Disruptive Innovation in Schools From Inside Out – Not Outside In

I’ve been thinking about disruptive innovation in schools. Disruptive innovation has evolved into a buzz phrase with superficial interpretations that can confuse understanding. First, its history. In 1997, Clayton Christensen coined the term to describe the concept’s application in the business sector and defined it in The Innovator’s Dilemma.

“Disruptive Innovation: The theory of disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service transforms an existing market by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability. – See more at: http://www.christenseninstitute.org/key-concepts/#sthash.fVqlOlnb.dpuf” (Christensen Institute)

Here’s a few examples. The personal computer replaces mainframes. The cell phone replaces land lines. Online sellers replace department stores. And, a question.

Will maker work replace factory school work?

Math class

In Disrupting Class, Christensen originally hypothesized the rise of online learning as being the big outside disruptor inside K-16 education, believing the exponential increase in virtual coursework would lead to replacement of a significant percentage of face-to-face classes over the next decade. Today, Christensen identifies blended learning models – a combination of virtual with bricks and mortar opportunities – as a key disruptive innovation occurring in schools.

However, I believe there’s more astir within the nature of disruptive innovation in education than simply the blending of technologies and the Internet with school and home to “personalize learning.” I see signs of a different form of disruptive innovation in schools, one grounded not in online coursework but rather in young people working together face-to-face as they search, connect, communicate and make to learn. My perspective is informed by teens who often share their value for the social nature of school communities as they learn with each other inside and outside school walls. I also hear it in their voices as they engage in the creativity processes inherent in making to learn and learning to make. How is this perspective being translated into schools?

The Learning Commons as Disruptive Innovation

Recent dynamic changes in how some libraries are used has shifted them to what now is labeled as the concept of the learning commons.

Music Industry Studio in the library

For example,  high school librarians in the district where I work as well as in some other districts across the country are providing students with opportunities to do much more than sit silently, research or read virtually or otherwise. Progressive librarians are turning space into areas where students can search, connect, communicate and make throughout the school day and before and after school. A disruptive innovation result? Kids who never stepped into a library unless required to do so now choose to spend hours there.

Librarians who disrupt the concept of library have become hackers alongside students. They encourage slam poets, music makers, videographers, app developers, gamers and design thinkers to share space alongside more traditional readers and researchers. As a result, kids are finding each other and forming social communities for formal and informal learning inside the school’s walls.

ESOL students creating art in the library

What else happens when librarians hack library space? Circulation goes up. Students who never would have visited the library voluntarily do so. Teachers value the library as an active and thriving space for their classes to produce, develop and curate as users, not just consume content. Libraries pick up a “market share” of teachers and students who never before saw themselves as library users by choice.

 

Libraries in this change process have become far more than a source of static, pre-curated materials used by people in permanent “silent” mode.  Instead, these libraries represent an Agora, a marketplace of ideas, creativity, discovery, and interaction. As  libraries become a gathering space in schools, cultural changes reflect students’ value for formal and informal learning opportunities – only some of which may represent Christensen’s blended learning disruption. Instead, it’s the emerging communal nature of the library inside the school that’s disrupting learning – the evolution of shared and open spaces where young people come together as agents of collaborative learning.

“The Agora (/ˈæɡərə/; Ancient Greek: Ἀγορά Agorá) was a central spot in ancient Greek city-states. The literal meaning of the word is “gathering place” or “assembly”. The agora was the center of athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life of the city. The Ancient Agora of Athens was the best-known example.” (Wikipedia)

 Makers Inside Schools Disruptively Innovate

Perkins+Wills interior designer works with 3rd graders on design thinking bedrooms

Beyond libraries, what other ways are schools becoming sources of disruptive innovation? Teachers and librarians who see themselves as creatives, designers, inventors, and even entrepreneurs are building start-up cultures in their classrooms grounded in the “make to learn” movement.

learner as teacher in elementary school

In classes with a maker mindset as Dale Dougherty of Make labels it, teachers and students redefine roles of teachers and learners as interchangeable. Students actively steer  their own learning as they work on projects, researching information they need in their “make to learn and learn to make” work using tools such as YouTube while seeking expertise found in interactive social media sites such as Twitter or Instagram. Students in maker-based learning environments begin to see learning as seamless, collaborative, and extended – not defined by other’s goals for them but by their own drive to learn.

 Freedom to Learn from the Inside Out

Educators who disruptively innovate the use of pedagogy, tools, and curricula through a maker-empowerment focus (Harvard Project Zero, Agency by Design) engage young people differently, reaching students who haven’t seen themselves as successful learners in traditional settings. These students may have silently resisted or even actively sabotaged school learning opportunities, regardless of their capability or background. From the maker-empowerment studies, students who experience passion, challenge and a chance to pursue their own learning interests are less likely to “drop out” emotionally and intellectually or to physically check out of school. Instead, “maker-empowered” learners build knowledge, competency and confidence through the relational support of teachers and peers. They come to see their potential to learn far more in school than educational standards prescribe.

The maker movement as disruptive innovation transcends the “personalized” options touted in blended learning or specialized environments such as charter schools. I’ve discovered a surprising number of makers in all kinds of spaces inside public schools once built to factory model specifications for the use of time, schedules, facilities, and learning resources. I’ve noticed middle schoolers taking apart a bike to figure out the physics of its design principles and observed teens repairing a compressor in a re-purposed audio-visual storeroom and using the library as a resource for finding the science, math, and technical knowledge and skills they need.

These are signals that mainstream education is being disrupted by the spread of maker ed, a simultaneous challenge from inside school walls to both the 20th century factory school  and the 21st century virtual learning model. Maker education is a simple, accessible and affordable way to change the way our young people experience learning – and it’s far more compatible with how humans learn than the dominant teaching wall, desk in rows, bell schedule driven schoolwork of the 20th century.

Isn’t it about time? 

#exponentialchange, #disruptiveinnovation, and …#CE14

Papyrus. Printing press. Microprocessor.

Change can occur in quick bursts that may advance or even retro-grade civilization, but in the moments of our daily lives we often think of change as a slow drift. The pencil I used as a child, as did my mother, and my mother’s mother and perhaps even hers before her was invented in 1564 and has mostly been constructed in the same way ever since. The pencil once was an essential tool in my elementary pencil box, the college bio lab, my own teacher’s desk, and in my admin office. Then the need for a pencil changed for me – and the rest of the world, too.

 The 1:1 pencil device of my schooling was replaced suddenly by my smart phone “pencil”, circa 2007. Now I reach for my phone to record lists, make notes, compose messages, capture images.

My pencil is a relic from a time just past Gutenberg’s era. His printing press fueled 1450’s connectivity, a revolution that emerged when writers’ final drafts turned into books, broadsheets, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines. Writing tools changed. Quill pens, pencils, rubber erasers, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, typewriters, whiteout tape and liquid emerged, all evolving technologies that advanced the capability of writers to record at a faster and faster pace. The printed page opened knowledge to people who otherwise would never have learned to read. It was …

Disruptive Innovation at its best

Just a little over 500 years after Gutenberg, the microprocessor was invented, an innovation as disruptive as the printing press. As a result we now live in a time of exponential post-Gutenberg change, a historical turning point equal to the Renaissance. Humans today search, connect, communicate, and make, linking the world through rapid-fire use of contemporary technologies.

Change does not drift along incrementally in our time.

Not in today’s careers, businesses, hospitals, homes.

And Not in Schools Either

Skyping In Kindergarten

Our kids no longer pull encyclopedias or non-fiction texts off the shelf to do research. They search the globe for accessible expertise, experts, and others with similar learning interests. The thought that paper books have appendices for citations versus hyperlinks in a digital document doesn’t even make sense to them.

They don’t limit their connectivity to peers in their class, grade level, school, or even their local community. Their tools move with them, allowing them to connect anywhere they can catch a wireless signal. They feel isolated in homes, cafes, cars, and streets when those signals are absent. They understand the language of connectivity – mobile, cellular, fiber, satellite up and downlinks, broadband, bandwidth, gigs, virtual, GPS/GIS, portals  – words that didn’t have any context or meaning for me until after my 5th decade had almost passed.

Teens no longer define communication as writing on paper, creating a snail- or e-mail, making a phone call or watching a television show, movie, or listening to a CD. Communication is about instant connectivity with peers, teachers, family everywhere – for them community exists all over the world and print in another language isn’t a barrier thanks to Google’s translator. They aren’t limited by devices that allow them to simply write. They dictate tweets, listen to text messages, “OTT” chat, share images profusely, and download music, books, and other media of interest.

They produce in any format in which they desire to communicate and upload at astonishing rates. They are are part of a human exploration and file sharing network that is changing the world. They are the most connected communicators in the world’s history.

Finally, our kids don’t define learning as limited to what’s on the board, in a lecture, or between the pages of a textbook. As humans have since the beginning of time, they yearn to “make” as a pathway to learning. Kids don’t want to power down their creativity.

They are intrigued with what they can make with older technologies from lathes and sewing machines to contemporary programming languages and music beat production tools. Give a first grader some cardboard and you’ll end up with a robot or a house. Give a middle schooler a 3-D printer and you’ll end up with a prosthetic hand to donate to a handicapped child or a “Dr. Who sonic screwdriver flashlight.” Give a high schooler the time to create and you’ll end up with a choreographed dance or a phone app.  Today’s kids are …

A New Generation of Inventors

Educators long have known from experience and research that learner engagement begins with hands-on, exploratory and experiential learning. Now some educators, parents, business executives, and politicians realize the “more of sameness” built through two decades of mass standardization has resulted in a generation of young people who have had to find their own pathways to active learning outside of school. They may be bored in school but they aren’t bored outside of it. Many of our younger generations spend time in post-Gutenberg “search, connect, communicate, and make” opportunities. While taking tests, listening to lectures, or doing worksheets they think about what they are going to do next. They aren’t waiting until after state tests are completed to go on their own version of field trips, pursue interesting projects, or engage in fierce debates about global issues.

They make learning happen in spite of us. They can because they are connected.

As October’s Connected Educator Month inches toward November, how might we accelerate the exponential change in learning opportunities that Connected Learners need?

How might we push not just beyond our own learning horizons but challenge colleagues who fear relinquishing the power and control inherent in Gutenberg-driven teaching?

How might we do something tomorrow to power up learners in our care? If we do, I believe we will unleash a passion for learning in young people unlike anything we’ve seen in the test prep classrooms of the last two decades.