I frequently write about new learning technologies, but there are lots of low tech learning innovations (i.e., produce better outcomes and potentially cost less). Here's a lit of 18. I bet you can add two to the list to make it an even 20. At this point, some aren't really innovations, they are demonstrated best practices but they exist in so few places they are worth mentioning.
1. High expectations and future focus. In the first minute of visiting an Aspire elementary school you see, feel, and hear about the college going focus -- a unique and powerful combination of high expectations and future orientation.
2. Make the target clear. The Common Core will help make learning targets higher and clearer. A Kentucky superintendent told me this week he wants to see learning targets phrased as "I can" statements on the board in every classroom every day.
3. Make learning more relevant. A variety of tactics could fit into this category but most common is project-based learning, which can be engaging but make the target clear!
4. Improve motivational systems. The first two points are about intrinsic motivation, but there is still big opportunity to organize learning in small chunks and celebrate progress (see On Merit Badges).
5. Give students choices. Related to #3, many students will respond well to having some choice over order, mode, and pace of learning and how they will show what they know. (This is for the Montessori twitter mom hating on digital learning this week.)
6. Make learning fun. Some people criticize the No Excuses charter school pedagogy, but when you visit them you quickly find out that they understand and leverage the art of making learning fun. I've seen KIPP teachers use music to make math fun, engaging, and memorable
7. Build a web of youth and family services. My family supports Communities in Schools locally and nationally because we know most kids need more support than they get.
Here's a few policy innovations recommended by Digital Learning Now. They imply online or blended learning but they are primarily policy changes that could yield big improvements. This is the 'getting out of our own way' section.
8. Give every student access to advanced courses. Every U.S. high school student should have access to every Advanced Placement and upper division STEM course.
9. Give every student access to foreign languages. Make language acquisition resources available K-12 and expand secondary choices by offering courses online.
10. Let teachers teach across district and state lines. Great teachers should be able to expand their reach and impact.
11. Remove certification barriers. Make licensing performance based.
12. Let kids progress when they have demonstrated competence and make tests available on demand. Lots of secondary students are bored and could move more quickly if states eliminated seat time requirements. It also replaces fail/repeat with the gift of time when and where needed.
13. Authorize multiple statewide providers of demonstrated quality. This could actually save the state some money and introduce quality options.
14. Fraction funding that follows the student to the best learning option. This won't be the most popular idea on the list, but it opens up a world of opportunity for kids that need it.
I spent two days with 'human capital' groups this week thinking about how to help teachers and leaders get smart.
15. Promote a culture of candor, transparency, and productivity. When asked what the most important talent develop factor was, most folks at the meeting said culture and leadership was number 2.
16. Get clear about job requirements. The military is really good at defining requirements; they map backwards from what professionals need to know and be able to do to a set of learning and development experiences. In K-12, Summit Prep is really good at this.
17. Personal learning plan. You may not be able to allow your best people to spend 20 percent of their time working on innovative stuff of their own choice like they do at Google, but you can help top performers figure out what's next and learn what they need to learn to get their.
18. Learning everywhere. While visiting Google this week, educators noticed that there are even learning resources in the bathroom -- it's truly a learning everywhere-all-the-time environment. Perhaps you don't want PD in the lav, but think about how you can extend and promote learning.
We could add an inspiring teacher or a creative physical environment. What would you add to the list?
Follow Tom Vander Ark on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tvanderark
Mitch Rosin: Bridging the Skills Gap in Today's Economy
Randy Turner: The Time for Term Limits for Teachers Is Now
Pat Yongpradit: Innovative Educators, Innovative Relationships
Brian Crosby: Models of Education Innovation: What Else Should We Try?
Learning and Innovation Skills
And didn't Vander Ark just abandon a charter group of schools in NYC, leaving administrators and supporters hanging? Yup (see the NY Times for the story)
He's not the one to give out advice.
To his "suggestions"
- learning should be interesting but no, it can't all be "fun". Learning is hard work and sometimes, it won't be fun. It's not a teacher's job to be an entertainer.
- "many students will respond well to having some choice over order, mode, and pace of learning and how they will show what they know. " That means every teacher would have to reorder the assignment per student request. Not going to happen.
- "Remove certification barriers. Make licensing performance based. " Meaning, all teachers should come from Teach for Awhile (America) and get rid of unions. Again, not going to happen.
-"Authorize multiple statewide providers of demonstrated quality" Meaning, more charters. Really? And since when have charters proven, that overall, they do better than regular public schools? Never.
I would add that instead of more data warehousing, more work for teachers and, of course, from Mr. Vander Ark's view, more technology, that we make it about establishing connections and relationships. Make school a place students want to be and want to stay.
Product! Product! Product!
The challenge for administrators today is balancing the need for better execution while incorporating innovation into school designs (http://gettingsmart.com/blog/2011/08/the-art-of-balancing-execution-innovation/)
Also, for the kids who literally can't write/spell/punctuate, they get a sense of pride when they are able to hear their ideas on tape. Then they are able to start working with INTEREST on transcribing their own thoughts.
Eliminating "seat time" means having a way of tracking each student's progress at least semi-automatically. It also means students know how to transition from one standard/concept to another with relatively little supervision. More than anything it means having teachers who can trust that their students are on some type of approved task and tolerance for occasionally higher noise volume than you find in a classroom where students sit in their seats and push a pencil. There are also issues of keeping students well-rounded, and not only working on subjects they love (we have an obligation to have a minimal competency level in broad areas, or people settle into comfort zones and miss out on opportunities to try new things)
We already have methods of tracking progress if every student had a tablet or even just a thumb drive to manage the database of accomplishments. They might even remember things if they could review their prior learning on a regular basis.
Students taught.
A student was responsible for mentoring other younger students learned material for the older, but new for the younger. This process requires a re-write of the information from one side of the brain to the other. In that process the information is shifted, reviewed and put into a different format, one that is easy to retrieve and shared. It is learned. In addition, while writing the data from one side of the brain to the other, a student starts to find new connections between disparate data. They start to identify things that they had not been taught. They learn to ask better questions, and to answer them (a process commonly called "thinking". Asking yourself better questions and getting better answers).
By moving students from learner to mentor, we recover a major piece of the education system of the past that worked well, and do so at a low cost per student. This method works so well that we find that students in college wanting to achieve success model this in "learning groups" on their own. We have to go back to the past to create a better future, we have to take that model that worked and re-implement it.
Where do you get off making wise suggestions to improve people's lives when we know the goal of government is to transfer as much wealth to the tippy top as fast as possible?
'' Educational innovation cannot be replicated because it depends upon the quality of leadership which drives it and not upon objective characteristics''.
I honestly believe that we are trying to fit too many children into the COLLEGE PREP TRACK, while they are too young to VALUE education in their own lives. Yet, get a roomful of kids having mock trials, get them indignant about inequities in the lives of OTHERS, get them aware of where the money is being spent and what value is received and you get a room of CITIZENS! I have never seen kids who didn't respond to MONEY as a topic of interest.
AS far as CHOICES...consider permitting middle school age students an opportunity to stay in school and ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE, or GET A JOB (age appropriate job). We might find that after a while of working for a living, they decided school was a pretty nice place to be!