If you haven’t read it – you better.  By "it" I’m referring to the draft report on Multiple Pathways developed by WestEd. created in response to CA Assembly Bill 2648 (Bass) that “ requires the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop, in conjunction with specified stakeholders, a report that explores the feasibility of establishing and expanding additional career multiple pathway programs in California”. My hope is that the energy surrounding this effort marks what will later be viewed (to co-opt Malcolm Gladwell’s term) as a “tipping point” in K-12 educational reform.
 The introduction to Multiple Pathways on the ConnectEd web site begins with the following statement: “California’s high schools are not working for large numbers of young people, with students feeling bored, unchallenged, or unclear about the relevance of school. Multiple pathways make learning exciting and challenging. They connect strong academics with real–world experience in a wide range of fields, such as engineering, arts and media, and biomedical and health sciences—helping students gain an advantage in high school, college, and career".    After reading the draft and having recently completed a research study at a model “Multiple Pathways program (High Tech high, San Diego), I find myself thinking about the tremendous investment that Autodesk has made in promoting the same principles that are essential to Multiple Pathways.  A perfect example is the curriculum from the Autodesk Animation Academy curriculum.  At first glance the images presented above may seem random without any coherent message. A review of the curriculum however reveals that the images embody a core principle of multiple pathways… linking academics to real world experiences through effective use of technology. Through the curriculum a student in science has access to alternative learning strategies for understanding the complexities of the digestive system; digging into the art of forensics, developing an appreciation for the cultural and engineering implications of historical architecture or interacting with models that offer deeper insight into weather patterns.

In my gut I sense that a multiple pathways approach can play a pivotal role in transforming our current, worn out way of envisioning school. In order to succeed however, this pedagogical shift will require the types of creative curricular innovations offered by organizations such as Autodesk and creative leaders and teachers who will embrace student centered approach to learning where collaborations between students and teachers becomes the norm.

 
  Students at High Tech High engage in a math physics project- where the building and testing of their pool table brings to life the word of physics and probability- while also creatng a fun competition. integrating CTE and Core academics offers great potetial for a winning Race to the Top.TIntegratng CTE ansd coire academicsw he goal of Pool Hall Junkies is to hel

Now that January 2010 is upon us, states are scrambling to finalize applications for the federal Race to the Top funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. States are asked to focus on four specific areas: 
  

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

As I read these I can’t help to wonder about the disconnect between these very important goals and the decline of Career Technical Education (CTE) in CA and many states across the nation. (the graph above presents a rather sobering picutre of where CTE has been headng).  Having started my career as what was then called a “Voc-Ed” teacher in the 70’s I am quite convinced that the traditional “stand alone” CTE classes should be relegated to the past...what CTE has to offer is far too important to be isolated from the core academic areas. After spending considerable time conducting research at a Multiple Pathways, project based learning ( PBL) High School (High Tech High, San Diego), I am convinced that the key to addressing all four areas listed above is through the dynamic integration of CTE with core academics. I’ve seen it first hand that when math and science is woven into experiential learning opportunities, students are more engaged- they can see the relevance of theories and what may formally appear as abstract concepts. This in my opinion is how we prepare students to become productive citizens in a global economy.

 Achieving these four critically important goals, means re-thinking how we “do school”. Here’s my two cents: The 20th century model no longer fits our 21st century economy. From my perspective a critical determinant in all of this involves the steps we take to prepare the next generation of teachers. To win the Race to the Top we need teachers who embrace collaboration to create learning environments where head and hand, theory and practice are an integral aspect of every student’s learning experience- not just students taking isolated CTE classes. To win the Race to the Top, we need teachers who understand how to leverage emerging technology to empower students to become creative problem solvers and critical thinkers. To win the race to the top we need to think of “school” as extending far beyond the confines of a physical campus and think in terms of learning environments where the absurdity of learning in 55 minute chunks segregated by the ringing of bells becomes a quaint memory. 

With less than 12 hours left of 2009, I felt compelled to finish the year with a posting to honor a dear friend and design educator who passed away this year. Dr. Nathan Shapira, professor and head of the Industrial Design program at UCLA was foolish enough to recruit me to a teaching position in 1980 right after my graduation from The Rhode Island School of Design. The official UCLA memorial statement follows but what it doesn’t include are references to perhaps one of his greatest accomplishments- his life in the classroom and role in elevating design beyond the acts of styling or production of artifacts. Long before it became fashionable, Dr. Shapira was much more concerned with “Design Thinking” paying much more attention to understanding the needs of people than simply looking at how to develop the next new gadget. Before the terms “Universal” and “Sustainable” Design came of age , Nathan was looking at how desing could play a role in improving the lives of people with disabilities or those living in poverty.  He dedicated his life as an educator toward networking people to people and people to causes.  In retrospect he was a pioneer in the world of community service learning. 

As I ponder Nathan’s passing, I’m reminded of the title of this blog “Classroom Connections” Nathan indeed connected the classroom with a very large world…Work has begun at San Francisco State University Depart of Design and Industry to establish the Nathan Shapira Archive.  It is quite fitting that the director of the archive project is Prof. Ricardo Gomes.  Pictured on the right in the above photo, Ricardo was as much a “son” of Nathans’ as he was a protégé. Those interested in the archive can contact Prof. Gomes, Chair Department of Design and Industry at SFSU.  rgomes@sfsu.edu

The following is drawn from the UCLA School of Design/ Media Arts website:

Nathan H. Shapira, an internationally renowned design scholar, curator and critic who was a UCLA faculty member for more than 40 years, died May 16 2009 at his home in Santa Monica. He was 80 years old.

Professor Shapira was a member of the Department of Design faculty since 1963 in charge of industrial and interior design. He was an authority on design for developing countries, on architecture and design in Los Angeles, and on Italian design throughout the United States and Europe.

He won many national and international design awards, addressed major international design conferences and contributed to leading international design periodicals, including Abitare, Construire, Domus, ID Magazine and Ottagano. His professional practice included graphic design, product design, packaging, architecture, interiors and exhibition designs.

He had a special interest in design for social responsibility and its relationship to industrial design and advanced technologies. His research and writings frequently addressed the theory that technology has widened the gap between rich and poor societies and that design could alleviate this problem. He maintained that future designers must concern themselves with the quality of life, not merely the decorative arts.

In 1987, the city of Trieste, Italy, honored him with the title of "Cavalieri," the Italian equivalent of a knighthood, for his curatorial direction and exhibit of "The Quest for Continuity" exhibit and other contributions to Italian society, culture and design. He also served as a research fellow at the universities of Trento and Bologna in Italy.

Most recently, Professor Shapira served as a consultant to the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles and a guest writer for the international architecture and design bilingual monthly, Ottagono, published in Italy.

  
 
 

It is now a little over two weeks ago, that on a very rainy Friday afternoon my doctorate in education was approved. I signed the last of the official graduation papers and as I began to make my way out of the Graduate Studies building at the University of California, Davis, a bell was rung and a voice from within shouted out- "Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you Dr. Brian Donnelly.  Apparently the bell ringing is a long standing tradition to officially acknowledge the awarding of a doctoral degree.  After many years of hard work I thought this moment would bring a sense of exhilaration- liberation from all of the nights and weekends of taking courses, reading, writing and analyzing data. Alas, it was 7:45 a.m. – there was no sense of exhilaration- and I had little time to waste.  I needed to be back at my middle school Industrial Technology classroom and ready for the 150 plus students I would have the opportunity to work with that day.

 Looking back, I now find my self thinking about an intriguing experience that occurred on the same day that perhaps explains what happened in the morning. Students in my second period class were excited about a new project we just started using Autodesk Inventor software and a 3D printer that has been generously loaned to us by Klein Educational Systems. After completing an Autodesk Design Kids curriculum jewelry project, I had challenged student to develop designs for rings that we could fabricate with the printer. Amidst the classroom chaos that I’ve grown to embrace, kids were running around trying to determine the proper diameter for their rings, how those dimensions related to the inner and outer circumference which in turn determined the size of the flat rectangle that they would create and sketch on prior to using the bend command. Here were some of the same kids who I often heard say they hated math – and they were whipping out the calculators, arguing about whether to use 2 Pi R or Pi R squared or predicting the mass of the finished ring and volume of material required to produce it.  Well I can’t say that my emotions reached the level of exhilaration- but I certainly felt good inside. 

This to me was where the rubber was meeting the road. The doctoral work lead me to investigate countless books and articles extolling the virtues of integrating academics and relevant experiential learning.  Yet, here  I was in a public school that based on traditional standards was considered high achieving. But there are still many students who are struggling, especially in the areas of math and science. Like the vast majority of schools, we deliver academic course content through a system that is still largely driven by an archaic 20th century model of discrete course sessions. I think I felt good for those few moments because I was reminded that my heartfelt belief in the need to dramatically change the way we “do school” was validated by the enthusiasm with which these students’ took to this “math” project. But my course is a stand alone elective- after the bell rings they will still find themselves at some point in their day sitting in a math class for another 55 minutes. 

 Maybe it wasn’t so important that I didn’t feel some thrill at hearing that bell ring pronouncing me “Doctor”.  Maybe the exhilaration comes in sensing that I’m on the right track-- advocating for greater integration between “academics” and experiential learning- where learning isn’t dissected into neat 55 minute packages.  Maybe- hopefully, the thrill will be in discovering how to use this newly minted doctorate to contribute to the groundswell of educational reform efforts where seemingly insignificant activities, like designing a ring are viewed as rich learning opportunities.

 
  
I’ll call her Alyssa.  She is in 8th grade and has this wonderful sense of curiosity and enthusiasm for problem solving.  This is my first time working with the Autodesk VEX Robotics curriculum ; so I was up with Allysa and her classmates – “I’m going to learn along side you”. I had some advantages having worked with Inventor for several years and participating on developing some of the STEM content for the curriculum. But this wonderful group of students seems to be perfectly ok having a teacher admit that they too are a learner. So Alyssa has this idea- how can I assemble theVEX components to create a device that could pick up and “deliver” a bowl of cat food from the floor to the counter. With confidence,(despite uncertainty) she emerged a few days later saying check this out…clunky yes- but did it work- yes.

So why am I excited and intrigued by this. Simply put, I think this is what learning is about, i.e., “making it your own”. This notion of students taking control of their own learning is central to the important theories of constructivism and cognitive development- theories that are often ignored in the quest to standardize learning.  What was Alyssa doing?  She was embracing this constructivist approach that emphasizes using prior knowledge and experience- (she had spent a couple of weeks going through the Autodesk VEX curriculum ) and then taking that knowledge and experience and “applying it to new situations”.

I’m not sure if it was a completely conscious decision, but the structure of the Autodesk VEX curriculum encourages this sort of “Disciplinary Understanding”, that Educational Psychologist Howard Gardner espouses. (Gardner is attributed with the notions of multiple intelligences).  So Allysa , although she might not label it as such, was reaching for deeper understanding as she engaged in “thinking like a designer or engineer”.  
 
The Autodesk VEX curriculum in this sense might be seen as a model that challenges the typical cookie cutter “drill and kill” curriculums that dominate our standards based (can you say “No Child Left Behind” ) curriculum. There is plenty of guidance to get you started, but learners are encouraged to use that experience as the platform to dive into their own ideas.  It doesn’t matter if Alyssa or any of the other students in my class become engineers or designers (Although I bet a few will). What matters is that our classrooms must become places for contextualized problem solving. Places where students use resources, build on prior experiences, collaborate with others, and interact with other cultures.  One curricular “kit” is not going to solve our educational crisis- but the focus on problem solving found in the Autodesk VEX curriculum is definitely on the right track.

 I had a student come to me the other day totally excited about the new computer that he has at home.  He asked “remember when we worked on that program "Inventor" last year- where could I get something like that? When I showed him the Autodesk Education Community site-- well he was more than pleased! Writing this blog I find myself connecting that experience with a report I read the other day from the Macarthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative.  Titled, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, the authors make the case that the emergence of new technologies forces us to re-think the whole notion of learning and learning institutions. They write “Technology, we insist, is not what constitutes the revolutionary Nature of this exciting moment. It is, rather, the potential for shared and interactive learning that Tim Berners-Lee and other pioneers of the Internet built into its structure, its organization, its model of governance and sustainability". It strikes me that this educational community, which I am honored to be a part of, is in fact helping to redefine learning- how it happens, where it happens and how it can be applied. 
So I want to bring to your attention the 2010 Autodesk Design Academy curriculum that is now available for free download.  From the home page click the Learn Tab- go to Curriculum- 2010 Curriculum Resources.  ADA offers an array of project experiences that includes Design Basics, Pre-Architecture, Pre-Engineering, Robotics, Sustainable Design. Grounded by a STEM foundation, the curriculum can help your students make the links between academic content and real life challenges. This I bleieve is representative of what we can thnk of as a new type of shared and Interactive learning!

 As I read the September 10th Cadalyst article titled “Santolupo's High School Students Tackle Real-World Design Challenges”, I was reminded of Professor Howard Gardner’s work in the area of learning theory. In his book Five Minds of the Future, Gardner talks about two types of understanding – “subject matter understanding” and “disciplinary” understanding”.  He argues that schools place far too much emphasis on mastery of subject matter:

 Subject matter can be viewed as the acquisition of what the literature refers to as “procedural knowledge”, i.e. understanding procedures, comprehending facts and information.  Gardner asserts that subject matter knowledge can be too easily lost and forgotten because it is not connected to a larger conceptual framework. In contrast to subject matter understanding, he defines disciplinary understanding as “a distinctive way of thinking about the world and a distinctive way of analyzing”( p. 9). He suggests that a major goal of education should be to support students in developing the abilities and confidence to think like historians, scientists and mathematicians.

 In his High School class in London, Ontario Canada teacher Mike Santolupo is working to help students develop disciplinary thinking- guiding them to “think like designers”. His 11th graders have been asked "to design a concept vehicle that would improve mobility in an urban environment for the physically impaired and accommodate both driver and wheelchair."  Subject matter expertise related to engineering, math and ergonomics and a strong foundation of skill sets with programs such as Inventor and Alias provide the important foundation. But this project takes that subject matter knowledge and goes further by asking students to consider how their work fits into a much larger conceptual framework that includes consideration of the urban environment, smart use of natural resources and accommodating the needs of people with disabilities.

   

   Top : High Tech High  "Holy Cows"          Middle: Thunder Chickens  

    Bottom- Images from the "Cybersonics"- winners of the 2009 Autodesk FIRST Inventor Award

  They entered the competition with team names such as “Thunder Chickens”  “RoboRaiders”, “Einstein’s Daughters” and “Blue Cheese”.  These quirky titles already reveal something about the creativity level among the high school entrants in the 2009 FIRST Robotics competition. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) In speaking about the competition, Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST stated” Our mission is about more than building robots; we are working to inspire and change a culture”. The culture he references is one of innovation, collaboration and community spirit.  I had the wonderful opportunity to see this mission in practice by getting to meet and speak with several members of the “Holy Cows, the FIRST Robotic competition team at high Tech High San Diego, CA.  As an educator, with a keen interest in student engagement, I was extremely impressed by the intelligence and sense of confidence/ maturity expressed by the young men and women at High Tech High. 

    Autodesk has been involved with the FIRST competition for many years.  Among the many 2009 teams that received support from Autodesk were two award recipients.  Team 103, “Cybersonics”, from Pennsylvania were this year’s winners of the Autodesk Inventor award. Team 1716, “Redbird Robotics” from Wisconsin was the recipient’s of the 2009 Autodesk Visualization Award.  By supporting student participants, Autodesk is doing more than facilitating acquisition of technical skills. Through the melding of academics and real world applications, competitions such as FIRST, present opportunities for students to develop the full range of 21st century skills that will be necessary for success in a rapidly changing global economy.  information about FIRST and Autodesk can be found at Autodesk FirstBase.

  

1. KIPP students designing a school mascot bracelet using Inventor 

2. Student catapult design for the 2009 Tech Challenge

3. KIPP student's work on designing a community skate park

    I recently found myself unable to put down Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Outliers, the Story of Success”. Outliers, as Gladwell suggests, are often viewed as those rare individuals who, because of some magical set of conditions are able to achieve enormous success where many others either meet with failure or at best achieve mediocrity. By digging into real life stories- some about our popular success stories and many about seemingly “ordinary” people, the author ultimately makes the argument that while chance and “magical circumstances” do play a role in building success, there are other factors related to persistence and community support that can turn the tide for people, diverting them from a path towards failure to a trajectory of personal and professional success.
     As I turned to page 250, my attention was riveted by what the author had to say about KIPP Academy programs. While I don’t want to give away the story, I did find a great deal of inspiration and hope in this section. Hope, based on the fact that the KIPP programs (along with many emerging innovative educational programs) have demonstrated that despite the challenges students may inherit, schools (leaders, staff and community), when willing to break from tradition and engage students in new ways can have a profound impact on nurturing success.
     When in 2007 Autodesk teamed up with Kipp Summit Academy in San Lorenzo, CA they were helping to create the sorts of conditions that Gladwell identifies as crucial for success. Using Autodesk Inventor software, Kipp staff members have created opportunities for students to become real world problem solvers with many of their efforts aimed at giving back to the community.  The academic knowledge, technical skills and relationships derived from these school-community efforts are pivotal in helping students find their own path to success.

  

So, here’s my confession… I’ve been so wrapped up in my dissertation studies on project based learning that I’ve missed several opportunities for postings. But the time I’ve spent reading, interviewing students and teachers at High Tech High San Diego, writing and re-writing has given me lots to share in this blog. So let’s start off this week with another entry about the KIPP Summit Academy,San Lorenzo, CA. This school was the recipient of a gift from Autodesk and among the many projects students have worked on this year is the TECH challenge presented by the San Jose Tech museum. In sending me some of her documentation on their entry, KIPP teacher Sylvia Gonzales included this note: “I have found that there are no limitations on what our students can create in Autodesk.  They always seem to go beyond the module or lesson to create their own designs.  At times, when they come up with an idea and I cannot show them how to do what they want – they experiment and that is where the real learning takes place”.  What struck me was her use of the term “real learning”.  What was she getting at- how does this learning different than other types of learning?  I’ll be relying to her e-mail with a suggestion that she take a look at a book titled “Real Learning- Real Work" by Adria Steinberg. The author suggests that the use of projects as a classroom pedagogy integrates what she coined as the “Six A’s- Authenticity, Academic Rigor, Applied Learning, Active Exploration, Adult Relationships, and  Assessment Practices.

If you go to the 2009 Tech challenge on the Web, you’ll get a sense of how the projects that the KIPP students worked on integrate the six A’s.  As noted on the site this challenge involved developing a device that can deliver a payload of up to 6 geological instruments (6 ping pong balls) to the top of the volcano in 3 minutes. The volcano will be 10 ft high and you must launch your device 20 ft away from the volcano. Read about the challenge and see where the A’s come into play.  In talking and reading about all of the problems inherent in our current educational system I can’t help but think that paying closer attention to how this configuration of A’s might steer us in the right direction for true educational reform.