D is to ask "Is there a better way?"  George also points out that many teachers who want to change lack clear guidance and support to make the desired change.  Prototyping through our R&D teams has given us that guidance and support.  He also writes that "being in spaces where people actively share ideas makes us smarter" and that social media provides a place for ideas to spread.  He writes, "sometimes the most valuable thing you get from the network isn't an idea, but the inspiration or courage to try something new."  It is with great pleasure therefore that I share the links to prototypes we have been conducting at ASB since 2011.

If you missed the earlier volumes, here are the links:

Future Forwards Volume 1
Future Forwards Volume 2
Future Forwards Volume 3
Future Forwards Volume 4
Future Forwards Volume 5

Future Forwards Volume 6

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

I want to challenge that!

Today I spent the whole day at school putting into practice my learning about the 6 Thinking Hats.  As we are re-thinking structures at ASB, our task as volunteers was to come up with ideas to conserve and grow ASB's culture of innovation in the areas of personnel, systems and processes and non-human resources.  We started the day with an introduction to the Thinking Hats, and then went on to deepen our understanding of how these can work by considering challenges.  It's important to know that a challenge is never an attack or a criticism, but it's a challenge to something that seems perfect - to see if you can do it an another, different way.  A challenge is always based on what the existing situation is and it can challenge both what is going on and what you are thinking.  The key word for challenges is why: in fact we are challenging something that is not broken but just asking why it's the way it is.

When considering why, there are 3 approaches:

• Alternatives - challenging uniqueness - asking "Is this the only way?"
• Because - challenging the reasons and asking if they are valid
• Cut - challenging the necessity and asking "Do we need to do this at all?"

When challenging traditional thinking we need to start with the C (do we need it?) and then move onto B (are the reasons we are doing this valid?) and finally the A (are there other ways of doing this?"

We were given a checklist to work through when considering our issue, which in our group was non-human resources.  The checklist was made up of 5 areas:

• Dominating ideas, thoughts and beliefs that control the situation
• Boundaries that we think we need to work within
• Assumptions  that we are making - do they just exist in our minds?
• Essential factors that have to be present
• Avoidance factors

Having considered all the above, we we able to use to Green Thinking Hat to come up with a lot of new ideas.  For example just challenging the notion that the school day runs from 8 am to 4 pm would give us many new ideas to work with. Perhaps there could be 2 "shifts" with elementary running in the morning and secondary in the afternoon, for example.  We ended up with many new ideas, and then these were sorted into a grid based on the impact they would have on student learning and how sustainable they would be once the present faculty who were advocating for them left the school.

In the top right quadrant (high impact on learning and sustainable) we had about 50 ideas.  These were then numbered and we were each given 18 stickers to write down the number of our favourite ideas. Once these were then sorted and grouped, 4 main ideas came to the surface:

• Becoming a green school
• Exploring outdoor education and the use of green spaces around the campuses
• Multi-age approaches to inquiry
• Building an off-site innovation centre 

All of these seemed great ideas to work with - and hopefully we will take these forward to grow ASB's culture of innovation.

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Innovation Self-Assessment

Around 3 years ago in R&D we read a book called The Inventor's DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen.  Recently we have also been given a link to an assessment tool so that we can complete a self-assessment of our innovation profile in order to become more aware about our strengths and areas for improvement as innovators.

The Innovator’s DNA research found three sets of characteristics that contribute to an innovator’s profile: the Courage to Innovate, Discovery Skills (Innovation), and Delivery Skills (Execution).  I was curious to find out how I was doing in all of these areas.  Once I completed the survey I was able to follow a link to get my results.  My profile came back as being that of a developer.  This means that I can both innovate and execute, though typically not as well as focused Innovators and Executors do.  As a Developer, I am able to help get new ideas that are often sustaining or incremental. I can also bridge the gap between others in school who are focused on either innovation or execution--helping them to work together seamlessly.

The courage to innovate was broken down into 3 components:  challenging the status quo, risk taking and creative confidence.  Of these I scored highest in challenging the status quo (no surprises there!) but this score was slightly lower than that of successful innovators.

The next section was on discovery skills and of these questioning came out the highest.  According to the report, questioning reflects my passion for inquiry.  Active, honest questioning of the status quo provides a powerful tool for opening up new opportunities and uncovering new ideas and directions.

Another section of the report looked at delivery skills.  These are the skills necessary to execute plans and include analyzing, planning, being details oriented and self-disciplined.  For me planning came out the highest. 

I'm not sure how we are going to use the results of this during our next R&D Meeting, however I'm very curious to find out about the innovation of other members on the team.

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Deep conversations: becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable

We had our first R&D meeting of the 2016-17 school year today.  The focus of R&D for this year is leading innovation from the middle - this means growing teachers' skills so that they can be innovators in their own classrooms.  We read and discussed a couple of articles from the Harvard Business Review, the first of which was about innovation being everyone's job.  This was an interesting read because the article was about how managers often discourage innovation as they want people to follow procedures and stay within guidelines - despite the fact that organizations need innovation.  The article states:

Great organizations don't depend on a small number of exclusive people to come up with innovations.  Instead they create a culture in which every employee is encouraged and empowered to innovate.

The steps to build a culture of innovation are as follows:

1. Identify and implement some immediate innovation in your own area - make them happen quickly to show innovation is successful
2. This leads to confidence - so now work together to identify a more ambitious innovation.
3. To make innovation stick you have to encourage people to develop and experiment with new ideas.

The second article we read is about the importance of diversity.  Research has shown that thinking with people who are similar to you hurts the rate of innovation, whereas thinking with people who are different from you  improves the quality of decisions by nearly 50%.  Diversity means many things: people who cooperate and people who challenge, introverts and extroverts, a variety of backgrounds, a range of experience and seniority - basically to form innovative teams you have to be intentional deliberate in putting together a diverse team.  While these teams can produce intense discomfort at first, eventually the conversations that emerge in such teams are more interesting and more challenging.  The author concludes:

To learn something new you have to be uncomfortable.  Our organizations are paying a high price for letting us work with only those we feel most comfortable with.  When assumptions aren't challenged, when questions aren't posed, when new ideas aren't thoroughly considered ... you don't invent a new solution to an old problem.

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Future Forwards Volume 6: recreating yourself and your school

Today ASB published the next volume of Future Forwards. The online edition is available at this link. Future Forwards is a collection of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions, and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning.  The focus of this volume is creativity - the top-ranked leadership competency for the future.  In striving to develop creativity in learners we must pay attention to what makes a creative school - and this includes R&D to support teachers to engage with new ideas and to think differently.  This volume of Future Forwards considers how schools can retool or recreate themselves to become institutions that develop all learners to create value in the world.

Paradigms - Looking to the Future
These chapters are about paradigm shifts - different approaches that radically challenge established conventions. Here you will find chapters on our mobile learning prototype, competency-based learning and ensuring that "tricky kids" succeed.

Practices - Innovating in the Now
These chapters describe the application of an instructional practice in a completely novel way or the successful mash-up of different practices.  In this section you can read about music technology, scientific inquiry driven by student curiosity, Maker Saturdays, and split-screening.

Ideas - The Next Step
These chapters are about how current research is changing or impacting existing practices or established norms. In this section you will read about standing in science, and STEAM in the Middle School.

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

If you missed the earlier volumes, here are the links:

Future Forwards Volume 1
Future Forwards Volume 2
Future Forwards Volume 3
Future Forwards Volume 4

Future Forwards Volume 5

Leaving a trail

I'm finishing up my 4th year at ASB and moving into my 5th.  It occurred to me today that I've been at ASB longer than any other school now, with the exception of ISA.  It's great working here - I love the vibrant atmosphere, the can-do attitude.  I am happy to be working in the only school I know that has an R&D department and I believe that I have had so many opportunities to grow and develop here.

When I left Switzerland 4 years ago I was given this card by a colleague (I just found it again today as I was moving offices). I hope I have lived up to his expectations!  Thinking about this, I decided that I would take stock of some of the new trails that we have started at ASB over the past 4 years.

• A Bring Your Own Device Program for teachers and students in grades 4-12 was initiated in 2012 to support personalized learning approaches for students.
• Beginning in 2012-13, all teachers started to collect student artefacts of tech-integrated learning and note which ISTE-S tech standard was addressed, the type of artefact and quality of learning. The data we have collected shows that technology is increasing used to promote higher-order thinking.  We have also used the data from the Tech Audit to determine teachers’ strengths and areas for growth and developed PD to target this growth based on the ISTE-T standards.
• Based on the data collected from the Tech Audits, we have written books on tech integration and digital citizenship which have been distributed to parents. The books contain information about ASB’s program, questions parents may wish to ask and parental guidance for home technology use.
• ASB is the only school in India to host a Google in Education Summit and we have hosted four of them since 2012.  As a GAfE School, this provides wonderful PD for our teachers and TAs at different levels.  
• From 2013 - 2015 ASB educators have presented at the annual ISTE Conference. Last year 13 presentations were from ASB, reinforcing the school as a world leader in the field of educational technology.
• In 2013-14 - 39 teachers and TAs took part in a year long prototype to study the impact on mobile devices on teaching and learning.  Nine further teacher prototypes took place in 2014-15.  This year 25 teachers have prototyped mobile devices with their students.  Following the successes of these prototypes, a mobile device is now a required tool for PE teacher throughout the school and for academic support teachers in secondary.
• Tech integration coaches were appointed in 2014 to support colleagues in integrating technology.  Currently there are 4 tech coaches in elementary school, 5 in middle school and 2 in high school.

When I think back to how some of these trails started, and what they are like now, it makes be realize that some of these initiatives are no longer trails - they seem like highways.  What started as small prototypes in R&D have become mainstream in teaching and learning throughout the school.

Micro-schools

A friend of mine who moved from London to the north of England put her daughter into the local village school.  There were 2 classes, what we would call in England the "infants" class from ages 5 - 7 and the "junior" class from ages 8 - 11.  Both classes involved mixed age teaching.  My friend's daughter is now about to embark upon her Ph.D.  An early education in a "micro-school" clearly worked for her.

In last month's R&D meeting we discussed micro-schools - not really schools set up by themselves but more the concept of a "school within a school".  We discussed how a micro-school could be one way of testing new ideas about personalizing learning.  A micro-school is one that would serve less than 153 students (the magical Dunbar's number, mentioned in a previous post) as research has shown that when a school gets beyond 150 students it becomes difficult for adults to keep track of individual students.  In a micro-school learning is mainly student-led, with students given more power to determine how they spend their time.  Teachers in such schools are most definitely the "guides on the side", managing a wide variety of learning styles in a community of learners where students are free to follow their interests and curiosities and where they have autonomy and ownership over their work.

Although all micro-schools vary, there are a number of commonalities, including the push to make learning more authentic.  The focus is on interdisciplinary learning, customized for each child, where students construct their knowledge and skills through inquiry. Today's micro-schools use technology to capture data on student progress, and so can easily evaluate what each student is learning, and at the same time many of these schools empower the students to collaboratively create and define the standards of the class.  These schools generally focus on one project at a time, and allow students to go through several iterations of the projects when creating and redefining their work.

Research into micro-schools brought us to The Future of School website, where there are posts about creating tiny schools.  The following quotation is taken from the article about micro-schools:

Obsolescence - not brokenness - is the problem.  We need to explore entirely new methods of organizing our schools, distilling what the most important role for schools might be instead of heaping ever more requirements on an old model.

At our R&D meeting we started discussing what a micro-school would look like, based on the school within a school model.  We looked at The Innovation Academy at the American School of Lima in Peru, and we made a very early start on ideating what a micro-school could be like in our community. Watch out for future updates as we continue this work.

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Future Forwards Volume 5 - from shining stars to connected constellations

Today ASB published the next volume of Future Forwards. The online edition is available at this link. Future Forwards is a collection of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions, and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning.  Previous volumes of Future Forwards have focused on how ASB's R&D has built a culture of active innovation at the school.  However we are aware that to effect transformation across education worldwide, we need more schools to "move past being distinct and shining stars of innovation, to become connected constellations of innovation."  Volume 5 of Future Forwards therefore contains explorations of the frontiers of education from 3 other schools around the world.

Paradigms - Looking to the Future
These chapters are about paradigm shifts - different approaches that radically challenge established conventions. Here you will find chapters on professional development, design thinking, multi-age classrooms and social entrepreneurship.

Ideas - The Next Step
These chapters are about how current research is changing or impacting existing practices or established norms. In this section you can read about ASB's partnership with a local school, research into digital wellbeing and social media use among third culture kids, the future of higher education, gender equity and meeting the diverse needs of language learners.

Practices - Innovating in the Now
These chapters describe the application of an instructional practice in a completely novel way or the successful mash-up of different practices. In this section you will read blended learning, student leadership in technology, curiosity projects in art, Maker, using sensors in the classroom and creative coding.

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

If you missed the earlier volumes, here are the links:

• Future Forwards Volume 1
• Future Forwards Volume 2
• Future Forwards Volume 3
• Future Forwards Volume 4

Definite -v- Indefinite and Optimism -v- Pessimism

I was in an R&D meeting at school today.  During this meeting we were discussing the Map of the Decade, a 10 year outlook.  We were talking about the shifts that are happening and the impacts that these are going to make, and how these could or should affect education.

These discussions drew us to a book published last year by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters entitled Zero to One:  Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.  In this book the mindsets of societies and individuals are discussed.  These fall along the Optimist-Pessimist spectrum, about how a society thinks the world is going (getting better or getting worse) and the Definite-Indefinite spectrum, about how we are going to reach the future.

Scot Hoffman, our R&D Coordinator, related these to schools:

Indefinite Pessimism:  An ‘indefinitely pessimistic’ school looks out at a bleak future but has no idea what to do about it. For these schools the golden age is past; things are moving too fast; they don’t know what to do about the future or are hoping that somebody else can do something about it.

Definite Pessimism:  A ‘definitely pessimistic’ school believes that the future can be known and changed. However these schools approach the future by planning for the worst in order to weather the storms the future is bound to bring. This excludes planning to change the way things are.

Indefinite Optimism:  An ‘indefinitely optimistic’ school believes that the future will be better but they don’t consider how this will be so.  Instead of designing for the future, these schools focus on incremental change, improving efficiency and optimizing systems.

Definite Optimism:  A ‘definitely optimistic’ school believes the future will be better than the present. They pursue knowing what can be known about the future in order to take action. They envision what they want the future to be and how they might get there. ‘Definitely optimistic’ schools engage in creating big bold new things that will shape their future.

I think this can also be applied at the level of individual teachers within a school.  I have worked with people who look backwards and say "Things were better before when ....", or "Here's a new approach, but the pendulum will swing the other way again in a few years, so let me just keep my head down and sit tight and soon my method will be back in vogue again."  I've also worked with people who are ready to jump on a whole load of new initiatives without really changing or examining their underlying philosophy or pedagogy.

Of course, being in a school that has an R&D department, we hope that ASB is a definitely optimistic school.  We are studying and prototyping new teaching and learning approaches, transforming ASB for the future.

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Accelerating R&D Work in Schools

Around a year ago I read the book Accelerate by John P Kotter.  One year on from this, our R&D Department has published the book R&D Your School, and one of the chapters in this book is about accelerators for school R&D work.  Here, then, are Kotter’s 8 Accelerators as applied to R&D work in schools:

1. Focus on high impact opportunity - to meet important learning needs.  One example of this at ASB is that we have focused on improving our existing teaching and learning practices by new innovations in professional learning and technology integration.
2. Attract and maintain an inquiry coalition - our R&D Department and the various Task Forces are made up of people with shared interests who wish to pursue them.  These are people with diverse viewpoints, a hunger to learn and an openness to creating novel ways to meet learning needs.
3. Envision impact and design a prototype - our R&D Department and the various task forces prototype - it’s the single most important thing we do.  A prototype is a first model of something from which later forms are developed.  Prototyping allows us to come to new understandings and insights that let us develop new approaches, practices or systems that meet the needs of our community.  It is completely different from piloting which selects, takes on and assimilates a pre-existing practice.  Prototyping, on the other hand, drives continuous development and improvement.
4. Attract voluntary inquirers - this is an important job of the R&D task forces, along with opening up the prototypes to others in the school community.  Everyone on these prototypes is a volunteer who wants to contribute to researching the impact of the new idea.  These volunteers give feedback for improving the prototype.
5. Remove barriers to inquiry - Prototypes lead to new learning, visions and impacts, which can come up against the barriers and resistance of fixed mindsets, existing systems and structures, or people who do not support change.  Removing these barriers is essential to maintain the energy and momentum of the volunteer inquirers.
6. Generate and celebrate early impacts - celebrating short-term wins energizes the volunteer inquirers, and draws interest and attention from others in the school.
7. Keep learning from evidence and experience - be careful as early successes can result in “taking your foot off the accelerator” before the prototype has reached its conclusion.
8. Institute change - New innovations need to be instituted by the school’s Leadership Team - they will need to further lead and manage the new innovation so it is effectively and reliably instituted to meet learning needs.

Would you like to read more about how ASB has used accelerators to promote innovation throughout the school?  You can purchase a copy of R&D Your School on Kindle to find out more (it costs just $5).

R&D - the essential conditions

One of the most important aspects of successful R&D in schools is to consider the essential conditions that are necessary to grow the innovation from ideas to impact on learning.  Chapter 5 of R&D Your School outlines the 8 essential elements for this growth:

1. Empowered leaders - which includes the framework within the school, a process for prototyping new practices and approaches and a commitment to innovation.
2. Engaged communities - both within the school and beyond.  It is essential to develop partnerships in the global community.
3. Intrinsic motivation - as it is impossible to force people to change.  At the heart of motivation are agency to make decisions and to act, expertise (knowledge and skills) and connection with peers to share the work.
4. Future connection - it's important to understand global trends and how these will impact learning.
5. Skill capacity - including recruiting curious, self-directed individuals and then encouraging professional learning and applied practice focused on innovation.
6. Resource capacity - including a budget, facilities and materials.
7. Design thinking competence embedded as a core process for research, capacity building and innovation (for example an always beta culture of ongoing development)
8. Impact validity - R&D work is democratically developed using multiple perspectives, deepens understanding and provides new answers and new questions.  It's important that data is used to support R&D conclusions and that R&D work and its impact on learning is communicated to the community.

Chapter 5 of R&D Your School contains more information about all of these essential conditions as well as an outline of an innovation audit that can be used to assess whether your school is ready for effective R&D work.  This will help you to identify the important conditions that you need to grow, in order for innovation to succeed in your school.  If you would like a copy of R&D Your School it's available on Kindle and costs just $5.

If you would like to know more about how ASB can help you, please visit ReD Solutions which contains information about school innovation, technology integration, Maker, Design Thinking, social entrepreneurship and collaboratives.

How do you decide what to research?

This afternoon I will be manning the ReD Studio booth at ISTE.  The title of this blog post represents the most common question asked whenever I mention that ASB has an R&D Department.  Chapter 3 of R&D Your School contains a lot of information about where our R&D topics come from, and outlines the 4 main drivers that are used to ensure our topics are relevant and focused on the needs of our students:

1. Current and emerging global trends - which are shaping our world and will shape the world of the future.
2. Major relevance to ASB's mission and core values.
3. Significant potential advantage to current teaching and learning.
4. A sudden urgency to meet unexpected needs.

So how do these play out in reality?  Let's look at some of our recent R&D topics and see how they relate to the 4 main drivers:

• Games Based Learning - this was a Task Force from 2011 (which later became Gamification) and was researched and prototyped because it has a significant advantage for current teaching and learning.
• Mobile Learning - this was a Task Force from 2012 and was researched and prototyped because of current and emerging global trends.
• Maker Mindset - this was a Task Force from 2013 and was chosen because of its advantage to teaching and learning and because Maker is an emerging global trend.
• Social Entrepreneurship - this was a Task Force from 2014 and was chosen because of it being both an emerging global trend and because it has major relevance to our school mission and values.

Of course it's not just a matter of selecting topics, we also want to ensure that we can implement these topics in the context of teaching and learning at ASB.  To decide on this we look at the plus factors that will enable us to develop these topics and successfully and various areas of the school in order to really innovate teaching and learning.  These plus factors are as follows:

1. Potential impact - there must be a significant advantage over what already exists.  Without this R&D will not make a meaningful impact or return on investment.
2. Champions - R&D needs teachers who are committed to lead the work and who will persist through obstacles.  Without this there is little chance of success.
3. Cost in terms of human resources - we have to ask whether the cost of developing and implementating is worth the impact.
4. Degree of innovation - we ask whether R&D will bring something new to the school, or is it simply a revamping of what already exists.
5. Receptivity to innovation - which can vary across divisions, grades and departments.
6. Synergy - between the different R&D innovations that can multiply the impact of an innovation.

If you would like a copy of R&D Your School it's available on Kindle and costs just $5.

Insourcing expertise

Over the past 6 months or so, I've been thinking about what my next steps in life should be.  I absolutely adore my job at ASB - truly it is the best I have ever had - but I also have to consider the needs of my family, in particular my elderly mother who has recently been diagnosed with mild dementia.  I have signed a contract to stay for the next two years - but I have to be realistic and face the fact that this might well be my last contract here, and that at the end of it I may need to return to Europe to give my family the support they will need.

In a recent conversation with a colleague, I broached this subject, and we discussed what the next move might be.  At my age, I don't really see myself starting all over again in another school - but what else could I do?  She suggested exploring the possibility of consultancy.  This is fairly challenging for me, as while I know that many schools do turn to outside "experts" to plan and lead changes in the schools, at ASB we are really comfortable with "insourcing" expertise and leadership by developing our own educators.

One of the joys of working at ASB has been being on various R&D teams.  These teams are given the conditions outlined in self-determination theory (autonomy, competence and relatedness to others) in order to engage in research and prototyping based on our personal interests - as a result new expertise and leadership is emerging within the school.  We abandon status quo thinking as we read, learn and open ourselves up to new ideas, and then we bring these to our colleagues, eventually changing the professional culture of the school.  I suppose it is possible to take this expertise to others schools, but I definitely feel much more comfortable developing it within the place where I actually work rather than working somewhere for a short time as a consultant and trying to change a school community that hasn't yet gone through this process.  I wonder how many schools have an R&D Department - and how many of these are in Europe (actually I can't think of one).

If you are working at a school that is considering starting or growing R&D you might be interested in reading our latest book R&D Your School, which is available on Kindle for $5.  I have found it amazing to work at a school with an R&D department, and it's an idea that I feel many others might be interested in.

Photo of The Shard, taken from London Bridge

Innovation at ASB - R&D Your School

I'm at ISTE in Philadelphia, and one of my jobs here will be to work on the ReD Studio booth.  One thing I'm excited to share is that ASB's R&D Department has just published a new book entitled R&D Your School  - it's a practical guide for starting, growing and sustaining innovation, and the foreword to this book has been written by Suzie Boss.  Suzie writes, "ASB doesn't just talk about the importance of innovation; it advances new ideas by bolting research and development - R&D- right into the institutional framework .... ASB uses core innovation processes - explore, study, prototype, research, scale - to guide the work and set the stage for action.  By inviting participation from across the school community, including teachers, parents, and students, ASB ensures that diverse perspectives inform future decisions."

I was thinking about this yesterday as I attended the Hack Education Unconference at ISTE.  As I listened to other teachers talk about the challenges of innovation in their own schools, I realized just how much we take for granted at ASB.  We really have used innovation to create the "new normal" for education at our school.   At ASB, what was R&D four years ago, is now incorporated into what we do every day.  The R&D team that looked into the design of school buildings and classrooms, has seen the building of a new school and the redesign of an old one.  The R&D team that looked into school calendars has now seen a revamped school calendar which allows for 265 days of school that includes an intersessions programme that all students may participate in completely free of charge.  As Scot Hoffman and Shabbi Luthra write in R&D Your School, "We are transforming one prototype at a time."

Many teachers might find it a bit over the top that we have an R&D Department in our school, however we believe there is a real need for this in schools around the world.  Scot and Shabbi write in the Introduction, "Our shared future is coming at us with increasing speed, but the structures that have been our strength are not built for the agility, speed, and focus that schools need to meet the pace of change.  Schools and school leaders around the world are looking to innovation to create and develop the schools that students need."

R&D Your School has chapters that deal with intrinsic motivation and insourcing expertise, the keys for successful R&D in schools, where our R&D topics come from, the need for a "dual operating system", the essential conditions for successful R&D in schools, prototyping, accelerating R&D,  and chapters that outline our experiences of intersessions, Maker, Studios, learning analytics and social entrepreneurship.

If you would like a copy of R&D Your School it's available on Kindle and costs just $5.

Future Forwards Volume 4

Today ASB published the next volume of Future Forwards.  The online edition is available at this link. Future Forwards is a collection of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions, and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning.

Paradigms - Looking to the Future
These chapters are about paradigm shifts - different approaches that radically challenge established conventions. Here you will find chapters on experimenting with drones, creating an app to support French language learning, exploring a walking workstation in school, yoga and meditation for adolescent decision-making, and creativity and innovation.

Ideas - The Next Step
These chapters are about how current research is changing or impacting existing practices or established norms. In this section you can read about engineering design and the STEM crisis, improving reading for English language learners, and Day 9 prototyping

Practices - Innovating in the Now
These chapters describe the application of an instructional practice in a completely novel way or the successful mash-up of different practices. In this section you will read about designing for environmental sustainability, the journey to standards-based assessment and reporting, problem solving (the Global Social Entrepreneurship Summit), using technology and analyzing data as key assessment, making and tinkering in the PYP, Community and Social Responsibility (CSR): a model for 21st century learning, inquiry in Kindergarten, iPad apps for creation in Early Childhood, using student data profiles to visualize student success in the Middle School, improving the world (the Technology, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Summit) and finally a chapter written by my colleague Sharon Brown and myself on coaching your colleagues about our Technology Integration Coaching programme.

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

If you missed the earlier volumes, here are the links:

·        Future Forwards Volume 1

·        Future Forwards Volume 2

·        Future Forwards Volume 3

Lifeschool adventures of a lost student

School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education - Austin Kleon

This quote comes from the book Steal Like An Artist, which I started reading this week. This week I also had the pleasure of having lunch with the newest member of ASB’s R&D team, Abhishek Shetty who spoke to me about his experience of education and his ideas about a Lifeschool.

Abhishek talked to me about his early life in Bahrain. He told me that up to the 10th Grade he was not a good student, however he then got the idea of studying what the “good” students did that was different from the rest and applying this to his learning in Grades 11 and 12 - and that this both led him to become successful academically and to find learning more enjoyable. So much so, that after Grade 12 Abhishek wrote a book about academic excellence to share these ideas with others. This book, published in January 2013 is entitled Academic Excellence … The Start of the Learning Revolution. Abhishek said his aim in writing the book was to show students how they can fall in love with their subjects and become great students who do well in exams.

At this point Abhishek said he still believed the most important thing about learning was getting good grades. After school he went on to university in Mumbai, spending a year doing Media Studies. He said he didn’t plan or do much research prior to starting the course and so became quickly disillusioned. As a consequence he did not do well. Abhishek came to realize that he had never really thought about what he loved doing. He decided that what he had to do was to apply his knowledge to add value to the world in order to be happy. At this point Abhishek described himself as a “lost student” and decided to take a gap year.

And what a year that was! At this point Abhishek developed the idea of Lifeschool. He felt that every experience he had could be a lesson, every person he met could be a teacher, and everything around him could be a learning tool. In 2013, he therefore decided to take matters into his own hands. He spent 6 months doing a tour of India, followed by 6 months of studying the history and evolution of learning from around the world. During this time, Abhishek tried to spend time in as many different educational institutions as he could. In order to get invited into schools and colleges he realized he needed a “product” to share - and so he developed the Empower One Billion youth movement, focused on the message that every student is special, unique and meant for greatness, and started visiting schools in Mumbai to talk to students about putting thought into what they were studying.

In his blog, Learning is Beautiful, Abhishek writes that he “wanted to fall in love with learning again and decided to attend every conference I could, meet as many new and interesting people as possible and read everything I could. It was a learning adventure like no other.” During the year he read 500 books and watched 1000+ hours of video. However he said the most important part of that year was that “I finally got a chance to spend some time with myself. I got a chance to look within and reflect on some of the deeper questions of life.” He studied Indian and Greek philosophy and considered the role of teachers as guides in helping students move from information, through knowledge, to wisdom.

Abhishek is now studying psychology and English Literature. In ASB’s R&D department he is working on the Lifeschool philosophy and is exploring future prototypes to inspire students to fall in love with learning and then use that skill to create products and services of real value to the world.

Photo Credit: The Nick Page via Compfight cc

Research and Development in Schools?

I've written in the past about how, starting in 2011, ASB has "superstructed".  This was not a term I'd heard before I came to ASB, but it is based on the ideas of Jane McGonigal for reorganizing systems and structures by building on the foundations that already exist. At ASB, the first thing to be superstructed was the teaming structure, where two new teams were established: Teaching and Learning (T&L) and Research and Development (R&D). The teams are open to those who are interested and many teachers volunteer to be on them. 

The T&L team's role is to make end results happen now, while the R&D team is looking ahead of the curve at what is possible or what could make a difference to education in the future. The T&L team set up different task forces to look at current issues such as 21st century skills, high student achievement, assessment, differentiation and so on - these are the things that ASB has to implement now as they impact on the teaching and learning of today's students. The R&D core team set up other task forces to look at project based learning, multi-age classrooms, online/blended learning, BYOD, games based learning, green education. mobile devices internship, news forms of PD, recruitment and so on.  ASB prototyped a number of these - and since 2011 many of these have in fact been implemented. 

In addition to this ASB has its own R&D Department, known as Re.D Studio.  The Research and Development Department explores, studies, prototypes, researches, and scales new teaching and learning approaches, practices, and systems that advance relevant learning in an accelerating change environment.  Re.D Studio is a sandbox space for creating perpetual beta prototypes that have been researched and developed through an action research process.

Last week 3 members of ASB's leadership made a presentation about the important of innovation to more than a hundred heads of top international schools.  I was really interested to read that the feedback from these indicates that there may well be an R&D movement in international schools in the coming years.  The video below is one that was used at the presentation.  It highlights some of the R&D initiatives that have impacted student learning at ASB in recent years, including Maker, TRAI (Technology, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence), Intersessions and Studios.

To find out more about ASB's R&D, including links to Facebook, Twitter, the Findings blog, Re.D Studio and MakerMinds please click here.

Making and the Learner Profile

Over the past couple of years I've written several posts about the Maker Movement at ASB.  I attended an ISTE pre-conference workshop in 2013 on Maker with Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez, and both Gary and Sylvia came to ASB to help us empower students through making.    We launched Maker Faires and Maker Saturdays at ASB and currently have these every month.  We have also incorporated Maker into a number of PYP units of inquiry, for example in Grade 4.  In Kindergarten we have an entire unit of making.  In their How the World Works unit, KG students explore the central idea "The way materials behave and interact can determine how people use them."  This is a PBL unit with the driving question "What do makers need to know?"  Our key concepts are form, function and change and our lines of inquiry are the behaviour and uses of materials, the changing properties of materials and manipulation of materials for specific purposes.  Students are assessed on their understanding through the creation of a Maker Studio - they explore the materials and create an end product that shows their understanding of the types of materials used and how they functions in their new state/version.

Yesterday at our faculty meeting it was time for the teachers to have a hands-on experience of Maker - our task was to design ScribbleBots.  Scot Hoffman, our R&D Coordinator, then shared several ways teachers could take this further.  The idea is not that the Re.D Studio team come into classrooms and lead Maker activities, but that they provide professional development, consultation and guidance so that teachers are supported to empower their own students to become makers.  Scot shared several other ideas (PrimeTime and the Curiosity Project which will the be subject of an upcoming blog post).  However one of the things that I found really interesting is how our Re.D Studio has looked at making together with the IB Learner Profile, making it a perfect fit for several of our PYP units of inquiry.  Here are a few examples of what teachers can look for in maker activities that support the Learner Profile:

Risk-Takers

• tries something new
• approaches uncertainty with forethought and determination
• takes intellectual risks

• transforms failure into new insights or approaches

• offers explanation(s) for a strategy, tool, or making outcome

• displays motivation or investment in learning through making

Reflective

• shares experiences and insights from making
• reflects on learning strengths and needs during making

Inquirers

• strives to understand
• persists to achieve goals
• expresses and uses curiosity
• inspired by new ideas or approaches
• inspires others with their making

Are you teaching at a PYP school?  Have you started to include Maker in any of your units of inquiry?  If so please leave me a comment as I'd love to learn more.

Click here for more posts about Maker at ASB

Photo Credit: The Bakken Museum via Compfight cc

Learning a new language: The French Files

Around a year and a half ago I wrote a post about how my son has been learning Spanish using the free app Duolingo.  Recently one of my colleagues Andrea, also a member of ASB's R&D Core Team, designed an iPad app to help students learn and improve their French.  I wanted to share this because I think that so many "educational" apps are designed by people who are not actually teachers, whereas Andrea has taken ideas from her many years of teaching French and Spanish and her knowledge of students to design something that would be fun for them to play - and to learn French through this play.  Her app is called A.C.D:  The French Files.

This game is about the Art Crimes Division (A.C.D.) who are on an adventure to uncover who has stolen a famous painting from a gallery in Paris.  It's a special agent adventure game where students have to learn new vocabulary and build simple phrases for using with suspects.  The idea behind the app is that students use French in everyday situations.

The Game
For many years a dangerous group of people who call themselves H.A.R.M. have been attacking famous works of art from around the world.  The Art Crime Division has been created to bring these criminals to justice.  The best agents from around the world are trained to stop these evil characters. H.A.R.M. is preparing to strike again and the A.C.D. needs a new agent to take care of this threat. While playing this game, students become language learning agents who need to explore various scenes filled with conversations to be understood, objects to be found and a person to be caught.

Here is a video about the game



And here is another educator, Sharon Brown, Director of Educational Technology for the Secondary School at ASB talking about her experiences with this game:



Personally I find it wonderful that a language teacher has decided to design an educational game to help her students learn French.  I hope other teachers find this useful and inspiring.

Andrea has many new ideas that she would like to add into the game in future.  She is now looking for ratings on the game so that she can look for funding.  She hopes that this will allow her to take the game forward by adding additional levels and to make the game in several different languages.

Visit Andrea's website to find out more about A.C.D.

Future Forwards Volume 3

This weekend ASB hosted the Future Forwards Summit.  This was a global conference on educational innovation with the mission of empowering schools in developing their capacity for innovation.  The goal was that the 15 schools who attended would leave the summit with their own prototype model of an R&D department for their school.  

One of the things I'm often asked about our R&D department by teachers in other schools is what do we actually research?  This question was answered by Craig Johnson, ASB's superintendent, as he drew the line between innovation and implementation.  Craig's message was that 

A lot of important ideas in education, that don't exist at your school, don't need to be researched, they simply need to be implemented. So, are you "researching a new topic and exploring new frontiers" or are you designing an implementation plan for something that is best practice already but doesn't exist at your school? 

A great question - that gets right to the heart of why we have an R&D department that focuses on innovation and exploring new frontiers in education.

The Future Forwards Summit coincided with the publication of the 3rd Volume of Future Forwards. These books are collections of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning.  The books are divided into 3 sections:  Paradigms, Ideas and Practices.

In Volume 3 you will find the following:

Paradigms - Looking to the Future
These chapters are about paradigm shifts - different approaches that radically challenge established conventions.  Here you will read chapters about relevance in a global educational ecosystem, the impact of a school R&D department, essential conditions for effective R&D in schools, the Global Recruitment Collaborative - a new way of dealing with the "talent wars", rethinking PD for the future, and how personal learning devices can personalize learning.

Ideas - The Next Step
These chapters are about how current research is changing or impacting existing practices or established norms.  Here you will find chapters on using visual analytics to support student learning, using technology to shift culture in a local Indian school, and the TRAI (technology, robotics and artificial intelligence) Summit.

Practices - Innovating in the Now
These chapters describe the application of an instructional practice in a completely novel way or the successful mash-up of different practices.  In this section you will read about how our tech audit has transformed the personalization of tech PD, accelerating and innovating intersessions, learning analytics and data visualization in a 4th Grade class, exploring wellness data, new media in art and Maker Saturdays.

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

Future Forwards Volume 3
Future Forwards Volume 2
Future Forwards Volume 1