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Lessons Learned

EDspaces 2019: Workshops and Marketplace

10/25/2019

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Below are my notes and takeaways from my learning at EDspaces2019. The conference, held in Milwaukee, WI this year,  "the place where technology, space, and pedagogy converge." It was a great opportunity to see learning environments and hear from expert designers, architects, and educators.
​On Wednesday, I began by hearing from Glen Brook High School on their change process. Their video, “Learning spaces -we are listening” demonstrated the student involvement in the change process.
Perhaps not so ironic, Ryan Bretag, from the district, discussed why is change hard and related it to change's alignment to the grief cycle (Kubler Ross model). A Lott of work was done around he well-being dimensions and pedagogical drivers.
The Why is an Anchor, not an activity
  • Many voices
  • Check decisions around the why
  • Honesty + Awareness + perspective x Purpose = Y it is hard
  • Bring community in all the time
  • Storage kills other space
Mindset Matters - Culture eats process for breakfast
Think about a space where you think, create, recharge, collaborate = are those all the same space?
When thinking about change, pedagogical and environmental, partnerships matter - Create intersections that move you - who are the people that can help move us
  • Google
  • Steelcase
  • Mindfulness institute
  • Measure to improve not to prove - Glenbrooks survey results
  • Look at Steelcase education measurement tool.

On Thursday Morning I heard from Steve Olson - Superintendent - Community HS 155. He spoke about Career and Technical Ed: Learning Spaces for future jobs
6000 students in 5nsites (4 HS and 1 Alt) School is focused on real world relevance / partnerships with the community.
  • CTE spaces
  • Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
  • Start with why?
  • 4th Industrial Revolution
  • Head on a swivel or head in the sand?
  • What if we hire based upon skills and not degrees?
  • Dual enrollment credits
  • District 155 - Swiss automation lab
  • CNC and engineering
  • Robotics and drone technology
  • Made in your own backyard’ - Chamber of Commerce
  • Habitat for Humanity and seeds for the community

Business Education -
Incubator space - pitch to business leaders... room flexes for that
Changing the space to match the aesthetics of the work place
Culinary - certifications - serve safe certificate
Sanitation manager training and certification as well
Telling your story is important - adjust the website

Session 2
The Brown Deer Maker Way - inspire - Innovate _ Lead
10 miles north of Milwaukee
  • Design thinking classes
  • Falcon 3:15 - bring students in
  • Purposeful, thoughtful implementation
  • Develop partnerships
  • WDC Fab Lab Grant with PD
  • The what, the why, mad the how -
  • Einstein project - Dennis
  • Change instruction - purpose statement and mission - Learning Happens Everywhere
  • Middle-High school library - branding -
  • Movement studio
  • Breakout space
  • Constraints due to the environment - flexible seating, write on wall, LEGO wall
  • The marshmallow incident book
  • Breaking the silos - cross curricular
  • Mastery connect - standards based grading
  • Badging
  • 1 professional development day a month

Session 3
Engagement for the multicultural learning community
  • Sit-down with folks that look familiar to them 50 year school life cycle
  • Incorporate core values
  • Master planning process - set the ground rules really early
  • Madison - northeast edge of Portland Oregon
  • Designed for 1700 students
  • Most diverse neighborhood
  • ‘Bringing science to the street’
  • Using pictures to help in the design process
  • Virtual reality engagement
  • ‘Be where the students are’ - what do the students value?
  • Candy and food... students put up post it’s answering the prompt - “I'm proud to be a student at .... because...”
  • Seniors sat in camp chairs in the hallway with their lunch —- loved it
  • Engage all voices
  • Design Advisory Group - went to other schools that have been renovated and replaced
  • Authentic, on-going part of the process —- community outreach
  • Students in high poverty areas spend more time at school
  • Role play activity - ESL - PPS international youth leadership conference​

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  • Put yourself in your students shoes
  • Pick: a space, activity, a feeling
  • Write: the space will...
  • what would you do with this information: report out
  • Can be done with magazine cuttings instead of pre made cards ​​
Outdoor Learning in an Early Childhood setting 
Nate Bosch - Landscape architect with GMB 
  1. Playing / Learning 
  2. Outside / Inside
  3. Unstructured / Structured 
  4. Natural / Constructed 
Time in nature, whether structured or unstructured, can blur the lines between play and learning 
European Forest schools - in Chicago Illinois as well 
Richard Louv - Pioneer of connecting back to nature 
academic environments becoming treatment spaces 
Little Hawks school - Holland, MI
  • robust playground area
  • Connect to the water
Strategies to incorporate nature in education:
  1. Nature is the primary classroom - connecting people to nature as soon as they arrive; make formal spaces feel informal; building is secondary to the site
  2. Maximize outdoor experience by simplifying indoor spaces - simple spaces promote active learning; space conservation / smaller footprint; utility functions can be educational and play space; mud room experience
  3. Holistic approach to nature-based education - natural materials in built environment; expansive views to outside environment; openness to outside; natural sunlight / effects on student behavior (south orientation)
  4. Create Dynamic outdoor environments - allow kids to be creators & self-directed; promote nature inclusion and invite the native (wild) in; flexible spaces for educators to engage students; allow room for the unpredictable
“Do what you can, with what you have.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt 
Tips: 
  • 10 different spaces for play/learning 
  • Looping walk ways 
  • Open grass area - to just run / roll 
  • Trees and shade - inclusivity / skin cancer / cool down 
  • Plant material - dynamic textures; edible items 
  • Outdoor storage 
  • Sheltered space - protected from elements 

21st Century Workplace Competencies: How can design shape student success? 
Gould Evans 
  • Inside higher ed survey - great graphic 
  • Arizona, Association of Colleges and Employers - Employer v. Student perception 
  • Lasso Bock - GPAs are worthless... 
  • Enterprise skills or transversal skills 
  • Gouldevans-edco.com 
  • Gen Z 
  • Alpha 
  • Competencies and Profile of a Graduate 
  • Human adaptability in relation to technology and change 
  • Missouri Innovation Campus - https://youtu.be/041UqIV9QgA
  • Adaptive and modular space
  • STEAM studio - in the office at Gould Evans - work with Rutgers University - Laura Evans
  • Power Skills and attributes - integrity, drive, ability to communicate
  • Come out of school doing nothing real
  • Portraits of a graduate - toolkit - 16 activity types
  • Lee Summitt School district has 5 competencies as part of their portrait of a graduate
  • Enterprise skill development ‘the competency project’ —— beta 
  • Connectingcredentials.org 
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EDspaces 2019: Keynote with Tony Wagner

10/24/2019

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The annual EDspaces conference and expo is billed as the place "where space, technology, and pedagogy converge" and it did not disappoint. In it's 24th year, the conference in Milwaukee, WI featured designers, vendors, and educators of creative and innovative learning environments from across the globe. 
In the opening plenary Session, Tony Wagner, one of the true visionaries in education, kicked off the conference  with a video describing the future of work.
He asked the audience to think about what can human beings do the robots and AI cannot do?
and further described the shift from a knowledge economy to a world that does not care what our students know; instead to a world that cares about what can they do with what they know.
Next, Wagner described his research that became his 2012 best seller ​Creating Innovators: ​The Making of Young People WhoWill Change the World. His interviews of highly innovative twentysomethings and their "ecosystems" ​(parents, teachers, and ​
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The Future of Work
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mentoring influences) brought him to several conclusions, among them were that the skills you need to succeed in a competitive academic environment are not related to innovation era. 
What must we do differently to prepare students for the innovation era?
  • Ask for evidence of a problem solved or failure and learning associated with it. 
  • Look for creative problem solving abilities - we are born this way - young children ask 500 questions or more and everyone is an artist .Then something happens... school. 
In fact, the students identified as creative innovators became innovative despite university and educators who were influencers were outliers in their educational institutions.
Next, Wagner identified 5 contradictions in education:
  1. Measuring and rewarding individual achievement - innovation is a team sport 
  2. Silos of knowledge - Not a single real problem can be solved within an individual academic discipline 
  3. Culture and structure of the classroom where knowledge of an indivual, compliance, are valued and students are consumers - The world demands that you seek out information 
  4. F- Word (failure) We grade kids on the mistakes they make - Innovation demands failure; iteration - this is fundamentally how we learn - we learn more from our mistakes than our successes; we learn from trial and error; use A, B, and Incomplete (B is performance standard as evidenced by a body of work; A is reserved for real human excellence) - How many want to fly with a C- airline pilot?
  5. Motivation. We use fear (failing, embarrassment, not getting....) - This does not bring out the best in us. The innovators had intrinsic motivation. - both parents and teachers focused on play, passion, and purpose.
Next steps/food for thought:
  • Does state have an educational R & D budget?
  • Accountability 2.0 - selective assessments every 3 years with demographically similar students 
  • Every student has a digital portfolio that shows progress over time
  • Every student demonstrates mastery badges on a transcript — what can they do
  • What content are kids learning? What skills are they learning? How are they being motivated to do their best work?
  • What if we make our work public? 
  • Statewide profile of a graduate - what is the assessment for the attributes on the profile? 
  • Develop local performance assessments 
  • What are our recent graduates doing? What did we do right? What would have helped you?
  • Internships
  • Have students keep question journals? Or concerns?  - then give them time & space to explore those questions 
  • College admissions process does not encourage innovation - consortium transcript; test optional 
  • The skills you need for work today are the same ones you need for active citizenship, life long learning, and creative leisure ​
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What happened to all of the toll takers?

10/22/2019

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When I recently drove across the Throgs Neck Bridge  and noticed that the toll booths had been replaced by fancy overhead structures with cameras and flashing lights, I couldn’t help but wonder… what happened to the toll takers?
​

If you do a Google image search, you will have difficulty finding any pictures that document the removal of the booths… they just disappeared; well, not exactly (as you can see I don't get out much). If you do travel that road every day and see the change happening, then it is not such a surprise. However, as someone who does not regularly travel over the bridge, and many don't, I woke up one morning, drove over the bridge from Long Island, and realized the landscape has changed; and with it, many jobs that used to exist.

I think of this as a metaphor for education. If we don’t look at the changes that are happening around us and do something to prepare our students while educating our communities, then change will always come as a surprise.

As a high school principal, it is important to me that we seek change and offer opportunities for our students that prepare them for the world outside of our schools.  We must continue to innovate and prepare students for a “modern world,” a world where our students will face opportunities and challenges that are developing at a rapid pace.  If you notice, I chose the term “modern world’ purposefully as we are nearly 20 years into the 21st century. The skill sets that students need today and the jobs that will be available for them are drastically different than the world I grew up in.  
2022 Skill Outlook
Growing
  • Analytic thinking and innovation 
  • Active learning and learning strategies
  • Creativity, originality and initiative 
  • Technology design and programming 
  • Critical thinking and analysis 
  • Complex problem-solving
  • Leadership and social influence
  • Emotional intelligence 
  • Reasoning, problem solving and ideation
  • System analysis and evaluation 
Declining
  • Manual dexterity, endurance and precision
  • Memory, verbal, auditory and spatial abilities 
  • Management of financial, material resources 
  • Technology installation and maintenance 
  • Management of personnel 
  • Quality control and safety awareness
  • Coordination and time management
  • Visual, auditory and speech abilities 
  • Technology monitoring and control
Source: Innovate Inside the Box (information taken from the World Economic Forum)
This should lead us to think differently about the purpose of school and the goals we have for ourselves and for our students. How are we preparing our students?
  • Focus on the Four Cs - Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Creativity are skills necessary across all content areas and are sought after by employers across all disciplines. 
  • Build Emotional Intelligence (EQ) - Incorporate Social-emotional learning to hone our own emotional states and those of our students.  These skills help us with our relationships and allow us to build empathy, trust, and the non-academic skills needed for success in life.
  • Teach Computational and Design Thinking - Computational thinking is so much more than coding in that it fosters logical thinking and problem solving. Design thinking stresses ideation and reasoning skills that promote innovation through iteration.
  • Empower Students - So much more than engagement and student voice, empowerment offers choice and builds the capacity for students to develop their passions, experience real-life situations, and a love of learning. It is about ownership and agency. 
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us and we cannot simply focus on the basics or rote learning. Simply knowing the facts isn’t enough. We must remain, as my drive over the Throgs Neck Bridge demonstrated, ready for change or we risk becoming irrelevant, or worse... obsolete. ​

“Our job is not to prepare students for something. Our job is to help students prepare themselves for anything.” - AJ Juliani (Empower)
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    Whittney Smith, Ed.D.

    Dr. Smith is the Principal of Mineola High School in Garden City Park, NY.  He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Ruth Ammon School of Education at Adelphi University.

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