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Jim Tiffin Jr

Innovation vs Circulasticity | EdCan Network - 0 views

  • Circulasticity. A combination of the words circular and elasticity, it is an organizational condition that generates contexts or situations in which high levels of activity are noted, but any discernible long-term change is not.
  • Because of the elasticity of circulasticity, “innovation” stretches the core environment, but is eventually brought back to the central traditional core and becomes more of an “improvement” than a change catalyst.
  • In my opinion, true innovation in education will only happen when a new structure is created: one that nurtures critical thinkers, supports risk-takers and encourages ongoing transformation, and that places a high value on creative and insightful learning / teaching in classrooms.
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  • As Martin Hays wrote in his analysis of organizational wisdom, “Organizational wisdom transcends organizational learning in its commitment to doing the right things over doing things right.”
  • At the current time, educational organizations are mired in structures that have significant “blind spots” for innovation or creativity. These blind spots are the structures themselves, since they were designed along an industrial model that favours uniformity and compliance and has no explicit place or mechanism for including creativity and innovation. Hence they simply don’t allow for innovation to be replicated or made systemic.
    • Jim Tiffin Jr
       
      Again, the industrial model spoils our work...
  • As John Kotter eloquently describes in his book Buy-In: Saving your good idea from getting shot down, there are four main change impediments that people use: 1) Fear Mongering, 2) Death by Delay, 3) Confusion, 4) Ridicule.[2] In education, these four elements can be translated into: 1) Need Research, 2) Need Results, 3) Need Support, 4) Need Financing. The irony is that even if all four parts of this requirement are met, it still doesn’t serve to create innovative practices.
  • Where everything seems to bog down is in the implementation component.
  • What we need is a work environment that openly values creativity, risk-taking and courage; its lack remains the single greatest impediment to innovation in education.
  • And so, innovation, as traditionally defined, remains more of an elusive objective in education than an emerging reality. We debate the issue; we define the issue; and we design the issue. But moving the innovation agenda forward is an entirely different issue.
  • “The quality of a question is not judged by its complexity but by the complexity of the thinking that it provokes.”
  • True transformation will ultimately have to begin with a courageous act from an individual or individuals to enact the deep structural changes that are so needed.
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    "Circulasticity. A combination of the words circular and elasticity, it is an organizational condition that generates contexts or situations in which high levels of activity are noted, but any discernible long-term change is not."
Bo Adams

American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn't Exist | WIRED - 0 views

  • We “learn,” and after this we “do.” We go to school and then we go to work. This approach does not map very well to personal and professional success in America today. Learning and doing have become inseparable in the face of conditions that invite us to discover.
  • In such conditions the futures of law, medicine, philosophy, engineering, and agriculture – with just about every other field – are to be rediscovered.
    • Bo Adams
       
      In this paragraph there are so many "project starters" that one could design an entire "curriculum" to weave them into an advanced problem solving component to school!
  • Americans need to learn how to discover.
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  • Against this arresting background, an exciting new kind of learning is taking place in America. Alternatively framed as maker classes, after-school innovation programs, and innovation prizes, these programs are frequently not framed as learning at all.
  • Failing to create a new way of learning adapted to contemporary circumstances might be a national disaster.
  • Discovery has always provoked interest, but how one discovers may today interest us even more.
  • in the course I teach, How to Create Things and Have Them Matter, students are asked to look, listen, and discover, using their own creative genius, while observing contemporary phenomena that matter today.
  • Learning by an original and personal process of discovery is a trend on many US university campuses
  • Success brings not just a good grade, or the financial reward of a prize. It brings the satisfaction that one can realize dreams, and thrive, in a world framed by major dramatic questions. And this fans the kind of passion that propels an innovator along a long creative career.
  • Culture labs conduct or invite experiments in art and design to explore contemporary questions that seem hard or even impossible to address in more conventional science and engineering labs.
  • The culture lab is the latest indication that learning is changing in America. It cannot happen too fast.
  • we need to get smarter in ways that match the challenges we now face.
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    "Our kids learn within a system of education devised for a world that increasingly does not exist." HT @MeghanCureton & Greg Todd Jones (two colleagues in significantly different worlds who sent me the link at exactly the same time.)
Bo Adams

8 EduWins of 2013 | Edutopia - 0 views

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    "We're always hearing about how education is so messed up -- so often, the conversation focuses on all the negatives. But there are also plenty of "EduWins," too -- awesome ideas, videos, people, programs, practices, products, Tweeters, teachers, and technologies that are making a difference and changing the lives of real students on a global scale. Indeed, as technology continues to quietly revolutionize learning, and models like project-based learning become more broadly accepted, and neuroscience deepens our understanding of how our miraculous brains actually work, it is no surprise that so much is changing in education. And -- as with any change -- there is the good and the bad. So we asked our intrepid team of bloggers to reflect on this year's biggest eduwins, and here are their thoughts."
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