“Inspire Students with STEM Career Pathways: A Step-by-step Approach”

Glass walls let the light in everywhere. What caught my eye was a series of small structures made of straws and tiny plastic connectors sitting on long white counters amid sleek computers monitors. Play, I thought…people here know how to play.

I had just walked into the M.I.T. Media [...]]]>

Flickr Photo by Sam Jacoby

Glass walls let the light in everywhere. What caught my eye was a series of small structures made of straws and tiny plastic connectors sitting on long white counters amid sleek computers monitors. Play, I thought…people here know how to play.

I had just walked into the M.I.T. Media Lab in Boston, where I could palpate disruptive technology, excitement and an exquisite open-endedness that was firing up my neural network. I glanced at the group of four teachers my America Achieves Teacher Fellowship had sent there and we all had the look of having stumbled into a candy factory. The 163,000 square feet around me had been created to be a literal laboratory fostering an anti-disciplinary culture that focuses on improving the human experience. Art, science, technology, and design converged in a place where Leonardo Da Vinci would feel at home in a dream.

For almost 30 years, the Media Lab has brought together inventors, artists and researchers to create for the future. The place is bursting with nanotechnology, data-visualizations, robots that express emotions, and work spaces where students and researchers can make gadgets they dream up at any time of the day or night.

Media Lab Director, Joi Ito, a major global thinker and advocate for the transformational power of technology, speaks of nine principles that will help us work in a future world of disruptive technologies. These principles emphasize resilience over strength, pull over push, risk over safety, systems over objects, compasses over maps, practice over theory, disobedience over compliance, emergence over authority, and learning over education.

What’s a teacher to do with all of this? Many teachers tend to like order, planning, and outcomes, but the virtual genie is already out of the bottle with a force that is shattering all known academic order like an anti-disciplinarian tsunami. Perceptive teachers know that all known territory is receding; yet the public demands that teachers become increasingly “effective” and accountable even as they are gripping onto the shards of life rafts from the last century and desperately trying to learn the habits of mind and skill sets needed for the future.

The truth, as I see it, is that we are all learning new navigation skills as we ride the waves together. Teachers, students and the people who organize and support schools will need to rely on a spirit of playfulness, courage, teamwork, insatiable curiosity, and new patterns of classroom flow that will be reflected in the way we organize time, space, and human efforts. We’ll need to ensure that students have the time they need to play while working on projects of their choosing, but still be supported by teachers, resources, and the sequential skills that school provides. We don’t have to sacrifice the nuts and bolts of learning; we just have to make sure that we allow our students to use them to create.

Early the next morning, the spirit of innovation I had witnessed at M.I.T. Media Lab found a home in my New Jersey classroom. My elementary school students and I brainstormed robots to become friends, help with tasks, protect them, or tell amazing stories. We talked about the limits and potential of artificial intelligence and what the world might look like when they grew up. As I watched my students playfully collaborate to design their perfect cyber-friend, I knew that the future was right here.

Maryann Woods-Murphy is the Gifted and Talented Specialist for Nutley Public Schools with thirty-five years of teaching experience. She is the New Jersey Teacher of the Year 2010, a Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow 2011, and has served as an America Achieves Fellow since 2012.

I originally wrote the book in 2008, which is about the time my oldest child was old enough [...]]]> I wrote Engineers Decide because I want every young person to be able to envision himself or herself doing engineering. I know that most will not become engineers, but too many children never even see the possibility.

I originally wrote the book in 2008, which is about the time my oldest child was old enough to have picture books read to him. Immediately, I noticed a large disparity between the number of books that are available about people that work in a limited few professions such as firefighters, artists, and athletes, and those that were about more prevalent professions. At that time, I found no children’s books related to engineering, one of the world’s most popular professions. Since that time, thankfully, a few self-published titles have emerged, such as Engineering the ABC’s written by my friend Patty O’Brien Novak.

So, I set out and made dozens of notes about things that engineers do. I went on to note ideas that put those things into some context that I thought children could understand and relate to. For example, a thought about engineers that work on machines became a page about engineers that work on machines that make something that is fun and familiar to all children such as crayons.

Upon completing the original manuscript, I put a package together and sent a proposal to dozens of publishers. I received but one response to say that the idea had merit, but the book just wasn’t right for their company. Now that the book was nowhere other than in a few dozen publisher’s slush piles, I was more than discouraged. But, in January 2012 things started to look positive again when I learned of Apple’s release of free iBooks Author software. Since I have some background in design and page layout software, I figured I might be able to pull off self-publishing the title without having to put out over ten-thousand dollars to fund a print run. I was also very intrigued by the fact that the iBooks format offered interactive multimedia features.

I went ahead and contacted the artist that I had hired to do some drawings for my first publishing attempt, Diana Chelaru. Diana made the drawings into beautifully colored panels while I searched online stock photo and video databases for the multimedia elements. With a few hundred hours invested into the endeavor, my dream became reality when the iBook was released in the iBookstore on July 17, 2013.

Here is the original description:
Awaken the young engineer within your student or child! Ideal for ages five through ten, Engineers Decide explains that engineering isn’t about “things” but about individuals, inspired to bring forth the discoveries that will change our world. By instilling the joy of designing the future – whether as part of a team or working solo – Engineers Decide ignites children’s curiosity to the wonders of applying their imagination to meet fresh challenges. Engineers deciding upon solutions for product development, as well as all sorts of inventions familiar to children, are described simply and depicted with colorful artwork. And photos show children actively participating in the adventure of discovering next-generation technology. Filled with interactive graphics and videos, Engineers Decide stirs tomorrow’s engineers to realize their potential by exploring this exciting field.

Thus far, Engineers Decide is only available as an iBook for the iPad. Please use this link to download from the iBookstore.

If you represent a group of educators or an engineering professional society, I would be happy to work with you on a free promotional offer for your school or group. Please feel free to contact me at dave@teachingenuity.com with regard to that or any feedback you may have about the book.

Janosz: What and how do we need to teach our young people to best prepare them for the future?

Worzel: Well, I can tell [...]]]> Last week, I posed a question to author and leading futurist Richard Worzel in a Facebook Q&A session sponsored by Canada’s The Mark News.  Below is the excerpt from the conversation.

Janosz: What and how do we need to teach our young people to best prepare them for the future?

Worzel: Well, I can tell you what they don’t need: they don’t need to be force-fed facts to memorize and regurgitate on a test, only to have them forgotten quickly thereafter. Yet this is what our education system specializes in today, even though kids can do it faster and more effectively online. Yet, there are things they need to know so they can research and assemble knowledge systematically, and that’s what we need to point towards.

Yet, what parents often mean when they ask this question is “What path can I set my child on that will guarantee their employment, financial security, and welfare until they retire?” The answer to this question is: there ain’t no such animal. But your question is still worthwhile, and is not being asked very seriously by our education system, specifically by the various ministries and departments of education.

Today’s education system should teach two things, both difficult: it should teach mental skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, research, and the ability to apprehend new areas of knowledge quickly; and secondly, it needs to teach context or understanding, also known as wisdom. This is hard.

How would I go about it? I’ve discussed that at great length in various columns I’ve written over the past 15 years in “Teach” magazine. I was going to provide a link to a relevant column, but something has just fowled up my website server. If you come back a little later, hopefully I’ll be able to point you to such an article. Sorry about that.

In summary, though, what learners need is to have their interest piqued, and their talents, interests and skills identified, and then put on a path to pursue those interests AS A MEANS OF educating them in the broader fields of knowledge. If we can capture a learner’s interest, then we won’t have to force them to go to school, they’ll drag us behind them because they will be so eager to learn. As it is, we force them through 12-13 years of servitude and boredom, killing much of their native curiosity.

Worzel continues: OK, my website server is back up, so here are some links:

http://www.futuresearch.com/futureblog/2010/09/14/follow-the-red-brick-road/

http://www.futuresearch.com/futureblog/2010/09/01/why-education-must-change/

Janosz: To The Ingenuity Series: Thank you for the opportunity to ask the question. To Mr. Worzel: Thank you for the thoughtful response!

Worzel: First, go ahead and repost the comments on your blog, and thanks for the interest.

FIRST Let me clearly state that I am a strong [...]]]> The CNN special report “Don’t Fail Me: Education In America” originally aired on CNN on May 15, 2011.  The report chronicled three students and teams engaged in the FIRST Robotics Competition during the 2010-11 school year.  Below are some of my thoughts on the documentary.

FIRST
Let me clearly state that I am a strong supporter of FIRST programs. I have coached a FIRST Tech Challenge team and since the program was first rolled out in New Jersey several years ago, I actively partnered and promoted FIRST programs by way of my involvement in my state professional association, the NJTEA. FIRST students work hard on developing and applying their ingenuity in a meaningful context.  It might sound as if I am critical of the program in some of my remarks, but make no mistake that FIRST is at the very least one of the programs on the right track. Yet, as one analyzes the teams pictured as participants in the FIRST Robotics Program in Don’t Fail Me, several interesting things come to light.

FIRST teams in schools are comprised of about twenty students.  FIRST reports that in 2011, they are reaching 66,875 students with their high school programs.  Let’s dig a little deeper into that number because it sounds like a lot. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are about 26 million secondary school students in the United States. So, FIRST, a program which most consider to be wildly successful, is now reaching only about 0.25% of American high school students.  Even if there was a FIRST robotics team in every one of America’s 41,000+ secondary schools, with only twenty students on each team, this program would be for only about 3% of American high school students.

The other thing that might strike you is the makeup of the FIRST teams themselves.  In photos of teams of just over twenty students, I counted only three and four girls on each of the teams pictured.  Let’s put that against some of the numbers mentioned previously. Assuming that the teams pictured are indicative of female participation in FIRST programs, and based on my research and involvement with this issue in the state of New Jersey I have no reason to think this is not at least in the ballpark, this means that FIRST programs are reaching only 0.08% of all female high school students in the United States!

INSANITY

I was surprised and somewhat pleased to see a former prominent public official in former Governor of Tennessee Phil Bredesen speak so frankly to a wide public audience about the insanity of the accountability system we employ in statewide testing.  I conclude from his comments and CNN’s analysis that any data presented by any state education institution can be considered invalid.

I also believe that this is closely linked to another thing I noticed in Don’t Fail Me. Pretty much any time you saw anyone teaching mathematics, it was as we all remember it; it was an overhead projector with the teacher writing on it; it was students doing math problems on the board in front of the class.  The relationship I would point out is this: The insanity of the testing and accountability system in place in educational institutions is perpetuating us in the same stale, demonstrably ineffective instructional practices that have lead us to where we find ourselves today. Ask any teacher in a tested subject and they will tell you clearly that they know that how they are teaching does not hold up in what research shows as effective. They basically will tell you that they do know better, but that they teach this way because of the test for which they are preparing students.

After all, Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We are clearly epitomizing his definition in the tested “core academic” subjects and this is done at the expense of programs that can deliver authentic learning experience such as those that FIRST and other technology and engineering programs in schools provide.

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I am thankful to CNN and Soledad O’Brien for taking up the effort to try to raise awareness about some of the issues that they brought to light in Don’t Fail Me. But, call it cautiously thankful since I know that so much more needs to be done. If we want to do more, we don’t need another robotics competition. We need a strong, rigorous, scalable program institutionalized in American schools that can reach every student, not just a few.  My colleagues and I are working on a plan to do just that and I look forward to sharing our ideas in the near future.