Turning Learning Right Side Up

What happens when you mix:
an American organizational theorist, consultant, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, who is a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science,
and
the founder in 1968 of a place where people decide for themselves how to spend their days; where students of all ages determine what they will do, as well as when, how, and where they will do it; which belongs to the students as their right, not to be violated?

They write a book collaboratively in 2008 which is titled Turning Learning Right Side Up.

Russell L. Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg are the volatile mix of exceptionally non-conforming, playfully democratic, and value-driven minds.

Both of these “wild and crazy guys” have been intellectual-activist heroes of mine for a long time–separately in his own field. Each of them has remarkable organizational and personal development results to show for their unconventional professional thinking and efforts.

Thanks very much to a friend of mine Mike for pointing out the book. I just ordered a copy of it.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

A new posting at the TED Blog announces Sir Ken Robinson’s new book titled The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything and provides a link to a video of his TED presentation on creativity in 2006. I continue to listen to what has been Robinson’s clear voice on creativity and human being. Awakening students’ passions of mind and heart in learning is as revolutionary and fundamental an aim as I can imagine for constructing an educational agenda.

The River City Project

Are you folks aware of The River City Project? Although I have no hands-on experience with it, it seems worth investigating. I learned about it in a tweet on Twitter about fifteen minutes ago from Scientific American magazine, which lead me to their online article which includes it in a discussion of learning science virtually.

Here’s how the Graduate School of Education at Harvard begins its introduction to this project:

With funding from the National Science Foundation, we have developed an interactive computer simulation for middle grades science students to learn scientific inquiry and 21st century skills. River City has the look and feel of a videogame but contains content developed from National Science Education Standards, National Educational Technology Standards, and 21st Century Skills.

playfulness and creativity and serious social progress

In recent discussions at online educational forums, I’ve shared a persistent and clear vision I’ve had of communities of digital-mediated learners as social/scientific laboratories in which participants innovate and design solutions to real-life local and global problems/challenges they encounter in these times of rapid change and dangers of status-quo mindsets. This video portrays for me the kind of interpersonal playfulness of learning and its productive outcomes which suits the centers of learning I have had in mind. The video gives substance to the hopeful vision of engaging new learning which would replace the fruitless (solely academic knowledge seeking), un-dynamic, un-playful, and obsolete system that we’ve allowed ourselves to believe is inevitable.

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play — with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn’t).

Tim Brown is the CEO of Ideo, a design firm founded by David E. Kelley in 1991. Brown carries forward Ideo’s mission of fusing design, business, and social studies to come up with deeply researched, deeply understood designs and ideas. Ideo is the kind of firm that companies turn to when they want a top-down rethink of a business or product — from fast food conglomerates to high tech startups, hospitals to universities. Ideo has designed and prototyped everything from a life-saving portable defibrillator to the defining details at the groundbreaking Prada shop in Manhattan (IDEO designed those famous see-through dressing rooms).

Ideo’s website sandboxes are a fun browse (recommended: Kid & Play, focused on children and fun). And check out the Global Chain Reaction for a sample of how seriously this firm takes play.

significance of the design of learning space

This short film by Kontent Real highlights the significance of learning in a green school, as told by the students of the Sidwell Friends school.