Last week, John Moravec and I were the guests of Destination ImagiNation during the DI Global Finals in Knoxville. We were delighted at experiencing the largest imagination and creativity gathering ever to assemble - anywhere! Our greatest respect and admiration was for the kids’ impressive demonstrations of intellectual, academic, and personal skills - just three of their many other attributes. Many with their parents in tow, over 1,000 teams of kids and young people ranging from elementary to college levels were there, some from countries such as China, Korea, Turkey, Canada, and Mexico.

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:

At last night’s Destination ImagiNation 2008 Global Finals opening ceremonies, the Minnesota delegation LEAPFROGGED into the Thompson-Boling arena at UTK!

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

Ron Fuller is an emeritus teacher at Edison High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Recently, Ron prepared this step-by-step format for creating self-organizing Innovation Cells in schools. With his permission, we are sharing his framework for building ICs in educational settings.

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)

Leapfrog Institutes introduces “Innovation Cells” as a way to operationalize Leapfrog in your school, college, business or community. First of all, what’s an Innovation Cell? Leapfrog Institutes has drawn the basics from an article written by Uri Weisflog. Uwe Weissflog is an associate of Cambashi and founder of Pathway Guidance – Europe. This work first appeared in the EAReport, October 2005.We’ve retained a very energizing quote from the author! The material was taken on 07 May 2008 from the Cambashi site.

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

David Brooks wrote an excellent op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. He states that individuals cannot be successful in a globalized world without building advanced capabilities to transform information into meaningful knowledge:

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.

This is one of the few articles in popular media that effectively ties globalization with the need for revolutionizing human capital development. And, it is one of the very few articles that contain the words “globalization” and “pedagogy” together in the same paragraph. Read the entire article…

Leapfrog means to jump ahead of the competition, to meet or exceed the needs of 21st Century citizens and workers, and to take a prominent leadership role in educational improvement. The Leapfrog approach focuses on preparing youth for both immediate and life-long participation in value-adding life, learning, work performances, and global-oriented competence.

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

Read the rest of this entry »

A “C” average nation. From Angela Maiers’ blog:

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.

At yesterday’s Horizon Forum meeting at the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Steve O’Conner, Director of Instructional Services for Owatonna Public Schools, presented an overview of an initiative in a classroom in Washington Elementary School where a fifth grade classroom has gone mostly paperless. Desks are replaced with medicine balls and music stands, and textbooks, papers and pens are replaced with laptop computers. We then connected to the classroom by videoconference, and spoke with the students and their teacher, Matt McCartney. What do the kids think? They love it! Jeff Cagle from Owatonna People’s Press joined the conversation in Owatonna, and wrote:

Megan Andrist said she found the laptops helpful because she was able to access a number of kid-friendly Web sites for research. Cam Muchow enjoyed using technology and adding other elements such as digital photography to his assignments.

By removing desks from the classroom, the students are able to instantly reconfigure their learning and work settings. In theory, the instant physical reorganization and software-enhanced environment allows for more individualized instruction. One kinesiologist at the University of Minnesota wondered if the medicine balls could help reduce the need to medicate children diagnosed with neurobehavioral development disorders (i.e., ADHD). Others saw instant potential in the cost savings that can be realized by eliminating traditional desks. Again, we asked: what do the kids think? They love the medicine balls. Cagle wrote:

Most students, including Brady Steinhorst, enjoyed sitting on the therapy balls. “Usually when you’re sitting in a chair, you have nothing to do,” he said, “and then you talk to a friend.”

Despite the excitement and hope the classroom is generating, a troubling question looms: What will happen to these kids when they graduate from the 5^th grade and enter a middle school with desks, and where computers and other resources are restricted to tightly-controlled laboratories? Special thanks goes to Superintendent Dr. Tom Tapper, principal Mary Baier, and Matt McCartney for their collaboration on this event.

[Cross-posted from e-rgonomic] Passport of skills for a knowledge worker:

1. Not restricted to a specific age.
2. Highly engaged, creative, innovative, collaborative and motivated.
3. Uses information and develops knowledge in changing workplaces (not tied to an office).
4. Inventive, intuitive, and able to know things and produce ideas.
5. Capable of creating socially constructed meaning and contextually reinvent meanings.
6. Rejects the role of being an information custodian and associated rigid ways of organizing information.
7. Network maker, always connecting people, ideas, organizations, etc.
8. Possesses an ability to use many tools to solve many different problems.
9. High digital literacy.
10. Competence to solve unknown problems in different contexts.
11. Learning by sharing, without geographical limitation.
12. Highly adaptable to different contexts/environments.
13. Aware of the importance to provide open access to information.
14. Interest in context and the adaptability of information to new situations.
15. Capable of unlearning quickly, and always bringing in new ideas.
16. Competence to create open and flat knowledge networks.
17. Learns continuously (formally and informally) and updates knowledge.
18. Constantly experiments new technologies (especially the collaborative ones).
19. Not afraid of failure.

Sources: Cristóbal Cobo. [http://www.slideshare.net/cristobalcobo] Stephen Collins. [http://www.slideshare.net/trib] John Moravec. [http://www.slideshare.net/moravec]

From this morning’s MACTA keynote address by Arthur Harkins and John Moravec: Co-constructing Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century

Career and Technical Education is poised at the inflection point of a technological and social change process identified as the “J” Curve. Just like the letter J, the “J” Curve describes a sharp upward turn in the exponentially accelerating rate of change. The effects of the “J” Curve will be felt -indeed, are already being felt- by every institution, company, government, and school in all societies. This presentation centers on the leadership that can be exerted by Career and Technical Education in the context of the “J” Curve’s increasing impacts.

To view the slides in a larger format, click here.