Changing Education from the Ground Up

I’m in a Wellington NZ Starbucks with 32 minutes left on a $5 card. $2.50 American.

Everything here is half-price with the exchange rate–The great mystery is how the dollar can be so strong–but the Internet is never free anywhere. Not even in hotel lobbies. Terrible.

I’ve been reading some discussions on education–or on how education sucks–and what should be done about it.

Doug Nelson sent a link to a VC on hacking education.

Matt Nathan emailed the full hacking education discussion.

He also emailed School of Everything. I’ve seen it in my web wanderings. A great concept. I figure that school of any kind–calling anyone a teacher or a learner–is a problem. We’re all learning in this world all of the time. That is what has changed.

Okay. Someone has to teach the math and physics. And I do want children to go to school.

But the old institutional words–instruction, curriculum, education–represent topdown control.  Imagine that the quality or type of instruction–or better said–source is rated and determined by the learners. Then we are set free.

Have you seen this?

David Merrill on siftables

Wow.

Power to the people. And then respect for the few have really put in the effort to make it good, who can reach us all, who show up on TED and emerge from the masses to show us the way. Who can tell a very good story. Who can make the journey from 2+2 to quantum physics the magical mystery tour that it is.

I want to email, blog comment, and twitter everyone. But back to the RV and a hike through Victoria Park.

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Okay. Maybe not the first. This blog is the first.

But I’ll be presenting icanology at the Maui Enterprise Forum on Wednesday, 10:30 am - 1:30 pm. It’s $30, lunch included, at the MACC.  Also presenting will be John Bower of uBoost.

If you are in business, this is an excellent place for you to network with innovators, investors, and all the people who can help you grow your business.

If you are in education, this experience will take your mind in a completely different direction.

The official announcement is here.

Registration is here.

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The Big Idea has a name!      Thanks to my friend and neighbor Sydney Smith at http://www.coloriginalsmaui.com who emailed in a p.s.

ican.  A learning benchmark.  Ex: I can count to 100.  I can demo the sales process in a retail store.

icanology. The study of, the knowledge of icans.

icanologist.  Developer of icanology.

icanist, icanista, icanner, icanographer. Creator and/or user of icans.

icanography. The maps of icans.

icanogram. An announcement of achievement of an ican

icanism.  ican belief or saying. Ex:  Education is something done to you. Learning is what you do.

icanocracy.  What forms up when people use icans.

icanary.  A listing of icans.

icanograph.  A graph of related icans.

icandoxy.   ican philosophy or thinking.

icanic. ican style.

icanory/icannery. the ican creative office.

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Over the month, the project has changed from LBI to TBI. Too bad thebigidea.com is taken. We still need a name!

My friend, Marilyn Vierra, who is working on an “online Master’s program (in education) with the objective of teaching Social Studies in a secondary setting,” suggested that I articulate a scenario.

Good idea. I’ll have to do it graphically some day.

Here are three student scenarios and one adult scenario:

[click to continue…]

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It’s Christmas morning, 6 a.m. I woke up with a Christmas gift:  A more fully developed vision for the Big Idea.

This week I’ve been deep into outlining the proposal on Omnioutliner, researching learning management systems, learning content management systems, elearning 2.0, eportfolios,open source social networks and wikis, widgets, pageflakes, and more. [click to continue…]

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Last night I read again about the Hawaii Department of Education’s standards and report card. The standards describe what each child should know in each subject area by each quarter of each grade level. The report cards then reflect student accomplishment according to the standards.

There are all kinds of problems with the system.

• The report cards aren’t detailed enough. They don’t show exactly what the standards are. They look like the same old report cards that I got in elementary school 50 (gulp) years ago.
• The report card doesn’t report exactly what a child has missed. Parents still don’t know what their children need help with. They can still only help with homework and homework doesn’t address individual needs.
• The report card doesn’t show the whole picture. Report cards start each year at a new level with new standards. When a child falls behind in a subject the year before, parents and teachers can’t tell exactly what hasn’t been learned.
• Often the standards are written in educationese. I don’t know what many of them mean. [click to continue…]

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I woke up with more thoughts about how to do the awards.

• Write them in first person. Make them into personal statements of accomplishment.  See below.
• For under 18, two people verify an award: another child, friend or family member and a non-family adult. It would solve the problem of child protection and safety and also include more people in the process.
• Put a “not yet” feature for reviewers so that when a person doesn’t make the award on the first try, the response is still positive. It could go on the future awardee’s site to remind him/her to finish it. We could also have an auto feature from the reviewer if the future awardee hasn’t come back to finish.
• Awards include a small deposit into a scholarship account. Auto send award to parents, grandparents, friends, like in facebook. Give them a chance to honor the event by donating to the scholarship system.
• Get an icon for achieving an award, an icon with silver lining for teaching/awarding one, and an icon with a gold lining for designing one. [click to continue…]

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Here you’ll find:

• the company name (Mohala Media LLC)
• the company tasks/kuleana
• The product (Lynn’s Big Idea): the portal and its list of functions
• The R&D team:  the positions to be filled
• Links to educational researchers in Hawaii

Yesterday I spoke with Janice Kato, the SBIR (federal grants/contracts for Small Biz Investment Research) specialist at HTDC, Hawaii Technology Development Corp, in Mano’a. She sent a great worksheet. I woke up with the business structure. [click to continue…]

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Kawika Kaikala is designing the very first “merit badge” on the Hawaiian value, aloha. I told him that I’d send over the beginning of a template.

A worksheet with questions seems to be the best way to go.  Here’s a rough start: [click to continue…]

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