One of the very real joys of InnovaScapes Insitiute is the breadth of topics we are privileged to consider. You've probably gotten a taste of that in previous posts -- topics from COPD causes to CAD designs to semi-logarithmic math for business students, and then to Milken Foundation competition versus the Silicon Valley Forum for entrepreneurs, and the risk to American middle class jobs from the turmoil and tumult in our tech-crazy world.
One of the very real constraints of the Institute is the eagerness with which I tend to seize each of them, diluting the focus and risking superficiality in the process. (Or, maybe, as my mother would counsel, that is the story of my life -- the perennial dilettante). But, why not savor the exciting topics out there?
I awode early this morning, infused with the enthusiasm of the gathering last evening for a small group around ALearn, a local non-profit "math intervention group" here in the 'Valley' (this almost always means "Silicon Valley" in my parlance, except when it doesn't). ALearn was founded by Kathryn Hanson, a driven woman who is fearless, tireless, and focused on one problem -- helping middle-school kids overcome their fears and issues with first-year algebra. Kathryn seems born to this mission, with early training as a teacher, and a passionate belief in math and science as the key enabler for careers. She was a marketing consultant for HP in the heady days leading up to HP LaserJet release (and she privately shared with me that our book, The HP Phenomenon, got some of those historic times slightly askew); I did not know her from her HP days, but we of course knew lots of folk in common.
Her Board chair is Diane Frankle, a human dynamo big in Silicon Valley legalese. Diane and I worked together on the Board of a company, Pretzel Logic, doing enterprise software in 1997-2000; after the dot.com meltdown, its founders "pivoted" (as they say now in Venture Capital circles) into Persistent Software, founded and headed by Anand Deshpande in India (who today is on the local Computer History Museum Board). It's fun to get re-acquainted with Diane around an entirely different topic.
I wrote about ALearn a bit on February 13, in a post called "Minority Math Skills". If you don't recall it, it is (relatively) easy to retrieve it in this blog. What I didn't include there was some of the success stories "in the small". Last night we were offered brief speeches and testimony from five students. One described herself as a "C+" student whose major goal was not to get "F's" until she met ALearn's summer math class. Now, she says, her goal is to go to UC Berkeley or maybe NYU -- this from a ninth grader whose parents never attended college, who certainly weren't urging her to consider it.
Another student said he took the summer program because he "didn't have a job so he had nothing to do that summer". He now is on fire, because he is qualified for a college track and he has been given a "reality dose" by his mentor, a college student who was in the program six years ago.
And John Porter, superintendent of the Franklin-McKinley School District, told the ninety guests that in his view the program was having as much impact on the teachers as on the students. He sees the teachers getting excited, both for the success of the kids but also for their own learning. Porter, on the ALearn Board, is highly qualified to talk to these topics. He founded the acclaimed Saturday Science Academy program with JPL and NASA, teaching 4th through 8th graders science across America. He is articulate, passionate, and eminently rational. See his bio at http://fmsd.org/District/Department/57-Superintendent. And enthuse that a man of this quality, accomplishment, and perspective will donate significant time to ALearn!
Porter's approach fit right into the philosophy being espoused in the 2011 book by John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas, "A New Culture of Learning", that was pressed in my hand by the new Provost at Cogswell College, Deb Snyder. She is seeking to have Douglas Thomas come to Cogswell for that all-important inspirational talk (we talked about how to persuade him to quote a reduced speaking fee).
I couldn't put the book down in the late evening. JSB (John Seely Brown's moniker to friends) is on the U C Santa Barbara Center for Information Technology in Society advisory board with me; he is the long-time director of XeroxPARC's fabled research lab before retiring and joining the USC Annanberg Center. He and Thomas argue that playful games are the secret to most learning in an unstructured world going forward. The book is larded with example after example.
I thought overnight about some of the attendees. Joel Orr and his wife Dalia -- Joel is a long-time CAD developer, now an accomplished author/speaker. Dalia emigrated as an adult, learning English, new customs, a new culture. They've raised, hummn, fourteen questing grand-children. And Joel is tireless too, about STEM education. Joel was a co-founder and still prominent leader for COFES, the Congress Of the Future of Engineering Software, reported on in three posts in April in this blog.
And so is Cogswell College, a great litle digital media school whose CEO Janis Paulson along with Deb Snyder attended. Cogswell just opened a summer high-school program -- 19 eager kids (they'd hoped for five) signed up, and now a Stockton principal wants to send a busload daily for two weeks! I haven't yet blogged much about Cogswell, but the stories are magnificent, and I had a little something to do with them, so it would be a prideful moment to describe some of their many achievements. Suffice here to say that they serve a very unique student body -- long on kids with modest grades but high passion for artistic bent coupled with math -- with a fully accredited four-year program and a job placement record that is astounding in the digital media world.
Media X at Stanford (Martha Russell, its director was in attendance) had that same perspective, as does Stanford's D'School. Martha pioneered some fabulous social-media visual presentations a couple of years ago, that have been sought by DoD and NSF as examples of a new way of considered math and science interpretive skills. The Media X founder, Byron Reeves, extolled 'gamification' for students and business alike, in his great book, Total Engagement.
This kind of learning is oft labled "Project-based learning". It is the cornerstone of the Thomas and Brown book, and their myriad examples. It was what I saw with a step-son years ago who was failing high school math, but who could recompute the batting averages in his head for the entire San Francisco Giants baseball team on the drive home from the game.
Barbara Adey, one of Cisco's key execs (and a key marketer of Cisco's pioneering Telepresence system), is on ALearn's board, as is Webb McKinney, the HP VP who engineered the successful merger of Compaq with HP a decade ago. They're with ALearn because they see daily what it means for students to grasp these arcane skills -- their lives open up instead of close down.
What if these dedicated supporters, observers and commentators are right? What if we are in fact building the best possible education system in the world, for the world of the 21st century, right in front of our faces, while decrying that "schools are broken". What's broken is the model of a stable, learnable, set of curricula that will sustain us for a lifetime, and the job of the teacher is to open the cranium of kids and pour facts in until full. The new model is collaborative, internet-based, experiential, engaging, compelling even, and playful -- ask a kid about the Harry Potter series, and they know every costume, event, backdrop, twist. How? Why" ALearn's dedicated interns, leaders and board gave that great testimony last night.
I didn't mention Nan Geschke and her husband Chuck, which would be a singular omission. Nan is a neighbor to Kathryn, and as such was pressed into helping (as she modestly put it). She opened her beautiful garden for the event, and the weather co-operated, although early on it was a bit blustery. I was almost agog at the trees and the flowers -- a grand Japanese maple framed four large pots of "The Fairy" rose that were billowing their luscious pink blooms at the landing as we descended the steps to the hidden grotto below, along a bridge and path outlined with coral pink impatiens, tended "just so".
Nan has been a huge supporter not only of ALearn, but of the Los Altos Museum, where she co-ordinated part of the 2007 exhibit around Lucile and Dave Packard's life. Her long-time friend Bob Grimm was in attendance too; Bob was a strong leader for San Jose's Tech Museum for many years -- he's working on more projects for both groups right now, at 84+ years old, an indefatigable ex-mayor of Los Altos.
In this early morning rush of enthusiasm, I'm inclined to start a new blog on 21st century learning models -- separate it from the InnovaScapes Institute main thread a bit. In a more sober moment, my guilt complex muses: maybe categorizing all these enthusiasms will somehow make my eclectic choices appear more focused so Mom, if she were still here to cajole, could be pleased.
And then I think of my grandmother Helen, a third-grade educated adopted waif who never lost her zest for learning, and who imparted to me HER love of learning (in my own formative third-grade year when I lived with her). When she was a wizened eighty-nine years old and I had just become HP's Corporate Engineering Director, she quizzed (actually accosted) me about HP-invented gallium-arsenide semiconductors that made possible satellite dish communications for her South Dakota farmer friends and family. She was into "internet" even before Al Gore.
ALearn has a website. Go see it. And muse about John Porter's statement to us that of 120 students the first year for ALearn, all but four passed college entrance math tests at tenth grade, and 88% enrolled in college. This from a Latino demographic that has 14% college-educated parents, and historically 23% success with Algebra 1, let alone any higher math.
JSB's book is available. Get it. But be forewarned, not everyone agrees. There are several negative reviews (I always like to read the 1-star and 2-star reviews to get some balance). Not everyone is a believer -- Truth, bottled, sometimes doesn't quench thirst. Education is in the eye of the beholder.
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