Education Innovation

Failure Is An Option: Ideas and Failure In The Open Model of Education

What do you get when you combine education with the books Here Comes Everybody and Wikinomics, with Lego, Saddleback Church, new ideas, a website for solving problems, failure, and a mining corporation? Let's put them in the Education Innovation blender and see?

Adding to my previous posts (1 and 2)  on what I call the Open Model of Education. Why is the open model so powerful? Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, discussed the advantages of open models. In this case, open source movements. Open source movements have several powerful advantages that education could leverage to improve itself. 

One advantage of the open source movement is that it is not an organization in the typical sense. It doesn’t have employees, it doesn’t make capital investments, and it doesn’t control resources. The advantage is that it highly tolerant of failure. Open source reduces the cost of failure because so many ideas are brought to the table.

“…open source relies on the ‘publish-then-filter’ pattern. In traditional organizations, trying anything is expensive, even if just in staff time to discuss the idea, so someone must make some attempt to filter the successes from the failures in advance. In open systems, the cost of trying something is so low that handicapping the likelihood of success is often an unnecessary distraction.”

In the Closed Model of Education that I have discussed previously, education is limited because the ideas that a school or district can consider can come from only a limited number of sources, usually teachers, administrators, and consultants. A great deal of thought must be put into the consideration of ideas because the time and cost of failure are so high. Time spent with meetings, staff training, and materials, has a cost. This means the filter for ideas is very high. Only those ideas that seem to have the most benefit will be implemented, though there is no way to know in advance that one of the ideas picked will bring the desired benefit, and one of the ideas left on the table could be the most effective and beneficial.

The Open Model of Education draws its ideas from a greater number of sources, including, and most importantly, the student. A wider net is cast for ideas, more ideas are implemented, and the ones that work will receive more resources, while the ones that fail can be quickly dropped. Because resources are only directed at proven ideas, this model essentially allows failure to cost nothing. Failure for free. But the chance of coming upon a better idea is increased due to the shear number of sources and ideas.

“Open system, by reducing the cost of failure, enable their participants to fail like crazy, building on the successes as they go.”

The open system has the advantage of exploring multiple possibilities.

“…the idea is that for any problem or goal, there is a vast area of possibilities to explore but few valuable spots within that environment to discover. When a company or indeed any organization finds a strategy that works, the drive to adopt it and stick with it is strong. Even if there is a better strategy out there, finding is can be prohibitively expensive.”

Our current Closed Model of Education is clearly locked into a few strategies and models that drive everything. Teaching takes place at a designated place and time, and it provided by designated people.

The Open Model of Education blends the sources of teaching to focus on the learning of the student. Learning, as opposed to teaching, can take place anywhere, at anytime, and can be provided by many people. It is this system that can bring many more ideas to the table. The current education system judges many ideas on whether that idea fits within the current construct of the education system. If the idea does not fit, the idea is not adopted. Those ideas that are adopted have been severely filtered in the hopes on ensuring success.

The Open Model of Education, or Clay Shirky’s open system, allow for many more participants, lowers the filtering of ideas, and is much more tolerant of failure because of the flexibility of the system. Ideas that fail are dropped instantly, and new ones adopted. It would be hard to say that failed ideas are dropped as quickly in education. Usually failed ideas have personnel attached to them, causing union issues, and resources that have been purchased, and possible even capital costs. This makes ideas difficult to drop on a dime.

Further because the Open Model allows participants from many areas to participate, the chances of great ideas and solutions are increased. In the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collboration Changes Everything, the authors describe in detail how organizations from Lego to mining corporation Goldcorp have opened their systems to the public and reaped the benefits that come from this openness. Websites like Innocentive.com open problems up to others to help solve and give cash rewards. Could you imagine what would happen if education opened itself to the public and gave cash rewards for great ideas?  Saddleback Church says to its member, if you have an idea, let’s do it. They offer help where they can, but they allow the member to come up with and implement the idea. One member had an idea for a ministry from people struggling with addictions. That ministry has become a worldwide ministry called Celebrate Recovery. Other ideas went nowhere and failed. But in allowing many ideas, having a low filter, they hit upon one of the most successful ministry ideas in recent years. It is the organizational model and mindset that is described in Wikinomics and displayed in Goldcorp, Lego, and Saddleback Church that education should look to.

The Closed System of Education does not tolerate failure, therefore restricting the quality and quantity of ideas and the chance for a superior idea. The Open Model of Education is much more tolerant of failure which results in a greater number of ideas and a greater chance of finding the superior idea.

Catalytic Questions:

How might you come at this issue from a different direction to get a different response?  What underlying principles are at work here?

In what ways could you shake the thinking of those in the education establishment? What might this look like?

What examples could you substitute to get your message across?

In what areas do you see opportunity for developing more openness in your school or your district?

Who is going to resist these ideas? How can you prepare for and mitigate their resistance?

Who is going to support these ideas? How can you leverage their support of these ideas?

Where could you focus your energy and ideas to make change?

In what ways could you use the disadvantages for of the Closed Model as advantages for support of the Open Model?

If your school or district were to be transformed into an Open Model school or district, could you let go of the past and adopt the new way of thinking? Does you answer impact your thinking or support for either model?

What problems might more openness create?

Open Model of Education vs. Closed Model of Education

What do you get when you combine a starfish, Napster, Kazaa, home-schools, spiders, organizations, internships, the Department of Education, and e-learning? Let's put them in the Education Innovation blender and take a look?

In my previous post, I explored the idea of what I call the Open Model of Education (OME) and the Closed Model of Education (CME).

Oddly enough, I began re-reading a book I read last summer, The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom.

 

As I dove in, I was happily surprised to see right in Chapter 1, a discussion that tied in directly to my thinking on OME vs. CME.

“A centralized organization is easy to understand. Think of any major company or governmental agency . You have a clear leader who’s in charge, and there’s a specific place where decisions are made (the boardroom, the corporate headquarters, city hall). Nevins calls this organizational type coercive because the leaders call the shots."

Education today, attempts to control where students learn, what they learn, when they learn, and whom they learn from. Our educational system is the very definition of a centralized organization. The federal Department of Education tells the states what to do. State departments of education tell the counties what to do, counties tell the districts what to do, districts tell the principals, the principals tell the teachers, and the teachers tell the students. It is very structured, very systematic, very controlled, very rigid, and very closed.

“In a decentralized organization, there’s no clear leader, no hierarchy, and no headquarters.”
“Nevins calls this an open system, because everyone is entitled to make his or her own decisions. This doesn’t mean that a decentralized system is the same as anarchy. There are rules and norms, but these aren’t enforced by any one person. Rather, the power is distributed among all the people and across geographic regions.”

If you view the student as a leaders of their own learning, then they have the ability to decided for themselves the what, when, where, who, and how of their education. They must follow and meet certain expectations and norms, but they are not controlled by a centralized organization. A student is free to blend normal brick-and-mortar school, with home-school, with e-learning or virtual learning, occupational or trade schools, with other opportunities such as travel, trips to museums, internships, volunteering, etc. This blend is what I call the Open Model of Education. It closely matches the spirit of what the authors describe in the decentralized organization.

“Flexibility-shared power-ambiguity”

The time has come to stop resisting home school, occupational school, e-learning and virtual schooling, and view them as partners. Resisting is not going to work, and can create a situation in which each is working in isolation and competing against each other. Think of the recording industry fighting sites like Napster, Kazaa, or eMule.

The time has come to see all of us as sharing a role and a responsibility in the education of our students. We should be partnering with each other, not resisting or fighting against the other. If education or the student is the goal, there are multiple routes and means of reaching that education. If teaching is the goal, we will all fight for the limited resources or money, materials, time, and most importantly, the students themselves.

The time for the blended model of the Open Model of Education (OME) has arrived.

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways can we view each other as partners in the education of a student and not rivals in the teaching of a student?

What mistakes have we made in the past that we can learn from to improve education in the future?

What hunches do you have that can be applied to improving the future of education? How might things change or look like if your hunches are correct?

What “sacred cows” must be sacrificed for the betterment of our education system?

How might your persistence make a difference?

How might reversing our/your current approach or philosophy to education make an impact?

In the current era of education bashing, what is still viable and productive? In what ways could be take the good and throw out the bad?

In what ways are our typical approaches and view getting in the way of what could be possible?

What unintended consequences might come from the implementation of the OME? What unintended consequences do we already suffer from in the CME? What can do be done to prepare for or repair these consequences?

What underlying principles are at work in this discussion?

Recommended Reading: 

The Questions We Choose To Ask and Answer: The Open Model of Education

The Tutor Mentor Connection blog

The Starfish and The Spider wiki

Book Review: The Starfish and the Spider

The Starfish and the Spider:

Education for the 21st Century: A Charter

Idea Jar - Reach in and take one out - 7/23/08

DyKnow 5.1 adds new features and enhances the user interface!
Great software for monitoring collaborative note-taking and student screen monitoring
Thanks to ePirate

Lesson Writer Helps Teachers Quickly Conquer an Often Menial Task
Interesting software for writing lessons digitally.  Thanks to Mashable

Take two Matisses and call me in the morning

Harvard and Mount Sinai Medical colleges have begun taking its students to art museums. The goal: To improve young physicians’ observation and diagnostic skills. Thanks to Dan Pink

Labeling is Bad For Creativity
Creativity, EQ, and IQ in education. Thanks to Achievement Radio blog

Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund
Check out idea 13, but they are all interesting. Thanks to Y Combinator.com

Alternative Assessment through Exhibition
Exhibitions as a valid means of alternative assessment. Thanks to Teacher Leadership Today

Social Notworking
Social networking sites banned in Mississippi district. Thanks to The Core Knowledge blog

Targets and Guidelines
Thoughts on standards, standardized testing, and NCLB. Thanks to The Faculty Room blog

Teach Students to be Pirates and Plagiarists?

So, what do you get when you combine a book on youth culture, a futurist, Thomas Edision, Disco, pharmaceuticals, Hollywood, the iPod, and school research reports? Let put in them in the Education Innovation Blender a take a look.

Is it piracy and plagiarism, or is it creativity and innovation?  Which do you suppose we should be teaching our students to do? My two previous posts have inspired this discussion.

Plagiarism and Pirates

Plagiarism Is A Good Thing?

We live in an age where anybody can produce, mix, or repurpose information and ideas.

When we pirate information and ideas, we may just be innovating new ideas and creating new ways of doing things.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and musicians viewed it as piracy. He was pirating their music, recording it, and selling it. They feared the end of live performances, instead an entire industry was born, the music industry.

MP3 players existed prior to the iPod, but the iPod pirated that technology and created it’s own phenomena. Music lovers, wanting to share music with each other without paying, created digital music sites like Napster. They were pirating their way around and outside of what the music industry existed to do. Steve Jobs figured out that to beat the pirates he had to compete with them and built iTunes. The pirates ideas had become mainstream and put old music sellers out of business. It is piracy or innovation? Is it plagiarism or creativity?

The iPod itself is just a combination of pre-existing ideas; the battery, operating system, hard drive, screen, MP3 technology, etc.

Reggae, Disco, and Hip-hop music demonstrate that we can repurpose music into something new. The pirate old songs and create new and innovative versions. These versions become so popular that they create entirely new music genres. It is piracy or creativity?

Moviemakers, not wanting to pay high fees in New York pirates their way around the system by setting up studios in California. Today we call it Hollywood.

India reverse engineers drugs for the poor pirating what they themselves could not afford to do. Drug companies, sensing the good public relations they can benefit from, begin selling their drugs at huge discounts an in some cases giving them away. They respond to the pirates by creating an entirely new approach of serving the poor of the world. Piracy or creativity?

So, is piracy and plagiarism just another way of being creative and innovative? Are they are source of new ideas, methods, and models. Are there links to each other or are they mutually exclusive? 

A senior business executive needing the most current research on a company or economic trend asks his junior executive to find the best and most current information. The junior executive doesn’t start his or her own research project, rather he or she Googles the information looking for the most current research on the topic that has already been done by the most respected and knowledgeable experts. He or she copies it, rips it, digitizes it, scans it, re-purposes it, integrates it, synthesizes it, and puts into a usable document to give the senior executive. This is what we call good research.

In the classroom we call plagiarism.  So, it is plagiarism or creativity?

Most of the examples I shared, which come from Matt Mason, would be examples of plagiarism and cheating if they happened inside a classroom.

Doesn't there seem to be a disconnect from what we do in the classroom and what the real world expects of them? I know most of you are saying it's about the process. But if that is true, then why do we spend so much time evaluating and grading the result?

If it really is about process then Pat Dixon has an idea;

• Give the students a question they know nothing about.
• Give them 30 minutes to put together a 3000 word report on that question.
• Grade for Correctness in the answer
• Authoritativeness of sources used
• Uniqueness of of the pieced together report. 

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways could you re-purpose your research report assignments to develop real world skills that focus on the process, the correctness, the authoritativeness, and uniqueness of synthesis?

What might that look like in your classroom or school?

How does your current understanding of technology, business, and innovation impact your thoughts?

How might your students be better served with the assignments they work on?

In what ways have you been successful in the past in adjusting assignments to meet the changing needs of the students and the world they live in? How might you draw upon that experience?

In what ways does the discussion of plagiarism and pirating vs. creativity and innovation force you to think in new ways?

What are the underlying principles at work in this discussion and how does it/they impact your approach to education?

What if you were to reverse the process and have students examine existing reports and determine how well they meet the criteria for a good research report?

Which assignments could you substitute with these new ideas?

Recommended Reading: 

Where's the Respect? A 21st Century Learning Question

Why My Gym Is The Future of Education

What do my gym and the future of education have in common?  Let’s throw them in the Education Innovation blender and find out.

I belong to a gym is called Snap Fitness. Their motto is “Fast-Convenient-Affordable.”

They describe the Snap Fitness experience…

“Drive up, walk in, and work out whenever you want. Just minutes from your doorstep, our club is like a having a private gym in your backyard.

“Use your personal keycard for instant access to a safe, clean, comfortable facility packed with state-of-the-art exercise equipment and value-added services you’d never expect from a club our size.

“Enjoy the same workout experience as at those big-box health clubs – but without the crowded parking lots, long waiting lines and inflated fees.

“Time-saving convenience, money-saving value and fat-burning workouts – just another way we deliver a better experience and better results…”

I think the future of education will be similar to my gym. First, education in the future will be fast. It will be fast because students won’t even have to leave their house in many cases. E-learning and virtual learning will provide students the opportunity to learn right in their own homes. Teaching and content can be delivered at the speed of an Internet hook-up all over the world.

It will be convenient. Students will be able to learn anywhere or anytime that makes sense for them. Much like Snap Fitness says, “…our club is like having a private gym in your backyard,” the same will go for education. The web will bring learning to the student, regardless of where the student is and at a time that the student chooses. What could be more convenient?

My gym uses the personal key card to get into the gym, while our students will simply use their passwords to log into the personal learning portals. The learning will be of a quality similar to what they can get in the classroom, if not more so, because students will be able to pick and choose classes that best match their learning styles.

Great workouts at my gym are the great teaching and learning of the virtual school. Imagine the wealth of resources, including expert teachers, video, audio, interactive websites, podcasts, social networks, etc, that the virtual school can bring to students.

My gym says it is affordable (which it is), but so to will virtual education and e-learning. Think of the amount of money that could be saved if teachers taught from their homes or places of work and students learned from home or their places of work. No costs for building buildings, no costs for utilities, no need for busing, for maintenance, etc. Virtual learning could save districts money. Why open a new high school, when you can start a virtual one?

My gym and the future of education both share one other thing. You have to put in the hard work to get results.

Catalytic Questions:

What excuses are teachers, schools, and districts giving to avoid e-learning and virtual learning opportunities for your students?  How can you answer them?

In the same way I have hunches about the future of education, what hunches do you have and what are you doing about them?

In what ways might some “sacred cow” be holding up e-leaning in your school or district?  How can you overcome those beliefs?

In what ways might virtual learning be made more attractive to teachers and administrators in your district?

What is your sense of things to come: More of the same or big changes? In what ways are you preparing for what is coming?

How might you start developing the tools and methods that will be needed to succeed in an e-learning or virtual learning environment?

How might Professional Learning Communities change is such an environment?

What are the unintended consequences of these changes?

What analogies or metaphors do you see?

Recommended Reading:

An education is…

Get an MIT or Yale Education Free

eLearning Technology

Fear of Virtual High Schools

Plagiarism and Pirates

In a previous post I asked if Plagiarism Is A Good Thing?

What about piracy?  That is the question Matt Mason explore in his book The Pirates Dilema: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism.

He shares some very interesting thoughts in this video about why pirates are a good thing. Remember, our students are the future pirates.

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Idea Jar - Reach in and take one out - 7/8/08

Adjunct America: open schools to part-time teachers, especially retired teachers

The four-day plus one-day week

The Scatological Connection

8 Creativity Fundamentals

Pocket Mod: Free Recyclable Personal Organizer

And

Video: Malcom Gladwell speaks about employment tests, hiring the best teachers, teacher quality, and class size reduction. This is really good!

Killing In The Name of Education: An Analysis Of Creativity- Part 1

I found this video to be very insightful and interesting. It blends several popular videos on the issue into a comprehensive exploration of creativity in education.

Idea Jar: Reach In and Take One Out

Here are a few links on creativity and innovation that I found interesting. Reach into the idea jar. Take as many as you like, no limit.

Dose of Creativity blog
How Are Your Creative Thinking Skills?

My "Idea" Blog
“Creative Notions”

Creative Economy blog
Arts in education and creativity: a review of the literature

The Heart of Innovation blog
The Good Thing About Bad Ideas

Innovation Tools blog
The chaos theory of innovation

 

Three Signs of a Miserable Job: Final Thoughts

The Three Sings of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni

  Part 5

Principals, Directors, Managers, and Superintendents… want to set your school apart? Answer the three questions.

Anonymity: “Do I really know my people?”

Irrelevance: “Do they know who their work impacts and how?”

Immeasurement: “Do they know how to assess their own progress or success?”

If you don’t have any answers for the “big three” questions, then you need to immediately set about creating systems, policies, habits, actions, etc. that can directly address them.

Why you ask? “Employees who find fulfillment in their jobs are going to work with more enthusiasm, passion, and attention to quality than their counterparts who do not, mostly because they develop a sense of ownership and pride in what they are doing.”

The benefit is, “…managers who work to reduce the three signs in their organizations discover an unexpected side effect. Employees themselves begin to take a greater interest in their colleagues, help them find meaning and relevance in their work, and find better ways to gauge their own success, and they do all of this without specific direction from their bosses. In essence, they take some responsibility for keeping the three signs of a miserable job at bay. Ironically, this gives them yet a greater sense of meaning while creating a sustainable cultural advantage that competitors will envy but find difficult to duplicate.”

When teachers feel empowered and engaged, then change initiatives and improvement plans will succeed. A principal or district administrator should wish for just sort of an environment at his or her school. Not that schools should be in competition with each other, but others will notice the change that is taking place at your school when Anonymity, Irrelevance, and Immeasurement are overcome. What educational leader wouldn't want that? What teacher or support staff member wouldn't want to work at that school?