Blog Has Moved to www.GrantLichtman.com

REMINDER: If you are following The Learning Pond, I have moved my blog to my new website, www.GrantLichtman.com.  Please add my blog there to your blog reader.  Thanks!

LAST POSTS ON THE LEARNING POND; MOVING TO WWW.GRANTLICHTMAN.COM

F YOU HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING “THE LEARNING POND”, PLEASE SHIFT YOUR FOLLOW TO WWW.GRANTLICHTMAN.COM.  THIS IS THE FINAL POST ON THIS SITE.

Given the rapid growth in my work with schools, I need a more robust website where I can share my blog, new book, new articles, resources, and workshop events. SO THIS IS THE LAST POST ON THIS SITE.

MY NEW SITE IS NOW ACTIVE: WWW.GRANTLICHTMAN.COM

PLEASE GO AND BOOKMARK THE  NEW SITE

YOU CAN FOLLOW MY BLOG AND ACCESS ALL OF THE ARCHIVED BLOGS ON THE NEW SITE. EITHER COPY THE URL INTO YOUR BLOG READER, OR LOOK DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE NEW SITE AND FIND THE “SUBSCRIBE” BUTTON TO GET AN EMAIL UPDATE WHEN NEW BLOGS ARE POSTED.

In addition to my blog, on the new site you will find:

Link for free download of the Introduction to my new book, #EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education

Resources: Links to my books, articles, media events, slide decks, and more.

Events: Clients lists, event tracking, and feedback

THANKS FOR FOLLOWING, AND SEE YOU AT GRANTLICHTMAN.COM

 

THE LEARNING POND HAS MOVED TO www.GRANTLICHTMAN.COM

THE LEARNING POND HAS MOVED!! AFTER TWO YEARS, THIS IS THE FINAL POST ON THIS SITE.

Given the rapid growth in my work with schools, I need a more robust website where I can share my blog, new book, new articles, resources, and workshop events. SO THIS IS THE LAST POST ON THIS SITE.

MY NEW SITE IS NOW ACTIVE: WWW.GRANTLICHTMAN.COM

PLEASE GO AND BOOKMARK THE  NEW SITE

YOU CAN FOLLOW MY BLOG AND ACCESS ALL OF THE ARCHIVED BLOGS ON THE NEW SITE. EITHER COPY THE URL INTO YOUR BLOG READER, OR LOOK DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE NEW SITE AND FIND THE “SUBSCRIBE” BUTTON TO GET AN EMAIL UPDATE WHEN NEW BLOGS ARE POSTED.

In addition to my blog, on the new site you will find:

Link for free download of the Introduction to my new book, #EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education

Resources: Links to my books, articles, media events, slide decks, and more.

Events: Clients lists, event tracking, and feedback

THANKS FOR FOLLOWING, AND SEE YOU AT GRANTLICHTMAN.COM

 

Students Don’t Have to Ace SAT’s to Get Into Great Colleges

One of the big obstacles to school innovation I have found is the “dam” of college admissions and college entrance exams that focus on lower-order knowledge acquisition and regurgitation. Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that if a good school de-emphasizes AP’s and college test prep and emphasizes deep, rigorous, student-centered, project-focused learning, their students will be attractive to the most competitive colleges and universities.  But where are the data? How do we answer parents who say “We know the processes of the past have worked to get our kids admitted to good colleges, so why do you want to mess with it?”

There is no one answer. We can cite college presidents and VP of Admissions who tell us that they want to admit creative, deep-thinking young people, but those same colleges still rely heavily on entrance exams, inflated grade records, and AP’s, right?

Twitter colleague Shelley Krause shared this compilation of actual SAT scores in the 25th-75th percentile range at many well-known and selective colleges and universities. Many of their students  are admitted with SAT’s in the 1000-1100 range (1800 scale); this are not low, but neither are they out of reach.

Will this report answer the concerns of parents? Not by itself.  But there is plenty of evidence, including Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath about which I wrote last spring, that there is a broad tier of US colleges and universities that are highly appropriate for, and available to, a range of high school graduates, not just the big name “most selective” schools. We are educators; we are in the business of educating people. We can rail against the college admissions “dam”, and blame “them” for making us focus on objective testing and narrow courses.  Or we can stand up, as many schools already have, and teach our communities that over-concern about college entrance tests and a focus on a small group of college choices is unhealthy for our students and their futures.

NEW WEBSITE: FIRST NOTICE

I am in the final stages of launching a new web and blog site. It will go live in a week or so. This blog site, The Learning Pond, will become inactive as I move all of my writing and resources to the new site.  All of the archived blogs are moving as well, so nothing is lost. Thanks for being a loyal follower and when the transition is made, please add the new site to your blog reader.  

DEEP DT Flash Lab: A One-Hour Dive Into the Pool #Fuse14

Am writing this blog post is in real time.  In the 101 Track of #fuse14, the coaches are leading what they call a “flash lab” a quick introduction experience that compresses the DT process into very short segments.  Attendees have partnered with people they never met before five minutes ago.  The group was handed the challenge “12 grade graduation”. Protocols/steps include: (and am writing this in real time so please forgive!) It looks like this is going to blow through in only about one hour; a flash experience but one that will give participants the faith that they can do this…and will go deeper into the steps this afternoon. How long does this process usually take at our schools? Days? Months? Years? This is part of the power of DT-type events; we can get to “yes” vastly more quickly, and with more authentic buy-in, than most of us ever thought possible. We just need to have a mindset open to a different process.

• Word Web: jot down words that come to mind.
• Rose, Thorn, Bud: what are bright spots, pain points, and possibilities inherent in the challenge?
• Interview: partners interviewing each other to gain empathy with another end user. Working on skills of questioning and real listening. How often do we let an opportunity to learn pass us by because we are not REALL listening to someone else?
• Second Round Interview: dive more deeply into something that important that surfaced in the initial brief interview. Explore those key issues that you heard.
• Empathy: Define/Distill: Narrow, filter, bring it down to bare bones. Who did you meet? What blew your mind? What if? Not designing solutions, but better defining the issues that stood out during the interviews. Got very quiet in here as each person is unpacking and synthesizing their interview knowledge.
• How Might We: turning a defined problem into a set of questions that you can brainstorm. (See how far into the process solutions/answer occur?!)
• Good brainstorming: defer judgement; go for volume; be visual; build on ideas of others; stay on the topic; encourage wild ideas.
• Four Corners: way to gather feedback. Things I like; things I don’t understand; things that could be improved; new ideas to consider. Not trying to convince a partner that we are right; gathering feedback on potential solutions.
• Write or sketch solution/idea; Version 2.0 now with feedback.
• Tell the story; 60 seconds. Who did I meet? What moved you? What was the need? What is the solution? What is the impact?

See how much valuable KNOWLEDGE has been gathered in this process that we would not have had if we had started off by brainstorming solutions right away, which is the traditional way to solve a problem?  And it took just an hour!

Whew. Lots there. The DEEP Playbook that will be available after the conference has this spelled out much better than I did here!