often credentials are earned mostly by the demonstration of proficiency, not completion.

important that integration of formal and informal learning have champions

Web 2.0 technology is a key enabler for this marriage

Technological tools and leadership support alone will not be enough to make the marriage of informal and formal learning work. The shared values, beliefs, mental models, habits, and behaviors of the workforce in an organization – its culture is key.

Creative leadership is rich with paradoxes. Creative leaders are driven by their internal passion and purpose, yet they also have an externally oriented, explorative mindset. Creative leaders lead from the front by envisioning a better future, pointing the way and setting an aspiration, yet they achieve this by orchestrating a creative team, often leading from behind to bring out the best in others. In this article, we describe the competencies of a creative leader in detail, and invite you to look in the mirror and see how you score on those key competencies. We explore the topic of paradoxes found in creative leadership and leave you with some practical suggestions on how to grow as a creative leader.

We discovered that self-awareness is the cornerstone of leadership: great leaders are aware of what we call their ‘leadership gifts’ as well as their ‘learning edges’. And we found out that self-awareness helps leaders to build authenticity, as great leaders think and act from a place of truth within themselves.

At THNK, we distinguish between a management team and a creative team. A management team typically comprises seven or more members and is charged with running an existing business. By contrast, a creative team has ideally three members and is focused on seeking new solutions.

untapped opportunities involve further personalization of the curriculum, teaching, and assessment.

Schools will no longer be just free-standing buildings but will be more integrated into community life.

Segregating students by age will become less prevalent within learning spaces.

But what are they betting on? AltSchool is a decidedly Bay Area experiment with an educational philosophy known as student-centered learning. The approach, which many schools have adopted, holds that kids should pursue their own interests, at their own pace. To that, however, AltSchool mixes in loads of technology to manage the chaos, and tops it all off with a staff of forward-thinking teachers set free to custom-teach to each student. The result, they fervently say, is a superior educational experience.

heir own weekly “playlists,” queues of individual and group activities tailored to the specific strengths and weaknesses of each kid.

This puts AltSchool at the intersection of two rapidly growing movements in education. Along one axis are the dozens of edtech startups building apps for schools; along the other are the dozens of progressive schools rallying around the increasingly popular concept of personalized education. The difference is: AltSchool is not just building apps or building schools. It’s doing both. In that way, AltSchools are more than just schools. They’re mini-research and development labs, where both teachers and engineers are diligently developing the formula for a 21st century education, all in hopes of applying that formula not only to other AltSchools, but to private, public, and charter schools across the country.

Flipped conferences could keep more of the traditional model than unconferences do. You could ask educational influencers with something important to teach the conference audience to speak. But instead of doing their teaching and presenting at the conference itself, they can work out an assignment for the attendees to complete in advance – a slide share, video of a speech, or a collection of reading materials – and then spend the actual conference time discussing, or workshopping, the ideas from the assignment.