[RE]LEARN 2020 - The Learning Innovation Festival

Those of us drawn to a learning innovation festival all read and talk about the need for a shift in how we think about education. We agree that it is time to do things differently. We no longer need convincing. We do need, however, lots of good models of real programs, complete with the successes and bruises of implementation, to effectively share what we mean by innovative teaching and learning.

In this session, we will explore one program initiated as a small additional opportunity for some students within a much larger, and largely traditional, high school program. How can those of us working in traditional schools contribute to a movement for greater innovation in schools? Is it possible to wobble even a little the feedback loops which keep traditional schooling so solidly similar to the schools of past generations and the schools in the next city, state, and country?

We'll look at two aspects of the LAS Edge program (see https://www.las.ch/learning/edge), now in its second year (but based on three years of a similar alternative program within the larger program): (1) the underlying educational framework provided by the agile movement, with concrete examples from the program, e.g. pull systems and working in iterative cycles, and (2) dropping traditional assessment and grades in favor of high frequency, low stakes feedback.

Our discussion will also focus on using existing school goals and programs to make small, incremental change in the direction of greater innovation and student agency. While we might all fantasize about radically different models of education, only a few of us have the opportunity to start with a clean slate, and even then one might discover that there is no clean slate to start from. So how do we create and sustain the change that is possible from our positions within the current educational assumptions and structures, and how do we grow that change year to year?