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IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience

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In recent years, IDEO has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about education. The firm’s work with Ormondale Elementary School, in Portola Valley, California, helped pioneer a special “investigative-learning” curriculum that inspires students to be seekers of knowledge. We spoke to Sandy Speicher, who heads the Design for Learning efforts at IDEO. Her insights provide powerful lessons for architects and designers creating the schools of tomorrow:

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. Pull, don’t push.

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1. Pull, don’t push.

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Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students,

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2. Create from relevance.

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2. Create from relevance.

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Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them,

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3. Stop calling them “soft” skills.

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3. Stop calling them “soft” skills.

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Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability

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4. Allow for variation.

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4. Allow for variation.

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Evolve past a one- size-fits-all mentality

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5. No more sage onstage.

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5. No more sage onstage.

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In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”

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Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”

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. Teachers are designers

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6. Teachers are designers.

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Let them create.

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. Build a learning community.

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7. Build a learning community.

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It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large.

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Be an anthropologist

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An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

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8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.

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8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.

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If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that.

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Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education.

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9. Incubate the future.

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9. Incubate the future.

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Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education.

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you have to measure new things

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on 2009-03-30 by ctscho

And this is why charter schools aren't and can't be truly innovative-- because they have to measure the same stuff as every other public school

It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.

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If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things.

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10. Change the discourse.

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10. Change the discourse.

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e can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.

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on 2009-03-30 by ctscho

And this still assumes that everything is "measurable" in some way.

This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones

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