#oesis

This weekend I had the privilege of going to the OESIS Boston conference in Quincy, MA. It was a room full of administrators, heads of school, and assorted tech teachers discussing Design Thinking, Engineering, 3D Printing, Innovation centers, and new forms of collaboration through technology. 

A page of my notes are above. I was the youngest attendee at this conference by far, and one of probably at most 2 other fine arts teachers. 

The biggest takeaway was that there are lots of new ways younger teachers and innovators are trying to harness technology in their own classes. Blended learning, teaching twitter, tying in Scratch programming with a creative writing experience. You name it, there was someone trying it, but there was a stark contrast between the early-adopters, a (as Seth Godin would call them, sneezers) and hesitant older faculty and administrators who were worried about a deterioration of faculty and school culture around these new processes. 

All the data points to a fundamental shift in the ways learning and success occur. I want to bring back the renaissance model. Let’s re-emphasize liberal arts and walk a few feet away from STEM and industrialized learning. Connecting information is more important than mindlessly consuming it, and when you compartmentalize the subjects, you prevent meaningful digestion of their importance. It’s impossible to adopt this at the secondary school level, because college admissions are keeping most elite prep schools in a vice grip. The future of school isn’t in purely academic learning (I plan on writing about why soon). The academic success of the future will be reliant on a more vocation-oriented model to survive. 

Connection over content!