[Cross-posted from Leapfrog Institutes newswire.] Last March, Minneapolis Public Schools announced that Edison High School and Washburn High School will be overhauled in response to under-performance. As part of the “fresh start” agenda, nearly all staff members at each school received notice that their contracts would not be renewed, and they would have to reapply [...]

Slides from last week’s presentations at Edison High School and the Minnesota House E-12 Education Committee Working Group on High School Redesign: These slides are also posted at the LeapFrog Institutes.

Games as Expert Systems It seems like common sense to assume that the best way to learn something is to work one-on-one with an expert. Unfortunately, many of these experts are busy using their expertise in important projects at the Louvre, saving lives, winning Nobel prizes, and putting out fires—and sometimes a great expert is [...]

We’re taking a short intermission from education futures blogging due to the craziness of the past week in Minneapolis. Thankfully none of us or any of our friends or loved ones were involved in the I-35W bridge collapse. Harkins and I were teaching in the UMN-FLACSO joint seminar at the time, only a few blocks [...]

Youth Futures: Projecting the Roles of Disruptive Technologies, Anticipatory Knowledge, and Continuous Innovation Summary: This session highlights the Global Youth Policy and Leadership Program at the University of Minnesota where faculty and students of all ages (kindergarten through graduate school) crafted scenarios, composed alternative futures, and explored other various futures methodologies. In this session, particular [...]

Twenty years ago, playing games over a distance might have meant that you played turn-taking games like chess over email, and you were cutting edge. I remember people playing chess through snail mail! You would make your move and wait for a reply. What is happening now is taking place in real-time in virtual environments [...]

To do is to be To be is to do So Do We? It is just good teaching Games taught me that modeling environments and taking on the roles are powerful ways to teach and learn. Piaget talked about roles as assimilation. You try on the role and see what part of the character is [...]

Video Games in the Classroom? I am a gamer. I am also a teacher for the Minneapolis Public Schools, and have been working with students on issues of Language Arts, Reading, and Video Games. I also offer a class called “Video games as learning tools.” This course is for teachers and people who are interested [...]

I’ve been participating on the Minneapolis Public Schools Technology Planning Steering Committee. The committee has adopted the Leapfrog Paradigm and leapfrog thinking into its planning. Leaping frogs are showing up in presentations, and leapfrog is becoming a metaphor for creativity in the district. The committee’s work has, however, thus far focused on discussion on the [...]