Resources
Additional Thought Stimulators
The following materials are being provided as additional resources and thought stimulators for participants of the June 2–3, 2010 Planning Session. These optional materials may be helpful in providing additional background information on the subjects being discussed in the Session. They may also provide some stimulating and thought provoking concepts that participants haven't thought of or been exposed to until now. Currently there are materials related to:
If you have any questions about the material provided here please contact Michael Kaufman from InnovationLabs by email or phone 510-903-0652.
Building Capacity in the Group
A short (under 3 minutes) video on perspectives by Derek Sivers (delivered at TEDIndia in 2009).
Big Bonuses Don't Mean Big Results
Daniel H. Pink, an author and former speechwriter for then-Vice President Al Gore, spoke about motivation at the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford, England, last summer. TED is a nonprofit whose focus is "Ideas worth spreading" and which distributes talks on many subjects at http://www.ted.com/. Pink's best-selling books include Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Dr. Willard "Bill" Daggett
CEO of the International Center for Leadership in Education, is recognized worldwide for his proven ability to move education systems towards more rigorous and relevant skills and knowledge for all students. The International Center would like to share Dr. Daggett's basic PowerPoint Slide Shows. He uses these to prepare his presentation for your group.
21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead
To work, the 21st century skills movement will require keen attention to curriculum, teacher quality, and assessment.
Punished by Rewards: A Talk with Alfie Kohn
Do this and you'll get that. Sound familiar? It's the basic strategy we use to raise our children, according to Alfie Kohn. As the author of Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes (Houghton Mifflin), Kohn has ardently spoken out against incentive plans to encourage good grades and behavior. FamilyEducation editor Ann Svensen spoke with Mr. Kohn about why this reward-based mentality is harming our kids.
A Well-Rounded Education for a Flat World
It's not a question of content versus skills—it's about creating challenging, profoundly engaging, and authentic educational experiences that produce lifelong learners.
Lessons Learned from Studying How Innovations Can Achieve Scale
Looking for common strategies and challenges as education reformers strive to grow and increase the impact of their education innovations.
Overview Video: Re-Imagining Learning in the 21st Century
In 2006, MacArthur launched the digital media and learning initiative to test the notion that public education would have to transform to prepare young people for the complex and connected social, economic, and political demands of the 21st century.
PBS Documentary - Digital Nation
Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained?
In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, FRONTLINE presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world.
21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn
This anthology introduces the Framework for 21st Century Learning from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills as a way to reenvision learning and prepare students for a rapidly evolving global and technological world. This dynamic new framework promotes innovation through critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and technology integration, while building on mastery of core content and background knowledge.
Kaiser Family Foundation Report: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds
Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people’s media use. The report is based on a survey conducted between October 2008 and May 2009 among a nationally representative sample of 2,002 3rd-12th grade students ages 8-18, including a self-selected subsample of 702 respondents who completed seven-day media use diaries, which were used to calculate multitasking proportions.
Teens and Mobile Phones
This survey of 800 teenagers aged 12 to 17 and their parents was conducted on landlines and cell phones from June to September 2009. It was conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the University of Michigan's Department of Communication Studies.
Innovative Programs Around the US
Quest to Learn -
Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders. Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others. As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.
Big Picture Schools
Big Picture Learning’s mission is to lead vital changes in education, both in the United States and internationally, by generating and sustaining innovative, personalized schools that work in tandem with the real world of the greater community. We believe that in order to sustain successful schools where authentic and relevant learning takes place, we must continually innovate techniques and test learning tools to make our schools better and more rigorous. Lastly, we believe that in order to create and influence the schools of the future, we must use the lessons learned through our practice and research to give us added leverage to impact changes in public policy.
Making Learning Real - Problem Based Case Learning
The PBCL approach enables educators to design learning based on current and authentic problematic situations encountered at local businesses. By bringing real-time, real-world business needs to their students, instructors can significantly minimize the barriers that typically separate the classroom from the real world.
Tribes
Every school should be a model home, a complete community actively developing future compassionate citizens capable of creating, leading and contributing to the kind of democratic communities - in which we all long to live.
Additional Articles and Videos
A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution
As smartphones and handheld computers move into classrooms worldwide, we may be witnessing the start of an educational revolution. How technology could unleash childhood creativity -- and transform the role of the teacher.
Catching up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization
Two Million Minutes, vividly reveals that American students are no longer “at risk” of falling behind -- they are now clearly behind even Third World students in India and China, in addition to being in 24th place among developed countries.
The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach The New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It
Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation's schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. This problem isn't limited to low-income school districts: even our top schools aren't teaching or testing the skills that matter most in the global knowledge economy. Our teens leave school equipped to work only in the kinds of jobs that are fast disappearing from the American economy. Meanwhile, young adults in India and China are competing with our students for the most sought-after careers around the world.
Top five predictions for 2009
Anthony Salcito, VP of Worlwide Education, Microsoft Corp. shares his top five predictions of trends in education for 2009:
- Modernization & “Greening” of our schools
- The promise of hosted computing
- Access to personal computing devices
- Emergence and connection of “workforce readiness” to student assessment.
- Digital Curriculum a reality
2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning
Over the next decade, the most vibrant innovations in education will take place outside traditional institutions. This 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning presents a critical dilemma facing these institutions: how to reconcile bottom-up developments in education with the traditional top-down hierarchy that is currently in place. Such peripheral innovation will redefine how learning is organized, who comprises the broad “school community,” and what the actual experiences of learners will be like in the future. The validity and role of formal institutions of education will be challenged by key forces of change and will be reconsidered by an expanding group of stakeholders. Together, the pressures of change and new stakeholder demands will create a new future for learning.
Race to Nowhere
Race to Nowhere is a documentary film examining the pressures faced by youth, teachers and parents in our achievement obsessed education system and culture. Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried students aren’t developing the skills needed, and parents who are trying to do what's best for their kids, Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic running rampant in our schools.
Map of Future Forces Affecting Education
The 2006-2016 KWF/IFTF Map of Future Forces Affecting Education is intended to help you think about the future of education in the United States in an engaging and constructive way. The map presents a forecast of external forces that are important in shaping the context for the future of public education and learning in the next decade.
Ray Anderson - CEO of Interface on the business logic of sustainability
At his carpet company, Ray Anderson has increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional "take / make / waste" industrial system on its head. In a gentle, understated way, he shares a powerful vision for sustainable commerce.
5 Personal Core Competencies for the 21st Century
What are the core competencies needed in this century? Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Helen Haste has identified five that we should begin teaching our students. We business managers should also consider how to bring these skills to our companies and careers. See her video Five Competences for Adapting to a Changing World.
The Transparent Factory - VW
This 6 minute and 43 second video gives us a glimpse into a world class factory and the kind of environment graduates will be working in.
Unions Differ On "21st Century Skills"
In this blog item, colleague Sean Cavanagh noted that the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association are on opposite ends of the "21st-century skills" debate. (NEA is one of the partnership's founding members; AFT challenges the effort, per this letter.)
Did You Know?
Video on YouTube on the progression of information technology, researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman, remixed.
21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness: A Resource and Policy Guide
This guide summarizes the challenges and opportunities that, if left unaddressed, will curtail our competitiveness and diminish our standing in the world. Excerpt: “Creating an aligned, 21st century public education system that prepares Americans to thrive is the central competitiveness challenge of the next decade. Addressing this challenge requires forceful and forward-thinking leadership from federal, state and local policymakers.”
Last Updated: April 23, 2010