TEDx is coming to Madison

If you follow TED, you know that the organization is dedicated to spreading good ideas through their terrific conferences and website.  TED talks are an amazing resource for understanding how the world is changing.  The talks are full of hope and promise and ask you to think deeply.

TEDx is a new program offered by TED that provides an opportunity to bring the  TED experience to your community.  Some TED groupies in Madison are working to bring TEDx to town. 

It promises to be an exciting event, bringing together a group of speakers who will challenge us to think about how Wisconsin's economy is changing and what that means for public education.

The event will take place on Saturday, March 5th at the Promega facilities in Fitchburg.  Check out the TEDx Madtown facebook page to learn more about this exciting event.

More on technical change

Last week I posted a number of resources that examine the common core standards, assessments and the teacher accountability.  In the New York Times Room for Debate, several nationally known education experts examine teacher assessment and the role value added testing plays in the process.

On the surface, value added seems like a pretty good solution to the question of how to hold teachers accountable.  Yet, effective evaluation systems, most likely need multiple measures best illuminate both student progress and teacher contribution to that progress.

Complicating the matter, is the question of how to delivery high-quality instruction and the role of teacher in this process.  In this TED talk, Sugata Mitra presents his research where he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.  My favorite quote from the presentation:  "If children have interest, then education happens."  So, why don't we simply let students do interesting things?  

So, what is TED?

From time-to-time I mention TED Talks and suggest that school boards schedule a work session to view a talk and then discuss how the ideas in the talk are impacting public education.

People then ask, what is a "TED Talk?" Here a link that explains: How TED Connects the Idea-Hungry Elite.

I know that after I watch a TED Talk, I feel jazzed about things that are happening in the world, and usually want to share with everyone I know.

Good stuff!

Innovation in Public Education--What is the most needed resource? Financial Capital or Human Capital?

I have been listening and engaging in conversations about public education for more than twenty years.  Two of the dominant themes of these conversations are the need to improve the system and the need for more money to implement improvements.

I have learned that the argument about the need for more money for public education is much like culture war arguments.  Just as we will never resolve culture war issues like abortion or gun use, we will never determine when public education has been adequately financed. (By the way, the funding argument has been employed since the Great Depression.)

Much like culture war issues, the funding issue distracts us from the bigger challenge--how to innovate so that all children learn what they need to survive as individuals and as productive citizens in our society.

Rather than  investing resources in the funding argument, I think we need to turn our energies toward learning how to make school relevant and meaningful; how to sustain the system; how to provide opportunities for children to learn 21st century skills (which, by the way, the 21st century is already ten years old).

Recently I had a conversation with a good friend about the state of public education. She works very hard and firmly believes that the public education system in Minnesota needs more financial resources.  She was having a down day because Minnesota had just released the results of the state test and, once again, little progress had been made.

I said that I thought the answer to the problem might be found in charter schools; that we need to radically restructure time if we intend to provide students with experiences that are relevant to their lives today and that charter schools provide a way around the structures--parents, teachers, communities--who don't want to change.  My friend argued that she was not willing to lose a generation of children  because the system cannot meet their needs. Implicit in her argument was the notion that charter schools create greater inequalities among students as motivated parents will enroll their children in charter schools that provide quality programs, leaving students with greater needs behind in the public schools.  She firmly believes that if public schools were given adequate funding, the system could meet the needs of all children.

I, too, see the problem as one of resources, but not financial resources.  We need to employ human capital if we expect to meet the needs of today's students.  I want to see us employ radically new methods of engaging with students--one rooted in 21st century technology, not the 19th century industrial model.

In this TED talk, Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums describes radical forms of education--all of which are found in some of the poorest communities in the world.  And this informal, disruptive new kind of school, he says, is what all schools need to become.  We need to look at these models to learn how we might transform public education in the United States.  


Improving the current system is not the answer.  Rather than incremental innovation, the system needs disruptive innovation, change the brings a whole new way of doing things to public education.  Rather than focusing on the money, we need to think about the structure.  We need to reinvent public education.  If we cannot transform the system from the inside, then we need to employ external models to do the work for us.


I just want to see it happen.  If the public system can do it--Great.  If it can't--I am ready to embrace what works, wherever it comes from.  I, too, hate to see us waste another generation of students.

Can you deliberate and still be civil?

Today I had the pleasure of discussing Peter Block's Community: A structure of belonging with a group of students from UW-Madison, and my research colleague, Rob Asen.  Rob wondered if Block was just a little too optimistic and that he didn't really allow for much deliberation in his model of community engagement.  One perceptive student referred to a section on appreciating paradox, that Block was not suggesting that a community engaging in successful discourse  had no room for disagreement.  Rob mentioned "reasonable hostility" an idea proposed by Karen Tracy, who suggests that disagreement is productive, particularly since people tend to pay more attention when there is disagreement.  In Who wants to deliberate--and why, Neblo et al argue that citizens are turned off by the adversarial nature of partisan politics; that they are interested in participating when political activity engages in deliberation. Groups like  America Speaks or Everyday Democracy practice this deliberative form of engagement.

One interesting twist on the whole idea of solving the world's problems is presented by Jane McGonigal who argues that gamers are developing the skills (including the ability to collaborate) needed to address the complex issues facing the world today.

Creativity in Education

A couple of weeks ago I posted a short YouTube video that indicated that fun could be good for us.  Today I’d like to return to the right brain and talk about creativity.  We can think of creativity in a couple of ways.  How we nurture it in our children; how we nurture it in our leadership.

I’d like to start with a story.  When my son Adam was in kindergarten, the students were coloring pictures on a worksheet.  One of the pictures was an elephant.  Because he didn’t have a gray crayon, Adam used a pencil to color the elephant.  His teacher looked over his shoulder and said that he needed to use his crayons to color the elephant.  Now Adam didn’t have a gray crayon so he determined that a pencil was a good substitute.  However, his teacher did not appreciate Adam thinking outside of the crayon box.  Unfortunately, this experience was not the only time Adam’s creativity took a hit as he worked his way through school.

In this TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson argues that, as exemplified by Adam’s experience, we educate creativity out of children in our public school systems.  He goes on to make a case for nurturing creativity in education; that creativity is as important as literacy and that we should treat it with the same urgency.  Take 15 minutes to watch this thought-provoking video.

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink makes a similar case, talking about the rise of right-brainers. Left-brain logic has long been admired and even thought of as the part of the brain that made us human.  The right brain was considered something less, that it somehow impeded the good work of the left brain.  However, today we understand how the two halves of the brain complement each other.  Pink writes,

“Both sides work together—but they have different specialties.  The left hemisphere handles logic, sequence, literalness and analysis.   The right takes care of synthesis, emotional expression, context, and the big picture. ”

Today, it is not enough to develop the rational left side of the brain.  Today’s challenges require that we develop what Pink calls R-Directed Thinking.   We still need L-directed aptitudes, but they are no longer sufficient for succeeding in today’s complex world. 

One final thought about creativity.  While we need to foster creativity in our children, as leaders facing complex challenges that require us to retool our public education system to meet 21^st century challenges, we need to reconnect with our own creativity.  In this TED video, Dave Eggers describes how he and a number of his writer friends developed a creative after school program, what he describes as “school, but not school.” 

How is your district encouraging children’s creativity?  How is the leadership in your community working together to develop new and exciting programs that provide opportunities for students to develop their creativity and reach their full potential?

Technology and Education

We all know the pace of technological change proceeds at a breakneck pace these days, making it difficult for digital immigrants like me to keep up.  How can we expect our schools to adapt to this continuously changing environment, especially when resources are tight and the people in charge may not fully appreciate the potential of many of the technological innovations found in our world today?


In Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America  Allan Collins and Richard Halverson talk about the possibilities and challenges of technology in public education.  While admitting their bias toward the promise of technology, they also consider the skeptics' view and explore how the deeply entrenched organizational structure of the school system works against innovation. 


In another book that focuses on technology in schools, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the  World Learns, Clayton M. Christensen talks about how student-centered learning is expanding largely through the less mainstream areas of the system like AP classes, remediation and special education.


Finally, those of you who attended  the WASB Leadership conference at the end of July might recall the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Map of Future Forces and the drivers of change in education. One of the changes, the end of cyberspace, challenges us to think about how technology is becoming more integrated into our lives.  In this TED Talk, Pranav Mistry,  the inventor of SixthSense, describes a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.


Collins and Halverson argue that technololgy cannot overtake traditional forms of schooling until the ratio of computers to students is 1:1.  Mistry intends to open source the SixthSense technology, perhaps making it easier for schools to bring computer technology closer to that 1:1 ratio.  What possibilities are in store for us as ideas like the Sixth Sense make their way into our lives and our schools?  How can this technology challege the deep structure of schooling that has been in place since public school systems developed one hundred years ago in the Industrial Revolution?

TED Talks

About a year ago, I was introduced to TED Talks. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. TED's annual conferences in Long Beach, California and Oxford, England bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

New TED Talks are made available each week. You can visit TED yourself, or view the videos you find posted here each week. Sometimes I will try to post videos that seem to build on a theme. Other times I will post just a single talk. This week I have posted a TED Talk that uses music to give us a new way to think about leadership.

In Itay Talgam: Lead like the great conductors illustrates effective leadership using examples of orchestra conductors. I hope you enjoy this TED Talk and will take a moment to post your reactions to the video.