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In response to yesterday’s post: Change is accelerating: Get ready!

Socially adapting to the pace and direction of technology changes has been a mixed bag. Sometimes, consumer pressures have the effect of driving change; sometimes consumers are indifferent; and at other times they challenge or resist a particular technological innovation. In Kurzweil’s case, some consumers are challenging the potential of technologies he’s projecting for the future.

Most challenges in advance of marketable products and services indicate ignorance more than fear. Most consumers do not read speculative (read science) fiction, and those over a certain age (about 35) usually don’t flock to science fiction movies or television shows. (No, “Lost” is not science fiction!) Hanging on to the past is easier and more defensible in the absence of known alternatives.

Where the rubber hits the road is the effects of adoption lags and challenges that affect education. While Leapfrog Institutes actively promotes the use of hand held, Web-enabled devices to facilitate 24/7 learning, schools sometimes challenge Web schools and -in the US- collect students’ tech hardware at the school door. This is a remarkable example of how ignorance of alternatives produces counter-productive and even anti-intellectual outcomes.

Kurzweil has a great projective track record. His futures are already on the way. The spoils will go to those organizations and societies that act as Beta sites for new technologies, not those who compulsively challenge, shrink away, or actively resist. The bottom line: get involved in testing and assessing new technologies, even when they are projected and not yet “real”.

At last night’s Destination ImagiNation 2008 Global Finals opening ceremonies, the Minnesota delegation LEAPFROGGED into the Thompson-Boling arena at UTK! More Global Finals coverage coming soon…

Did you notice that they carried frogs in with them, too? Rock on, Minnesota! (If the embedded video doesn’t play, you can view it here).

[Cross posted from the Leapfrog Institutes Newswire]

Ron Fuller is an emeritus teacher at Edison High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Recently, Ron prepared this step-by-step format for creating self-organizing Innovation Cells in schools. With his permission, we are sharing his framework for building ICs in educational settings.

Students are grouped with a licensed staff member by area of interest. (Example: Music, Writing, Computer Programming, Politics, Painting, Robotics, etc)

• The cells would meet daily during advisory time. The cell becomes the students advisory for the year. Cells would have students from all grade levels.
• The cells would select a project or projects to focus on for the school year. (Example: Build a robot, Create a short play, Design a new computer program, Complete a community service project, Study global warming, Lobby for a political cause)
• The cells would meet an additional ½ day once a month to complete work on the project.
• The cells could elect to meet before or after school to complete a chosen project.
• At the end of the year, one cell would be chosen to receive the Thomas A Edison Innovation Award. (Maybe the Superintendent or Mayor could help select the winning cell.)
• An Innovation Fair would be held in the Spring to share innovation ideas and projects with the Edison School Community.
• Innovation Cells could have displays at school open houses and other community events.
• 12th and 11th graders could be academic coaches for 9th and 10th graders in their cell.
• All Licensed Staff would advise an Innovation Cell. Staff would be chosen for cells depending on interests or expertise.
• Business and Community Leaders could come in during the ½ day each month to advise students on cell projects.
• The Innovation Cells would provide a learning focus for advisory and help students develop their creative skills.
• Upper classmen could serve as role models for under classmen.
• We could start with a few Innovation Cells next year and phase them in over the next few years.

(Created by Ron Fuller 2-7-08) (Revised 3-26-08)

[Cross-posted from the Leapfrog Institutes Newswire]

Leapfrog Institutes introduces “Innovation Cells” as a way to operationalize Leapfrog in your school, college, business or community. First of all, what’s an Innovation Cell? Leapfrog Institutes has drawn the basics from an article written by Uri Weisflog. Uwe Weissflog is an associate of Cambashi and founder of Pathway Guidance – Europe. This work first appeared in the EAReport, October 2005.We’ve retained a very energizing quote from the author! The material was taken on 07 May 2008 from the Cambashi site.

So, what’s an “Innovation Cell”?

An Innovation Cell (IC) helps to organize a project to make good ideas more operational. ICs help to answer the “So What?” question that usually accompanies new ideas generated by students, faculty, and the community. Innovation Cells have small numbers of people at their core, but may have many affiliate ICs and individuals around the globe via the Internet.

ICs are especially effective when a large gap separates a good idea from a great project that can help materialize that idea.

Comparatively unburdened by tradition and bureaucracy, ICs can operate very rapidly – a major advantage in a rapidly changing world. In other words, responsible ICs can operate with reasonable freedom within the larger organization.

What kind of organization distinguishes the IC? It is self-organization, a product of collaborative work among its members. Self-organization generates ownership, excitement, and commitment among IC members.

How long should an IC last? That is to be locally determined, but in general, until it has completed its task. Thus, some ICs might last a few months while others might continue much longer. On occasion, ICs might choose to terminate because, despite everyone’s best efforts, they determine that insufficient progress has been made.

ICs bring out the “implicit” knowledge and creativity of their members. This provides a self-discovery and self-improvement value in addition to the actual benefits gained from collectively working toward the IC goal.

These benefits may cause the IC to appear inefficient and too unstructured, but many great innovations have come from just such contexts!

“Beyond ICs lies a vast continent of innovative possibilities. Although we understand ICs, there must be many more innovative possibilities we have not yet discovered. To explore this treasure requires the open mind of the explorer himself. This mindset may be one of the most precious results of the work in an IC. Viewed in this way, a new generation of professionals and leaders may emerge to deal with the challenging uncertainties of our future.” -Uwe Weissflog

After University Relations flatly rejected the “Goldie the Leapfrog” logo with a gopher head pasted onto a frog body, I started to play around with a new idea that is probably more likely to conform to University of Minnesota image standards:

Please let me know what you think! The resultant image will become the new logo for the Leapfrog Institutes.

You are invited to join us for the final Horizon Forum meeting for this school year!

Fifth Grade for the 21^st Century

Hosted by Dr. Tom Tapper, Superintendent, Owatonna Public Schools

Thursday, April 24

11:15am – 1:00pm

Conference Room 325, Education Sciences Building (University of Minnesota East Bank)

Dr. Tom Tapper (Superintendent, Owatonna Public Schools), Dr. Steve O’Connor (Director of Instructional Services), Mary Baier (Principal, Washington Elementary School) and Matt McCartney (Teacher, Washington Elementary School) will lead a discussion on their experiences in purposively adopting technologies in Owatonna Public Schools. During this session, Mr. McCartney’s fifth grade class will join us by videoconference for student presentations on how they’re using technology in innovative, Leapfrog-oriented ways that better connect them with their future participation in the workforce.

Lunch and validated parking will be provided. Please RSVP your attendance to Carole MacLean at cmaclean@umn.edu or call 612-625-5060.

During October 12-14 of this year Anqing Teachers College will sponsor a conference on Leapfrog-inspired changes in the near futures of Chinese and U.S. education. The University of Minnesota, Anqing Teachers College, and the World Future Society are collaborators in this exciting development.

The official title of the conference is Interdisciplinary Education in Teacher Training Programs via Leapfrog Principles. More information about the conference will be released in the near future.

Eight draft papers for the ATC conference are linked here. Please make any comments that you feel will improve the papers. In the near future, the papers will be edited by Dr. Tim Mack, President of the World Future Society, for a special issue of the journal Futures Research Quarterly.

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/04/antioch

Antioch University’s announcement last week that its board had “reconfirmed” plans to shutter Antioch College at the end of this academic year has prompted a flurry of activity to prevent that from happening.

Most notably, alumni and professors are working on plans for the faculty to continue to teach students — even if that takes place without the university’s endorsement. Plans being discussed would have classes held in various locations in Yellow Springs, Ohio, so that there would be no stoppage of Antioch instruction. Alumni announced that they have raised $1 million to support such efforts, called “Non-Stop Antioch.”

Antioch College likes innovation in education, but if they had Leapfrog on their mind, they might look to the Shibuya University Network for an innovative operational model. The Shibuya model would provide a lifelong learning approach that is infused into the community Antioch serves. In effect, the entire city of Yellow Springs could become a classroom. What need would there be for a formally organized Antioch College?

(I couldn’t resist posting this…)

A while back, I promised to share more on what co-seminars look like and how they operate. I promise to show a little bit tomorrow, with sample videos and a link to a co-seminar in progress. But, before I get to that, let me supply some background.

Co-seminars exhibit the following main characteristics:

• international;
• multilingual;
• embraces the use of Web 2.0 technologies (i.e., blogs, wikis, SlideShare, YouTube) to share ideas and promote learning;
• designed to enhance learning methodologies based on the principles of collective intelligence
• problem solving in complex environments;;
• purposive and intelligent use of information technology; and,
• use freely-available or open source technologies to limit expenses.

The co-seminar model was designed by collaborating faculty at FLACSO-México (mainly Cristóbal Cobo) and the Leapfrog Institutes at University of Minnesota (Arthur Harkins and John Moravec). In a pilot of the co-seminar model in summer of 2008, we built a course that integrated internally-focused content on innovation, knowledge management, and a forward-looking analysis of education in the 21st and 22nd centuries. The project included training instructors from multiple countries, and the participation of specialists from around the world (through virtual and in-person participation).

The co-seminar experience involves a new academic approach –particularly in regard to innovative teaching—that moves away from “download”/banking pedagogies toward “upload and download”/co-constructivist pedagogies that thrive in interdisciplinary environments. This means that both students and their instructors both learn and create new, meaningful knowledge.

A taste of a co-seminar in progress is coming tomorrow…