Putting Kids First

Let's continue talking about community development, education policy and reform.
David Kirp is James D. Marver Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His work ranges across the social policy landscape. He has been directly involved in policy-making, and between the 2008 election and the Inauguration, he has served on President Obama’s Transition Team. Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming the Lives of Children (2011) makes a powerful argument for building systems of support centred on the kids.
It may "take a village to raise a child," but most American families are struggling, with diminishing social support, to do the job on their own. While parents work longer hours for less and the costs of childcare, healthcare, and college skyrocket, the share of the U.S. budget spent on kids has fallen 22 percent since 1960. More and more children may well not make it to a healthy, productive adulthood. It doesn't have to be this way. In this book, Kirp clarifies the importance of investing wisely in children. He outlines a visionary "Kids First" policy agenda that's guided by a "golden rule" principle: Every child deserves what's good enough for a child you love. And he offers lively and inspiring, on-the-ground accounts of five big cradle-to-college initiatives that can change the arc of all children's lives: strong support for parents; high-quality early education; linking schools and communities to improve what both offer children; giving all youngsters access to a caring and stable adult mentor; and providing kids a nest egg to help pay for college or kick-start a career.
-- David J. Erickson interviews David L. Kirp (Community Development Interview Series)

Youth speaks

This is a very interesting concept, born in California, Bay area.
Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, Youth Speaks is the leading nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs in the country. Presenters of local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, reading series, and more, Youth Speaks also offers a comprehensive slate of literary arts education programs during the school day, in the after-school hours, on weekends and evenings, while providing numerous opportunities for youth to be published and heard. All told, Youth Speaks works with 45,000 teens per year in the Bay Area alone, and has helped create partner programs in 47 cities across the United States. By providing free arts education to youth with limited access, their  programs seek to empower young people with opportunities to discover and develop their own voices. They firmly believe that in order to overcome the difficulties of the circumstances within which they are situated, young people must think of their voices as vital tools through which they can process their lives, shape the world around them, and hone their abilities to envision and create long-lasting impact. They challenge youth to find, develop, publicly present, and apply their voices as creators of social change.
-- for Youth Speaks website

My wish: Once Upon a School

This great TED talk will inspire you to be more engaged with your community and local schools.

"..there's something about the kids finishing their homework in a given day, working one-on-one, getting all this attention -- they go home, they're finished. They don't stall. They don't do their homework in front of the TV. They're allowed to go home at 5:30 p.m., enjoy their family, enjoy other hobbies, get outside, play. And that makes a happy family. A bunch of happy families in a neighborhood is a happy community. A bunch of happy communities tied together is a happy city and a happy world"

"So, the TED Wish: I wish that you -- you personally and every creative individual and organization you know -- will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have a thousand examples -- a thousand! -- of transformative partnerships."

"The schools need you. The teachers need you. Students and parents need you. They need your actual person: your physical personhood and your open minds and open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time. Some of these kids just don't plain know how good they are: how smart and how much they have to say. You can tell them. You can shine that light on them, one human interaction at a time. So we hope you'll join us". 

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. He is a publisher, philanthropist and advocate for students and teachers. In 1998 he launched 826 Valencia, a San Francisco-based writing and tutoring lab for young people, which has since opened six more chapters across the United States. He has extended his advocacy of students by supporting their educators, instituting a monthly grant for exceptional Bay Area teachers.
-- go to ONCE UPON A SCHOOL WEBSITE
-- go to 826 Valencia

Good resources for teachers

BlueHarvest - Managing Individualized Education. "BlueHarvest isn't a gradebook, it's a learning tool. It helps manage the hundreds of conversations I have as I differentiate for every student"
BlueHarvest is the experiment of a high school teacher in Iowa who was fed up with students valuing points and grades above learning. What does BlueHarvest do? BlueHarvest is a website that organizes the feedback that teachers give to students and then keeps it organized by idea for future reference as the student progresses. How much? Your account is free of charge until one year from the day you set it up, at which point it will be $36 per year for each subsequent year.
-- read about it - review by Chris Ludwig



Edmodo is a "social learning platform" website for teachers, students, and parents. It is marketed as the Facebook for schools. Join over 33 million teachers and students safely connecting in online classrooms, collaborating on assignments, discovering new resources, and more!

The Future of Education Without Coercion

"Humans are built to walk, humans create, humans cook, humans tell stories..So, how does school rank? The current model of high school fails every single one of these measures. Are they arbitrary? Maybe, but I’m a blogger and this is my blog...Do we walk, cook, create, and story tell? Regularly? Is your school built to emphasize these parts of being human?.. I’m saying that if you ignore the end users’ requirements for interacting with your system, you’re going to get insanity...I’m just saying that a school that is mobile, centered on creating solutions, allows for sensible food preparation and production, and built on narrative is the only school that I want my kids going to". -- Shawn's blog

Shawn Cornally's tagline to his blog sums him up well: "Dealing with the fear of being a boring teacher." Clearly Shawn is successfully combating this fear. Blogging extensively and generating conversations among educators across the world, Shawn brings us some perspective on how the tools of today can be put to work in the classroom.
-- Visit Shawn's blog

Science should be a story

"I am often so disappointed when people think that I'm advocating a dumbing down of science. That's not true at all. I'm currently a Ph.D. student at MIT, and I absolutely understand the importance of detailed, specific scientific communication between experts, but not when we're trying to teach 13-year-olds. If a young learner thinks that all viruses have DNA, that's not going to ruin their chances of success in science. But if a young learner can't understand anything in science and learns to hate it because it all sounds like this, that will ruin their chances of success".

As we said many times, teachers can make a big difference. Please watch this talk and the one that we will post next by two young inspiring and energetic teachers.
When new friends tell Tyler DeWitt that they hated science classes in school, he doesn't blame them. In this video, Tyler discusses how modern science education has taken a fascinating subject filled with riveting stories, colorful characters, and spectacular demonstrations, and has eviscerated it of its joy, excitement, and intellectual engagement. Science communication should be a narrative, he argues, that draws on analogies, metaphors, humor, and emotional connection. Tyler puts these ideas into action by telling a fun, intriguing story that explains the complex means by which viruses attack their targets. He urges fellow scientists to dispense with jargon, seriousness, and tyrannical technical precision, and to focus on communicating their main ideas through appealing narratives. Tyler DeWitt has taught high school Biology, Chemistry, and English in independent schools in the United States and South Korea, and he has worked as a project manager to develop new K12 science curriculum for the state of Florida. Tyler is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Microbiology at MIT.

A Factory Education (Documentary)

The idea of education as a factory is based on a 1988 article by Dr. Hermine Marshall, which can be found here
-- documentary filmed and produced by NUGENT PRODUCTIONS

Who is BEN?

The Bermuda Education Network (BEN) is an independent association of organisations offering free supplementary learning opportunities for Bermuda’s public school students. They secure funding for investment in targeted projects involving our member organisations and public schools. For TEENS: academic school year expeditions and summer programs that offer opportunities to develop new perspectives and global skills. For YOUNGER STUDENTS: enrichment programs during school hours and summer camp resources. For TEACHERS: professional development programs for both public and private school teachers using Artful Thinking, a cognitive development program from Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero.
We spoke about Artful Thinking a while back. The goal of this program is to help students develop thinking dispositions that support thoughtful learning – in the arts, and across school subjects.
Designed for use by teachers in any grade and in any subject, Artful Thinking's purpose is twofold: to help teachers create rich connections between works of art and their curriculum and to help teachers use arts experiences as a touchstone for developing students' intellectual capacity.
BEN was the organizer of the Bermuda Conference on Artful Thinking which took place on October 10, 2011, where Dr. Shari Tishman and Bermudian Harvard graduate student Katie Davis moderated the event at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.
"Most educators recognize the importance of teaching children to think," says Becky Ausenda, executive director of BEN. "The development of thinking skills is critical to helping children learn complexity and dimensionality." "Since 2010, the Bermuda Education Network has worked with Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, Kaleidoscope Arts Foundation and the Bermuda National Gallery to create more opportunities for children to have increased exposure to art during their school experiences," says Ausenda.

More on need for change in education from Will Richardson

"If you want school to be test prep that's fine, but please realize you don't need schools any longer for test prep...(online) kids will get personalized self paced curriculum where they can pretty much get prepared for the test...I understand why we go for better...most of us are products of the system and we can relate to what better means...we have taken the same tests that our kids have taken and forgotten the same answers that our kids are going to forget as they go through school..We know the system...the system worked pretty well for a few decades...but right now this system is KILLING our kids. It is taking all the imagination, all the creativity, all the initiative, all the engagement right OUT of them"

"It is time now we stop trying to do schools better and we start trying to do them differently...schools in the form they were constructed are no longer relevant to our kids' lives in terms of places to get information and knowledge. Information and knowledge are everywhere...we have to reenvision schools for a different purpose and that purpose is more meaningful, more important, more difficult in a lot of ways..schools for our kids have to be places of deep enquiry, where they are solving real world problems because they have a lot of problems that they will need to solve..places where we can help them find their passions and support those passions so that they can become the life long learners in this context that we all want them to be..and none of this is the stuff of test prep, all of that is the stuff of life prep"

"Do we want our kids being prepared for their futures by a system that hasn't fundamentally changes in 125 years?..We have to take back this conversation about education from the businessmen and the politicians..and we have to scream to whoever is listening that test prep and learning are two very different things and one has been lost at the expense of the other right now and this is not acceptable for our kids...The system was built for a world that no longer exists"

Another TED talk about the need of reforming education to adapt to the many possibilities of the modern world by Will Richardson. He has been blogging about the intersection of social online learning networks and education for the past 10 years. He is a former public school educator for 22 years, and is a co-founder of Powerful Learning Practice, a unique long-term, job-embedded professional development program that has mentored over 3,500 teachers worldwide in the last four years. Extremely interesting and inspiring talk, please take the time to watch.

Education Leadership

"There are a lot of people in education that when they hear that the world is changing they don't feel excitement about that..they feel anger, they are not happy about this... and I was saying to them you have to change..you are not a teacher as much as you are a learner with your kids, you are not a content expert as much as you are a master learner who models learning on a regular basis for your kids and asks questions you do not know the answer to because that's the way to prepare kids for a world of abundance. So we have to deal with that anger, maybe even that sadness..grief..we have to feel that and we have to make sure we understand that in the context of the intellectual part of that change. Once we get through that we ourselves have to change, we do have to become learners first..parents, teachers, community members.."

"We need to be articulating the idea that schools still have a huge, huge value in our kids learning wise, but that value has changed. It not a place of content so much as it is a place of learning, collaboration, critical thinking, of making things with kids that can absolutely change the world...It cannot longer be about simply passing the test, it has to be much much more than that..if we really want to be leaders in education..it has to be our job stand up and say that learning is what our kids need to be doing in the classroom not getting ready for assessments that we built for an age that no longer exists."

Will Richardson has spent the past decade thinking and writing about how emerging web technologies can be best used in classrooms and schools. Called 'a trendsetter in education' by The New York Times, Will is author of the bestselling book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, and has spoken to tens of thousands of educators in more than a dozen countries about the value of online learning networks.
This was a free event hosted in the State Library of Victoria's Experimedia room -- a distinctive space where 19th-century grandeur meets 21st-century digital technology in a spacious bluestone-walled courtyard. Around 250 educators came together to explore the theme of Education Leadership. Attendees were encouraged to start thinking about how they can work together rather than in isolation within their own classrooms. The event focused on the changing nature of education and how technology can shape the future of learning which each of the speakers speaking passionately about their areas of expertise. VERY INTERESTING TALK, WELL DELIVERED.

Creating classrooms that work

"Keys to empowering students: TRICK = Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration and Kindness..every single class needs that and it should happen in most schools"

Esther Wojcicki has built the journalism program at Palo Alto (CA) High School from one class of 20 students in 1984 to one of the largest in the nation: 500 students, five teachers, and ten award-winning student-produced publications. She has served as an executive or board member of several organizations, including Creative Commons and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
In this heartfelt TEDxBeaconStreet talk, education innovator she shares the simple but powerful formula she used to raise three highly successful children and to build one of the most dynamic and successful high school media studies programs in the U.S. Her method (TRICK) frees teachers to be learning resources, not just lecturers; engages students and empowers them to teach themselves and each other; and accelerates learning-by-doing in a collaborative, hands-on environment that mirrors the real world of contemporary media.
EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF STUDENT CENTRED EDUCATION

Innovations In Education

"..That's the kind of schools we ought to be aspiring to, places that engage hearts and minds and build knowledge and skills"

Tom Vander Ark was CEO of Open Education Solutions, an organization which provides blended learning services. He is a partner in Learn Capital, a venture capital firm investing in learning content, platforms, and services aimed at transforming educational engagement, access, and effectiveness. He is currently CEO at Getting Smart, a community passionate about innovations in learning. A prolific writer and speaker, Tom has published thousands of articles and blogs. He chairs the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), and serves on the board of LA's Promise and Strive for College. Tom received the Distinguished Achievement Medal.
In cities such as Delhi and Nairobi around the world children have a passionate desire to learn, but little opportunity. Here at home, we face problems a well: a third of kids don't finish high school, and another third graduate unprepared for college or employment. We can do better. So far when we've taken technology to schools, we've layered the technology on top of the way we've always organized schools. Educators are now shifting delivery to online learning and a blended learning approach. When we teach kids in the right way and with the right modality, they learn more per hour. Personal digital learning is the next wave in education, and will allow us to customize the learning experience, motivate students and equalize opportunities for learning.

Schools of the Future: Time to Develop Your Metaphor

Jack McManus has been involved in education at the high school and university level for the majority of his life since 1961. He is currently professor of education at Pepperdine University, where he has worked since 1979. After more than 50 years in education, Jack feels that he is finally "getting the hang of it" in teaching. If you want to learn research, you do research; if you want to learn public policy, you do public policy. Why is the obvious so hard to discover?
Changing the way schools operate is a necessary, but foreboding, task. The reality is this: schools are so large and so entrenched that it may not be possible to change them in any significant way. What to do? Tim Magner suggests a critical first step is for leaders to change the way they look at their schools and develop a new operational metaphor for each school or each set of district schools. The ideas, language, and implications of this new metaphor can serve as an inspiration for schools to be transformed. Possible metaphors for schools include: shopping mall, hospital, space ship and technology research center.

A 21st Century Education

As part of their continuing investigation into the approaches that support and extend next-generation-learning, Nokia and the Pearson Foundation launched a film series in 2009 that profiles and share thoughts of leading, innovative educators. The Mobile Learning Institute’s film series “A 21st Century Education” profiles individuals who embrace and defend fresh approaches to learning and who confront the urgent social challenges that are part of a 21st century experience. The series is meant to start, extend, or nudge the conversation about how to make change happen. The series is comprised of twelve films in three categories: Technology and 21st Century Learning, Student-Centered Learning and Social Equity and Justice in Education.
-- view all videos HERE
-- click on IMAGE below to watch video

Blended learning

Frank Baxter has been an enlistee in the US Air Force, CEO of an Investment Bank, Ambassador to Uruguay, inveterate non-profit Board member. Since 1986, Frank has been an activist in improving K-12 education for low income students. Since the 90′s he has been a supporter of charter schools in Oakland and Los Angeles. In 2004, he was one of the founders of the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools, a high performing Los Angeles charter management organization which now has 6 middle schools and 15 high schools serving 9,500 inner-city students. He has served as Chairman and Co-Chairman since. In 2010, the Alliance started a transition to blended learning, a model which integrates teachers with 21st century technology. Now seven schools are BLAST (Blended Learning Alliance School Transformation) schools. The students are learning much faster and are much happier than in the traditional vintage 19th century model.

We haven't heard from him in a while...

"Technology on its own does not do much it is what you do with it....the technologies we have available in schools don't make the great education, but great educators can make something great of them"

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation. He is also one of the world's leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere. The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries. He works with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world's leading cultural organizations. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. The resulting blueprint for change, Unlocking Creativity, was adopted by politicians of all parties and by business, education and cultural leaders across the Province.

More pedagogic change in 10 years than last 1000 years

"Does technology shape education? That is empirically true. It does, it is only a matter of degree. My argument is you can ignore it, but resistance is futile"

Donald Clark was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, which established itself as the leading company in the UK e-learning market, floated on the Stock Market in 1996 and sold in 2005. Describing himself as 'free from the tyranny of employment', he is a board member of Ufi, Cogbooks, LearningPool and the Brighton Arts Festival. He has been involved in major film, games, simulations, social media and mobile projects. He is an evangelist for the use of technology in learning and has won many awards, notably the 'Outstanding Achievement in e-learning Award'. Search, links, media sharing, social media, Wikipedia, games, open source etc. are ground breaking shifts in the way we learn, says Donald Clark. Unfortunately, they're not matched by the way we teach. The growing gap between teaching practice and learning practice is acute and growing. Institutional teaching, especially in Universities is hanging on to the pedagogic fossil that is the lecture. The true driver for positive, pedagogic change is the internet.
Very entertaining talk. Great accent :)

Disrupting Class

Today we will focus again on technology, education and the idea of blended learning.

"Our education system is built to measure and reward the wrong end of the student". 

Michael B. Horn is the cofounder and Education Executive Director of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to solve problems in the social sector. He is the coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Tech&Learning magazine named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education.
His mission is to create a student-centric education system so that all children have an education that allows them to find their passions and fulfill their human potential. Today's education system doesn't do that; it's modeled after a factory and is built to standardize the way we teach and test. The problem with this is that every child has different learning needs at different times. If we hope to educate each child effectively—an imperative in today's society—then we need a system that can customize to meet each child's unique needs. With the growth of online learning—a disruptive innovation—we stand at an unprecedented moment in human history where education is being transformed. If we leverage this innovation properly, over the next decade, we will be able to deliver a high-quality, customized learning experience to all children no matter their circumstances and transform not just the delivery of education, but the hopes, dreams, and realities for all children.
GREAT TALK, worth watching.

Blending technology and classroom learning

"..or we can figure out a way to make zip codes irrelevant to a child's ability to learn, to realize their learning potential, and I believe in doing so realize their human potential. I am very excited about the future of learning because I think it rests in the promise of blended learning..learning that combines the traditional face to face classroom experience that all of us perhaps grew up with, with new innovative technologies that have the power in my mind to democratize learning"
-- Jessie Woolley-Wilson

"If children do not learn the way we teach we must teach the way they learn" 
-- Margaret Mead

Jessie Woolley-Wilson is an eLearning leader who has served as President of LeapFrog SchoolHouse, Blackboard, and now as Chair, President and CEO of DreamBox Learning, creator of the Intelligent Adaptive Learning platform that teaches students at any level of understanding how to become better junior mathematicians. Excellent talk.

Can Technology Change Education?

"Even in today's world we are pretty much delivering learning just like we did when we did not have computers, nothing really much has changed. What's needed is.. we have to tear down the walls, we have to tear down the walls of the classroom and we can make that possible with technology. We can use blended learning to deliver a mix of different types of learning to kids"

Raj Dhingra is a twenty-year veteran of the technology industry with an extensive track record of building strong, sustainable and profitable industry leadership positions in new and emerging categories. Raj brings entrepreneurial drive and success, and a rich depth of corporate experience across general management, business development, product development, sales and marketing functions. Prior to joining NComputing in April 2011, Raj was VP and GM at Citrix where he led the company's desktop virtualization business from zero to half a billion dollars growth in sales over a 3 year period. As well as his leadership role in global virtualization companies such as Citrix, Dhingra has held executive leadership positions in public companies such as McAfee, 3Com, SonicWALL and startups such as IntruVert Networks (acquired by McAfee) and PortAuthority Technologies (acquired by Websense).