Here be Dragons: Approaching New Educational Ecologies Through Speculative Design and Research (Consilience Learning Future Forwards Summit - Dubai 2017)

Transcript

1. Here be Dragons Thomas Steele-Maley CTIO: GEMS Global Innovations Group @steelemaley Future Forwards Summit Dubai April 14, 2017 Approaching New Educational Ecologies Through Speculative Design and Research
2. 07 Our Goals for this session S E E A N E E D | B E Y O N D I D E A S S E E E X A M P L E S | D E S I G N F I C T I O N I N E D U C A T I O N D I S C U S S P O S S I B I L I T I E S | D E S I G N A N D P R O T O T Y P I N G Q A N D A
3. 07 Our Goals for this session S E E A N E E D | B E Y O N D I D E A S S E E E X A M P L E S | D E S I G N F I C T I O N I N E D U C A T I O N D I S C U S S P O S S I B I L I T I E S | D E S I G N A N D P R O T O T Y P I N G Q A N D A
4. 07 S E E A N E E D | B E Y O N D I D E A S J O H N S E E L E Y B R O W N : “ T H E G L O B A L O N E R O O M S C H O O L H O U S E ”
6. We need to suspend our disbelief that education can change.
7. Design Fiction*- Design fiction is a method of critical design* that uses fictional and narrative scenarios to envision, explain and raise questions about possible futures for design and the society —purposeful —speculative —diegetic (a style of fiction storytelling that presents an interior view of a world) —playful —imaginative *Critical Design: This kind of design uses design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions, conceptions about the role of objects play in everyday life. *Source: Design Fiction. (n.d.). Retrieved July 13, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_fiction
8. 07 S E E E X A M P L E S | D E S I G N F I C T I O N T O A C T I O N I N E D U C A T I O N N L E N A G W A - C H I C A G O N A T I O N S A C A D E M Y - D U B A I S T A N F O R D 2 0 2 5 / M A S T E R Y T R A N S C R I P T C O N S O R T I U M
9. NETWORKED LEARNING ECOLOGY NORTH AMERICA
10. Four “near future” vignettes to consider. How are we mutating our educational ecologies for these futures?
11. N E T W O R K E D L E A R N I N G E C O L O G Y U B I Q U I T O U S , M O B I L E , B L E N D E D , P E R S O N A L I Z E D N E T W O R K E D L E A R N E R : I N D I V I D U A L I Z E D L E A R N I N G P L A N B A S E D O N B L E N D E D L E A R N I N G E C O L O G Y: E X P E R I E N T I A L F I E L D W O R K ; E S S E N T I A L S K I L L S D E V E L O P M E N T; A P P L I E D R E S E A R C H ; E X H I B I T I O N S N E T W O R K E D P R O J E C T T E A M S : M U LT I G E N E R AT I O N A L A N D I N T E G R AT I V E R E S E A R C H T E A M S C O L L A B O R AT I N G I N D A I LY, W E E K LY A N D M O N T H LY L E A R N I N G N E T W O R K S L O C A L C O N N E C T I O N M E S H : I N D E P E N D E N T L E A R N E R N E T W O R K S , L E A R N I N G E X C H A N G E L A B S ; E X P E R I E N T I A L L E A R N I N G ; M E E T- U P S ; T R A N S P O RTAT I O N , L E A R N I N G M E N T O R S H I P S ( FA R M , S C I E N C E L A B , P O L I T I C A L O F F I C E , C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E , C R E AT I V E E C O N O M Y G L O B A L C O N N E C T I O N M E S H : F O R M A L / N O N - F O R M A L B L E N D E D V I RT U A L L E A R N I N G C O M M U N I T I E S , N E T W O R K E D L E A R N I N G ( M O B I L E , U B I Q U I T O U S , S O C I A L LY R E L E VA N T, S C H O L A S T I C ) S E L F O R G A N I Z E D L E A R N I N G E N V I R O N M E N T S I N T E R D E P E N D E N T A C T I O N S : N E T W O R K E D PA RT N E R S H I P S F O R A C T I O N I N S Y S T E M S ( S O C I A L , E C O N O M I C , E N V I R O N M E N TA L B E T T E R M E N T, S O C I A L LY R E L E VA N T A C T I V I T I E S , M U LT I - S I T E D I N T E R N AT I O N A L P R O J E C T C O L L A B O R AT I O N . S O U R C E : S T E E L E - M A L E Y, T. ( 2 0 1 1 )
12. Piper is a 15 year old who lives in Midcoast Maine, US. A year ago, Piper heard about a new way to learn, and decided to take part in a new learning experience called the Maine Networked Learning Project. Known as “the Mesh” to participants, this learning ecology offered Piper the chance to apply her passion for learning in highly experiential and collaborative ways with groups of young people of varied ages, adult and youth mentors with knowledge territory specialties and organizations focused on ensuring sustainable and resilient societies, economies, and the environment. This is a snapshot of her day. Piper gets ready for her week by sitting outside sipping tea and looking at her smart phone. She is checking project updates sent from the team she has been working with for the last two months on her Google Reader and Twitter feed. The project Piper is checking in on deals with food justice in the rural communities of her bioregion. Seeing many updates, and much activity she decides to look at the overall “mesh” schedule for the day. She notices that the MNLP van will be moving across the local region starting in an hour. To get a ride on this local transportation system she has to ride her bike to a station stop or have her parents drop her off at the regional mesh meet-up location. But before deciding this she reviews her weekly schedule on her mobile. Piper notices that she and three others will be presenting at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars organization to a large group on the history of local food cultivation in the region. She and her Food Justice project group have spent a good deal of time completing ethnographic studies of the areas “locals”. These participant interviews are seminal to their presentation as they show that local sustainability and resilience projects are not “outside” or “rich Peoples” pursuits, but can save local economies and the historical heritage this stakeholder group cherishes. The group has also been working in restoration crews on local farms as a service learning tie in to their studies. The project has been extensive. Piper and her group have covered mathematics, experimental sciences, writing, social sciences and much more in an integrated project framework. They have relied on their mesh mentors, local experts (educators, authors, historians, scientists….), and the internet for research, recording (writing, video) and exhibiting their knowledge and understanding to multiple community stakeholder groups. As the project presentation pre-work is done, Piper contacts her group via twitter hashtag to remind all that they will need an hour to meet-up before the presentation and to ride their bikes to the VAW hall from the meet-up. Immediately she gets a response from three of the four other group members that they will meet prior to the VAW event. They remind each other that a collaborative learning session will be going on for applied algebra and trigonometry concepts at Noon. This session will be special, as an innovative regional planner from rural Scotland will be mentoring at the Self Organized Learning Environment today along with their local quantitative reasoning/systems thinking mentors. She video chats with one participant letting her know that she will be at the SOLE, and is hoping to get a ride to her house (or dorm) after today’s VAW presentation. That done, Piper checks with her parents (or dorm parents) and decides to ride her bike to a mesh station stop. She then rides the mesh van into town and catches up on posts in her Reader and replies to myriad comments and responses in her network on the way. At the Meet-up location (a wide open space that reminds Piper of a open market of some kind), she settles in with the other young people in study, discussion and deliberation. Today she takes out her tablet and reads a work in global literature that was suggested by a mentor she has in South Asia. She will take notes on the work over the next hour and send those notes via blog post to the mentor. The mentor, other participants and Piper are involved in a global project combining cultural understandings of place into a wiki resource for future learners to use. She sees connections everywhere in her learning and after being inspired by an experience in India she’s just read about (or had?), Piper adds content for today’s VFW presentation to the shared presentation document for group review. Piper takes a run with others from the meet-up, and then decides to review the quantitative reasoning skills that figure into the edible re-vegetation project from Scotland being discussed at the SOLE today. Piper will get another chance to apply her growing knowledge and understanding with today’s SOLE because the re- vegetation work they are doing locally is based on the Scottish project being discussed. After the SOLE, and successful VAW presentation the group meets at a Mesh group members house. The group has grown from five to seven now as the crew who filmed the presentation and ethnographic methods over the last months are with them to discuss editing and working on the script for the groups public exhibition of findings. Piper and her group know that the scientists, mentors, politicians, local and global participants, and their peers will attend the exhibition. This step in their project leads to funding and further action on their multi-year food security project. After Dinner with the host family, rides home for most, and ePortfolio updates. The rest of the week will be full of networked, experiential, and mobile learning directly applied to creating solutions in an interdependent world. Source: Steele-Maley, T. (2011) P I P E R H A H N ’ S N E T W O R K E D L E A R N I N G E C O L O G Y
13. GEMS WORLD ACADEMY - CHICAGO
14. GEMS World Academy-Chicago employs four pioneering innovation strands to support and inspire our students, as they become global citizens. Focus is on creating “translocal understanding” to explicitly develop the key dispositions in students necessary to learn, live and work in extended partnership with others across the world. Learner as Researcher Field Studies Based Mobile Learning Connected Learning School as a Mesh Network
18. NATIONS ACADEMY - DUBAI
19. Nations Academy Design: Essentials • Classrooms not labs • Expectations of a contemporary teacher • Professional Learning (72 Hours-August, 1 Week November, online) • Interwoven in all subjects • new forms of assessment • Learner • Society • Knowledge • Design Based • Personalized Professional Learning • University Partners (Carnegie Mellon University) Teacher as Integrator Interdisciplinary Relevance “Perspectives” Research
20. Design: Our Essentials • Classrooms not labs • Expectations of a contemporary teacher • Professional Learning • Interwoven in all subjects • new forms of assessment • Learner • Society • Knowledge • Design Based • Personalized Professional Learning • University Partners Teacher as Integrator Interdisciplinary Relevance “Perspectives” Research
21. Design: Our Essentials • Classrooms not labs • Expectations of a contemporary teacher • Professional Learning • Interwoven in all subjects • new forms of assessment • Learner • Society • Knowledge • Design Based • Personalized Professional Learning • University Partners Teacher as Integrator Interdisciplinary Relevance “Perspectives” Research
22. • Body Level One • Body Level Two • Body Level Three • Body Level Four • Body Level Five 22
24. STANFORD 2025 AND THE MASTERY CONSORTIUM
27. 07 D I S C U S S P O S S I B I L I T I E S | D E S I G N A N D P R O T O T Y P I N G
28. Theorize: New Educational Ecologies Read into trends Mind your dragons Create Design Fiction
29. The social, cultural and political basis of those ideologies need to be exposed, interpreted and explored. Through Design Fiction the ideological drive of schools is laid bare. Deconstructing the economic and political underpinning of of school design is an essential skill for school leaders to develop. All design for schools is ideological As with any practice where contingency is mapped and explored, future ‘scenarios’ lay a framework for possibility…. Fiction can be a testing ground for reality Things to Remember Adapted from: Sterling, B. (2013, July 21). Design Fiction: Design Teaching with Design Fiction. Retrieved July 13, 2015, from http://www.wired.com/2013/07/design-fiction-design-teaching-with-design-fiction/
30. On Parents and Governments M O S T S T A K E H O L D E R S D O N ’ T R E A L L Y K N O W W H A T S P O S S I B L E I N E D U C A T I O N I N S T E A D , N E W M E A N I N G A N D D I R E C T I O N F O R E D U C A T I O N M U S T C O M E F R O M Y O U R V I S I O N A N D Y O U R S C H O O L S A C T I O N S
31. • Body Level One • Body Level Two • Body Level Three • Body Level Four • Body Level Five 31 Learner Perspective Design and practice are of vital importance for learning from the personal and educational needs and interests of the learners themselves. Societal Perspective Design and practice focused on problems and issues that seem relevant for inclusion from the perspective of societal trends and needs. Knowledge Perspective Design and practice cultivate academic and cultural heritage that seems essential for learning and future development. Perspectives to Guide Speculative Design in Education
32. Prototyping a future of education Mini-Workshop Storytelling: Answer the following question as a group. What are the barriers that make creating new educational environments difficult. (5min) What have been the best and worst experiences you’ve had creating new initiatives/educational environments/schools? (10 min) Critique: Answer the following question as a group. Vision: Write a design fiction Write/draw/map a narrative script for the most ideal educational environment (space, pedagogy, credentialing….) you could imagine for students — what does your exaggerated picture of future possibilities look like? (20 min) Report out, discussion, networking
33. “As educators we need to be more like gardeners than engineers” -Sir Ken Robinson (2015) in Most Likely to Succeed A reminder….
34. –Nassim Taleb “Milk uncertainty and try to exploit disorder”
35. #DIGEDME @steelemaley W H E N Y O U S E E A B L A C K S Q U A L L , S A I L T O W A R D S I T — F O R T H A T S W H E R E T H E W I N D I S - M E G L E S
36. Suggested Resources Thomas Steele-Maley CTIO GEMS Education @steelemaley Resources http://steelemaley.net/2014/05/26/design-fiction-and-prototyping-disruption/ Super flux (http://www.superflux.in/): “is a collaborative design practice working at the intersection of emerging technologies and everyday life to design for a world in flux.” The Near Future Laboratory (http://nearfuturelaboratory.com/): who’s “goal is to understand how imaginations and hypothesis become materialized to swerve the present into new, more habitable near future worlds.” Arup Foresight Group (http://www.driversofchange.com/about/): who “research and raise awareness about the major challenges affecting the built environment and their implications. We also run events to help clients think more creatively about the long term future, and to manage risk and uncertainty more effectively.” Design Interaction Program at RCA (http://design-interactions.rca.ac.uk/): who “are interested in the social, cultural and ethical consequences of emerging technologies, and this means asking probing questions through design. To this end, we encourage students to consider the implications, as well as the applications, of new technologies, and thus to seek fresh approaches to interaction design – approaches that are meaningful and relevant today. In short, we see this field of design as a fertile way of thinking about the life around us, within us, and in the future beyond us”.