savvyleader : education leadership innovation

= creativity & edupreneurship educator, writer, thinker conferences, consultant, training, strategist kamahl russell e: [email protected]

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SavvyIdea: Concepts, not just facts

Personal, economic and social success in the globalized 21st Century will hinge upon a thinking-worker who instinctively uses his critical-analysis skills and inventive creativity. 18th Century (yes, not 20th) traditional models of teaching that simply disseminate knowledge and facts are redundant. Instead, we need to cultivate student learners who are able to successfully synthesise knowledge, divergent problem-solving skills and the ability to think abstractly.

By focusing on concept-based learning, you can move away from the standard rote style of instruction where student success is simply measured by their capacity for memory-retention. The key to this is encouraging student identification, usage and synthesis of ideas rather than process. Students are rewarded for concept-engagement and interaction, not simply knowledge recitation.

Not only does this enhance intrinsic self-learning within students and increase engagement over ideas and solutions they’re most interested in, but helps you as teacher not spend as much time with teaching-to-test. Students instead are able to develop deeper understanding and practice in approaching concepts, and in identifying and analyzing problem-solving solutions.

The International Baccalaureate program has had tremendous success with this approach, especially with critical-engagement with conceptual ideas and abstract experimentation. Take a look also at Dr. Lynne Erickson’s thoughts on concept-learning. 

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Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?

Robert Kennedy

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SavvyClip: Watch how Kunsmiller Academy prioritises creative and performing arts to enrich student learning and hands-on experience.

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Infographic: Path to Personalised Learning

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SavvyTips: Innovation Default Setting

As educators we need to be brave enough to subvert our system’s obsession over standardization and accountability. Notice we only really change our curriculum and teaching-approaches/activities when they’ve run out of steam, relevance or text resources change?

Imagine if we had a commitment to innovating even those courses that on the surface seem successful. Problem is, that because of lack of time, or attrition from battles-past in trying to make changes - we tend to return to a 'default setting' of the familiar and tried. Yes, pun-intended, tried and tested.

For our kids to experience liberated learning, we need to first liberate ourselves. We can be smart and learn to we need to operate within the requirements for sure, but we can do so by being smart, creative and experimental. By engaging with colleagues in the process of ideation for new approaches to curriculum and learning activities in class we can mutually support each other as we develop a willingness to think outside the box, maybe fail and more importantly, create better opportunities for our students’ learning experience.

It requires energy, but even with strategies approaches that may fail, by being perpetually innovative we model for our students the very qualities we are attempting to draw out of them. To do this, we must always have the reality of ‘21st Century’ in mind.

How can we instinctively think innovatively? How do we intrinsically develop within our teaching an 'innovation default setting'? Start with these 2 ideas:

Lock in 5-10 minutes each day looking online for ideas and strategies being explored by teachers teaching the same topics. When you locate several that look interesting, figure out how you would adapt these for your own students? Perhaps even contact the initiating teacher to discuss what aspects of their ideas worked and those that didn’t.

At least once a year, lock yourself away in a room with poster paper, and re-conceptualise your course. Why are YOU  teaching it? What do you bring to the learning-community of that class? Who are you teaching? Does it pass the ‘smell test’ of student-engagement? What is their skillset? What could they learn? What strategies or approaches need updating or downright re-invention? Who else is teaching the course – what ideas could you both together experiment with? Give yourself permission to think differently...

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Charles Leadbetter on 'Global Learning Innovations'

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It’s not about breaking the rules. It is about abandoning the concept of rules altogether.

Paul Lemberg

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Infographic: A Glimpse into the Future of Learning

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SavvyTips: Reward Discovery

If I ran a school, I’d give an average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I’d give the top grades to all those who made a lot of mistakes, and told me about them, and what they learned from them - R. Buckminster Fuller

In the shift towards standardization over the last 20 years, innovation has effectively been squeezed out of learning.

So how can we shift towards encouraging students to also become true investigators?  We need a future workforce willing to experiment and take risks. Teachers need to de-risk failure. Educators need to be actively rewarding the ideas, even their mistakes that come from their efforts.

One idea to do this? Incorporate a section for ‘Discovery’ or ‘Idea-Development’ within the assessment rubrics of any tasks, PBLs or class tasks. Measure this with the new thoughts and potential problems the students encounter. This is how we encourage a ‘learning laboratory culture’ within our schools, rather than assembly-line class instruction. 

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Infographic: Building the New Leader | Source: visual.ly

Want to know what it takes to develop the growing numbers of Millennials stepping into leadership positions across industry and education? 

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SavvyIdeas: Project-based Learning

PBL enables students to focus on a specific question, and establish pathways in exploring and analyzing potential areas for discovery and solution-hunting. It gives students the opportunity to explore real-world problems and challenges.

The key to this however is not to bog students down in the ‘process’ of PBLs ie. the paperwork side of the task. As soon as the focus shifts from the initial joy and motivation over the PBL question to the administrative side of the task – students lose interest and the task becomes tedious. Instead, our role is to give students opportunities to develop question themes, identify paths for investigation, their preferred research tools and their ideas for presentation of the topic they are exploring.

Where to start with introducing PBL into your teaching? Try the Buckland Institute of Education’s website – it is filled with resources, videos, teacher-testimonies, etc that you can introduce with your colleagues.

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Infographic: State of Create in the UK

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Teachers create their own IPad apps

Instead of waiting for apps to be created for them to use, they've created their own. Check what these 4th Grade students are learning on their teacher's self-created Poetry app.

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Blessed are the peacemakers

16 years old, Malala was shot in the face by the Taliban because she wanted to go to school. She didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize, and sure, the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons deserve this honour in light of their work in recent months in Syria.

However, Malala stands a beacon for millions of young girls worldwide who are refused the basic human rights of education and free speech. In an interview this week, she brought Jon Stewart to near-tears. He asked her what she would say to a Talibi who would try to kill her again, 'I would tell him how important education is and that I would even want education for your children as well. That's what I want to tell you, now do what you want. You must fight others, but through peace and through dialogue and through education.'

This heroine doesn't need a Nobel to be treated with admiration and honour, or for the very-obvious destiny she has ahead of her. She inspires hope and opportunity for millions of young children, especially girls, across some of the darkest locations in our world. Her living-embodiment of the power of education over violence to bring about social change inspires us educators. It helps remind us of the world-changing potential of each child in our stewardship and the capacity for future-changing influence we have each day. 

I read this verse this morning and could not but think of Malala. 'Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God.' Inshallah.

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If I ran a school, I'd give an average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I'd give the top grades to all those who made a lot of mistakes, and told me about them, and what they learned from them

R. Buckminster Fuller

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Infographic: How has your school made these 3 shifts? (Source: dangerouslyirrelevant.org)

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Never innovate to compete, innovate to change the rules of the game.

David O. Adeife