24 hrs to reinvent school

Ok, we’re all time poor but we can all find an hour or two in 24 hrs to design our ideal class,  school, curriculum.

So get to it.  Use the comments below. Tell me how you would do it and help me creat the next course on Udemy called 24 hrs to reinvent school

I will post the courseby the end of January 2012.

Brendan

Five Steps to Better School/Community Collaboration

I had the the great pleasure of writing a guest post on Edutopia this month and now I look forward to writing some more in the future.

As the old African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” One could imagine then that it would take a community to raise a school. We can’t rely on local, state, or federal governments to take ownership of the issues we face locally. We need to work as a community to nurture our schools for our particular community needs. Read my full post, Five Steps to Better School/Community Collaboration on Edutopia here ….

School redesign as a community project-based learning challenge

When Lisa Nielsen, best known as creator of The Innovative Educator blog invited me to write something on the Reinventing School challenge as a guest on her blog, I jumped at the chance.  One of the things that I thought would be useful to explore in this blog post was the importance of getting to the heart of the issues. One great way to do this is to design beautiful questions, questions that request grand answers but also invoke action.

If you’ve ever complained about the way things are in schools today, now’s your chance to stop talking and start acting by participating in the Reinventing School Challenge.  The challenge is a program that begins with a simple mission: Encourage life-long learning, promote alternative learning environments and equip learners with 21st Century skills. It takes a fresh and different approach to school reform in the following ways. Read the entire post, School redesign as a community project-based learning challenge over at the Innovative Educator….

Update & need your help promoting through your networks

The Challenge launched on Monday the 12th, and with little promotion on facebook and Twitter I’m pleased to say we have 7 teams already registered.

I’m working on a media release aimed at education newspapers and blogs to be sent out the end of next week. I will share it here when it is released.

If you could do these simple tasks over the next 2 weeks I’m sure we can raise awareness and get a further 20-30 teams to register. The goal I’ve set is 40 teams.

What follows are some ideas on how you can help promote the Reinventing School Challenge throughout your networks.

• Follow @reinventschool and monitor the hash tag #reinventschool
• Try and use #educhat #teachers #designthinking  #edreform in your tweets where possible
• Tweet to your followers or retweet any of the tweets from @reinventschool
• Write a short blog if you have one on the challenge
• Write a guest blog somewhere else if you can find an appropriate place
• Write a guest blog on the Reinventing School Blog. Say your piece. Let the audience know what you are involved and your ideas on transforming education.Get in touch and I’ll set you up and Author account
• Share electronically or print out the invitation + poster. You can download it here
• Like the Reinventing School facebook page and share it with your facebook friends. Write a testimonial on the facebook wall or your wall.
• Speak to your peers, colleagues, family, friends, local schools and business associates. Let them know that a key feature of this challenge is that it invited the entire community to participate
• You tell me? Do you have ideas on how to get the message out? Do tell!

The Websites:

http://potentiality.reinventingschool.com.au or http://reinventingschool.com.au

Social Media and Networks:

• Twitter – @reinventschool 
• Hash tag –  #reinventschool
• facebook – http://facebook.com/reinventingschool
• YouTube: There is an inspiring video playlist here. It’s a beauty with over 80 videos that have something to do with the Education Revolution. Some of you even feature in it. Share it.
• Brendan O’Keefe (Curator) on Google + http://gplus.to/education and our dedicated Reinventing School circle https://plus.google.com/u/0/circles/reinventing-school-p3fb27761085ef5b0

Online Course:

The self paced online course that supports the challenge is here. We have 200 subscribers so far.

http://www.udemy.com/reinventing-school-design-thinking-challange/

What’s next? Participate in some online discussion in the near future using Skype, Google Hangouts and Twitter. Stay tuned.

Please do get in touch with your ideas on how to make this a resounding success. I selected you because you are all leaders, driven, creative and care about the future of education.

Thank you all for your belief and support.

Brendan

The challenge is tied to 21st Century student outcomes

Teachers and others who work with young people have a great opportunity to engage their students in a real life challenge. The Reinventing School challenge is hands on, encourages discussion of the issues facing learners today and empowers young people, teachers and other members of the community to come up with solutions and share them for all to benefit.

In recent times there has been a renewed focus globally on the 3 R’s – reading, writing, and arithmetic, however if our young people are to fully participate in today’s global community, students must also master the 4 C’s – creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. The Reinventing School Challenge enables students to explore all 4 C’s  from the P21 framework while learning by doing. Below are the key areas that the challenge addresses. The following excerpt is taken from the definitions on the 4 C’s.

LEARNING AND INNOVATION SKILLS

Learning and innovation skills increasingly are being recognized as those that separate students who are prepared for a more and more complex life and work environments in the 21st century, and those who are not. A focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration is essential to prepare students for the future.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

Think Creatively

• Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
• Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)
• Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts

Work Creatively with Others

• Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
• Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
• Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
• View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes

Implement Innovations

• Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur

CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING

Reason Effectively

• Use various types of reasoning (inductive, deductive, etc.) as appropriate to the situation

Use Systems Thinking

• Analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems

Make Judgments and Decisions

• Effectively analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims and beliefs
• Analyze and evaluate major alternative points of view
• Synthesize and make connections between information and arguments
• Interpret information and draw conclusions based on the best analysis
• Reflect critically on learning experiences and processes

Solve Problems

• Solve different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways
• Identify and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions

COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION

Communicate Clearly

• Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts
• Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions
• Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate and persuade)
• Utilize multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as assess their impact
• Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual)

Collaborate with Others

• Demonstrate ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams
• Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
• Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member

Learning happens everywhere

We also want to promote alternative learning environments, life-long learning and want you to also think beyond the classroom when coming up with ideas. How do you learn outside of the classroom? What technologies do you use? Where and when do you learn best?

In his best selling book Drive, Dan Pink talks of the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The challenge is designed to give you all of the key elements needed to drive you to success.

Learning happens everywhere, and so does this challenge

I want to ensure that the entire community feels welcome and able to participate in the Reinventing School Challenge. While students and educators are most likely to be attracted to the challenge, teams can participate from many other organisations or groups.

Some of you educators may feel that the current state of affairs in your school setting makes it too difficult to facilitate your students in the challenge at this time.You may be a passionate parent or youth leader who feels you want to change the way we educate our young people and want to make a difference.

No problem. You can make this challenge work.

One of my life missions is to encourage life-long learning, promote alternative learning environments and inspire people to live their dreams. Self-directed, curiosity-based learning is something I have experienced all my life and it’s one of the reasons I built this challenge.

I have participated in very little formal learning,  just about everything I have learned since I left high school I have taught myself one way or another or learned on the job. Thanks to the Internet and social media, I continue to learn a great deal every day and the Internet presents a wonderful opportunity to connect, collaborate and promote what I love to do.

There are so many venues for social and blended learning that it would take this entire post to list them all but I’m sure you know most of them.

The Reinventing School Challenge can be facilitated in many of these learning environments. Everything you need to facilitate it is online here, and all it takes is you and a small team of enthusiastic participants to make it happen. Ask some kids, ask the seniors at the local aged care home, ask your local council person, ask the design team at the local print shop, ask your local doctor. Diversity makes magic happen.

Tell the world the challenge is here -  Get involved and shout it out!

Please do help promote the Reinventing School Challenge. You can use our social bookmarking, sharing buttons found on the pages of this site, join the facebook page and follow us on twitter @reinventschool and @ideasatplayedu

Youth groups

Did you know you can simply host a Reinventing School party as an add on to an existing group you are part of?

Scouts, Girl Guildes, Rotary, Sports Club, you name it.

Find a venue. Host your Reinventing School Challenge in your club, the school library, local community centre or at home with your family and friends.

Friends and family

For instance, get some of your  friends or family, form some teams  and commit to organize and host 4 parties between all of you, one each week over a 4 week period during the holidays or over the weekends.

• Host a great party
• Express yourself
• Have fun
• Do your own thing
• Get your friends involved
• Show off to your friends and family
• Make a difference

Employee team building

Get your employees involved and make the Reinventing School Challenge part of your team building or corporate citizenship program.