Innovation in Education

This week I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Milton Chen, senior fellow at the George Lucas Educational Foundation sharing innovative models of education at Edutopia.org. With a key understanding of the power of connecting media with education, Dr. Chen is the former director of research for Sesame Workshop and assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. GLEF transforms K-12 education to include creativity, innovation, inspiration, project-based learning, social-emotional learning, and access to new technology. This is the kind of school that I would like to work in and to which I would send my children.

Dr. Chen inspired me with a simple question: "What's your definition of a great school? Make it short and measurable!" This question has had me thinking all week. What is it that creates a great school and how can I state that in a single short, measurable phrase?

I considered Dr. Chen's 6 Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools: the thinking edge, the curriculum edge, the technology edge, the time/place edge which Chen describes as learning "any time, any place, any path, any pace," the co-teaching and co-learning edge, and the youth edge. Any great school gets students thinking deeply, using a curriculum that focuses on solving problems that matter in their communities and the world. Project-based learning can provide the format for students to ask important questions, search for answers, create projects that solve problems, learn from experts in their community and throughout the world, collaborate with others, and share their learning globally using readily available technology tools. Teachers empower students by putting mobile devices into their hands to change the world.

One of these edges that I have explored more deeply is the idea of co-teaching and co-learning. A great school today has access to information through a variety of sources: school leaders including teachers, principals, and paras who monitor and further learning; local experts from the community who visit classrooms to guide learners; global experts who join classrooms via video conferencing; and parents who share time and expertise in a variety of areas. When these experts co-teach the results can be greater than when any of them teaches alone. Together these co-teachers can challenge and support students by pointing them to appropriate Internet locations to inform their specific questions as well as answering student questions from a variety of standpoints.


Accompanying this idea of co-teaching Dr. Chen also emphasizes co-learning. In his presenation at the E. N. Thompson Forum, Chen compared how we used to call it cheating if you asked someone else about a question, to what we today call collaboration as we encourage students to bounce ideas off of each other, each exploring different aspects of the problem studied. Great schools encourage co-learning to prepare students for careers where they may collaborate with people from around the globe to solve problems that effect the entire planet.

So what makes a great school? At this point I say: A great school is one that empowers students to communicate, collaborate, and learn for a lifetime; encouraging innovation through co-teaching while challenging co-learners to solve problems and effectively use digital tools to share results globally. What's your definition of a great school?