A New Vision for Education: From Career to Creative Life

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Education stakeholders currently share a common vision of preparing students for career and life. However, the transformation of work driven by accelerating technologies is challenging our understanding of readiness and the very nature of career itself. Indeed, as digitally automated and augmented work diffuses across industries and reshapes the productive contributions of humans, traditional notions of career may actually limit opportunities for success. Rather, a more robust process of cultivating a creative life may be more effective in helping students develop the capabilities, motivation, and self efficacy to thrive in the emerging era of smart machines. Educators, counselors, parents, and other stakeholders would benefit from an understanding of the shift from career to creative life in order to effectively support students for long-term well-being and success in the future.

The Need for Passion and Creativity at Work

The rise of smart machines, global production networks, and technological acceleration are transforming the work landscape. Technological job displacement through automation is widely accepted, yet the pace and scope of its impact are still unfolding. A University of Oxford study reports that 47% of current US middle class jobs are at risk due to automation over the next twenty years. While the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that 45% of the activities that workers do today could be computerized. Others forecast that technology will redefine work and create new jobs rather than destroy them.

Central to the evolution of jobs and meaningful productive work in the future will be the demand for human creativity, curiosity, imagination, and emotional intelligence. Indeed a key element of success in an innovation-driven economy is the ability to leverage human passion and imagination in the pursuit of new ideas and possibilities. Supporting and amplifying these uniquely human capabilities will bring success and competitive advantage to organizations across industries. And as smart machines perform more cognitive, “knowledge work” tasks, these human super powers will be critical for a fruitful professional and personal life. As John Hagel, co-chair for Deloitte’s Center for the Edge advises,

“Find a passion. Find something you’re really, really passionate about, and don’t stop until you find it. Once you find it, find a way to make a living out of it because that’s the only way you’re going to thrive in the new world.”

In the emerging work environment, the productive individual is a creative producer of original ideas and approaches, building a portfolio of work that is the unique personal and professional signature of the individual. This means more than cultivating a personal brand. It means discovering and developing an expression of the individual’s creative identity applied to the problems and challenges of her broader productive community.

As automation permeates work, the uniquely human meta-cognitive strengths will form the basis of new jobs, work projects, and lifelong productive pursuits. Educational institutions (including those serving K12, postsecondary, and higher education students, and lifelong learners) will need to prioritize and re-orient around two insights:

  • Effective educational preparation and readiness will need to prioritize its focus on the development of a strong human social-emotional core and self-concept to provide an engine for curiosity, creativity, lifelong learning, positive relationship building, and resilience; and
  • Career development processes and supports will need to shift from an external orientation based on short-term market needs and static job requirements to a focus on cultivating a creative life.

These two insights are critical guiding principles for educators as they design learning experiences and programs intended to prepare students for long-term success in an increasingly automated world.

A Social-Emotional Core for Readiness

An effective readiness approach for the emerging world of work will be built on a strong inner social-emotional core. As described by the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Redefining Readiness from the Inside Out,  attending to the fundamental human capabilities of self discovery, individual awareness (emotional regulation) and social awareness (perspective taking and empathy) is essential to effective progress  in other foundational cognitive and meta-cognitive capabilities that are critical to the emerging world of digitally automated and augmented work.  Failure to address and develop the fundamental human capabilities will constrain success and well-being in the future world of work.

Among foundational practices (see figure above), problem-solving, thinking differently, creating with numbers, making friends with people and machines are critical capabilities for creative production and innovation. These capabilities draw heavily on a deep sense of self and resilience that grow from skilled awareness, understanding, regulation, and management of human emotions. Individuals without these skills will not be able to weather the rapid change and volatility of the workplace. They will struggle to effectively respond to the imperative to build productive relationships and maintain the agility and motivation to learn.

A Focus on Cultivating a Creative Life

While automation is elevating the importance of bringing uniquely human capabilities to work, it also is disaggregating work from institutions causing it to become distributed across online markets and platforms. Employment will be increasingly arranged, evaluated, and coordinated by algorithms enabling the growth of online talent platforms, contingent work contracts, algorithmically managed project-based work, and professional nomadism. In the context of fragmented employment and projects, how might individuals construct a narrative of their professional lives and make choices that contribute to a fulfilled life?

The desire to learn and continue on a journey of self development will propel successful individuals through the job and work choices of the emerging era of work. Individual initiative and self efficacy will be essential for building coherent work strategies through potentially turbulent and rapidly changing employment environments. The traditional notion of career — with its predetermined, linear path of work and codified skill development — is not robust enough to help to organize a professional life. Likewise, most career management models are aligned to industrial era work and are not sufficient for the kinds of personal and professional development necessary to be successful in a creativity and passion driven economy.

The table below describes the shift from managing traditional careers of the industrial era to cultivating creative lives in an era where human contribution at work is derived from imagination and creativity.

Source: Saveri Consulting, 2017; derived from Marc Zegans, Arc and Interruption

Strategic Implications for Educators

Education leaders have an opportunity to re-examine their school models, programs, services, and learner experiences to understand how they might support their students in developing a creative life in the rapidly emerging world of smart machines and digitally automated and augmented work. Specifically, educators should identify and focus on ways to support students in developing a robust self-concept with tools and capabilities necessary for professional creative production and practice.

Below are some opportunity areas to consider for supporting students in developing a creative life, with examples of current programs and initiatives.

Help students build robust inner selves
Schools that fully integrate social-emotional learning across curriculum and school community life will provide students daily practice in building and integrating essential emotion management skills. This will help students recognize and appreciate emotion management as a core tool for self care, creative engagement, and identity development as they encounter the joys and challenges of learning in a socially dynamic school community. Comprehensive social-emotional curriculum programs such as the RULER program and other CASEL programs are evidence based programs that work with educators to develop their social-emotional skills and implement curriculum into preK-12 classrooms and after school programs.

Develop multidisciplinary, thematic learning that drives self-examination
Creative production emerges from discovery, uncertainty, conflict, challenge, emotion, and expressive desire. To develop their creative thinking, expression, and problem solving capabilities students need to engage in relatable experiences and real world issues. Particularly in middle and high school years, they need to care and be activated by real world phenomena that spark awe, compassion, outrage, and joy. With greater self-discovery students will find passions that direct their creative energy and learning.
Schools such as SF BrightWorks, Tahoe Expedition Academy, Big Picture Learning, and Finland’s approach to phenomenological learning are examples of multidisciplinary, thematic, learner-centric education that puts individual student discovery and sense-making at the center.

Develop assessment frameworks that reveal uniqueness not averages
Most students experience assessments as competitive comparisons with their peers that highlight their deficits. Report cards and transcripts focus on reporting average and reductive scores (GPA, SAT, ACT) rather than unique strengths, experiences, and possible future directions as a creative individual and learner. The Mastery Transcript initiative is a collective of high schools collaborating to develop an alternative model of assessment, crediting and transcript generation that serves students by creating a unique, visual graphic that illustrates a student’s individual learning, growth, and experiences. Students demonstrate their mastery of skills, knowledge and habits of mind by presenting evidence of their work that is institutionally assessed. The electronic Transcript allows college admissions, counselors, parents, or students themselves to click through any part of the graphic transcript to get a deeper story about the individual student’s body of work. The Mastery Transcript has the potential to shift a student’s school experience (and college admissions) toward more authentic engagement around and discussion of a her personal development and expression as a learner and creative thinker in the world.

Support teachers as creative designers
Teachers create learning experiences, inquiry-based project engagements, social and emotional climates in their classrooms, and various growth opportunities for their students every day. As creators and designers, they are important role models for their students. Teacher professional development and training should shift toward supporting their growth as creative designers of social-emotional, academic, and community/civic experiences. ISKME’s Action Collab program and the Teachers Guild are dedicated to developing the capacity of teachers as creative designers and innovators by offering training and a peer community for user-centered design and problem-solving techniques that they can bring back to their schools and classrooms.

Refocus teacher preparation programs on human development
Teacher training institutions need to re-examine their programmatic approaches and priorities to ensure that new teachers gain a meaningful understanding of the shift to the emerging era of digital automation and its implications for human learning and ongoing self-development. With this background they will be able to design learning experiences, assessments, and communities that best support student wellbeing in the future. Specifically, new teachers should be well equipped with social-emotional intelligence skills. It will be necessary for them to create appropriate and productive emotional climates in their classrooms and apply emotion-based skills to manage their own professional practice as well as guide students through their social-emotional self-development. A recent CASEL study shows that SEL is lacking in most teacher certification policies and in the coursework of colleges for teacher education. In particular, they note that teacher self-awareness and self-management skills could potentially contribute to improving the rate of teacher burnout.

These are just a few concrete examples of the ways that schools can begin to support students as creative producers in an increasingly automated world. School senior administrators, principals, trustees, and school boards should consider the shift from career to creative life in their strategic planning, communications, and marketing efforts to ensure their schools are aligned with the future of work and professional life.

To learn more about the implications of Redefining Readiness for your school or organization’s strategy, and the rise of creative production click here.

Cake, Stories, and Imagination: Big Ideas Fest 2015

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While the real-time adrenalin and excitement of ISKME’s Big Ideas Fest 2015 have subsided, I wanted to share some personal take-aways about how to inspire collaboration to activate change in education.

First, is that listening to feedback and being open to surprises can result in new learnings for everyones. Big Ideas Fest 2015 was ISKME’s seventh engagement with educators with the purpose of fostering collaborative, problem-solving and transformation in education through action-oriented design sessions and thoughtfully curated, rapid fire speaking panels.

The format of Big Ideas Fest has changed over the years to give participants the best possible experience in learning from education change-makers about their innovation journeys, and helping BIFniks develop a mindset and practical approach to become an active change-maker in their own areas of influence. We pay a lot of attention to participant feedback (yes, we really do read those BIFnik surveys!) and continue to iterate on the format and process so that participants feel supported and are able to take risks, leave their comfort zone, and feel okay about not knowing where their efforts may lead them.

Big Ideas Fest is intended to be a collaborative experience, with speakers and guests participating in Action Collab design sessions and participants taking ownership of their group work. And sometimes they take over the agenda, like our student BIFniks did this year in the closing session when they wanted to share their culture with the rest of the participants. They intercepted the A/V team at the Dolce Hayes Mansion and proceeded to immerse and teach us their music and dances, for a final impromptu extravaganza that had everyone up on their feet with huge smiles on their faces!

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Second, we need to embrace the power of story to re-focus and re-energize a group. This showed up several times at Big Ideas Fest 2015 and in different ways. Each time it brought us to new depths of understanding and insight, preparing us to imagine and explore more. Our opening panel of storytellers kicked off our first design challenge: How might we create educational opportunities to disrupt the school to prison pipeline? Tyson Amir-Mustafa from Five Keys Charter School (who teaches at the San Francisco County Jail) spoke about his work with young men and women in prison classrooms. Ashanti Branch, Founder of the Ever Forward Club, talked about his work with middle schoolers and their need for safe spaces to identify and share their emotions in order to develop greater emotional resilience. Both sharing their personal experiences of growing up as black men in America. Shanley Rhodes, Deputy Director of the Southern Region of Five Keys Charter, described her early years as a teacher in a violent and dysfunctional school and its personal impact on her as a teacher. BIFniks listened actively and openly to capture what they heard without interpreting or rushing to rationalize and solve.

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The ballroom was thick with energy and emotion. We were all brought to a new place—a new perspective on a dimension of the education system that often is not the focus of “future of education” gatherings. Our expectation was not necessarily to solve this challenge in 6 hours, but to bring BIFniks to a new place in their thinking about this critical issue—to show them the complexity and tensions from authentic, personal voices, and to feel confident that there are practical solutions that can improve lives if we allow ourselves to see the challenge with new eyes.

As one BIFnik eloquently describes in her post, “listening deeply, I heard a common thread—a desire from the young people in these stories to be truly heard, known, and understood. It harkened back to the notion that it is really all about building authentic relationships and hearing someone for who they are and not who we assume them to be.”  And in fact, several provocative solution ideas emerged from such insights: Mind the Gap is a board game that reveals the perspectives of different stakeholders to find common ground and connection on specific challenges; Invite to Insight is a set of invitation cards that students can use to invite a teacher to lunch for free and just talk; and BEASE is a program to overcome parent resistance to change at school by having parents “become a student” and “become a teacher” to learn the benefits of change in the classroom.

Kicking off Big Ideas Fest 2015 Action Collab work with powerful storytelling gave BIFniks permission to tell their own stories, and most of all, to create a space to listen deeply and openly to each other.

This is precisely why we use storytelling, among other techniques, as a part of ISKME’s Action Collab process. ISKME developed Action Collabs as a collaborative platform for educators problem solve creatively as peers and gain the insights and perspectives from each other’s distinctive perspectives and imaginations. By equipping teachers, principals, administrators, students, parents, and other education decision-makers with such skills, tangible change in education may become human-centered and emerge from the bottom up.

Finally, dessert helps! That BIFniks sampled a delectable assortment of cheesecakes, chocolate mousse, passion fruit cake and other sweet treats made no small contribution to the positive and open climate throughout  Big Ideas Fest.

ISKME will be holding Action Collab trainings in March (28-29) and August (1-2) so that educators can develop and practice their collaborative problem solving skills and catalyze transformation in their own organizations. For more information on Action Collab trainings click here.

Originally posted on January 26, 2016 at http://www.iskme.org/our-ideas/cake-stories-and-imagination

Unleashing Innovation in Teachers

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“In the future I am going to do something that scares me more often.”
Big Ideas Fest 2014 Participant

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Reflections like the one above are what keep me coming back every year as a designer and facilitator of ISKME’s Big Ideas Fest — an annual immersion in collaboration and design for educators around the world looking to make meaningful change in teaching and learning.

As someone who works behind the scenes, as well as in the midst of the action, I am always thrilled to see the diverse collection of educators arrive with enthusiasm, some with a degree of healthy skepticism, and leave Big Ideas Fest as experienced BIFniks— open, collaborative, and hopeful education change makers, equipped with new tools and concepts, and inspired to put them into practice in their own learning environments.

The Action Collab—ISKME’s design thinking process— frames the Big Ideas Fest experience as it gives BIFniks a chance to immerse themselves in an innovation and collaboration experience in order to learn it and apply it to real world education challenges. It provides a common language for the way we interact, pose questions, and look ahead to post BIF engagements.

We asked BIFiks to reflect on their Big Ideas Fest experience at its conclusion to learn about the impact of the BIF and Action Collabs on their work. Three important outcomes, listed below, emerged from their comments about their Action Collab experience.

It demystifies and democratizes innovation by breaking it down into practical activities
BIFniks leave with a grounded experience in creative problem-solving and with an understanding of how to set themselves up for innovating at home. They learn to become open collaborators less concerned about perfection and more focused on generating possibilities to explore.

Today I learned:
“How to move forward from a juicy question to a specific innovative solution.”
“Letting go of my own outcome leads to new discoveries.”
“The design process is messy but generative.”

It instills fearlessness and confidence in their own abilities as creative problem-solvers
They learn how to trust their own creative instinct and gain an appreciation for the uncertainty and surprise factor that accompanies true innovation.

My biggest take-away is:
“There’s something productive behind frustration!”
“You can’t predict where an idea will go.”
“I can’t be wrong, my ideas matter.”

It gives them skills and practices to act on right away
BIFniks walk away with clear, practical tools for collaborating and unlocking creativity in themselves and their colleagues.

In the future I’m going to:
“Live ‘Yes, And’ more often.”
“Resist suppressing my creativity.”
“Listen in order to receive”
“Use student collaboration right away in my own work.”

I’m looking forward to our upcoming Facilitator Training for Action Collabs on April 27-28, 2015 in San Francisco. If you want to learn how to facilitate an Action Collab process in your own organization, ISKME is offering a 2-day immersive training where you will learn the Action Collab process and its rationale, by participating in an Action Collab, and learning how to set up Action Collab modules for your own groups. Check out the following announcement for more details, and email andrea@iskme.org if you have additional questions.

Notes on Conversations of Education Transformation: Frames Shaping the Stories and Solutions

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As I participate in discussions about the future of education, I listen for how the conversations get framed.  Underlying most discussions about innovation and transformation in education are assumptions that tend to set the boundaries of discussions.  Sometimes these frames are overt, sometimes hidden, but in any case they influence the kinds of questions that get asked and shape the solution space.  They highlight some players over others and may orient towards particular solutions.  Ultimately they shape how we view opportunity and visions of what is possible.

Here are three frames that I have noticed.  I’m sure there are others out there too.  When I sense that we are moving into one of these frames, I draw it out so that we can be explicit, work the frame to deepen our conversation, then move to another frame.

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The performance frame is typically technology driven.   It frames discussions by focusing on innovations that drive what teaching and learning could look like.  (Time on the x-axis and performance on the y-axis.) These conversations tend to focus on what is possible from innovative ideas and new technologies.  Questions focus on how emerging technology clusters and new conceptual paradigms enable improved system functionality and value.  The key here is how performance is measured.  It could be increased access (as with MOOCs) or greater affordability and relevance (as with competency-based education programs). Over time, as incremental gains decline and are exhausted a new set of technologies comes along and boosts performance to a new level.  The benefit of this frame is that it can serve as a springboard for imagining new constellations of innovations that collectively could increase the performance of the system.  It also focuses on highlighting definitions, measures, and values for system performance.

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The adoption frame originates from Everett Rogers’ early work on the diffusion of innovation and recently is described as the “two curve” challenge, in Ian Morrison’s book, The Second Curve.  (Time is on the x-axis and penetration rate is on the y-axis.)  This frame is more human, and organization centered.  It focuses on the threats and opportunities of innovations to specific users and stakeholders.  It helps orient conversations around what might enable or inhibit adoption of innovations.  For example, who doesn’t want to move to the new curve and what economic or political drivers may be the reason? Are there other barriers in the market or within an organization?  This frame also is a good way to discuss what kinds of risks emerge, and when, from remaining on the existing curve too long or leaving it too early.

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The concept of the adaptive cycle is at the root of the ecosystem frame.  This lens on change in education helps us look at the breakdown and disruption of the traditional education system as part of an adaptive process to a newer system that is better aligned to its context and conditions.   After a mature forest experiences breakdown and loss from fire, it re-generates itself by opening itself to unknown possibilities from potentially new species and relationships among plants, insects, wildlife, and nutrient flows.  Productive relationships thrive and over time the ecosystem rebuilds itself in response to its new conditions.

The ecosystem frame is particularly useful for orienting education system discussions around new opportunities, potential value, and relationships.  The frame highlights the generative dynamic of relationships and novel responses to threats and disruptions. Rather than resist disruptions (such as new technologies and innovative organizational models) or fall back on existing (ineffective) responses, the ecosystem frame points out adaptive responses by examining opportunities created by the release of resources, re-organization of relationships, and exploitation (leverage) of new niches in the ecosystem.

We’re currently in the early period of exploitation in which novel combinations of players are testing the ground and seeing what kind of sustainable value they can create.  Content and curriculum development is proliferating among open educational resource spaces that support new combinations of teachers, experts, and learning agents like librarians. New ideas like blended learning and competency-based assessment are attracting experimentation and pilots.  The most damaging action to the education ecosystem now would be to stifle experimentation (the exploitation of opportunities presented by new ideas, technologies, and players) and the learning obtained from successful and failed initiatives.

The adaptive cycle is nature’s learning process that supports its resilience over time.  For this reason, the ecosystem frame is a useful one for challenging the rhetoric around experimentation and failure (as in “don’t experiment with my children”) and creating a more productive conversation focused on learning and system improvement.

See my earlier post for a detailed explanation of the adaptive cycle.

Benefits of an Ecosystem Frame for Understanding the Future of Education

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Using the adaptive cycle to imagine sustainable transformation of teaching and learning systems

The word ecosystem is used a lot in education today to talk about new ways of organizing teaching and learning. Often the term is used to refer to more network-styled relationships (rather than hierarchy) among a diversity of players and roles (rather than a single bureaucratic system) using various modes of organizing learning experiences (rather than one-size fits all approaches).

The concept of the adaptive cycle is at the root of an ecosystem frame and worth exploring to understand more deeply the possibilities for transformation in education. The ecosystem lens on change in education helps us examine disruption and breakdown of the traditional education system as part of an adaptive process to a newer system that is better aligned to its context and conditions.

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Source: Saveri Consulting, derived from Hollings, Radford, Weeks, Rodriguez, and Blakeslee.

Mature, tightly connected ecosystems can become rigid as they accumulate resources in their conservation phase.  And while they may be efficient in their exchange of resources, they are inflexible and susceptible to breakdown when confronted by threats and disruptions, such as fires, invasive pests, drought, and pollution. These shocks drive a release of energy and nutrients as trees and plants burn, wildlife scatters, soil erodes (or floods), and resources become disconnected from their traditional relationships.  Release leads to re-organization as gaps in the ecosystem invite new species and resources.  Loss of low growing, dense plants may allow more circulation and sunshine to penetrate a forest and sets the stage for new plant species.  New plants species may attract new kinds of wildlife—perhaps new insects and other creatures that create new relationships and resource connections.  Re-organization of existing ecosystem inhabitants and new entrants enables a period of exploitation—a time of rapid experimentation by ecosystem inhabitants to learn what relationships are most productive and sustainable.  Some new species fare better than others.  Some may get crowded out by invasive species (weeds) while others may benefit from the stabilizing effects they have on the soil.  As successful combinations form, they grow and accumulate more resources and reach and begin to define the transformation of the ecosystem over time. (see this for a detailed explanation of the adaptive cycle).

The ecosystem frame is particularly useful for orienting education system discussions around new opportunities, potential value, and relationships.   The frame highlights the generative dynamic of relationships and novel responses to threats and disruptions. Rather than resist disruptions (such as new technologies and innovative organizational models) or fall back on existing (ineffective) responses, the ecosystem frame points out adaptive responses by examining opportunities created by the release of resources, re-organization of relationships, and exploitation (leverage) of new niches in the ecosystem.

Shocks to the traditional bureaucratic education system in the past few decades include disruptive technologies, increasingly diverse learning populations, new workforce requirements, soaring costs, and economic crisis (declining budgets).

Traditional responses from existing players seem to have only driven greater breakdown and release in the system, as student and new teacher dropout rates have increased, schools apply for charter waivers and reduce connection to the public system, and neighborhood schools close.  This may not be a bad thing as breakdown and release have created openings for new ideas and players.  Ed tech innovators have entered the teaching and learning ecosystem, as have community organizations such as libraries and museums.  Venture capital firms, crowdsourced funding platforms, and employers are playing new roles as funders and partners.  New individuals are finding their way into the teaching and learning field as professionals or para-professionals in new kinds of spaces of learning like media labs, techshops, maker centers, and learning hives.  New school models are attracting new providers.

We’re currently in the early period of exploitation in which novel combinations of players are testing the ground and seeing what kind of sustainable value they can create.  Content and curriculum development is proliferating among open educational resource spaces that support new combinations of teachers, experts, and learning agents like librarians. Foundations are seeding more cross-boundary partnerships and novel pilot projects. New ideas like blended learning and competency-based assessment are attracting experimentation and pilots.  And schools themselves are beginning to open to more experimentation among its faculty and staff. The most damaging action to the education ecosystem now would be to stifle experimentation (the exploitation of opportunities presented by new ideas, technologies, and players) and the learning obtained from successful and failed initiatives.

The adaptive cycle is nature’s learning process that supports its resilience over time.  For this reason, the ecosystem frame is a useful one for challenging the rhetoric around experimentation and failure (as in “don’t experiment with my children”) and creating a more productive conversation focused on learning and system improvement.

Kids as Critical Futurists

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When given the opportunity, kids can be wonderful futurists, creating artifacts that help us imagine possible futures.

Two summers ago at Kirk Cooper’s fabulous summer camp Sees the Day in Berkeley,

Finnish Field Phone, WWII era.

California, kids 6-9 years old prototyped devices they thought would be important in the future.  Using a forecasting rule of looking back two years for every forecast year, we looked at many historical devices and the kids had to guess their function.  A lantern specifically designed for milking cows in the mid 19th century; a wired, “mobile” field phone from the mid 20th century: a cassette player/boom box and an LP from recent past, etc.  The campers had to guess what the devices were, how and why were were used.

We then talked about what devices might be important for us in the future (time frame is a squishy concept to nail down with 6-9 year olds).  They prototyped and then presented their devices.  We talked about why these devices were important, who might use them, and what kinds of things were happening that would make them important in the future.

Two of my favorites:  spray on network (when signal gets weak) and backyard, garden grown battery packs!

Everyone had fun.  And it was a great way for kids to experience the threads that connect their present with their future.

Making the Future of Education Actionable Today

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One of the challenges of foresight work is to make new insights about the future relevant to our own situations and actionable in meaningful ways.  Foresight needs to be matched with processes that help leaders move past “This is interesting, but what does it have to do with my organization?” towards something more like “This reframes our professional development needs (or choices for strategic partners, etc.) and here are 3 things I can do now!”

The KnowledgeWorks Foundation recently released a new toolkit that is intended to help education stakeholders do just this.  Creating a New World of Learning: A Toolkit for Change Makers is an action planning guide that helps leaders design and facilitate customized learning experiences that help them think long in order to take action now.  The toolkit supports the forecast content that KWF have been developing and sharing for the past several years, such as their 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning and Learning Agents of 2025.

I worked with KWF to develop the toolkit and one of my goals was to make sure that education stakeholders had an opportunity to engage creatively and play with ideas about the future of education.   Rather than look for proven answers, it seemed important to create opportunities for leaders and groups to ask “What if?” and explore possibilities, even if they seem a little crazy or silly. With this in mind we broke out the activities into four sections:Imagine, Learn, Apply, and Prioritize.


Imagine and Learn sections focus on expanding the visions of what is possible in the future of education and developing a shared language and set of concepts to talk about future possibilities.  The Apply and Prioritize sections focus on applying new concepts and possibilities to a group’s organization and identifying opportunities for action.

The toolkit works a bit like a Chinese menu. Each section has multiple activities that facilitators can pick from to structure their learning experience.  The document is web-enabled so viewers can jump around and check out each section, the resources in the back, end even sample agendas.

There is also a rich set of audio, video, and text based resources to support activities.  There are audio and video clip stories in which future learners and learning agents describe their teaching and learning experiences.  There are text-based scenarios about future learning systems that describe how stakeholders might interact and how resource might be allocated. And education artifacts from the future provide an opportunity for practicing a bit of future focused archeology.   Participants can explore new ideas through hands on activities such as card games, prototyping, storytelling, and news headline generation.  And ultimately, there are opportunities for participants to use their new insights to identify new goals and actions for change.

Since the activities are modular, sessions can be flexibly planned to last 2 hours or as longer half or full day sessions.  The hope is that this toolkit brings some fun and safe risk taking, and thoughtful play to the education transformation process.