Google Innovators: How to Build a Moonshot.

“One of our most important principles is to run as fast as we can at all the hardest parts of a problem, and try to prove that something can’t be done. We want to force ourselves to learn. We actively embrace failure: by making mistakes, we make progress. In this way, our ideas get stronger faster, or we discard them and move on to new ones.” X

As Seth Godin points out in his book What To Do When It’s Your Turn “The prevailing system of the educational-industrial complex puts the fear of a ‘C’ in us. The entire point of twelve…years of our lives isn’t to learn anything, it’s to get an A. Is it any wonder the thirst disappears?”

We need to allow students to be thirsty, to help them keep their curiosity and help them believe in their ability to create real solutions to real world problems while engaging in important discussions with their community.

We need to change the way that schools are designed, in order to change they way students and teachers work.

Example: The Google Self Driving Car project team reached out to the community to have them design the exterior for the car in a project called paint the town. This helped to get these important stakeholders to engage in the project.

As I’ve been discovering through my Cohort 21 action plan this year, not all students are ready for this shift. We need to prepare them when they are young before they are trained to follow a system that doesn’t work.

David Kelley said that he believes students lose their creative confidence as young as grade 4 because schools don’t let them develop their own ideas. We need to prevent that from happening, but we need to get parents, administrators, teachers, and most importantly students on board.

I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by SO MANY “Peter Pans” here at Cohort 21, from the Klingenstein Institute, at Greenwood College and now through the Innovator program. We need to ensure that all teachers have a “tribe” that inspires them to continually adapt their teaching practice.

This made me think about how we stream our students, often separating those who are so called “academic” (aka “smart”) from those who are “applied” (aka not as “smart”). How can we help students and teachers realize that there is no such thing as smart and not smart, but just that people are different kinds of smart? I feel fortunate to teach a class that contains a mix of academic and applied students and in a school that supports all learners. I see everyday in my classroom how a student who doesn’t identify as being “smart” is actually brilliant when it comes to solving problems. We need to celebrate cognitive diversity, rather than promoting a culture that results in have and have nots.

For example, when creating the Google glass, the team developed a new prototype everyday in order to push it forward quickly.

When teachers are most concerned about having their students pass standardized tests, or passing their own teacher evaluations, how can they be confident to try new approaches in their classroom?

In the classroom, how might we help students take risks and fail? What if we designed evaluations to be iterative, rather than so focused on a final product? Is it effective for students to expend all of their energy on a single idea in a big, end of unit project? Why not have a series of small micro-projects that encourage students to think experimentally?

My grade 12 students are currently working on a large project that requires them to develop their own solutions for redesigning a significant portion of Toronto’s waterfront. Throughout the iterative process, students regularly critique each other’s work. It has been incredibly effective in helping them move ideas forward. What else can I do to encourage collegial conversations amongst students?

When was the last time you were really excited to give your students that unit test? Think about your most memorable learning experiences. I bet none of them involved a worksheet.

I generally don’t give tests in my classes, but on occasion, I will have students complete Assessment For Learning quizzes to help them learn content. (Here’s a great article on how taking a test can help you learn – it changed the way I approach testing in my class). However, following in the tradition of @gnichols, they are not called quizzes, but “Celebrations of Learning.” I play music, bring in snacks and generally get really pumped for students to write the quiz. You’d be surprised about how much this actually works for getting students in the right mindset for the quiz. But that’s beside the point. Quizzes are not really exciting. 

Apart from these short quizzes, students demonstrate their learning in project based learning activities that are connected to the community. I come across ideas in the news, from local non-profits, architecture firms, etc. and if it gets me excited, I bring it to my students. For example, in Toronto there is currently a big debate about the future of our elevated expressway, the Gardiner Expressway. Some want to tear it down, others couldn’t bear to have a commute that is two minutes slower. Just like the general public, students in my class have strong opinions on the topic and when the topic came up one day in class there were heated debates. So, I am throwing out last year’s final “exam” and challenging the to redesign the Gardiner as their final for the year. I’m excited about it. And so are they.