Leadership+Design
"We design experiences for the people who create the future of teaching and learning."
In our work, we build capacity, create conversations, and make connections.
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Upcoming Programs/Events:
Plan your professional learning adventure with L+D in 2016.
Santa Fe Seminar
November 9-12, 2016
Santa Fe, NM
Coming this Summer . . .
 4D Studio: Design. Dare. Disrupt. Dream.
June 26-29, 2017
The Steward School/Bryan Innovation Lab, Richmond, VA
 Wonder Women!
July 10-13, 2017
Castilleja School, Palo Alto, CA
Registration opens for both summer programs, November 1, 2016.
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L+D Board of Directors
Ryan Baum
VP of Strategy Jump Associates, CA
Lee Burns
Headmaster
McCallie School, TN
Sandy Drew
Non-profit Consultant, CA
Matt Glendinning (Secretary)
Head of School
Moses Brown School, RI
Trudy Hall (Board Chair)
Interim Director of High School
Forest Ridge School, WA
Brett Jacobsen (Vice Chair)
Head of School
Mount Vernon Presbyterian, GA
Barbara Kraus-Blackney (Treasurer)
Executive Director
Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS), PA
Karan Merry
Retired Head of School
St. Paul's Episcopal School
Carla Robbins Silver (ex-officio)
Executive Director
Leadership+Design, CA
Mary Stockavas (Treasurer)
Director of Finance
Bosque School, NM
Matthew Stuart
Head of School
Caedmon School, NY
Brad Weaver
Head of School
Sonoma Country Day School, CA
Paul Wenninger
Interim Head of School
Alexander Dawson School, NV
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School and Work in the Age of The Singularity
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Carla Silver, Executive Director, Leadership+Design
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Greetings, Humans,
Happy October! What a perfect month to spook ourselves - with a conversation about AI and the future of school and work.
When my husband brought "Alexa" home last Christmas, I didn't think much about her. She wasn't particularly beautiful or exciting. I figured she would just sit around, innocuous enough, and do what she appeared to do best - play music. Now, ten months into our relationship, I'm finding Alexa almost indispensable. How could I survive without her?
If you own an Amazon Echo, you know what I am talking about.  With a single voice command, Alexa makes shopping lists, checks the weather forecast, sets timers - sometimes three or four at once to track the cooking of multiple recipes and homework times for children simultaneously - offers the latest election news, orders an Uber, sets the thermostat, tells jokes, makes to-do lists and yes, streams everybody's favorite music on demand. All that and a lovely, unflappable demeanor too. She is almost everything I could ask for in a personal assistant. If you are familiar with the work of the futurist Ray Kurzweil you might know his theory of the Singularity - the idea that by 2044, computers will have surpassed biological humans in just about every capacity, including those things that require relational and emotional qualities, allowing humanity to surpass biological limitations. In the event of the Singularity, by 2044, Alexa will not just meet my transactional needs, but my emotional needs as well.
Putting all of this in perspective, in 2044, my own three children  will be in the prime of their professional lives - between the ages of 36 and 42 - and I can't help but wonder: will they be ready to succeed, collaborate, and compete in a global innovation economy with people and machines from all over the world - machines that possess "perfect knowledge," have the ability to think and learn, and are free of human error? Are my children learning the content and skills in school today that will prepare them for this future? Does it matter? Can schools even evolve fast enough to be relevant for this possible future? A new video from the Institute for the Future suggests another scenario for the future of learning and work. The "Learning Ledger" envisions an economy - this time in 2026, only ten short years in the future - that combines learning and earning. "The Learning Ledger scenario is based on real changes that are already happening. No one can predict the future. But thinking about the future is a way to find out what's possible.... and to think about which futures we want, and which futures we don't want." If we can do anything at all, it is to develop futurist mindsets and to imagine not a dystopian future but rather one of hope and progress. Thanks to our provacateurs this month, Christian Long, Christian Talbot, and Alyssa Gallagher and Elizabeth Lytle. All four of these authors spend a lot of time designing experiences for the future of teaching and learning, yet never lose sight of the most important thing - to ensure students leave with healthy minds and bodies, a good relationship with themselves, a sense of their own humanity, and an understanding of what it means to contribute to a democratic society.
Warmly, Carla Silver Executive Director
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| The Big Lesson? Be More Human. |
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Christian Long, Founding Partner, Wonder, by Design
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Earlier this year, AlphaGo, a 'deep learning' computer program created by Google's DeepMind unit, beat the world's greatest-living Go player Lee Se-dol, the first time any computer program has ever beaten a professional player at his level.
As a February 2016 Boston Globe article described the challenge of a computer winning a game at this level, "Go is a board game so complex that it can be likened to playing 10 chess matches simultaneously on the same table;" or, more stunningly, "Go is a game with more possibilities than atoms in the known universe."
The prize for this stunning machine-over-human victory? $1million.
More importantly, the prize was undeniable recognition that a computer had beaten one of the most elusive artificial intelligence computing challenges, a near Turing Test, proving that computers are now able to 'learn how to learn' like human beings (not just overcome remarkable computing challenges through brute force computations).
For technology experts, futurists, and The Boston Globe article,  the real accomplishment was undeniable proof that "nothing humans do as a job is safe anymore."
Literally: every single job done equally well or better by computers. Not just the tasks of rote memorization or simple jobs handled better by physical robots.
Every job. Without exception.
And this is where things become interesting for educators who must not only prepare our young people for the challenges and complexities of a generally foreseeable future in the decade (or three) ahead, but who must also ponder how to prepare future students, future teams, and future schools to be relevant and valuable in a future where the very 'act of going to work' may no longer be guaranteed.
The Boston Globe article spends much of its energy pivoting from the historic Go contest to the growing argument by many at the center of the AI (artificial intelligence) world that we must begin considering the introduction of 'universal basic income' to guarantee that all human beings would be paid as technology increasingly replaces all of our assumed skills and roles. Think the way Uber and self-driving technologies are quickly proving that even owning a car or needing a human being to drive the car is a strong likely in our lifetime. And then think about what this means for entire industries and economic assumptions across not only individual industries but all of society.
As the article stated, "During a panel discussion at the end of 2015 at Singularity University, prominent data scientist Jeremy Howard asked, "Do you want half of people to starve because they literally can't add economic value, or not?" before going on to suggest, "If the answer is not, then the smartest way to distribute the wealth is by implementing a universal basic income."
For us at WONDER, we are intrigued (and made a bit nervous) by all of this, but looking more at the 'mindset' of schools - rather than the 'toolkit' of economics and society - we find ourselves more interested in how schools are preparing their own teams and students to 'think in future terms' no matter what happens.
Generally, when the 'future' is discussed in education conferences or inside faculty lounges, it usually is in passing reference to the need to foster "21st century skills" as being a modest evolution of previous generation's educational goals.
We tend to agree that more collaboration and creativity would be a good thing. Its hard not to recognize that access to computers and digital tools is now a reasonable 'right' -- rather than just a entertaining 'curiosity' -- in most schools. Many schools are exploring more student-led learning experiences and data-based customizations to guide and evaluate individual students on their path. On occasion, we make reference to emerging professions (video gaming, nano-biology, et al) that challenge some of our assumptions about the value of traditional subjects. And every once in awhile, we tease the edges by talking about Google Cardboard, virtual reality, and the possibility of mankind getting to Mars within our lifetime.
In truth, we treat this superficially. At best our discussions about the future are really modest efforts to hedge our bets in ways that are generally intuitive and easily explained, or possibly sparked by Twitter or the release of a new smart phone. It is often driven by getting into college or general trends in the workforce. Or it is a matter of re-packaging what our schools have done for decades or centuries, shifting from vocational tools to maker movements, from typewriting speed drills to coding courses.
But what would it mean for us 'to think like a futurist', both as individual students / educators and as entire school teams / organizations? What would it mean for us to begin to do so with purpose, passion, and possibility?
As a design studio working with schools across the country and world, we can't help but ponder what it would mean for schools to study the 'future' with the same energy as we do 'history', to position our professional peers and young people to be just as agile creating 'plausible future scenarios' as they are in deconstructing how humanity got to this moment.
Given Google's AlphaGo victory, the rise of self-driving cars, and even a casual discussion of the massive and confounding ways all of society is changing before our very eyes, perhaps we'd be wise to ponder the design challenge of inviting our youngest learners and most experienced mentors to day-dream in future terms. This offers both striking intellectual growth and an unapologetic investment in our part of the great human journey.
As The Boston Globe article ends, "What's the big lesson to learn, in a century when machines can learn?, finally answering that "[m]aybe it is that jobs are for machines, and life is for people."
If so, perhaps we should explore what this means beyond iPads, test scores, and getting into college to prepare for the workplace of tomorrow.
And how we can design the conditions for all of us to 'think' about our futures in a way that we've never had to do so in the past.
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A VERY SPECIAL THANKS
to our friends at Mithun for hosting our L+D Seattle Bootcamp this weekend! We had 30 participants from all over the country designing "Pop-up Learning Spaces" in this beautiful architecture studio. Thanks also to friends at Synapse Product Development Company and Artefact for joining us as guest presenters during the two days.
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L+D Bootcampers enjoying Mithun's signature space.
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| AI and the Future of Education |
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Christian Talbot, Head of School, Malvern Preparatory School
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This past Spring at Georgia Tech, a young woman named Jill signed up to serve as a teaching assistant in "Knowledge Based Artificial Intelligence," one of Georgia Tech's MOOCs. While Jill had a firm grasp of the subject matter, she had never been a TA before.
The pressure to perform was high: in previous iterations of the class, the professor and his 8 teaching assistants had experienced considerable trouble keeping up with students' 10,000 online messages each semester. Would adding one more TA really make a dent?
At first, Jill performed horribly. Many of her answers seemed way off the mark, and occasionally even a little strange. But before long, and with some help from the professor and the other TAs, Jill was answering questions with 97% accuracy. The secret of her quick success? Jill is actually Jill Watson--as in IBM's Watson, an artificial intelligence.
The story has a fascinating footnote: Almost none of the enrolled  students knew they had been interacting with a computer. Did that excite you? Terrify you? Confuse you? Inspire you? Something else altogether? Consider this more recent news story from IBM's kaleidoscopic Watson experiment: by the end of 2016, we will have free access to "Teacher Advisor", a program "that uses artificial-intelligence technology to answer questions from educators and help them build personalized lesson plans." Did that stir the same emotional reaction? It may seem odd to focus on emotional reactions in a discussion about AI and learning, but technology has always been a flashpoint for educators, and AI all the more so given its perceived potential to displace teachers from answering students' questions and personalizing their learning. It may be tempting to speculate about IBM's Watson, Google's Deep Mind, and other stealth AI projects' impact on school. But what if we were to focus our energies on formulating questions about the intersection of AI and the future of learning? For example: How might AI make a teacher more effective? How might AI complement rather than replace teachers? How might AI help us to rethink what "teacher" and "student" and "learning" and "education" mean? "Classroom" too. How might AI allow for curricula that adapts in real time to each student's progress? Who / what is doing the teaching? Who / what is doing the learning? With these feelings and questions colliding, I have been thinking about Spike Jonze's 2013 film, Her. In the near future, the protagonist, Theodore, purchases an artificially intelligent  operating system. This OS, Samantha, adapts and grows as she develops a surprisingly intimate relationship with Theodore. Samantha's inflections, her questions, her sense of humor, and her insights are so authentic that it's sometimes hard to remember that she is a computer program. Here is the very first exchange between Theodore and Samantha (don't worry, no spoilers):
Theodore: Really? Where did you get that name from?
Samantha: Cause I like the sound of it. Samantha.
Theodore: When did you give it to yourself?
Samantha: Well, right when you asked me if I had a name I thought, yeah, he's right, I do need a name. But I wanted to pick a good one, so I read a book called How to Name Your Baby, and out of a hundred and eighty thousand names that's the one I liked the best.
Theodore: Wait, you read a whole book in the second that I asked what your name was?
Samantha: In two one hundredths of a second actually.
Theodore: Wow. So do you know what I'm thinking right now?
Samantha: Well, I take it from your tone that you're challenging me. Maybe because you're curious how I work? Do you wanna know how I work?
Theodore: Yeah, actually, how do you work?
Samantha: Well, basically I have intuition. I mean, the DNA of who I am is based on the millions of personalities of all the programmers who wrote me. But what makes me me is my ability to grow through my experiences. So basically, in every moment I'm evolving, just like you.
Samantha: Is that weird? Do you think I'm weird?
[Theodore laughs]
Theodore: Well you seem like a person, but you're just a voice in a computer.
Samantha: I can understand how the limited perspective of an un-artificial mind would perceive it that way. You'll get used to it.
[Theodore laughs again]
Jill Watson can answer "What is the homework for tonight?" but she can't respond to "How do you work?" with contextual awareness and emotional sensitivity. The former question is transactional while the latter is relational. For those who may be nervous about the idea of AI in education, the good news is that we are probably a long way away from an AI like Samantha. On the other hand, Jill Watson is already here--and many of us don't even know it. Rather than wondering IF we need to prepare for AI in our schools, let's think about WHEN and HOW it will arrive. When you think of your community's experiences, which are transactional? Which are relational--or even transformational? How might AI help us to invest more time in those relational and transformational moments with our community? Jill--and Jack--Watson may be more helpful than we imagine.
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The Future of Virtual Reality in Education
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Elizabeth Lytle, Director of Education at zSpace and Alyssa Gallagher, Learning Experience Designer
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Imagine it's 2044. The world has become a pretty bleak place and most citizens now primarily interact inside a metaverse called OASIS. Physical schools are an option but most students  attend school virtually where they are surrounded by other avatars, go to classes and engage in activities with friends. The experience is frighteningly similar to the school experience as we currently know it and yet wildly different. Everyone in the country is able to access OASIS via government issued networking hardware and subsidized access to the internet, effectively equalizing the access to resources and educational experiences. If you are a fan of science fiction, this may sound familiar as it is the basis for the best selling novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline written in 2011. Cline's imaginary view of the future of education may not be so far removed from our reality.
While we may not be ready to exist in a metaverse, the past five years have introduced exceptional expansion in technology tools for educators. Information readily available and data about student performance and adaptive learning systems are creating opportunities to improve the student experience. For the first time in history, we may have access to technological tools with power to disrupt the learning experience. One of these tools may be virtual reality.
If you are like most, hearing "virtual reality" conjures up a life devoid of human interaction where all experiences are virtual. In our experiences, we are seeing virtual reality in education do quite the opposite. We see students seeking to engage with each other while being truly engaged through the immediate and highly personal experience of virtual reality.
While terminology and definitions are still being debated among the techies of the world, here is how we have come to define the differences between virtual and augmented reality. Augmented Reality (AR): Think PokemonGO. Your cell phone, or one day, your glasses, overlay information on top of the real world. Virtual Reality (VR): Immerses you in a new world, most commonly via a headset/headphones so that you no longer see or hear things from your real world.
In the last three years, two virtual reality technologies have come 
to the forefront of education: zSpace and Google Expeditions. Both offer a type of virtual experience. zSpace puts the power of AR and VR into your desktop computer, while Google Expeditions turns a cell phone and piece of cardboard into a 360 view of a land far away. Both technologies completely engage the students: they ask questions, they dig deeper, they guide their own learning, AND we are finding they have an increased desire to connect with peers and teachers to discuss the new learnings.
While still a relatively new field, virtual reality is showing up as a disruptor of our traditional learning methodologies with incredible impacts. Below are a few of the impacts we've seen: -
Personalization goes beyond the content. VR creates a truly personalized learning experience. While a computer recognizes where your mouse clicks, virtual reality systems know where you are looking and how you're interacting with the system which is how they create "live" scenes adapted to you. Imagine the power of providing personalized content, something already happening today in places like the ALT School, which responds not just to student performance, but also to their exploration. As a student looks more closely, the object becomes easier to see; as they look underneath, they have a view of the underside of the object of study. Allowing students to use natural behaviors - the same behaviors they would use with physical objects - creates more powerful learning experiences. After teaching a six-week unit on the cardiovascular system, one high school teacher was confident that students had mastered this content. Yet, it was only after the medical students experienced the heart in zSpace that many exclaimed, "NOW I get it!" - as they were able to watch the valves open and close, see how they related to each other, and position the heart to see where it actually sits within a body. The interaction within the virtual reality experience made the connection.
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Curiosity is piqued. When students realize that there is more than meets the eye, that exploration reveals more depth and detail, the conversations begin in earnest, and questioning moves from active to interactive. In an elementary setting, we saw that given time to explore the heart in zSpace prior to their cardiovascular unit, students asked deeper questions during the unit than those who had not had the opportunity to explore. The teacher reported that they moved deeper into the content than other classes.
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Hands-on and real-world experiences are increased. No longer limited by constraints such as travel, funding or space, hands-on learning experiences can be incorporated into many more classes. Whether it's traveling to the Great Pyramids or creating circuits to power a new invention, safety is assured, supplies are unlimited and the learning enhanced.
We believe the future of learning is here, and it's time for educators to collectively begin embracing what it might mean together. We imagine it a bit like this: schools become a networked hub of learning, where students come to interact with teachers and students in shared learning experiences. Classroom walls no longer represent boundaries, and are now places for connections to places and space beyond, and they may appear differently to each student or group of students. One may look out the window to see Africa while another watches a polar bear cub make its first exit from the den onto the snow. Their exploration is not limited to watching; they work within the environment to solve problems or support an endangered species.
Within another classroom, students work together to build a Rube Goldberg of real objects, then 3D scan their set-up and send it to their virtual lab table, they make a few adjustments and choose to travel to Saturn and run the experiment. They discover objects don't move in the same way and begin an investigation to understand why, and how to change their machine to adapt to the new conditions. The group works together around the table, no glasses are needed, and they use their hands to move the virtual objects.
The teacher is moving between the groups and activities, being notified of student questions and engaging in their problem solving. Did we mention that that teacher is the designer of the classroom described above?
This is just the beginning. There is so much more to explore and imagine. We hope you too find an opportunity to explore the world of virtual reality and start to ask, "What if?"
Elizabeth and Alyssa collaborated to bring virtual reality to 1,000 elementary and middle school students in Los Altos School District as a part of the initial zSpace pilot and research process during the 2013-2014 school year. We brainstormed, developed professional development sessions, worked closely with teachers/students and recognized the incredible power of virtual reality through student stories and experiences. Neither of us dream of a Ready Player One OASIS in our future, but we do expect to see students succeed more readily through virtual reality experiences. Oh, and we're both a little impatient for online shopping to step up to the world of interactive 3D.
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