Education

Day Two of Great SXSW Ideas

A few highlights from today’s journey among the best new ideas that intersected my journey around Austin.


Session with Vice-President Al Gore and Sean Parker (think Napster, Causes on Facebook, or the character played by Justin Timberlake in the film The Social Network).  (#goreparker)

  • Being “liked” by somebody online is not the same level of engagement as connecting with someone offline who is willing to action for your cause.
  • There are 800,000 meaningful political offices held in the United States.  If we want to alter the current discourse we need to realize the reach is far deeper than Washington, DC.
  • Current TV has been the leader in running user generated advertisements
  • The internet has been very successful as taking money and market share from traditional businesses
  • 30% of the broadband network activity during high usage periods is directed towards services such as Netflix.  This is an example of the mismatch between evolving and traditional media.
Dean Kamen (think Segway) spoke about Invention and Innovation (#SXdkamen)
  • Be hands on with innovation.  We do not lecture about football for nine months and then go on the field to play.  We need to be hands on and project based with education.
  • Dean co-founded FIRST which aims to make science and math competitions bigger than the Super Bowl.  This years competition has 22,000 teams.
  • The sustainability of humans is a race between technological advancement and catastrophe
  • If we could provide clean water to the 1.6 billion humans who currently have none we would solve 50% of the world wide treatable diseases.
  • Dean has partnered with Coca-Cola to instal his clean water machines in places with no clean water.  Coke wants to be the stewards of clean water and they have the most advance world wide distribution system.
  • In a free society you get what you celebrate.  Celebrate what you want.
Just a few excellent points among many yesterday.

Education Manifesto
Credit

If you wish to read one piece on transformative ideas in education I highly recommend Seth Godin’s manifesto which he released this week.  I am attending the National Association of Independent School’s conference and will be interested to hear the reaction to the ideas Seth has advocated, starting with Bill Gates’s opening keynote.


A sample of Seth’s manifesto:

84. The two pillars of a future-proof education:

Teach kids how to lead

Help them learn how to solve interesting problems

Leadership is the most important trait for players in the connected revolution. Leadership involves initiative, and in the connected world, nothing happens until you step up and begin, until you start driving without a clear map.   

And as the world changes ever faster, we don’t reward people who can slavishly follow yesterday’s instructions. All of the value to the individual (and to the society she belongs to) goes to the individual who can draw a new map, who can solve a problem that didn’t even exist yesterday.   

Hence the question I ask to every teacher who reads from her notes, to every teacher who demands rote memorization, and to every teacher who comes at schooling from a posture of power: Are you delivering these two precious gifts to our children? Will the next generation know more facts than we do, or will it be equipped to connect with data, and turn that data into information and leadership and progress?

Mistakes Were Made

I spent the past month juggling the schedules of three potential clients.  To make the projects work I needed to purchase a complicated airline itinerary.  I have been waiting to make the final purchase of the ticket in order to get confirmation from each party.  What I forgot to do was to keep everyone informed and communicate constantly.  One long-term client engaged another consultant for a portion of their project.  They needed certainty and wanted to lock in the dates.  Although I was committed I forgot to reassure the client that they were a priority.  Nothing I can do now but remind myself that more communication is better than less, even if it is not definitive. 

Are you communicating constantly?

The Games Are Coming, The Games Are Coming!

 
A revolution in education is taking place and I am not talking about the one being debated at many state houses across the country.  The real change is the marriage of gaming into online education platforms.  At the SXSW conference, Seth Priebatsch of SCVGR spoke about this very reality.  Education is ideally suited to incorporate gaming.  It have grades, divisions, tests, graduations, and scores.  Education should be the leader in partnering with the online gaming culture and yet it has missed the boat.  Why?  Education models are based on avoiding failing and discipline, two elements that are not inherent in most games.  What if you started school with zero ‘user’ points?  You accumulated points as you mastered different ‘levels’ or subjects.  At the end of the year there would be a dispersion of total points but remarkably nobody would be getting a D or even an F (the failure model), instead everyone would have progressed forward, some more than others but everyone has moved in a positive direction.  If you could carry your ‘ability’ forward to the next year, you would already have a virtual avatar with skills accumulated from previous grades.  Thing how hard it is to unsubscribe to a game when you already have so much sweet equity into the creation of a character and his/her attributes.  Badges, avatars, recognition, and access to the next level are already appearing in everything from the Khan Academy to RossettaStone courses.  It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when gaming becomes embedded in education.

Even When You Have All the Resources

Traveling to Seattle this winter, I had the privilege of meeting with experts in the world of early childhood education. Their knowledge, curriculum maps and facilities are among the best in the United States. One of the major supporters of the school’s work at the pre-school level is the Gates Foundation. Over lunch, one of the leaders remarked how the the original intention of the Gates Foundation was to reform the public school system. The foundation’s financial grants and programs were transformative in their size and approach. What the Gates Foundation did not anticipate was the general resistance to change in the education system and the obstacles created by bureaucracy. After evaluating their impact, the foundation decided to change its strategy. It did not leave the field of education but rather jumped forward on the timeline to focus on opportunities within early childhood education. The reception to their efforts and programs has been dramatic. They are now collaborating with the leaders in the field to create new programs and share their discoveries.

Sometimes all the money in the world will not help you meet your mission (do not tell your Director of Advancement or Development) because the obstacles that exist are not ready to budge. Seth Godin describes this as the ‘Dip’. If the Dip is too big you may never get to the other side during your organization’s life cycle. If the Dip is not big enough, then lots of organizations can get to the other side and your enterprise and its programs are no longer remarkable. But you can look for a new entry point. For the Gates Foundation, the move upstream, closer to the educational headwaters shifted the educational paradigm. The foundation’s mission did not change but their approach did.

Is your organization committed to executing your mission despite the resistance and results? How do you evaluate how your organization might best achieve its mission? Are you finding the best place to cross the swift current?