• The role of Leapfrogging in the future of youth work and workforce preparation by George Kubik
• Leapfrog principles and practices: Core components of Education 3.0 and 4.0 by Arthur M. Harkins
• The Leapfrog Principle and paradigm shifts in education by Xian-rong Wang
• The significance of Leapfrog education development in China by Changde Cao
• Four scenarios of Leapfrog for teacher training curriculum in China by Hongzhuan Song
• Utilizing digital technology to achieve leapfrog learning by Jun ma
• Technological applications of Leapfrog by John Moravec
• Leapfrog Education: An alternative present and future for Chinese tertiary education by Yi Cao

(Earlier drafts of each paper are available here.)

The Leapfrog Institutes at the University of Minnesota intends to foster a sustainable culture of innovation in our schools. You are invited to participate in discussions on building positive futures for PreK-21 education in the communities served by the Leapfrog Institutes. MESPA is a Collaborating Institution in this incredibly important infusion of creativity and innovation in education.

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Leapfrog Institutes can visit your school and share what Leapfrogging is all about, possibilities for how to address your district or school needs, and how imagination, creativity, and innovation can expand at ridiculously low expense. And these expansions don’t need to occur in the regular school day. They can be extracurricular, involving self-chosen teachers, students, parents, and other members of our education communities!

Thank you, MESPA!

Soon, we hope to begin collaborative work with the Minnesota affiliate of DI, and with the national/international level as well. Is it an exaggeration to say that DI is doing what the majority of schools (and colleges) are avoiding, namely to promote imagination, creativity, invention, and innovation? We think not! Hats off to everyone associated with Destination ImagiNation!

John compiled a short video from our visit:

(If the embedded video doesn’t play, you can view it here.)

Students are grouped with a licensed staff member by area of interest. (Example: Music, Writing, Computer Programming, Politics, Painting, Robotics, etc)

• The cells would meet daily during advisory time. The cell becomes the students advisory for the year. Cells would have students from all grade levels.
• The cells would select a project or projects to focus on for the school year. (Example: Build a robot, Create a short play, Design a new computer program, Complete a community service project, Study global warming, Lobby for a political cause)
• The cells would meet an additional ½ day once a month to complete work on the project.
• The cells could elect to meet before or after school to complete a chosen project.
• At the end of the year, one cell would be chosen to receive the Thomas A Edison Innovation Award. (Maybe the Superintendent or Mayor could help select the winning cell.)
• An Innovation Fair would be held in the Spring to share innovation ideas and projects with the Edison School Community.
• Innovation Cells could have displays at school open houses and other community events.
• 12th and 11th graders could be academic coaches for 9th and 10th graders in their cell.
• All Licensed Staff would advise an Innovation Cell. Staff would be chosen for cells depending on interests or expertise.
• Business and Community Leaders could come in during the ½ day each month to advise students on cell projects.
• The Innovation Cells would provide a learning focus for advisory and help students develop their creative skills.
• Upper classmen could serve as role models for under classmen.
• We could start with a few Innovation Cells next year and phase them in over the next few years.

(Created by Ron Fuller 2-7-08) (Revised 3-26-08)

So, what’s an “Innovation Cell”?

An Innovation Cell (IC) helps to organize a project to make good ideas more operational. ICs help to answer the “So What?” question that usually accompanies new ideas generated by students, faculty, and the community. Innovation Cells have small numbers of people at their core, but may have many affiliate ICs and individuals around the globe via the Internet.

ICs are especially effective when a large gap separates a good idea from a great project that can help materialize that idea.

Comparatively unburdened by tradition and bureaucracy, ICs can operate very rapidly – a major advantage in a rapidly changing world. In other words, responsible ICs can operate with reasonable freedom within the larger organization.

What kind of organization distinguishes the IC? It is self-organization, a product of collaborative work among its members. Self-organization generates ownership, excitement, and commitment among IC members.

How long should an IC last? That is to be locally determined, but in general, until it has completed its task. Thus, some ICs might last a few months while others might continue much longer. On occasion, ICs might choose to terminate because, despite everyone’s best efforts, they determine that insufficient progress has been made.

ICs bring out the “implicit” knowledge and creativity of their members. This provides a self-discovery and self-improvement value in addition to the actual benefits gained from collectively working toward the IC goal.

These benefits may cause the IC to appear inefficient and too unstructured, but many great innovations have come from just such contexts!

“Beyond ICs lies a vast continent of innovative possibilities. Although we understand ICs, there must be many more innovative possibilities we have not yet discovered. To explore this treasure requires the open mind of the explorer himself. This mindset may be one of the most precious results of the work in an IC. Viewed in this way, a new generation of professionals and leaders may emerge to deal with the challenging uncertainties of our future.” -Uwe Weissflog

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.

During October 17-19 this year Anqing Teachers College will sponsor a conference on Leapfrog-inspired changes in the near futures of Chinese and U.S. education. Six members of the University of Minnesota CEHD community are involved with coordination, presentations, and papers for the conference which will be held in Anqing, China.

The University of Minnesota, Anqing Teachers College, and the World Future Society are collaborators in this exciting development.

The official title of the conference is Interdisciplinary Education in Teacher Training Programs via Leapfrog Principles. We will release more information about the conference in the near future.

All eight draft papers for the ATC conference are linked here. Please make any comments that you feel will improve the papers. The deadline for suggesting changes to the papers is April 4, 2008. After that, the papers will be edited by Dr. Tim Mack, President of the World Future Society, for a special issue of the journal Futures Research Quarterly.

We look forward to reading your ideas!

Arthur Harkins and Sam Song, co-editors

Paper drafts for ATC Leapfrog conference

1. Arthur HARKINS: Leapfrog Principles and Practices: Core Components of Education 3.0 and 4.0
   This paper describes the paradigm and practices of educational “Leapfrogging.” Leapfrog Principles and Practices are introduced and explained as components of “Education 3.0,” or knowledge-producing education, and “Education 4.0,” or innovation-producing education. Examples are provided of human capital enhancements relevant to knowledge production and innovation applications of knowledge. The author contends that the first nations to Leapfrog into local expressions of Education 3.0 and 4.0, support them with advanced technologies, and apply them in early childhood through tertiary and adult education, will become bellwether human capital development leaders among 21st creative economies of the 21st Century.
2. Changde CAO: The Significance of Leapfrog Education Development in China
   Leapfrog development in education can be classified as 1) Leapfrog development in macro education, which involves Leapfrogging in space, time and quality; and 2) Leapfrog development in micro education, which involves Leapfrogging in the era of curriculum programming, the starting point of teaching, and the growth level of individual students. Implementation of Leapfrog education development strategies is of special significance to developing countries like China. First, it can rapidly narrow the education gap between China and developed countries. Second, it can promote the balanced development of education among regions within China, achieving distributed educational equality and the sharing of best educational resources. Third, it can promote large-scale improvement in the quality of teaching. And fourth, it can explore students’ potentials to the utmost extent, enabling them to reach international horizons on the “highland” of the future.
3. George KUBIK: The Role of Leapfrogging in the Future of Youth Work and Workforce Preparation
   Coping with unprecedented rates of change and complexity requires the ability to Leapfrog existing assumptions and practices regarding the roles of youth, enterprises, and societies in work and workforce preparation. Legacy systems must be continuously rethought, and routinely discarded, in order to persistently spring-board youth into rapidly evolving personal development roles and work situations involving partnerships with enterprises and governments. This paper examines the nature of the emerging new economy and the future of work and workforce preparation in the context of a youth-oriented Leapfrog paradigm.
4. Hongzhuan SONG: Teacher Training and Upgrading via Leapfrog: Four Scenarios of Teacher Training Curriculum in China
   For the past over two decades, and especially the last five years, the People’s Republic of China has taken the rest of the world by surprise with its astonishing economic growth. To sustain its rapid development, however, the Chinese government and other key stakeholders realize the urgency of reform of the national educational system. In China, it is widely recognized that ICTs make it almost impossible for learning to take place without using emerging new technologies to meet the demand from the ever quickening change in the external world. Based on findings from a recent research the author of this paper conducted, there is a good reason to believe that China will turn its education system upside down by introducing what we call Leapfrog principles and practices. This paper focuses its discussion on the reforms of teacher education in China by exploring the future(s) of curriculum reform for teacher education in the light of Leapfrog principles.
5. John MORAVEC: Technological Applications of Leapfrog
   Relating recent social developments in mobile learning (m-learning) technologies in China, this article explores technological manifestations of Leapfrog as it relates to educational transformation. The author asks readers to consider a break in didactic educational settings where students “download” knowledge from their teachers to a new paradigm where m-learning devices replace the teacher for banking-style pedagogy and free classrooms from rote memorization exercises. New technologies therefore must be purposively employed to support the construction of new ideas and support the coconstruction of new pedagogies. This purposive refocusing allows for the application of innovative modes of knowledge production and distribution that identify, create and utilize new and futureoriented formats for sharing knowledge in schools. In this reframing to support knowledge-based learning for an innovation society, Leapfrog schools must design and build institutional flexibility to rapidly adopt/incorporate/evolve these technologies into transformative practices rather than using them to support old practices.
6. MA Jun: Utilizing Digital Technology to Achieve Leapfrog Learning
   With the increasing explosion of human knowledge, it is necessary for people to undertake cross-space learning, cross-time learning, and eventually achieve education Leapfrog capabilities. The emergence of digital educational media has made these capabilities both desirable and highly likely.
7. Xian-rong WANG: The Leapfrog Principle and Paradigm Shifts in Education
   This paper introduces the Leapfrog Principle and discusses its implications for education in the globalized, knowledge-based society. Facing the challenges in the new millennium, a paradigm shift in education is urged to support the formation of globally-competent, knowledge producing learners who will thrive in an era of accelerating change and uncertainty. Based on the theory put forth by Cheng (1999, 2000, and 2001), a new triplization paradigm is introduced and explained. This new paradigm emphasizes the development of students‟ contextualized multiple intelligences (including technological, economic, social, political, cultural, and learning intelligences), and the processes of triplization (including globalization, localization, and individualization) in education.
8. Yi CAO: Leapfrog Education: An Alternative Present and Future for Chinese Tertiary Education
   This paper discusses the application of Leapfrog University principles within the context of Chinese distance education. The paper argues that the proposal of Leapfrog is a viable alternative to the present and future development of Chinese tertiary education, in particular, online teaching and learning based on modern technology. Leapfrog education and its underlying themes are well contextualized for Chinese tertiary education during the transition period from elite to mass education. The co-constructivism of social and contextual meaning suggested by Leapfrog Education 3.0 and 4.0 is particularly pertinent to what is missing in Chinese education. In addition, the Leapfrog Education points out a new direction for research and action-to address the gap between socioeconomic advancement and a slower pace of change in traditional education. Within the traditional education, there is also a call to tackle the startling discrepancy between student and faculty rates of adoption of web-based learning initiatives. Finally, Chinese postsecondary education has the emerging capacity to build up a host of liberal skills for PreK- 17 learners who are the primary population the Leafrog Education attempt to serve. In spite of these advantages, the Leapfrog Education has to address more conceptual and practical concerns, such as Leapfrog implementation and cost-effectiveness and cost utility. Some implementation suggestions are also provided.

The 2008 State Technology Grades have been released. This State Technology Report is a joint project of Education Week and the EPE Research Center. Each state was surveyed to assess the status of K-12 educational technology across the nation in the areas of access, use, and capacity. The report assigned “grades to the states” for their technology performance overall and in those three categories.