Blog posts March 2011
The World's Most Innovative Schools: School of the Future, New York City
Wednesday, 23 March 2011 - 10:00am
by Alec Patton
Well, if you call yourself School of the Future you had better be innovative. I'm pleased to say that it lives up to its name. The video above gives a taste of the stuff that's happening at School of the Future, which serves just under 700 11-18 year olds on the east side of Manhattan. What sets School of the Future apart from many other schools that do project-based learning is that they've spent serious time on designing assessments that measure what they care about, rather than what's easiest to...
Do we need more social activists – and can they learn from organisations like Green Peace
Tuesday, 22 March 2011 - 2:54pm
By Peter Baeck
I recently read this really interesting feature story in the Danish newspaper Information (it’s in Danish, so unless you are one of our few Danish readers, I’m sorry!!), by Knud Vilby the chairman of Denmark’s Social political association. Vilby raises some interesting questions to what the role of volunteers in the delivery of public services should and shouldn’t be. Most of these are directly transferrable to the debate in the UK around volunteering and the Big Society
In the article Vilby describe the growing political focus on how volunteers can contribute to public...
Raymond J. McNulty calls for 'Next Practice' in education in the Washington Post
Tuesday, 22 March 2011 - 1:48pm
by Alec Patton
It's nice to see your language getting traction - and totally unexpected to see the Innovation Unit's concept of Next Practice turn up in the Washington Post!
It's a piece about the importance of stretching beyond the 'evidence base' in tackling the intractable challenges facing education today. Here's a quote:
Introducing truly novel ideas means considering something so new that it has not been proven to work. Critics will say we shouldn’t be experimenting on our young people, and I’m not suggesting we ditch our best practices and research-based strategies. Hard data is an...
