#edinnovation

(via This Non-Profit Is Building A Network To Innovate Education – Innovation Excellence) 

By Greg Satell

Talia Milgrom-Elcott went to Harvard Law School with the idea of making the world a better place. An early role model was Charles Nesson, a professor at Harvard who devoted his career to defending the downtrodden. One of his cases, involving a famous lawsuit, even became the subject of a hit feature film, A Civil Action.

Yet after she graduated, she decided that she could make a bigger impact outside practicing law. Today, Milgrom-Elcott is the Executive Director for 100Kin10, which is spearheading the effort to train 100,000 STEM teachers in 10 years. So far, it has raised more than $100 million and is on track to meet its goal.

What makes 100Kin10 so effective is its unique approach. Rather than coming to the table with yet another program and yet another strategy to improve education, Milgrom-Elcott saw that far more could be achieved by helping existing programs to connect and learn from each other. It’s a model that has the potential to solve other complex social problems as well.

Working To Improve Education

After law school, Milgrom-Elcott began her career working as a law clerk in Manhattan for a Federal Judge. It was there that she began to hear about the work Joel Klein was doing at the New York City Department of Education. Schools in New York had been plagued with problems for decades, but somehow Klein seemed to be getting results. She was intrigued.

“Before you can solve poverty and a lot of other problems, you first need to solve education,” she told me. So she went to work for Klein and was inspired by what she saw. Rather than mandating programs for change, Klein focused on empowering teachers and principals to make change happen themselves and then expand the ideas that showed promise.

One idea was to break down large schools in the city into smaller ones that were easier to manage. The results were dramatic. Graduation rates for minority students jumped by more than 10%. What’s more, these gains were achieved at a lower cost per graduate than the traditional big schools.

Milgrom-Elcott also noticed how one success can lead to others. For example, from the small schools initiative, the Department of Education learned the value of assigning each student with a mentor that would stay with them throughout their high school experience. The program then provided a model to improve results at larger schools.

Islands Unto Themselves

After spending a few years working with Klein, Milgrom-Elcott moved to the Carnegie Corporation to work as a program officer, which put her in contact with a wide array of programs devoted to improving education in America. She found many hard working, intelligent people that were getting results.

One program in particular that she remembers is The New Teacher Project, which helps school systems staff hard-to-fill positions by transitioning professionals into teaching careers. They also trained administrators how to implement their programs so that the changes would resonate long after the period of engagement ended.

But coming into contact with so many worthy programs raised an important question: Why is education in America still so riddled with problems? She saw the results her grantees were getting and, as best she could tell, they were having a true impact. Was she missing something?

She got a crucial insight at a communications training program for grantees. While those that attended found the curriculum stimulating and valuable, they were most excited about the opportunity to meet each other, compare notes and share ideas. How was it that so many skilled professionals, working in the same field, had no prior contact with each other? They were, essentially islands unto themselves.

A Call To Action

In the fall of 2010, President Obama announced an audacious goal, to recruit 10,000 new STEM teachers over the next two years. That winter, he upped the ante to 100,000 in 10 years during his State of the Union Address, which was even more ambitious. To many, it seemed downright outlandish, but Milgrom-Elcott took it as a call to action.

She gathered a few dozen stakeholders, including universities, school districts, corporations and other NGO’s to discuss next steps. “I realized I couldn’t do everything that needed to be done, no one could,” she told me. “So I wasn’t just looking for ideas. I wanted action.” Always persuasive, she managed to get concrete commitments and set up a meeting with Education Secretary Arne Duncan 120 days later to reinforce those commitments.

Once again she saw the power of sharing. While all of the organizations were committed to the effort, having them connect to each other helped deepen and widen their efforts. It was becoming clear that there was more value in the organizations as a network than individuals programs pursuing separate agendas. That’s how 100Kin10 was born.

Weaving Together A Network For A Better Future

Today, 100Kin10 has become a massive platform for collaboration that connects and empowers nearly 300 partner organizations. “We not only offer ideas, we offer empowerment for programs to connect with each other, share ideas and learn together, so that a great idea in one place can cascade through the network and expand its impact,” Milgrom-Elcott says.

The results speak for themselves. 40,000 STEM teachers have been trained in the last five years and President Obama’s once seemingly quixotic goal now looks like it will be achieved on time. 100Kin10 continues to vet and recruit new partners, widen and deepen connections. What started out as a simple idea, is now becoming a full-fledged movement.

There is also clear potential to applying the same approach to other seemingly intractable problems. “We think there are a lot of complex problems out there, such homelessness, addiction and gang violence, just to name a few, that have multiple interconnected roots that require multiple interconnected solutions and can benefit from a networked approach based on shared values,” Milgrom-Elcott.

The truth is that innovation is combination. There is no idea strong enough to stand on its own. The power to solve tough problems won’t be found in ivory towers, but emerges at the center of networks, where ideas can connect, evolve and adapt to a ever-changing and more complex environment.

An earlier version of this article first appeared in Inc.com.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Innovation Excellence.]

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Speaking of Innovation and Innovators...

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Teachers need a holiday. I’m not talking about a day off, though they definitely enjoy those when they come around and I’m not talking about Teacher Appreciation Day, which is ironically still an instructional day for almost all teachers. I’m talking about a day for teachers to look at their practice, acknowledge what went well and what could have been improved, and make a plan of action for how it will be different next time.

Coming off the Memorial Day weekend, there’s lots of talk about remembering. We think about the soldiers who gave everything, including their lives, in service to their country. There is no doubt that many aspects of modernity are due to the sacrifices of men and women willing to put everything else on hold why they embody the very definition of courage.

Yet, when I talk to veterans, it is without hesitation that they acknowledge that every day is Memorial Day. Each day carries with it the weight of their fallen brothers and sisters. They are not nostalgic about the past like the rest of us. They don’t pine for days gone by, as if the “good ol’ days” were something to be revived. Instead, they have found a unique way to carry memories forward into the future.

The banks can stay open, the mail can still run, but teachers need to designate a day, maybe this summer, to find a way to remember the past, but not go back to it. Don’t be nostalgic about a lesson from five years ago, the world has changed since then. You’ve changed since then. How can you honor the past while moving bravely into the future?

"What app are you using?"

"Ooh, that's cool, what website is that?"

"How can I use this in my next lesson?"

These questions seem innocent enough, but they assume that technology is the key to successful teaching and learning environments. Put another way, it's almost as if you're saying, "if I could just find the right app or the right tool, THEN I'd be successful." I see this mentality all too often with the teachers (and trainers!) that I get to work with and, frankly, while their heart is in the right place, the methodology is exactly backwards. Here's the truth:

Successful teaching and learning begins and ends with quality pedagogy in service of excellent content

Technology is an enabling force. It certainly influences and changes the pedagogy needed for maximum effectiveness, but technology always serves content and pedagogy, not the other way around. Any lesson plan that starts with technology will be like a bottle rocket: exciting for a short amount of time, but you'll always need novelty to keep their engagement. Good pedagogy, on the other hand, ensures that every lesson is an adventure in learning, more like a July 4th fireworks show. You know it will be good, but you are still excited to see how it will play out. Yes, we need technology in the hands of our learners, but not without appropriate pedagogical frameworks that will ensure the identified learning goals will be accomplished.

Consider the following: a 7th grade teacher wants to help their students stay in touch with what's going on in class. A technology-first solution would involve choosing a publishing platform (like Google Calendar) and then making their students subscribe to it, whether or not it's something they'll actually use. Pedagogy considers how best to connect with the learner. He did something radical: asked his students what he should do. "If you want us to see it, why not post it on Instagram? We check that 500 times a day." So the teacher took his content, considered the pedagogy necessary to reach his learners where they are, and created an Instagram account for the sole purpose of showing his students what they will be learning. Now, when he posts the day's agenda, he gets dozens of 'likes' within minutes of posting.

So what is the one big secret? Start with what you want your students to learn, decide on the pedagogical strategies you will use, and then choose the tech that best fits where you want your students to go. After all, the best app is the one that facilitates learning.

Technology in education isn’t new, despite what it might feel like. The Internet is older than most beginning teachers and depending on how you define “technology,” you have to admit that it’s always been an iterative change process.

However, it does seem as though we’re finally at a breaking point where our old systems have stretched to their absolute capacity for the influx of new technologies. In layman’s terms: we’re maxed out and something has to change. Here are 9 problems that #edtech needs to fix, in 3 categories: #1-3 are about Communication, #4-6 are about Visibility, and #7-9 are about Pedagogy.

Parents. No, not the parents themselves, but rather our communication channels with them. We need better methodologies in place to have open, honest, transparent conversations with the parents of the students we teach. Involving parents in the educational process is the single greatest contributor to an increase in student achievement.

Students. I’m sure education would be much easier if we just had robots for kids, right? But that would be boring and that’s not our world. Nobody signed up to be a teacher because it was easy and that would be a waste of our talent. Instead, we need an edtech solution to how we can keep communication channels open with our students about their learning. Much like we need more dialogue with parents, we need students as active participants in their own learning as well. Students need to have voice and choice when it comes to their learning and so far, edtech has provided a lot of choice, not so much voice. Tools like Remind101 and Edmodo are changing the paradigm around the conversation of student learning and I encourage others to follow suit.

Universal IEPs. This is a problem you probably didn’t know we had. Here’s the scenario: students identified as qualifying for special education services have a meeting once a year where their teachers look at the instructional practices that work or don’t work for that specific student. They set goals for the year and identify any new strategies that could be tried. They talk about the future of this specific child’s education and, as a team, commit to working together for their benefit. Oh, and did I mention that the student is part of this process as well? They are in the room while this is taking place, interacting with these educators, administrators, diagnosticians, and their parents. They are actually a co-creator of their learning. Why don’t all students get this? Time and money. This represents the single biggest opportunity of edtech, in my humble opinion. Show me a tool that provides easy pathways to have a conversation about a specific student with all of their stakeholders with identifiable outcomes and recommended practices for the upcoming school year and I will show you a billion-dollar idea and one that will completely change the face of education.

Data. Teacher-accessible data that is clear and easy to understand just doesn’t exist. Data analysis is right up there with ‘root canal’ in most teachers’ prep times. And let’s not even start down what data visibility looks like for students and parents (it’s nonexistent). Companies like Eduvant and Metryx are looking to change this, but the edu-pool is big enough for all to play in. Let’s stop talking about data-driven decision-making and actually do it.

Soft Skills. Remember, back in the day, when we had character education? For some, it was even a class! We’re pretty focused on cognitive skills (reading, writing, arithmetic) but we’ve passed the buck on our non-cognitive skills like empathy, respect, and leadership. Yes, we could point fingers at why we think these skills have fallen by the wayside, but the past doesn’t have to determine the future: we can choose to value these again and edtech can help. We need tools to help us track and identify the impact of these skills. We need to be able to demonstrate them and show employers how valuable our skills are: cognitive and non-cognitive.

Lesson Planning. Somewhat surprisingly, we still need edtech to step in when it comes to lesson planning. We need embedded state standards. We need collaboration. We need idea discovery mechanisms. We need sharability. We need transparency. There is so much opportunity here and I am excited to watch companies likeTrinket, Planboard, and Common Curriculum as they seek to innovate this space.

New tools. This one might seem a little ‘meta’ at first, but hang with me. Teachers need to know what to use in their classroom and how to use it. It needs to be easy and it needs to be fast. Please don’t tell a teacher to go to a conference or “search the Internet” or “join a Twitter chat” to find the latest tools. Yes, these will work, but they are horribly inefficient. Keep an eye on great tools like EduClipper and what they’re doing in this space.

Entrepreneurialism and the Maker Movement. Teachers desperately need help here. If we want to see more entrepreneurs and more makers, we’ve got to create the spaces for our students to not only discovery but develop these skills. For this to happen, there need to be the resources in place to facilitate this kind of learning. It represents a pedagogical shift for sure, but education is ripe for this kind of innovation and we think the edtech community is primed to bring it. Here’s the bottom line: if you want entrepreneurs and/or makers and you are one, you need to create something to help expand the playing field. You need to get more folks into the game, not less.

The Nature of Learning. The massive influx of personal computing devices into classroom environments represents a tidal shift in pedagogy. If we want teachers to be successful with these pedagogical shifts, we need to give them the support and resources they need to make them. More than just an app or a tool, teachers need training and practical steps to help them cross this chasm.

The 21st century is here and it’s brought some baggage. How will you turn it into an opportunity?