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Enjoy the short video above- it is very much worth the six minutes.
It is the time of year when many are looking ahead to opening of the school year faculty and departmental meetings, so it is a good time to start sharing valuable short videos which can be used for inspiration and illumination at these meetings. This six minute video is a great candidate (and I intend to share a list soon); it is a very current (ISTE 2012) talk in which author and provocateur Will Richardson lays out his challenge to us: Bold Ideas for Change in Education. (Another alternative would be Will’s TEDx talk.)
Consider the opportunities: ask educators in groups to identify their bold ideas first, and compare; ask them to watch and discuss which bold ideas make sense and how might they apply them, which don’t and why not, and what original ideas do they have.
From Lisa Nielsen’s blog I’ve copied at bottom of this post the list of 19 bold ideas for easy reference.
A few comments:
1. Of course, I am delighted to see Will’s very first “bold idea;” I think it is so important to put a focal point on assessment as a huge lever to influence, via backwards design, everything else that happens, and at St. Gregory we worked hard to develop and advance methods for ‘open network assessments.’
(Some may recall that Will wrote about his enthusiasm for this kind of testing in a post which cited our work at St. Gregory as an influence; the post begins “I just recently ran across Jonathan Martin’s posts regarding the ‘Open Internet’ tests that he’s piloting with some teachers at St. Gregory School in Arizona, and I’m just loving the thinking.”) [For a set of posts and resources about our open computer/open network testing at St. Gregory, click here: 21k12blog.net/oct]
2. Numbers 2 and 15 are excellent: among the most important advances we can make is if we start working now to rethink how we choose, curate, and create our textbooks, using open source, free resources, using wikis, using a panoply of techniques like this to crack open the expensive hardcover textbook monolith that stifles and costs too much.
3. Numbers 7, 8, and 9 sing to me: Our own learning as adults, and our sharing of what we are learning and what we are teaching, and committing ourselves to a journey of discovery alongside our students, are attitude adjustments that will make a huge difference.
4. Numbers 3 and 5 goes with much of the above: let’s have students publish and post and share and contribute, to truly participate in the world. As we do, we help our students strengthen their own google identities and enhance their future resumes; we also give them a greater sense of investment and ownership in their work.
5. What would I add? This list is extremely resonant with my thoughts, and it is hard to see strong differentiation. But my list might have included:
a. something along the lines of Build things from scratch, in the spirit of my (former) school’s Fab-Lab like Innovation studio class and the similar, Maker’s Faire inspired, programs around the country;
b. Facilitate Problem-Finding, inviting students to reflect on their own situations and environments and thoughtfully identify incongruities before working toward local and immediate problem-solving (and problem-grappling, as Peter Gow, channeling Sizer, recommends); and
c. Assess What Matters: Schools everywhere are hung up on data of student achievement, and that isn’t going to go away as much as we might wish for it, but we can at least balance the portfolio with a broader array of measurement techniques, and communicate better our Bold schooling priorities and emphases by the date we report.
From Lisa Nielsen’s blog, Will Richardson’s 19 Bold Ideas.
- Forget open book / phone tests.
Let’s have open network assessments where students can use the tools they own and love for learning. School should not be a place where we force kids to unplug and disconnect from the world. - Stop wasting money on textbooks.
Make your own texts with things like wikis. - Google yourself
If we’re not empowering ourselves and our students to be Google well, we’re not doing a good job. - Flip the power structure from adults to learners
Empower students with the tools and resources they need to go where they want to go and explore and develop their interests and passions. - Don’t do work for the classroom
Support learners in doing work that is worthy of, can exist in, and can change the world. - Stop telling kids to do their own work
That’s not reality any longer. Support them in collaborating, interacting, and cooperating with others. - Learn first. Teach second.
We must come into our classrooms knowing that we are learners first. If we think we are teachers first, we are not giving our students the powerful learning models they’ll need to be successful. - No more how-to workshops
Educators should know how to find out how to on their own. When we come together it should be to talk about how we are doing. - Share everything
The best work of you and your students should be shared online. This will help us all get better. - Ask questions you don’t know the answer to
The learning of high stakes tests with predetermined answers is not as powerful as the learning that comes from finding our own new and unique answers. - Believe that you want to be found by strangers on the internet
If you think kids aren’t going to interact with strangers on the internet, you’re wrong. Let’s embrace that and support kids in being smart when doing so and learning a lot about the minds they are meeting. - Rethink the role of the teacher
We should not be doing the same work that 20th century teachers did. Consider how technology can and should change our roles. - Toss the resume
No one cares about your resume anymore. The internet is the new resume. What will people find when they look at who you are online? That is what you should be focusing on. - Go beyond Google to learn
Build your personal learning network and learn with and from the people you know via places like Twitter and Facebook. - Go free and open source
We have a budget crises, yet schools are wasting millions on things that are offered for free. - Create an UnCommon Core
Don’t ask how you will meet the common core, empower kids to think about how they will change the world. - Stop delivering the curriculum
This is no longer necessary. Information can be accessed without a teacher. Move beyond delivery to discovery. - Be subversive
- Stand up and scream
Tell everyone that education is not about publishers and politicians but rather it’s about what students and parents want and how teachers can best give that to them.
21k12 
August 1, 2012 at 8:56 pm
I will add my comment that I also posted on Lisa’s blog:
“Some great points but I will challenge some:
8. No more how-to workshops
This would make the assumption that every teacher is at the same point. I get the idea and that it may be low level thinking, but some teachers need the “how-to” workshops. Not everyone is at the same point and we have to honour that teachers, like students, are on different paths. I can accept that as an administrator as long as I am seeing movement.
13. Toss the resume
I love this idea and I am someone who looks at a prospective employees online footprint, but do you think that this is the norm with administrators? Really? Great idea but I hate to tell you that most people who are hiring still look at resumes at the school level. You can be subversive and say that I will not give a resume, but you could also say that you don’t like working as well. Some expect it. I wish we were at that point with most school admin but we are nowhere near that.
17. Stop delivering the curriculum
I am not sure what Will means by this. As teachers, we have to “teach” or “deliver” the curriculum. You can still be innovative and discover within the curriculum to some extent. Again, how do we work within our system and create change within? The expectations in most areas is that teachers are evaluated on how they teach the curriculum. Ignoring it will, unfortunately make certain that you will not have a job.
This is easy advice to give if you are outside of the school system but what about those that are working within it? How do we create transformative change while still working within the system. I believe that it is possible and work on doing it every day.
Just my two cents.”
It is cool to talk about ideals but how do we push change in our current system? Often when we talk about these great goals, we are not actually scaffolding our way there. It often is leaving teachers more frustrated because too many people are talking about jumping from point A-Z, without even figuring out how to get to point B. Those little steps need to be evident as well and recognized. We have to quit talking about ideals without actually delivering what we are doing to meet these goals and sharing them with people. Easy to talk but much harder to do.
August 1, 2012 at 10:26 pm
Interesting points here, Jonathan, and though I at times push teachers toward discomfort and allow kids freedom from what is common in our curriculum, I struggle with it. There is a system, and there are tests, and there are standards. Are we doing kids and teachers a favor by not preparing them for what society deems important (SAT, AP, IB, GRE, etc.)?
August 2, 2012 at 3:33 am
Thanks for the mention, Jonathan. I normally ref our exchange about open network tests during longer presentations. ;0)
And George, if throwing out ideas without action plans for five minutes works to only get people stirred up and asking “how” then I think the purpose of the “Ignite” talk has been achieved. Thanks for the intelligent pushback regardless.
August 2, 2012 at 10:39 am
Thank you very much, George, Jim, and Will, for visiting and commenting.
Jim and George, of course you are right we have to work within the system and within the constraints of our reality. Jim my argument, Assess What Matters, I thought I was trying to make that same point: we will always have (or will have for a long time) the SAT and the related testing, and we do have to prepare students for those tests, but we should strive to diminish, at least a tad, their stand-along significance by surrounding them with other numbers, other stats and other data which we think is more educationally sound. It is a tough balancing act, to be sure, and I think there are good opportunities for us to draw in online educational resources such as KA and ALEC which help students build up the test-able mastery of skills they require while our classroom learning environments become more effective laboratories of 21st century learning. But yes, we do have to keep that preparation in the mix.
George, your points are all wise and sound in the practical work of running schools, but Will’s Ignite session was meant, I think, to provocatively push the boundaries. We will still use resumes, sure, but each and every year that goes by they will become less and less important, and we should begin working now to strengthen our digital footprint (as I know, George, you are an expert about), as it becomes more and more important. We will still have How-To workshops, but we should be cultivating as best we can among our professional colleagues in education that they shouldn’t be waiting for the how-to workshop before committing themselves to the learning of the necessary skills, but that it should be embedded in their own professional identity. As for the curriculum delivery, well, I agree with you: we decide what our students need to learn, and we ensure that happens in our schools. But the more we can re-cast teaching as the facilitation of a shared experience of pursuing challenging issues and questions outside the textbook, issues and questions for which the answers are not already entirely known, the more we will prepare our students for their careers while also making learning more relevant and meaningful for them.
August 2, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Will and Jonathan,
I am all about pushing the boundaries of what is happening in our schools and having those big goals. But as Will said, these ideas (as they should be) should be talked about and encourage conversation. Many might see this type of thing and not do the scaffolding. As we are all educators we have to continue to discuss how do we get to these points. Extremely important conversations.
Thanks for the conversation as I know it is extremely valuable.
August 3, 2012 at 5:38 pm
As a teacher at Jonathan’s former school (and 30-year educator), I just want to make two observations: embracing innovation can be transformative for teachers–I know it was for me. It was like one little step (in my case OCT) brought an avalanche of other, almost “necessary” innovations (flip teaching, e-textbooks, authentic PBL) and the whole adventure changed my life. The coolest thing was that I did not have to be the authority anymore, and the student response alone is worth the price of admission. Secondly: I would not have left my comfortable, teacher-centered world without inspired (and insistent) leadership from the Head of School (in this case Jonathan Martin). A phrase comes to mind: endless gentle pressure, endlessly applied.