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Evo Hannan is the MYP Design Teacher and Spark Tank Coordinator at Dwight School in Dubai. He is dedicated to promoting design and abstract thinking, innovation and the UN SDGs in education and beyond.  His passion for design and innovation is about enabling students to experience the benefits of collaborating with global enterprises. Evo is always innovating and is the creator of The Agency #Agents4Agency. 

Your background 

My parents are very humble people and grew up in a very small village in Bangladesh. My father is an abstract, forward-thinking person. The first time he moved to the UK he was 16 and didn’t know the language or knew anyone or if he would ever see his family again. He went back, married, started a family, and then moved to the UK in the 70s with me, my four brothers and my sister. We are all very entrepreneurial, and to the core, we are all innovative. We’re not all creators but we think at a slightly different level than others around us. We’re all over the world. I’m in Dubai. One of my brothers taught in Paris, India, and Houston, TX. My younger brother currently lives in New Zealand. My other brother lives in Ibiza. My sister lives in the UK, travels for work, and has 2 daughters.

My father is definitely an innovator who made strategic moves financially. He has rebuilt his village and my mother’s village from mudhouses to concrete buildings. Eventually, my first global goal that aligns with SDG #4 Quality Education is to open a school in Bangladesh named after my father.

Ted Talk Breaking the Box to Discover Your Creative Currency

What it was like for you growing up

We grew up in a predominantly white British community called the Wirrall. It was challenging when we went to school as the only nonwhite kids. My brothers and sister as well. It’s kind of really made us the people we are today. I wasn’t ever the one who was favored and was always chosen last for things. I never put my hand up in classes in case someone didn’t like it and say something after class. It really knocks down your confidence and identity. You almost become comfortable not being noticed. 

It’s tricky to do anything differently because it could be a good thing or a bad thing. I avoided ever getting into fights or any physical bullying because I backed out every single time. To be honest at the time, and even now, I look back and think that was a bad decision. Psychologically, bullying and verbal abuse were like a daily thing. You almost have to put up with it. 

Advice to others about struggling

Going through what we went through is not always a negative thing. If this is happening to you now or in school, always think ahead. Consider that the moment you are in NOW is not the moment you are going to be in forever. So if you’re struggling now, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to struggle in the future. 

Be mindful of your situation. 

If you’re 13 or 14 and you are struggling, don’t think that you have to do things now that could impact you later. The last thing you want to do is retaliate and not be able to handle yourself. That could really lead to devastating effects. When you get a job when you are 21 or older, you are a different person. I’m not advocating “struggle,” but what I’m saying is to be aware of who you are in that situation. My family took their struggle and used it to become someone positive.   

“Struggle brings out a different type of thinking.”

Your journey to become an educator

As I grew up and went to a university in Manchester, the communities were much wider and more diverse with Chinese, African, and others. I could be a bit louder and step out of my shell. I graduated in design, innovation, and tinkering in 2000. There were very few jobs in design in Liverpool and Manchester.  

An opportunity came up for me to train as a Design and Technology teacher. I went to my old secondary school and spoke to the head of Design and Technology who was a great mentor of mine and was the one who suggested that I study design. He told me to “Go for it. You’ve always thought differently.” So at 21 years old, I graduated in Product Design and started a post-graduate certificate of education of PGCE. After receiving my certificate, I started teaching on the Wirral.

Your family

My wife. Anne-Marie works in leisure and tourism. We have two children Zakaria and Zara. They are, honestly, the best kids in the world. Zak who is 6 years old is going to be a bit of a game-changer and learned how to do the Rubik’s Cube and is such an environmentalist. He noticed that people were throwing litter into the sea so he picked up some litter so it wouldn’t kill the animals. Zara who is 4 is the smallest kid in the school with a huge personality. We are very fortunate to have children and learn from them.

Your journey as an educator

My first school in the UK was Upton Hall School is an outstanding school with high standards.  Working there was like surfing a big wave with expert surfers (the other teachers) where I was just trying to stay on the surfboard. Everything was so fast. My background is Muslim but I’m not very religious and this was a traditional Catholic all-girl school. I was only 22 and never thought I’d get the job. Some of the students in my class and advisory were turning 18. Some had friends that were friends of mine. I developed a sense of humor around education straight away. I was there for six years and then I wanted to get into leadership, so I decided to make a big move. I had been to Dubai before so why not give it a go. Below is an image of students from the GEMS International School, Al Khail, as winners of the Innovation Clash 2017. 

I was trained in Design and Technology that is part of the curriculum in the UK. I got a teaching position at an International School in Dubai with a British curriculum so I transitioned into the same job. I created the same type of projects but was able to challenge myself a bit more. Innovation came after there were a few shifts in the priorities for the arts in the UK. I realized that being a Design and Technology teacher wasn’t going to be enough. So I learned about what innovation means since, in the corporate world design, technology and innovation go hand-in-hand. Design and Technology is actually designed thinking but we never called it that. All of a sudden around 2010-2011, there was a relevance to what I was passionate about, and I felt I could leave a mark because people cared about it.

Dwight School Dubai – The Dwight Difference

I’m in my third school in Dubai, the Dwight School Dubai where I currently facilitate the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program which is called Spark Tank. I teach in a gigantic space with a double floor that is at the center of the school with a staircase that runs right down the middle of it. There are five Dwight Schools. Dwight School New York was the first found in 1873. In 1973, they opened one in London. Then Seoul and Shanghai in 2012 and 2013. Then they opened Dubai in 2018. The Spark Tank program was introduced to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in New York four years ago based on the TV show Shark Tank. Students have passion projects and use mentors to develop their projects further.

What is the Agency?

Student agency is fast become a hot topic in education, allowing students to learn by letting them create their own journey. The Agency was created to provide tools for educators so they can support this idea for every child.

I invite teachers to join [THE AGENCY]  and learn and share about Gen Z and student agency. Allow students to succeed in their own way. Go to my website to register:

https://www.evohannan.com/theagency

#Agents4Agency 

[This is Barbara – I’m one of the Lead Agents for #Agents4Agency. Call me Agent WHY. Hope you join Evo, me and all the other Lead Agents to support students so they develop agency.]

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Evo Hannan is one of the Middle East’s leading innovators in education. Innately driven by his desire to create positive change and a passion for technology, Evo began teaching Design and Technology at a top UK grammar school before moving to Dubai: a city renowned for its pioneering innovation, design, and architecture. His passion for design and innovation developed further after partnering with some of the region’s leading multinational companies, enabling students to experience the benefits of collaborating with global enterprises.

Evo is currently the Spark Tank Coordinator at Dwight School Dubai. He continues to develop new ideas and leads a collective of innovative educators called ‘Innovation X’. He is also the founder of ‘Teacher Society Dubai’, an education community that promotes teacher well-being, and the creator of the #INN4SDGs initiative. Evo is also the Lead Agent for the #Agents4Agency empowering educators to be Agents for Student Agency. 

• Website: https://www.evohannan.com/
• Twitter: @Evo_Hannan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evohannan/ 

Join Evo at the OGC Global Summit July 2020 in Australia
https://conference.ourglobalclassroom.com/

Evo Hannan will be one of the Key Speakers

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For all of the Conversations on Learning podcasts with Barbara Bray, click on the podcast tab at the top, the logo below, or go to https://barbarabray.net/podcasts/

Dr. Lindsay Portnoy is a cognitive scientist, educator, associate professor, and author who is working to translate the science of learning into powerful and intentionally crafted experiences tailored to each unique learning community. 

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Lindsay writes and researches about learning science in articles in peer-review journals to widely read publications such as EdSurge and Getting Smart, to ASCD and Digital Culturist. Her new book, Designed to Learn is available now for pre-order.

What it was like when you were a student

I had a very traditional experience with school. I didn’t feel like I was a ‘good’ student until I was in high school and sometimes I wonder if even that was by accident. I remember taking a test in high school telling me what types of careers I should pursue and thinking “wow, I don’t want to do any of those things but I guess I’m not able to do anything else.”

I think it’s really an interesting juxtaposition that in a time where so much money is being spent on initiatives to foster ‘growth mindset’ the grown-ups in the room are still following the entity perspective of ‘this is what type of learner you are and this is what your ability is’. We’re still looking to standardized tests to determine what people are capable of accomplishing and not allowing people to pursue what they care about and supporting them along the way. We ask our kids to be resilient but we don’t model it very well. Especially in a school system that is predicated on bells and exams and multiple barriers to entry from college to career. It seems a bit silly to me.

Lindsay and Barbara at the SXSW EDU conference 2018

Who made a difference in your life when growing up

My parents divorced when I was little. They both loved us a great deal but it was not an easy childhood. In high school, I really grew. I had this choir teacher Mr. Cleveland who treated us all like his kids. He was kind but firm and you knew that he really cared about you. Having him as my teacher freshman year set me on a path towards believing in myself. I had other incredible teachers in high school too including a now very dear friend Kristie Paull Syron who mic’d me for all the school plays and was my coach in forensics. She used to sing beastie boys to me to help calm my nerves before going on stage. “Slow and low that is the tempo.” 

And then there was Jeannie Yakel my English teacher who pushed me in the arts and also in the classroom and had more faith in me sometimes than I had in myself. I remember freshman year in high school I was placed in an honors English and an honors Bio class and I couldn’t understand why. I thought there was a mistake. But I was too nervous (and didn’t know where my counselor’s office was) to ask. Ms. Murphy was my English teacher and asked so much from us. I remember getting an A that first semester and saying something to her like: “well this is good because I think I was put here on accident” She said something profound about “how we’re all in the place we need to be…” My honors bio experience was similar and for the first time, I could see myself as pursuing science or math or art or anything. It changed a lot through school as the pressures of friends and extracurriculars set in but mostly it was the high school that made me start to believe in myself.

Your family 

My hubby is Gary. My kiddos are Judah (11years old) and Levi (9 years old).

And we have two pups (Stellaluna- named after the children’s story because she has a bat symbol on her tushie- true story! And Halley named after the comet because she is so fast and three cats (Olive- it was Judah’s favorite snack when he was 6 and we rescued her, and Emilia and Rosie who came named as rescues). All of our babies are rescues and my kids love their fur babies!

Background as a Cognitive Scientist and unpacking the science of learning

My ‘big idea’ when I went to grad school (the second time) …and how I was ultimately deflated when I realized it had already been done =D Story of my life…also opportunity of my life!

Cognitive science was born from behavioral science and has given birth to neuroscience, but the super cool thing here is that we are really repeating the same experiments in new ways. We can use new imaging techniques to find where within the neocortex neural networks are firing when we hear, see, or learn information. 

Keynote at the Intentional Play Conference September 2018

Human-centered experiential learning through games

We learn by playing. Skinner talked about operant conditioning but Piaget too talked about how children learn by operating on the world around them. The way kids and all of us take on the roles of others is really just play. When you put on a new hat as a writer or even as a teacher you are learning the role, you are playing.

Article Human Motivation in the 4th Industrial Revolution 

This article on Medium was one of my favorites to write as it is the application of the theories I’d been teaching for so very long. I remember in grad school (second time) I was blown away by the incredible research in the ivory tower that was never distilled (with any semblance of comprehension for that matter) to the people who could use it most!! 

When I went back to learn about educational psychology and the science of how we learn I turned to my partner and said: I want to learn how people learn so I can write a book that anyone can read that will help them understand how people learn and how we can all learn better based on real science. 

I love elevating the work of amazing educators I work with and also love to write about the practices that are founded on the science of learning that has been hidden in that same ivory tower for far too long or worse yet, misunderstood or misapplied.

I think about learning ‘styles’ or multiple intelligences and it makes my heart hurt how many kiddos may have been led to believe ‘oh i can’t do that because I’m not an auditory learner’ or some such nonsense. Humans are wonderfully complex beings who are driven by curiosity, need, and interest. 

Human motivation in 4IR, wide audience. We KNOW how people learn. We need POLICY.

Article: When Next is NOW

https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/08/when-next-is-now/

Design thinking and a focus on the SDGs: Design thinking is just GOOD thinking =) There’s no magic! It’s really the application of deductive reasoning or the scientific method as a way to suss out the multiple components of a specific problem and in doing so, answer it!

Author, Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom

Design thinking prompts students to consider: “I’ve learned it. Now, what am I going to do with it?”

In Designed to Learn, I share the amazing teaching and learning that take place in design thinking classrooms. To set the stage, I provide easy-to-implement strategies, classroom examples, and clear tools to scaffold the processes of inquiry, discovery, design, and reflection. Because formative assessment is crucial to the process, I also include sample assessments that measure student learning and ensure that learners take the lead in their own learning.

Students become attentive, curious, and passionate about learning when they can see its relevance to their lives and when they’re empowered to use that learning to solve problems that matter. Regardless of the subject or grade level you teach, you can infuse your instruction with the meaning students crave by implementing design thinking.

https://www.amazon.com/Designed-Learn-Thinking-Purpose-Classroom/dp/141662824X

Your WHY

My WHY is a work in progress: to leave the world a better place than I found it. To help others. To learn with and share learning with the world so we can all be better for each other. I want to be good for my children and for all of our children. It’s so funny because Gary calls me a short term pessimist and long term optimist.

I really believe “there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet” and I sort of extrapolate that to learning by saying to my kids, my students, my teachers: there’s no magic in learning, it’s just content you haven’t learned yet. You can be, learn, do anything, it’s just a matter of access (e.g., and here is the opening of the talk about true educational equity).

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Dr. Lindsay Portnoy is a cognitive scientist working to translate the science of learning into powerful and intentionally crafted experiences tailored to each unique learning community. 

Drawing from a deep knowledge of the cognition and instruction, Portnoy works with educational stakeholders from students and policymakers to educators and curriculum developers to transform the nature of today’s classrooms and the lives of tomorrow’s citizens.

The science of learning provides a strong foundation for designing the classrooms of the future starting today.

Lindsay writes and researches about learning science across a broad range of publications to meet each educational stakeholder. From articles in peer-review journals to widely read publications such as EdSurge and Getting Smart, to ASCD and Digital Culturist.

Supporting each of our children in becoming the very best versions of themselves requires the support of parents, teachers, schools, policymakers, and communities.

A few other roles for Dr. Portnoy:

An Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern University: Working with students to conduct their original research and create their own innovations that will help transform the nature of learning.

School Board member: Soares School Board, NY

Chief Learning Officer: Killer Snails 

2015 ASCD Emerging Leader; Member of the World Economic Forum Expert Network (Media, Entertainment, Information); Assessment Fellow, Hunter College, CUNY

Member of World Economic Forum Expert Network (Media, Entertainment, & Information)

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/lindsay-portnoy/

Website: Edvolution https://lindsayportnoy.com/ 

Twitter: @lportnoy

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lportnoy/

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For all of the Conversations on Learning podcasts with Barbara Bray, click on the podcast tab at the top, the logo below or go to https://barbarabray.net/podcasts/

Dr. Winston Sakurai is Principal of The Prep at St. Andrews School in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was named 2016 @NASSP National Digital Principal and 2016 HASSA Hawaii Principal of the Year, and is moderator of the Twitter chat #PrinLeaderChat  Sunday evenings at 9pm ET for all school leaders.

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I’m so fortunate to have worked with Winston at St. Andrews School and with so many awesome educators. After learning more about all the innovation that is happening in Hawaii and at his school. I really wanted to share his story with you. Aloha!

Your background

I was born and raised in Hawaii. I grew up on the windward side of Oahu. My parents understood the value of education.  They moved from Honolulu to another part of the island where the school system was really good to put education first. They would say that they didn’t want me to have to work as hard as they did. They had to do a lot of manual labor and didn’t go to college. My dad repaired air conditioning units. My mom would get up at 4am as a cafeteria worker at the high school down the road. They put every effort into their children’s education so I could go to college and do well.

Your family

It’s a great story. My wife, Rochelle, and I have had the opportunity of working together as educators in the same schools since we began. She has been a kindergarten and 6th-grade teacher, early childhood and then with our middle school and high school and past ten years before I was here at the Prep, she was the college counselor and I was the principal for the middle and high schools in the upper school. We worked together as a team. We call it “Team Sakurai.” She’s now the college counselor at the Priory at St. Andrews Schools. Her office is right down the hall from where I am.

Rochelle makes me better. I appreciate her because she is smarter than me and she does a lot of things that point me in the right direction. We have two children. I am fortunate to be the principal for my son, Matthew, who is in fourth grade and my daughter, Madison, is in first grade. Not every educator gets the chance to develop a school that your children will go to and benefit from. Even though we are working together as a team, we also get the benefit of seeing our children having those experiences that we create for all children here. I’m very blessed to have this opportunity.

What it was like for you as a student

I did have a little bit of a struggle. I remember third grade and taking the standardized assessment tests and scoring really high. But they wouldn’t put me in the Gifted and Talented Program because my grades in school were just average. I didn’t do well on everyday work because it was kind of confusing. Math was easy. English was a struggle.

My mom asked the school for diagnostics about speech delays and impediments. Through the testing, they couldn’t find anything. In 1983, I made it through because my parents purchased a Commodore 64 for me. It had a spellchecker and a word processor so I was able to get through school.

[This is Barbara: make sure you listen to more about how technology and his mom helped him starting around 14:00]

It wasn’t until later when I was in college and couldn’t get through the foreign language class that I found I had dyslexia. I’m thankful for the University of Hawaii who understood that there are ways to get through college even through struggles with language acquisition. I remember what Mrs. Ito from the student services center said to me, “I can help you.” That was the support I needed.

Voice of Reason on the Hawaii state board

In 1993 at the age of 20, I was appointed by Governor John Waihee to the Hawaii State Board of Education and served multiple terms as Vice Chairperson. I helped to create the BOE’s Committee on Budget and Fiscal Accountability where he redirected hundreds of millions of dollars in wasteful spending back to schools. I was known as the BOE’s “Voice of Reason” during my ten-year tenure, My accomplishments include blocking privatization of public schools, stopping class size increases, and negotiating a settlement to the statewide teacher’s strike.

I would also serve as a voting member on the National State Boards of Education Association and National School Boards of Education. In 1996, I was named by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin as one of 10 people “Who Would Make a Difference in Hawaii’s Future” along with notables such as Governor Ben Cayetano, US Senator Mazi Hirono & US Representative Mark Takai.

Your journey as a teacher and becoming an administrator

I “retired” from the BOE to teach History at Hanalani Schools and spent five years as the elementary administrator before becoming principal of Hanalani’s Upper School in 2008. During my tenure, the school developed an international championship robotics program, national award-winning student government, National Honor Society chapter national recognized for service, raising Advanced Placement (AP) passing exam scores and a college readiness program where 100% of graduates are accepted to college.

Award for National Digital Principal in 2016

My wife was the one who had me apply for the National Digital Principal award. I told her that I’m not anybody and not at that level that everyone else is. I remember that Eric Sheninger won the award in 2012 and I thought I would never be like him. She told me every single year, that I was good enough to apply. It took a lot of her encouragement helping to develop who I am that brought out the best in what I could do. I was one of three digital Principals of 2016. Here is a picture of me with Bobby Dodd and Glenn Robbins.

Principal at The Prep at  St. Andrews School

The Prep, a school within St. Andrews School, is four years old and an all-boys school right in the heart of Honolulu. We’re trying to make it one of the most innovative schools in the state. For a principal to have the opportunity to build a new school is unbelievable. Currently, we’re kindergarten through 4th grade and we hope to continue growing. Even now we’re talking about what to do for our incoming 5th and 6th graders and beyond. We’re building a school with great teachers and the sky is the limit. Having to build things on our own, we have to think creatively and outside the box. Everything is new each year. Follow #WeThePrep on Twitter. Technology brings students together at The Prep.

Design Studio 4

We’re using the design thinking process from Stanford that places a focus on empathy. Our students are building things here on campus and creating different spaces for learning to take place. The kids own the process. Having them think about others and not themselves, being empathetic, understanding people is a process that will help them become successful. They problem-solve, create, iterate, test things out, iterate again until things are right. That’s how life is. We teach them that you don’t fail until you stop and quit. We encourage them to keep on going, going, going and make it better. When you stop because you’re giving up, that’s when a failure takes place. But if you iterate, iterate, iterate, you’re constantly getting better and moving forward, you’ll be very successful for the rest of your life.

It’s hard. We’re in a world where we have to understand each other. In order to understand each other in a way that you’re very helpful to each other as well. It’s not just taking something and saying, “I get it.” It’s about what we can do to help that other person be successful as well. Give them opportunities. Help them to be better. Our society will move forward and get better because we’re looking out for each other, trying to help each other move to the next level. We get the opportunity of knowing that the next generation is going to take our nation to a different place that is so unique and so spectacular that we couldn’t even imagine those things.

Why are you so passionate about changing school?

I see that lightbulb go on that they wouldn’t see if they were reading out of a textbook because it wasn’t relevant to them. My son comes home sometimes and asks me “what’s the relevance of this worksheet?” I have to question that, too. Now, he doesn’t say that as much. He goes, “this is difficult, but I think I can figure it out.” Which is spectacular!! It’s such a difference in how he’s learning and how he’s doing things because he’s processing stuff because he wants to. He thinks the challenge is important to tackle and fix.

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Dr. Winston Sakurai has distinguished himself as an innovative educational leader at the state and national level for over 25 years. He was recently named by the National Association of Secondary School Principals as a 2016 National Digital Principal of the Year and by the Hawaii Association of Secondary School Administrators as the 2015-16 Hawaii State Principal of the Year. He currently moderates a national education chat for school leaders, #PrinLeaderChat, on twitter.

Winston’s Contact info

Winston Y. Sakurai, Ed.D
winstonsakurai@gmail.com
NASSP National Digital Principal
Former Hawaii State Board of Education Vice Chair
The Principal of The Prep, St. Andrew’s  Schools 
https://standrewsschools.org

• Website: http://winstonsakurai.weebly.com
• Twitter: @winstonsakurai
• Twitter chat: #PrinLeaderchat
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/winstonsakurai
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winstonsakurai

New Book: Education Write Now: Top Strategies for Improving Relationships and Culture with multiple authors including Dr. Winston Sakurai

Ted Fujimoto is President of Landmark Consulting Group, Inc., a management and investment consultancy for scaling innovations in learning. Ted helped to design and create the replication systems and strategy for several of the highest performing public school designs in the country that created over 350 schools, including New Tech Network and Big Picture Learning.

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I’ve been following Ted on Twitter for many years and am constantly learning from him. When I reached out to Ted, he welcomed me with open arms. I really enjoyed our conversation and added excerpts with links, resources, and pictures to complement his podcast.

About you and your family

I was originally from the Napa Valley in California. During my developmental years, I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I lived overseas as a teenager in Japan. I have two kids. One is finishing up her third year of medical school and the other is finishing college who just got married this summer. My wife, Leigh Rachel Faith @unleighshed, is an actor, writer, and producer in the entertainment business. We live in Los Angeles.

What school was like when you were growing up

I was in a traditional school in a single room country schoolhouse. Oversees, we had correspondence school where we had to mail in our assignments and then got them back literally a month later. I was one of those kids who felt that school was boring and in the way. What got me through it was kind of cracking the code. For example, when I was in the correspondence school, I knew I could get the school work done by 10 am and then jump on the subway to tour Tokyo until 6 pm every day. So I got done by speeding through.

Even in college, I got through in three years. There was a bunch of classes where I just went to the midterms and finals. That’s what I needed to do to get the grades and that’s all I did. Even as a professional some 20 odd years later and started dozens of education organizations, I looked back to figure out what part of my education contributed to what I know today. I would say maybe 5% – there were a few classes that gave me a perspective and helped me to do what I do today. But, actually, about 80% was not useful at all.

New Tech Network

When I moved my company from Silicon Valley to Napa Valley where I was originally from, we were one of the first tech companies there. Then Napa was a farm town then and we couldn’t find employees to help us grow. My first foray in transforming education was literally out of survival. We needed employees even entry level and that resulted in starting that Napa New Technology High School in 1996.

About New Tech High School: https://youtu.be/NuurI4v8nSY

I hired a number of students as interns and later as full-time employees. It was really creating a school that gave kids the real skills that I could literally use the next year. We hear about project-based learning and the variety of ways to do it.  I can tell you with New Tech and the teachers like Paul Curtis who went to sabbaticals with the Buck Institute. We wanted it rooted in real-world work and toured the country to find schools that. But we couldn’t find schools with that authenticity. One of the people who designed New Tech was involved with Silicon Graphics. The purple that New Tech uses is the purple from Silicon Graphics. Now there are over 200 schools in the New Tech Network.

Big Picture Learning

My involvement is to help communities connect to school designs that scale and are replicable. I was on the board and executive team with Big Picture Learning and now am a thought partner. I helped Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor design and create the replication systems and strategy that created over 200 schools. They have public schools located in some of the toughest urban areas in America and are graduating over 95% of their students of which nearly 100% are being accepted to college.

Landmark Consulting

My company, Landmark Consulting, has gone through multiple iterations, but it officially started in 1988, my freshman year of college. We built finance and logistical systemsfor major clients including Remy Martin, LVMH and early cellular phone innovator AirTouch Communications which then became Vodafone and then became part of Verizon. I had no master plan, but I had the skills and the opportunity to use those skills. It actually started out fixing people’s personal computer problems. Then all of a sudden we saw some other problems that needed to be solved. Within a 24-month period, we were literally taking on whole enterprise systems. Part of it is about being at the right place at the right time, but that all boils down to relationships. It was all about doors being open when someone said we have a problem we know you can solve. That’s how it started and continues to work that way.

At its peak, we had several dozen employees mostly in the management consulting area. Today, our focus is very specific around advising investment groups and helping organizations to scale in their strategy. I have a network of consultants that understand this area for different sectors. We handpick maybe a dozen clients that have a high potential to do amazing work in their area or their organization is at risk to do damage in an area. We help them help navigate and gain perspective so they make better decisions.  

Scaling innovations in learning

Early in my career, I had a long-term client that developed the retail concept for the Saturn automobile brand. We re-engineered the retail networks of 11 automotive and hospitality brands worldwide like Ritz Carlton. We asked questions like how do you create a new network experience for your customers? How do you create the culture, mindset, and practices that are world class? The founder of the group was retiring so as part of an investment group acquired the company. During the time that I was there, I learned so much about scaling and creating ecosystems that enable the right mindsets to start to work and function on a consistent basis. This happened at the same time we were looking at how to scale New Tech and Big Picture Learning.

Having aligned goals is not enough. Every school says pretty much the same thing. It is the consistent execution that matters. No one wants to work in a toxic environment. What makes it executable? What we learned is not only how they structure time and space for effective relationships and agree on the goals but how they are going to work together.

If you have a school that has discourse and disconnects, I ask them “when was the last time you compared student work with other schools and national practice?” It takes a much more structured approach like daily advisories to actively spawn the relationships, trust, and responsibility. Not many people have been trained to do this instinctively. Proactively, you need to do this every day and be intentional to build those authentic relationships and use protocols.

The things that distinguish who employers want to hire is how they work as a team, how they think creatively, how they basically manage a team project, how they are reliable, how they articulate their journey and what they are going to solve, know how to get agreement, and how to navigate things that might be falling apart. All the companies I work with are doing innovative things which means no one has done it before. It is unchartered territory.

The education community doesn’t realize how big the gap is and what is applicable. We don’t use email. We use a joint conference call with teams worldwide. The amount of real-time decision making and collaboration is happening right away. That is different than the routines and schedules that are in schools.

Right to Succeed Foundation

Right to Succeed Foundation is a non-profit that is focused voice and storytelling about the schools really work and are scalable. There are systems to support that. We use our connections and media to share the stories with the world.

Right to Succeed: https://twitter.com/righttosucceed

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Ted Fujimoto is President of Landmark Consulting Group, Inc., a management and investment consultancy for scaling innovations in learning. Clients include some of the most prominent foundations, investors, and innovators that span across education, media, entertainment, technology, distribution, content, energy and real estate.

Ted currently serves on the Board of Directors of the California Credit Union, a $3 billion credit union.  He is the co-founder of MuzArt World Foundation and co-chairs the Right to Succeed Foundation, a non-profit focused on transforming public education through the creation of at least 6,000 American Dream Schools within the next 10 years

Ted helped to design and create the replication systems and strategy for several of the highest performing public school designs in the country that created over 350 schools, including New Tech Network and Big Picture Learning.

He has served on the California Education Technology Advisory Committee, received the 2002 Center for Digital Government “In the Arena” Award for Education Leadership in transforming vision to reality, and in Converge Magazines “1999 Year in Review,” Ted was named one of “Educations Dreamers, Leaders, and Innovators.

+1 916-769-2417 Direct

Email: tedf@consultlandmark.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tedfujimoto
Landmark Consulting Group: https://twitter.com/ConsultLandmark
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedfujimoto
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/public/Ted-Fujimoto
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tedfujimoto/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/tedfujimoto/

Other Podcasts with Ted

https://youtu.be/912jOwBK72E
EdTech Episode #69 – Relationships, Relevance, Rigour in School Reform

Naomi Harm is a Tech Innovation Specialist, ISTE Instructional Coach, and Google Certified Innovator in Fairfield, California. She is an educational thought leader and influencer and Strategic Outreach Manager in Education for Wonder Workshop.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

When it comes to human-centered design, design thinking and brain-based approaches to teaching and learning, I seek out Naomi. I’ve known her for years and am honored that she joins me in a conversation about her journey. Below are excerpts from the podcast along with great resources that include pictures, videos, and links. 

Learning My Work Ethic From My Father

I grew up in Northeastern Iowa on a dairy farm, and that’s where I got my work ethic. My father was my mentor and allowed me to be the maker of who I truly am today. I used to get up early to milk the cows and late at night to do my chores helped me learn to continue that work ethic in my college education, in teacher education, and when I earned my master’s degree in educational technology.

Image from http://blog.innovativeeducator.us/2008/10/my-father-my-mentor-my-best-friend.html

Being a teacher of 4th/5th-grade looping classroom also a year of kindergarten in Bangor Elementary in Bangor, Wisconsin gave me the utmost patience and competence. But what I learned from the kids was that I could inspire teachers. I saw the computer lab was not being utilized and sat there empty with 20 brand new iMacs. I decided to figure out how to use them and created the first WebQuests with kids. A regional agency saw what I was doing and then asked me to lead 26 school districts in Western Wisconsin. It was a very big job with a huge learning curve but it provided me the opportunity to create my network and relationships with educators across the nation.

Advocates for Jake

We have 3 children and our son, Jacob is our youngest. He was injured in a military accident over 3 ½ years ago. When we heard about his injury, we got to him in Texas within 12 hours. He broke over 50% of his bones in his body and endured a severe traumatic brain injury. He was in a total coma for over 3 weeks. My husband and I are grateful for the opportunity to be advocates for Jake and brought him to Minnesota to the Bethesda Traumatic Brain Injury Center. They worked with him to get to the next stage so he would be able to walk, talk, eat, and breathe without a respirator. We were told that he would be a vegetable and that we should put him in a nursing home. We would not do that. I reached out to find neurologists and surgeons that could help us. Everyone we talked to said don’t give up on him. They told us as parents we need to nurture him by stroking his hand and keep talking to him in small spurts so he knows we are there and that he has a support team. We are very thankful for the Augusta Health Unit in Minnesota. We got him home 175 days later and continued physical therapy at the local hospital at Gundersen Lutheran where my cousin Marguerite Costigan is the head of the physical therapy unit.

It’s amazing with a brain injury, your brain controls everything. With the amount of injury on his right side, he had paralysis on the left side of his body but he does walk now his way. He knows 3 ½ years later that he was in an accident, doesn’t remember the accident, and that he knows he has a brain injury. Because of that, we continue to work with neuroscientists across the US. They call him the miracle soldier in the US Army because he was not predicted to live. They are doing case studies on him because of the amount of support he has from us as educators and parents to help him live a productive life.

Jake’s Blog- where I dedicate most of my blog efforts instead of my personal blog: http://posthope.com/We-Love-Jake-Harm

Connecting the Teacher Story

Teachers are the essential ingredient in the classroom that can make or break a child’s learning cycle. We need to bring whatever we can to make teaching and learning successfully. Brain science is so important and we need to bring that into our classrooms for our teachers and our students. Every child can be successful if they have more processing time. Jake needs 3-5 more seconds to process and think about what you said to connect with his brain to generate a response.

So many times as educators we just put that question out there and don’t give students enough wait time to process the information. Even the high achievers, it gives them the opportunity to think differently. Teachers need to know how the brain is highly malleable and changes. That is called neuroplasticity. Every interaction we are having with a child is changing their brains. The more positive influences, interactions, or hands-on, minds-on learning experiences children have, it gives them opportunities to succeed in what they are truly passionate about. When we talk about the maker culture, that is very important now because it is meeting so many needs of our children so they find success. We need to build that culture and community each and every day so kids feel safe and productive. The teacher is the one to make that personal connection to each child so they have confidence in themselves. Listening to understand how the child feels, processes, and what they are truly struggling is about building the empathy connection so the relationships matter. That’s the game changer right now.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

I was asked long ago to do a keynote in South Africa and the person in charge of the agency would not let me go because they wanted me to stay in the area of Wisconsin instead of going internationally. During this time, my father had just retired from farming and developed pancreatic cancer. Before my father passed, he told me to either venture out on my own to inspire adult learners or open my own bakery. I loved to cook and bake. I have a chemistry background and love STEM. So I thought about how I could do both of these and ventured out to start my own consulting company. I took the leap and did do that keynote in South Africa. Actually, I was invited back three more times in seven years. It has allowed for me to scale my business and also inspire more women in educational technology in the Midwest.

 http://best-keynote.com/naomi-harm/  

I moved to California, but I still have my consulting company, Innovative Consulting Network, with 12 amazing women educational consultants that are leading the company for my back in the Midwest. We are better together because we share and learn from each other. It is like we are a startup where they are learning from their kids in the classroom and sharing back what works.  I’ve been lucky to work all over the country with schools, organizations, and major corporations. I get to meet awesome educators in person who I met on Twitter that are doing wonderful things with coding and robotics. Jon Samuelson @jonsamuelson is in Beaverton, OR and has a Techlandia Podcast is blowing me away with what he is doing with an awesome group of women. They offered Tinker, Code, Make as an all free professional learning for teachers in January and called it “Welcome to the Petting Zoo.” #tinkercodemake

http://www.tinkercodemake.com/

I now work for Wonder Workshop that allows me to continue working on my own as an entrepreneur and to be creative with everything STEM and coding with girls. Wonder Workshop sparks creativity with kids of all ages and inspires them to have fun, learning new skills with our robotics. Hands-on activities like these encourage students to continue building critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration skills for tomorrow’s job market.

I wanted to put everything up that Naomi shared, but you just have to listen. It was a wonderful conversation. I was touched by Naomi’s story and her journey.

******

Naomi Harm is an educational thought leader and influencer. She welcomes every opportunity to share her expertise and best practices relating to mobile teaching and learning initiatives, coding, programming, and robotics, redesigning classroom learning spaces, human-centered design thinking approaches, and brain-based instructional strategies to support the student-centered classroom. Her 20 years in the educational learning space and her dynamic career focus reflects a passion-driven approach to leading and learning as Strategic Outreach Manager in Education, National Intel Senior Trainer, ISTE Faculty Instructional Coach, Google Certified Innovator, and CEO and founder of IEC Network http://IEC.Network

Naomi’s well-known specialty is delivering inspiring keynotes focusing on emerging technologies, transformative technology leadership, empowering student voice and choice, and brain-friendly teaching and learning environments.

As a Strategic Outreach Manager in Education for Wonder Workshop, Naomi Harm grows partnerships with schools and cultivates these relationships to successful implement coding and robotic best practices with Wonder Workshop products in K-12 schools. She defines long-term computational thinking and computer science goals for growth throughout the West Coast and MidWest regions. Naomi also builds relationships with educators, schools, districts, government officials and organizations in education, while leading educational industry discussions, conduct keynotes, presentations and workshops.

She has spoken at over 125 National and International technology conferences, and her most recent keynotes and featured speaker addresses include: ISTE – San Antonio, TX, CUE – Palm Springs, SSLA Saskatoon, Canada, AVEdTech Summit Palmdale, CA, Practical Pedagogies in Toulouse, France, NCTIES in North Carolina, ISTE, and SchoolNet South Africa in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Bloemfontein.

Twitter: @NaomiHarm

Website: Innovative Educator Consulting https://www.naomiharm.org/ or http://www.IEC.Network

About Me: http://about.me/naomiharm  

Best Keynote: http://best-keynote.com/naomi-harm/  (Linked to updated preso’s, live webinars, quotes from national edtech leaders I have worked with, and keynotes)

Wonder Workshop Blog: https://blog.makewonder.com/

Digital Buzz Podcast show https://www.spreaker.com/user/the_digital_buzz (last recording was one year ago with my contract with Intel Education)

2017 was an interesting year. I decided to go in a new direction this past year to focus on the WHY of learning and even started hosting a podcast. This post is about the blog posts I wrote. I always try to have hope and embrace joy when and where I can find it. Much of my love of learning is from my PLN. I have learned so much this year from amazing educators and wanted to share ideas and what I learned with you. In no particular order, here are the top 10 posts I wrote that were pretty popular on Twitter:

Build a Toolkit so Learners Become Future Ready

Most teachers join the profession because they want to make a difference in children’s lives. They want their students to be the best they can be so they reach their fullest potential. But that is not always easy with large classroom sizes, a wide range of differences of the learners, and the constraints and barriers within the system. A Class Learning Snapshot (CLS) helps you design instructional and learning strategies based on four diverse learners in your class or classesby teaching to the extremes. What you come up with for the four learners helps you teach to the extremes instead of the average.  Read more…

Ikigai: Your Purpose and Reason for Being

In a 2001 research paper on ikigai, co-author Akihiro Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Toyo Eiwa University, placed the word ikigai as part of the everyday Japanese language. It is composed of two words: iki, which means life and gai, that describes value or worth. This is similar to passion but holds a strong “purposeful” connotation.  The Japanese see the discovery of your ikigai as requiring a deep, long search within yourself that can bring about satisfaction and meaning to life. Ikigai has nothing to do with income. Start with these four primary elements to determine your reason for living:

• What you Love (your passion)
• What the World Needs (your mission)
• What you are Good at (your vocation)
• What you can get Paid for (your profession)
  Read more…

5 Tips to Make PBL Personal

Project-based learning (PBL) incorporates the elements of learner-centered environments. When learners are encouraged to ask questions and have a voice about something they are interested in, now that’s more personal than traditional instruction! When kids have a chance to play, experiment, tinker, create, and do meaningful tasks, they are more motivated to want to learn. But it is not always that easy for teachers to transform lessons into project-based learning activities. The five tips to help teachers get started in making PBL personal include doing an Edcamp model, pick a catchy title, articulate standards, learn how to pitch the project, and have kids provide feedback. Read more…

Defining Learner Agency

There is a significant and growing demand for learners to be able to do more than receiving instruction, follow a learning path designed by educators and complete problems and assignments presented to them by an adult. We have a sense of ‘agency’ when we feel in control of things that happen around us; when we feel that we can influence events. They must develop the capacity to engage strategically in their learning without waiting to be directed. They must take ownership of and responsibility for their learning. And, they must possess the skills to learn independently, without heavy dependence on external structures and direction. Read more…

18 Ways to Recognize Learning as the Culture

When you walk into your school, what do you see? Are kids motivated to learn? Do you see effort and persistence? Are teachers excited about all the kids in the school? Just as the Iceberg Illusion created by Sylvia Duckworth, @sylviaduckworth, shows, sometimes we only showcase success after learning has happened. For more of Sylvia’s graphics, go to her Flickr page.  This post is about creating a culture of learning that is visible in your school as learning is happening. For learners to grow and flourish, we need to create learning environments where every child is recognized as a learner while they are learning. Some kids never get showcased or recognized. A culture that values every learner will empower them to discover the joy of learning. Read more…

7 Ideas to Discover Magic in Your Classroom

Yes, you can discover magic in your classroom right from the first day of school. Your kids are ready and willing to make magic happen if you are. Think of kindness, wonder, mindset, and the heart of learning as magical. We all need some magic in our lives. Why not in our classrooms?  You can do that by bringing a sense of wonder to your classroom. One way is by building a wall of kindness. You can start by playing a game that makes everyone giggle. Share the difference between growth and fixed mindset. Find the heart in your classroom. Discover and share what you are passionate about. The magic is the culture in your classroom. Read more…

UDL and the Why of Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was developed by David Rose and Anne Meyer from CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology).  The UDL principles are Multiple Means of Engagement, Multiple Means of Representation, and Multiple Means of Action & Expression. After learning more about UDL, I can see how UDL can be the framework for learning for all learners. I love that UDL starts with the why and how learners are engaged and motivated to learn. The WHY means what learners are interested in and passionate about. I decided to explore the UDL principles from my perspective as a learner. I know that I need to be motivated first about something new I want or need to learn. I’m kind of busy. There has to be a reason or purpose for my learning. Read more…

Design Thinking Process and UDL Planning Tool

I wrote this post with Jackie Gerstein @jackiegerstein to go with our presentation at ISTE 2017. Some makerspace activities may be focusing on how to use the resources available and may not be connecting the activities to the curriculum or around a real world problem. If this is how the makerspace is set up in your school, then your kids may not have access to the resources, materials, and tools when they need them, especially for STEM or STEAM. In deciding what resources you need based on the learners you have, you may first need to determine how your learners learn best, what projects you plan to do, how you can set up a makerspace in your classroom, and much more. This is why we created a planning tool for makerspaces in the classroom using the Design Thinking Process and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Read more…

6 Ways Teachers Can Spread Intentional Positivity

Being a teacher is the best job in the world. Just imagine all the children you impact and made a difference for every day. You may not get paid what you’re worth, but you probably would never do anything else. Right? So, why not start each day being grateful and positive for it. Consider “intentional positivity” means celebrating all the wonderful things happening in your class, school, and community. What can you do? Be happy! Keep a journal. Write Notes and send them home. Share with colleagues. Post stories. Read more…

7 Strategies for Personal Professional Learning

Professional learning encourages personal growth by teachers, but professional development (PD) programs have been designed around the “one size fits all” approach. A district may mandate that all teachers have to attend specific sessions around the district mission. Did the teachers have a voice in creating the mission?  Teachers are learners too. What if teachers take charge of their own professional learning by reflecting on the process and demonstrating evidence of learning? It is all about owning the learning. When teachers identify and address what they need and want to learn and the school supports them by providing resources, people, and time, then that’s personal professional learning. Find out about the 7 strategies for your own personal professional learning. Read more...

This coming year has my head spinning. I wake up and write in my journal ideas for new posts in the middle of the night. I’m excited about all the podcast conversations I’ve had. There are many I still need to edit and publish in the new year. They are amazing and I want to do a good job. I’m fortunate that my son, Andrew, is helping me edit the sound, find music, and make sure there are resources and links to complement the podcast. This takes time so there will be many podcasts being published soon.  I so appreciate everyone in my PLN and all the awesome educators around the world who share the magic happening in their schools, their ideas, the books they wrote, and so much more. I am really looking forward to sharing more stories this coming year.

School tends to be about teaching to the test and addressing each standard more than finding real-world authentic learning experiences. How do we shake up the system so kids address what they need to know and what they want to learn? What does that mean for “school” now?  We talk about the importance of voice and choice but how do we encourage learners of all ages to discover their purpose for learning so they own and drive it. Learners need relevant, authentic applications.

On January 1st, 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by UN world leaders were adopted in an international effort to meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ 

Each SDG has resources that include research, videos, facts and figures, lessons and targets to reach the goals by the year 2030. The 17 Global Goals impact all of us especially children today. When even young learners realize that the SDGs involve authentic learning experiences, they will want to get involved so they can make a difference locally and globally.

What if we redesign our existing curriculum to create a learner-centered approach around the SDGs?

We can do this using the Design Thinking Process which starts with empathy. Start with the World’s Largest Lesson and have your kids use design thinking to identify a group of people and choose one of the Global Goals to research. The following information was adapted from the dschool at Stanford: https://dschool.stanford.edu/

Let’s take the main ideas of the 2030 goals which are to see how all of us can be the change.

Empathize: Who is your audience?

“To create meaningful innovations or solutions, you need to know your audience and care about their lives.” 

• Review the Global Goals and see if there is a group of people you would like to learn more about.
• Would it be better to start locally before globally? If so, who have you identified?
• Have you thought of focusing on yourself first?

Define: What is the problem?

“Framing the right problem is the only way to create the right solution.”

• Define one Global Goal as the problem
• Choose one of the targets for that goal to address
• Identify the point-of-view to frame the problem
• Craft a meaningful, actionable problem statement
• Capture the hearts and minds of your audience

Ideate: What are some possibilities?

“It’s not about coming up with the ‘right’ idea, it’s about generating the broadest range of possibilities.”

• Harness the collective perspectives of your team
• Uncover unexpected areas and solutions to explore
• Push for the widest possible range of ideas
• Encourage many ideas and discourage judgment

Prototype: What can you do or create to solve the problem?

“The prototype is the iterative generation of artifacts intended to answer questions to get you closer to your final solution.”

• To problem solve.
• To communicate.
• To fail quickly and cheaply.
• To test possibilities as if you are right.
• To manage the solution-building process.

Test: What you can learn about your solution?

“Testing is an opportunity to learn about your solution and your user.”

• To invite feedback.
• To learn more about your audience.
• To test as if you are wrong.
• To refine prototypes and solutions.

After you review the design thinking process, you may realize your students may want to start with themselves and may ask you what they can do even at home to make a difference. The UN created a page where anyone can take action.

www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/takeaction/you

Things you can do on your couch:

• Save electricity by plugging appliances into a power strip and turning them off completely when not in use, including your computer.
• Stop paper bank statements and pay your bills online or via mobile. No paper, no need for forest destruction.
• Speak up! Ask your local and national authorities to engage in initiatives that don’t harm people or the planet. You can also voice your support for the Paris Agreement.
• Don’t print. See something online you need to remember? Jot it down in a notebook or better yet a digital post-it note and spare the paper.
• Turn off the lights. Your TV or computer screen provides a cozy glow, so turn off other lights if you don’t need them.

There are 2 more levels with many bullet points. Invite your students to start with Level 1 and keep track of what they are doing to save the planet. Involve your kids in multiple ways using the SDGs. Consider the design thinking process so they have a voice in their decisions.

Rethinking Learning Episode #8

Dr. Jackie Gerstein has been teaching in-person and online for several decades. Currently, she teaches master’s level online courses in educational technology for Boise State, Walden, and Western Governors’ Universities as well as gifted elementary education where she focuses on STEM, STEAM, and Maker Education.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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I was so lucky to present with Jackie at ISTE 2017 in San Antonio and participate in a webinar with her about maker education. I am constantly learning from Jackie and am always blown away by how much she knows and shares with the world. When Jackie agreed to have a conversation with me, we had to talk about maker ed and her life. I captured some of the conversations from the podcast and referred to references mentioned in her blog below.

Can you share about you, your background, and how you decided to focus on maker education?

I was one of those painfully, bored kids in my K-12 education [ Freedom to Learn 2017]. I hated school and didn’t think it was fair. In college, I took a course in environmental education. For part of that course, we went out to the local camp where I worked with 5th and 6th graders for a week. We studied marine life by walking down a creek. To learn history, we went to a local cemetery and did gravestone rubbings to look at their lineage. This just made sense. It was real and kids were learning content. So I thought, “why wasn’t my education like this?” Maker education is just a form of experiential education and now I am thrilled that it is becoming very popular in schools and libraries right now.

Why did you come up with A Framework for Maker Education? 

Coming from the experiential ed field, it’s this idea that if we just have an experience, then we leave learning up to chance. It’s based on the experiential learning cycle where you do a front load by framing experience, doing the experience, then reflecting on the experience. The cycle is not anything new. I just tweaked it to be more modern day and applicable to Maker Ed, STEM and STEAM, and to include more technology.

How do you connect making with what kids are supposed to be learning?

When you give someone a worksheet, they are learning one skill that’s often no related to anything else. You and I have talked about learning in context. If you give a kid a sheet with just math problems, they don’t connect to anything else in their lives. So you’re spending that time on things kids will probably forget and often do because it doesn’t have a context they can relate to. When we do Maker and STEAM activities, it is so easy to go through them and say how you are addressing cross-curricular common core standards within the activities. The kids are excited because they are learning skills not only related to the standards that teachers are asked to address, they are learning how to talk to each other, how to present orally, how to work together in a team, how to be innovative, how to use their creativity, and addressing the standards. We have this huge list of things kids are learning from a one-hour activity versus one or two things they might have learned from that hour long worksheet. [Games or Worksheets]

What is the connection with maker education and social-emotional learning?

I’m not a big fan of step-by-step activities where kids all end up with the same product. I call it the Thanksgiving Turkey where kids are all given a hand that they trace out on brown paper and stick on feathers. They all look the same except their name on the back. There are things like Gami-bots or different kinds of projects that are open-ended where kids can put themselves in them. By the nature of them being open ended instead of close-ended projects where all the products are the same, kids develop social emotional learning. I wrote a blog post “Helping Kids Move Beyond I Can’t Do This.”

I work with gifted elementary students and do summer camps for elementary kids. Almost every time with the nature of the projects, I hear “I can’t do this.”  And that’s usually because it doesn’t work the first time exactly the way they want. It’s the same with worksheets where they get them right the first time or not and then the teacher moves on. They don’t have time to master it so they just move on. Even adults get frustrated about this because they didn’t have the experiences of making something, having it fail, and trying multiple iterations around it. They aren’t developing the idea of what do I do when I’m frustrated or how to ask for help. I tell kids to ask another kid for help. In real life, there is no teacher there for them to ask for help. So they have to figure out ways to get the help they need. There is so much social emotional learning happening in maker education. What they do with one project helps them with the next one.

How do you make reflection a powerful part of your framework?

I encourage my kids to blog. I might do a Twitter hashtag and a YouTube channel this year too. There are other ways to encourage them to reflect on their learning. I’m in a Title I school where I have kids with parents from Mexico so they’re not that comfortable with social media. I sent home a permission slip even though some parents may not have signed the AUP, they all give permission because they want to see the projects. I do Google photos for them so I take a lot of pictures. I never use kids names. You saw the videos of my kids. Even though you know where I live, you don’t know what schools. There are 19 elementary schools in my town and there is no mention of the names of the schools. There are lots of ways to get kids to reflect. I might have them create a comic strip, infographic, or a photo essay and put those on their blogs. They love YouTube so if I start a YouTube channel, they’ll eat that up. So that involves  Universal Design for Thinking® that offers different ways for them to reflect on their experiences. [Check Documenting and Reflecting on Learning]

How do you encourage your teachers to incorporate makerspaces in their schools?

Human beings like to make. Good teachers have always done making and experiential ed in their classrooms. Look at the teacher gardener in the Bronx who created hydroponic gardens and encouraged kids go to the Farmers Market to sell their goods. I had some of my college students encouraging empathy by doing a social studies project having their kids write in a journal about being one of the settlers as if they were on a journey. I hope that making doesn’t become just one more flavor of the month. If people associate making with only 3D printers and laser cutters, first, many schools cannot afford those and second, teachers and librarians have said that’s not what they’re about. [The Classroom or Library as a Makerspace]

There are tools and resources that are affordable and useful like cardboard and play dough. I found out about activities and resources from social media. So I tell my ed tech graduate students as well as my student teachers to follow hashtags like #makered, #STEM, and #STEAM. That’s where I found out about using pumpkin cutters for making and where to find them for low prices especially right after Halloween. We don’t all have to be reinventing the wheel. [Read Teacher PD: Purposeful Tinkering and Application]

You share at https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/. Can you talk about the importance of sharing?

It’s important to share. We talked about this idea that educators do not want to share out work. People have said to me, “but I’m not getting paid then for that work.” I always say that we get so much back for sharing. When you do share out, you get rewards from people coming up to you and thanking you. I’ve gotten jobs because I share my work. I think it is not about living in the Win-Lose model. Same thing with kids going back to the reflective piece I mentioned before, one of my beliefs is that kids should be sharing their work out to a broader audience. It motivates us. When someone comes up to me at a conference and tells me that they read my blog and it helps them, there’s no bigger reward than that.

Educators love sharing on social media. I never heard of squishy circuits and then I saw some links about using playdough or make your own. Then I got some LED lights and batteries at the dollar store. I have my kids interview each other to design an animal with squishy circuits for their classmate. I shared this out and a teacher may find a better idea or adds onto this project then shares it with others. This then becomes a collective, cumulative sharing, and then everyone benefits. Teachers don’t have to reinvent everything or figure things on their own anymore.

Before we end the podcast, can you share some of the maker projects you are doing with kids?

I do different themes. The cardboard creations where we spent a week 3 hours a day. We did circuit camp. We did Toy Making and Hacking. This was probably one of my favorites. The first part of the week, they make toys. The second part, I bought a pile of old handheld games that you can get in lots from eBay. They take apart those games and you should see their looks when they take apart the circuit boards, screens, and the keys.

They have to invent a new game out of the parts and create a prototype that doesn’t have to be working. They have to create a posterboard that says the name of the game, who it’s from, the rules and designed an app for it so you get to see what it looks like. There are so many ways to bring maker ed activities into all environments.

Dr. Jackie Gerstein’s byline is, “I don’t do teaching for a living. I live teaching as my doing . . . and technology has amplified my passion for doing so.” Dr. Gerstein has been teaching in-person and online for several decades. Currently, she teaches master’s level online courses in educational technology for Boise State, Walden, and Western Governors’ Universities as well as gifted elementary education where she focuses on STEM, STEAM, and Maker Education.

She believes that one of the roles and responsibilities of the 21st-century educator is to share resources, ideas, and instructional strategies with other educators.

Jackie actively blogs at  https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/jackiegerstein

Resources

• https://www.slideshare.net/jgerst1111/workshop-maker-education-in-a-context?qid=51f75f03-c038-436f-99b1-5f6d537f46c4&v=&b=&from_search=1
• Youtube Video commercial for my SXSW EDU proposal – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADabjmV8qBE
• The Educator as a Maker Educator (Kindle version) https://www.amazon.com/Educator-as-Maker-ebook/dp/B016Z5NZ6O/

Some articles about Jackie’s maker education framework

• Don’t Leave Learning Up to Chance: Framing and Reflection https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/09/14/dont-leave-learning-up-to-chance-framing-and-reflection/
• Fashioning a Framework for Maker Education — THE Journal https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/05/16/fashioning-a-framework-for-maker-education.aspx

Guest blog by JoAnn Jacobs, sixth grade social studies teacher at Mid-Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii

Prior to entering sixth grade, parents fill out a form about their child and feelings about school. Nine times out of ten, the least favorite subject listed is social studies. When I speak to parents at open house, I stress I’m not your typical teacher. There are no textbooks, quizzes, or tests but an environment where we all learn together with respect and trust.

Our final project last year was Global Awareness which lasted from mid-March until the end of May. What the students didn’t realize was that I was leading them along the path from the very beginning. Through the use of inquiry, CNN Daily News, CBS News, YouTube, articles, and numerous other resources, we arrived at the UN2030 Goals. Instead of revealing the goals, I passed out post-it notes and asked students to list issues, be it local or world, they felt would fall into one of the UN2030 categories. Needless to say, they already knew them and realized their significance.

After choosing the issue they felt most strongly about, students formed groups to begin their investigation. One of the questions that continually surfaced was “how can the problem be solved?” We continually discussed and decided bringing awareness would be a good first step. So over the next few weeks we used the design thinking process to develop products which would bring focus to each issue.

In between the design thinking process and sales so many other things happened. Constructing prototypes, accepting criticism, deciding on a final product, defending the choice during a Shark Tank, earning fifteen dollars to purchase supplies while at Walmart, keeping a balance sheet, investigating an agency to receive profits, and construction and preparing for the final sale.

The sale took place during the middle school lunch period with groups divided up over a five day period so individual groups would have one day to explain their cause and sell what they made to students and teachers.

As within every market place, some groups had higher sales than others, but each student was successful in learning about trust, collaboration, and world issues along with how to create and market a product.

The final counting of money in the cash boxes and making donations to various agencies brought not only a sense of accomplishment but an understanding there is still so much for us to do.

JoAnn Jacobs is a sixth grade social studies teacher at Mid-Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. Entering her fortieth year, she looks forward to continually learning with her students and members of her sixth grade team and helping to make the world a better place.

Twitter: @JoAnnJacobs68

#edcampHI organizer, #edchatHI moderator,