I had a wonderful conversation with Jerry Michalski on our way to and from a talk by Sir Ken Robinson.  Our talks covered designing from trust, the boundaries of social organisms (communities, companies etc), digital reputation tools and the possibilities (and limits) of what they might help us accomplish and more.

The best bit of insight from the event itself came as a result of a question Jerry asked.  It was Sir Ken Robinson saying something along the lines of this:

We need to transition our educational system from a model based on “Industrial Agriculture” and its focus on categorization and scale of output to one based on “Organic Agriculture” and its focus on nurturing the soil — the conditions within which learning occurs.

Alongside those like Jerry Michalski, Sir Ken Robinson, Parker Thomas, Stacey Wang, Wendy Tsu, Nancy Giordano and many others, I want to see us move toward

  • a more individualized and integrated educational model,
  • with less division between subjects,
  • more hands on learning,
  • more peer-to-peer instruction,
  • less age-based segregation and
  • the appreciation of physical work alongside abstract theoretical pursuit (both are important and shouldn’t be divorced from one another – the physical brings the feedback).

Sir Ken has a new book coming out about this very topic called Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution that’s Transforming Education and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Jerry Michalski snapped a Wefie.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-XWEkzMe97Xo/VRL3hREgYyI/AAAAAAAAV5Q/35MbeaFaHpw/w1008-h756-no/IMG_20150324_215937.jpg

Al Chang, Sir Ken Robinson, Jerry Michalski and Matthew Schutte