Service Learning Canvas

I have the honor of helping Blueprint High School in developing an innovative Service Learning (SL) program. In general, Project Based Learning (PBL), which Service Learning (SL) is a sub-category of, offers the great promise for deeper learning and developing 21st Century Skills. Yet, PBL and SL take antiquated and heavy approaches. It expects heavy upfront planning, command and control project management, and a 20th century silo approach of chopping up roles and responsibilities. This makes it  difficult to implement with the short time schools have available and inhibits the learning of 21st Century Skills like Collaboration and Creativity.  Assessment of the project usually comes at the end, often too late to make any changes if it is discovered that the learning and project goals are not being met. Teachers often complain that PBL takes too long and takes too much time to prepare for, regardless of how excited they are to use it as a strategy. By taking a native 21st century approach, we deliver value and validate learning in short iterations, each time learning and steering. We plan, work, learn, and validate in small chunks of time. The worst case, if the project has to be canceled due to other pressing concerns, each week you have actually accomplished  visible learning and project goals, that can be used by the community and students. We are developing a Service Learning approach that uses Agile, Lean, and Customer Development methods to develop extreme readiness for the 21st Century

As I think about the approach to SL, the first step is to identify the Service Learning Model.  In essence, what is the problem we are out to help solve and the what is our approach in solving it. Borrowing from the Business Model Generation, I quickly drafted the Service Learning Canvas, inspired by the Business Model Canvas, that many of today's startups and entrepreneurial companies are using to innovate and learn rapidly.

The idea behind the Service Learning Canvas is that we do not start with a big upfront plan, but rather a set of  hypothesis that we will set out to validate.  We develop the Service Learning Model, then use Agile to test the hypothesis of the impact to the community in short cycles. At the end of that cycle, we review to see if we are on the right track, and update the Service Model Canvas. Instead of heavy upfront planning with lots of big assumptions that are usually wrong, we do lots of small planning and small assumptions, and use the scientific method to discover the right path. In addition, with each small cycle, we deliver value to the community and get feedback on the learning goals of the students, without having to wait to the end of the semester or year.

As usual, I am short on time. I will complete and revise this post later when I get some slack time and describe how to use the canvas. For now, please send in comments, questions and feedback!

Thanks
John Miller
Learning Rightshifter

RightShifting Learning

It is time to stop walking students backwards into the future.

It is time to shift from a 20th Century approach to an authentic 21st Century approach.

The Conceptual Age is upon us, yet the Industrial Age culture in education still sticks.
The need for 21st Century Skills are real and urgent.
Where is the Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Communication when students sit compliantly at a desk staring ahead at the teacher?

RightShift the classroom or mass obsolescence awaits students upon entering the real world.

RightShifting the Classroom - The 7 Shifts

1. RightShift from individual learning to more collaboration 
2. RightShift from conformity to more creativity
3. RightShift from dependency to more self-directedness
4. RightShift from compulsion to more choice
5. RightShift from monolithic instruction to more differentiation
6. RightShift from just learning outcomes to greater emphasis on the learning experience
7. RightShift from rigid plans to more adaptation to learners' present needs

Start RightShifting. Start small. Start big. Just start. 

Self-Organizing Classroom: Big Picture

The Self-Organizing Classroom ...The Big Picture

The Self-Organizing Classroom Big Picture - John Miller

My experiences with with Agile in the classroom and deep thinking about why and how it works in K12 has led me to these insights. I am backing away from Agile as the key name or model. There is too much debate and noise about what Agile is and is not. I have come to realize that for this to truly take root, it can not be an adoption of Agile by educators, but, a cross-pollination of the Agile with education.  Agile approaches are borrowed and adapted to the unique context of the classroom and education. Agile provides a helpful scaffolding to building something new and uniquely valuable for a 21st Century learning environment, but, does not imprison its adaptation in schools. The diagram is a big picture overview of the Self-Organizing Classroom and it's interdisciplinary approach.

The 5 C's of Flow (The Outer Circle)

The 5C's to Evoke Flow

In my pursuit of why Agile worked so well in a classroom to evoke self-organization, engagement, love of learning, collaboration, self-directness, and positive behavior from 3rd graders to high school seniors, I have discovered it is because it provides the right conditions for the state of flow to occur. You enter flow when you match one's perceived skill level with the perceived challenge. Flow is the psychological state of

"being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." - Csikszentmihaly

I argue that the Flow State what student engagement is. According to Csikzensmihaly , the environment should provide 5 characteristics to evoke flow,  The Self-Organizing Classroom intentionally builds these characteristics in throughout the entire learning experience.  

1. Centering - centering on the student's present interests, emotional state, and concrete experience in the present, not focusing on consequences of completing the goal.  In other words, focus on the dynamically changing intrinsic motivations and states of the student not the extrinsic motivators and engaging in the learning activity for its own sake.
2. Clarity - unambiguous goals, feedback, expectations, and norms of working together
3. Challenge - set and negotiate meaningful challenges within students' perceived skill levels.
4. Choice - students have choice in how they accomplish learning goals.
5. Commitment - students can fully commit to the goal, without anxiety and distractions. They feel they have the support to be confident in completing the activities.

The Self-Organizing Classroom model intentionally designs learning so that these characteristics permeate throughout the entire learning experience, to help evoke radical engagement of the entire classroom.

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The  Engagement Cycle (The Second Ring )

The SOC Engagement Loop

The Engagement Cycle is inspired directly from the Scrum framework, a highly collaborative Agile approach to innovative product development. The Engagement Cycle provides an iterative and incremental approach to learning, allowing learners to inspect and adapt their own learning. The Engagement Cycle is short time box, usually a week, where learners commit to learning goals to be demonstrate by the end of time-box, and then inspect and adapt the results and process for self-improvement.  It is the key enabling constraint for rapid learning and collaboration.

1. Plan - The teacher presents learning challenges, usually in the form of  learning outcomes or project outcomes, and provides a forum for discussion to center on the learners and ensure clarity on the outcomes. Learners have choice in what they commit  to achieve in the Engagement Cycle. Learners break down the challenges into activities and tasks, with choice in how they achieve the challenge.

2. Huddle - as the learners are self-organizing, they coordinate their activities with one another in a huddle, usually daily. They state what chose to do yesterday, what they choose to do today, and what problems they may need help in overcoming. This provides clarity on the progress of learning.

3. Demo - At the end of the Engagement Cycle is a formal demonstration of learning. Although demonstration of learning happens throughout the Engagement Cycle, this is the formal finish line to demonstrate the learning challenges were met. It provides clarity through immediate and relevant feedback on if the learning challenge was met. It provides valuable insight on how to adapt learning to the differentiated needs of the classroom.

4. Reflect - Learners reflect on their collaboration, their individual performance, the learning process, and the learning environment to celebrate their strengths, achievements, and to commit to a clear improvement challenge in the next Engagement Loop. Whereas the Demo is about  providing clarity on the outcomes of the learning, Reflect is about evoking clarity of the current process and self-improving it together. A self-organing classroom is a self-improving classroom. This formally happens at the end of the Engagement Loop, but, I have seen classrooms Reflect daily with amazing results.

Characteristics of a Self-Organing Classroom 

A Self-Organzing Classroom has unique characteristics that serve as scaffolding structures to support and evoke self-organization, self-improvement, and the achievement of learning challenges. These are also characteristics of an Agile environment that enable self-organzing teams to develop innovative products.

1. Visual - the learning environment provides radical clarity through providing highly visual learning radiators. Learning radiators provide unambiguous clarity on the learning challenges, expectations, progress, issues, and norms on how the classroom self-organizes, protecting against chaos that ambiguity can cause. It makes often invisible collaboration and meta-cognition activities transparent, so that the classroom can inspect and adapt their own learning.

2. Rapid Feedback - Throughout the framework, rapid and relevant feedback is provided at many levels, for individuals, for the interactions between learners and the environment, realtime feedback of learning and collaboration in progress, and the outcomes of learning. It enables the classroom to inspect and adapt quickly to differentiate their own learning. It does not wait for a test or a grade, it happens throughout the learning experience, and empowers learners to sense and respond themselves to the feedback when it is relevant.

3. Pull - The Self-Organzing Classroom moves towards more "Pull" and less "Push".  Learners have incrementally increase the choice they have, pulling in challenges and activities at their own rate at their own level. Although students may or may not develop their own goals, they should at a minimum have the structures and empowerment to pull the challenges and activities in at their own rate. By centering on the learners present and intrinsic motivation, the challenges "pull" them in,  versus being "pushed" onto them as something to comply to.

4. Self-Organzing -  Is a specific form of self-directed learning combined with collaboration. Self-organized learners work without out direct supervision, released from command and control style of instruction, to accomplish clear goals.. This does not mean self-organized learners do not have rules, to the contrary, it is essential to provide enabling constraints for self-organization to emerge. Self-organization emerges within simple scaffolding structures, which is what this framework provide. This framework provides just enough rules to provide guard rails against chaos, while enough space to empower learners to choose and adapt their own learning path together.

The Empowerment Dial

The Empowerment Dial is a visual information radiator unique to this framework. It is the lever to provide gradual release of control from the teacher to the learners, from just individual learning to collaborative learning. It incrementally builds and stretches the self-organzing capacity of the classroom, from the teacher's capacity to empower as well as the learners capacity to take on more responsibility. This is the safety dial to protect against the perceived and real risks of a classroom spilling into the chaotic classroom. It provides a visible and incremental path, through 5 discrete stages of empowering learners and and transforming the teacher from the traditional "sage on the stage" to the coveted "guide on the side".  From Level 1, on-boarding the classroom by acclimating them to the engagement loop and visualizing learning through learning radiators, without changing the current level of  empowerment, to Level 5, where the classroom is fully self-organized and perhaps even developing their own learning outcomes and learning activities in full collaboration. The Empowerment Dial provides highly visible and explicit expectations on the roles and responsibilities, so that delegation of authority is unambiguous and can be respected by all. The 5C's of Flow is instilled in the Empowerment Dial as it is throughout the entire learning framework.

Summary

Through real experience of applying this model in classrooms, I believe this provides the right approach to a classroom of extreme engagement, empowerment, while providing the 21st Century skills in to thrive in the present and in the future. Be aware that this post is not a step by step guide, but, the overarching structure and characteristics the Self-Organzing Classroom guide will follow. With that said, as the real experiences of provide real feedback, this model will change, as it is still in it's infancy. We will inspect and adapt the model as we learn more.  I invite your feedback and contribution.

Your Help

I aslo ask for your advice on naming the framework and to participate in it's continued development and application with me. I am considering dropping the name of The Agile Based Learning Environment (ABLE) upon the recent insights that it is a cross-pollination of Agile, not an Agile adoption into education. I have used the term the Self-Organzing Classroom (SOC) throughout, and in writing the guide, but, I am not sure if that will stick. There is a another great educational approach out there urge you to explore, called the Self-Organzied Learning Environment (SOLE), which I actually started to use until I discovered their site. It is a very different model, but, I believe complimentary to this one. Thanks for you help!

Thanks,

John Miller PMP, CSP

Agileschools@gmailcom

P.S. I am short on time to write and my quality suffers, so, if you see any typos, please let me know.

ABLE Guide: Challenges to ABLE

This is a work in progress as I and a some great helpers are developing, called the The Self-Organizing Classroom -A Quickstart Guide to Agile Based Learning Environments. 

Please email or comment your feedback so it can be as valuable as possible. 

What Are The Challenges of ABLE?

Although ABLE is simple and if implemented with patience and discipline, will emerge fantastic results, it is not without it's challenges. Some challenges you might encounter are:

• the self-organizing aspect of learning teams may look like chaos from the outside. Many will see it and love it, but others, may not understand and see it as disorganization. 
• it may be difficult to let go of the control. Anxiety may set in, especially when you the classroom is beginning to discover their "empowerment muscles" and the soreness that results from any growth.
• it can be tempting to skip some steps in the framework for expediency or not yet seeing the value. Skipping the steps will diminish and sabotage the results.
• uncertainty about how it can effect test scores. Although we can not guarantee it, in our experience, we have never seen a decrease in test scores. Especially with Common Core, we expect it will increase the results on Common Core and other tests. 
• if you are a teacher who needs a high amount of certainty and control, this may not be right for you. It requires a tolerance for uncertainty, patience, and a growth mindset that the classroom has the ability to be self-organizing.
• it does not guarnatee instant results, although, we have seen results happen quickly, expect a month before you start seeing significant changes in student self-directedness. 
• any change is hard, and, ABLE is no exception.

Thank You,

ABLE Guide: Elements of a Self-Organizing Classroom

Dear Readers, This is a work in progress as I develop the The Self-Organizing Classroom - A Quickstart Guide to Agile Based Learning Environments. 

Please email or comment your feedback so I can make this as educator-friendly as possible.  Thank you for your help in developing the future!

A self-organizing classroom is one in which student self-directedness and collaboration intersect. A Self-Organizing Classroom energizes and engages learners and allows for novel learning opportunities that emerge bottom up from the classroom interaction itself. There are 7 elements of a Self-Organizing Classroom. 

1. Engagement: pursues a state of flow in which the classroom balances  perceived challenges to perceived skill.
2. Relatedness: establishes positive connections to each other, relates to a sense of purpose, and provides relevancy to the real world.
3. Achievement: pursues continuous improvement and shared commitment to accomplish clear and negotiable outcomes.
4. Autonomy: provides incremental increases to student empowerment, gradually stretching the classroom capacity for autonomy. Learners "pull" their work over work being "pushed" onto them.
5. Agile: rapidly inspects and adapts the learning environment to the changing social, emotional, physiological and cognitive states of the classroom.
6. Visible: the classroom is filled with highly visible artifacts that reflects realtime progress of learning and collaboration.
7. Kinetic: is rich with physical and verbal energy that is harnessed towards collaboratively achieving shared goals.

The elements are a inspired by Positive Psychology, Flow State Theory, Self-Determination Theory, VAK/VARK Learning Model, research on teaching best practices, and influences from  Agile and Lean Methodologies.

The Agile Based Learning Environment's roles, artifacts, events, and agreements provides practical guidance on how to actualize these elements every day to achieve a Self-Organizing Classroom.

ABLE Guide: Roles

This is a work in progress as I develop the The Self-Organizing Classroom - A Quickstart Guide to Agile Based Learning Environments. 

Please email or comment your feedback so I can make this as educator-friendly as possible. 

ABLE ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

ABLE provides 3 roles in the classroom; (1) the ABLE Teacher, (2) the ABLE Facilitator, and (3) the Learning Team. Each has distinct responsibilities that interlock and balance one another to enable self-organization. It is important to not only understand the roles and responsibility, but, most importantly the classroom's journey in actualizing the roles.When the roles are fully actualized, a self-organzing classroom emerges, full of engagement, collaboration, creativity, and focus.

ABLE Teacher

• Responsibilities:
• orders and adapts the classroom  backlog based on the current realities of the classroom
• develops and communicates clear learning outcomes and assessment criteria
• ensues the learning backlog is highly visible to the classroom and other classroom community members at all times.
• owns the "Empowerment Dial" and the "Empowerment Board"
• assesses the learning outcomes
• creates a learning environment that fosters creativity, empowerment, collaboration, and engagement
• establishes learning teams that leverages diversity of strengths and perspectives
• Characteristics:
• finds joy in being surprised of emergent and novel approaches when empowering students to develop their own way to achieving a learning outcome
• embraces a "growth mindset" for the classroom, each students, and herself
• belief that students will be responsible, if given opportunities to make their own decisions
• ability to articulate learning goals clearly
• ability to fast forward attitude
• situational leadership style
• The ABLE Teacher's Journey is from teacher to coach. From the "sage on the stage" to the trusting and empowering "guide on the side"

ABLE Facilitator

• Responsibilities:
• facilitates the ABLE Events, for her team or on a rotation for whole classroom learning
• helps the team stay focused, positive, and productive
• reinforces and reminds the team meet their ABLE Agreements
• encourages the team to utilize each member's strengths
• helps the team follow the ABLE framework.
• encourages the Learning Team to stretch reach their next Empowerment Level
• removes roadblocks from the team and escalates issues that can not be resolved by the Learning Team to the Teacher
• facilitates in team member mediation when needed
• helps the team identify and obtain resources to meet their goals
• does not have to be a dedicated assignment, it may be rotated to a different students per Sprint
• does not have any authority over the team
• The ABLE Facilitator may be the teacher in certain situations, such as:
• intervention situations
• early stages of ABLE to model the ABLE Facilitator role
• The ABLE Master's Journey is from "just reciting the ABLE Process" to a "Team Coach and Facilitator", that can ask powerful questions of the team to help move them to their highest potential

ABLE Team Member

• Responsibilities:
• the "how of the work"
• develops their own learning and project tasks
• "pulls" their own learning tasks
• collective ownership of the tasks as a team
• commit to doing their best to achieve the learning outcomes be the end of a Sprint
• Characteristics:
• self-organzing is the fundamental characteristic and ultimate goal of an ABLE team
• extremely collaborative
• shared ownership of goals
• self-mediating
• team has diverse strengths, aptitudes,styles and passions that complement each other.
• no prescribed roles exist or are assigned, except for the ABLE Master. Each team member contributes their own unique strengths and talents to accomplishing their shared goals.
• suggested group size is 3-5 students. Too large of a team makes self-organization difficult; too small of a team does not provide the diversity required to leverage one another's strengths.
• Self-organization means that the team is not told "how" to do their work and there is no central authority directing individual assignment to a team member. Students develop and self-select their own tasks to satisfy the learning or project outcomes in a self-organzing team.
• An ABLE Team Member's Journey is from an individual learner, dependent on the teacher to be told the what, when, and how, to a learner as a member of a collaborative self-directed team, in other words, a "self-organized team".

What feedback do you have? How would you describe the roles and responsibilities of an ABLE Team? 

Thank You,
John Miller

Changes:
12/9/12 Changed ABLE Master to ABLE Facilitator.

References:
Based on the Scrum Framework

ABLE Guide: Cover

The following are 3 cover ideas for the ABLE Guide. Take a look and provide feedback on the poll at the end.

Cover #1

Cover #2

Cover #3

ABLE Guide: Learning Rhythm

This is a work in progress as I develop the The Self-Organizing Classroom -A Quickstart Guide to Agile Based Learning Environments. 

Pleaser email or comment your feedback so I can make this useful and as easy to use as possible. 

This is part 1 of multiple parts describing the Sprint and the Events that enable a Self-Organized Classroom.

THE SPRINT 

-The Rhythm Self Organizing Classrooms Dance To

ABLE is composed of a consistent learning rhythm, called a Sprint. A Sprint is a time-boxed duration within which classrooms commit to a set of outcomes to be achieved by the end of the time-box. Just like a sprint in track and field, it is a short duration with a starting line and a finishing line, except in this case, it is not distance, it is time. The time-box is typically a week, but, can be as short as a day or class period to as long as a month.  Once one Sprint ends, the next one begins. For example, if your Sprint cadence is set to one week, your Sprint may start on Monday and end on Friday. The next Monday, the next Sprint begins. 

The 4 Events of ABLE 

-The Drumbeats of Learning

The Sprint is composed of 4 events, that serves as the "drumbeats" of the Sprint,  that self-organizing classrooms dance to. The 4 ABLE events in a Sprint are : (1)Sprint Planning, (2) Huddle, (3) Sprint Review, and the (4) Sprint Retrospective. The Sprint itself is a feedback loop for learning and adaptation to occur. Each ABLE Event in the Sprint is a specific feedback loop as well. Every event provides an opportunity for the classroom to inspect current learning and adapt in realtime. Instead of making assumptions about how students should be doing or by inspecting and adapting too late, it provides a mechanism for teachers and students to ask, "How are we really doing now?";  "What can we do now based on our unique classroom's strengths, diversity, and opportunities?. As each classroom is a dancing landscape, with an array of complex variables changing daily.  The Sprint provides a cadence for the classroom to improvise and dance with it. The 4 Events occur sequentially, opening with Sprint Planning, a Huddle every day/class period, and ending with the Review and Retrospective. 

A Startup Guide

I am currently developing a short guide to share with educators on implementing Agile Based Learning Environment in the classroom. The guide will be "teacher-friendly, providing a step-by-step approach on how to beging "Sprinting" right away.  I have a group of amazing Agilists and educators who have signed up to review and contribute to the guide. My goal is to release this, free for all, by December.



Title:

The Self-Organizing Classroom: A Startup Guide for the Agile Based Learning Environment

Agile Based Learning Environment Vision Statement:

"ABLE is an innovative learning framework that creates a vibrant self-organizing classroom. Unlike other systems, ABLE gives the classroom a practical applied structure that integrates 21st Century Skills, collaboration, and self-directness throughout all learning."

As I have not written anything substantial since college, besides memos, project plans, and reports,  this has been a re-education for me in the basics of writing and is taking me a bit longer than I thought.

Feel free to email or leave comments on what you think will be important to include in the Startup Guide or just plain simple advice, I definitely need it!

Thank You,
John Miller, PMP, CSP

Student Scrum Board

Student Team Scrum Board Example. Feel Free to download and print as a poster for your students. More details to come.

Real Life Examples

More details to come : )

Download your Student Scrum Board here .

Agile Principal Interview

Introducing Principal  3.0

Christopher R. Barnes, award winning principal of Cortes Sierra Elementary School in Arizona, is a different kind of  principal. He has lead his school to two A+ awards, is currently a finalist for the National Distinguished Principal Award, and has established an amazing shared culture with staff, students, and the community.  His greatest legacy may be leading a new way of thinking about how learning and school operations should be conducted in the 21st Century for a vibrant learning experience and a vibrant future. He is Principal 3.0, an Agile Principal, one that harness the power of Agile thinking to innovate education.

Scrum as Game Changer in Education

Chris was so inspired by the success of Scrum in one of his 4th grade classrooms, he invited me to help him transition his entire school to Agile thinking, from leadership council, staff professional learning communities, Principal leadership, and classrooms.  He has always believed in a culture where students and staff are empowered, passionate, and innovate to reach their unique destiny. This Principal 3.0 has witnessed firsthand how Scrum is the ultimate framework to bring these values to maximum fruition. 
Chris exclaims, "Scrum is a game-changer in education!". Spearheading through the 21st Century" is his powerful vision for the school, and Scrum is what powers that spear. He sees that Agile is making a great school into the innovative leader in education, developing real life skills for students to thrive and lead in the world, a true love of learning, mastery of standards, and character development for the 21st Century (Character 3.0).

Flip the Economy

Agile is the business framework of the future. For the first time, schools have the opportunity to be in the lead with the world's most innovative businesses. Rather than business telling schools how to run, schools that adopt an Agile transformation will flip this equation on its head, being the model for business to emulate. Cortes Sierra Elementary, with Agile, will not be benchmarked against other schools, but, will benchmark themselves with the most innovative organizations in the world, such as Google, Yahoo, GE, and Ericsson. The students and staff from Cortes Sierra Elementary can walk into Agile team at one of these businesses and feel right at home. Better yet, these students could be unleashed into the business world and teach and transform businesses stuck in old management paradigms. Imagine, a concept I call the "reverse internship", where Agile students are placed in business to transform the business.  Perhaps businesses will start placing their leaders into internship programs at Cortes Sierra Elementary to learn from students and teachers the power of Agile cultural transformation.

Principal 3.0 Interview

Here is the interview I did with Mr. Barnes, perhaps the first Agile Principal, recently after his Common Core workshop. Pardon the bad production quality, I am not a skilled videographer or interviewer. You will witness how he is spearheading through the 21st Century as a pioneer in Agile Based Learning Environments (ABLE). l.  Note: You will mention he references his "interview" in the video. Mr. Barnes is referring to his interview as a finalist as a National Distinguished Principal he had recently.

Can Scrum Change The World?

A great article, "Can Scrum change the world?" , by Melanie Webb from TechTarget.com on my Scrum in Schools presentation at the Atlanta Scrum Gathering this week. She makes me sound so much better than I actually was : )  And yes, Scrum can and will change the world for a vibrant future.

The Scrum Alliance Gathering was amazing! The best part was meeting the amazing folks that work behind the scenes at the Scrum Alliance. They are the most friendly, warm, and passionate people you could meet. I know they are taking the organization to amazing places.

Trailer for presentation:

Prezi for Presentation: Just pics. I was requested to accompany this with a speaking video or voiceover.  Coming soon!

Thanks,

John Miller

Vibrant Lives, Work, Communities, and Schools

http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/

Scrum Alliance Gathering Atlanta

I had the honor of speaking at the Scrum Alliance Gathering in Atlanta this week. Honestly, I was not sure how the Agile community would respond, fearing I would be presenting to an empty room. The session was very different from the others, where they were to deepened the Agile proactive, while, mine was why to be passionate about Agile and broaden Agile to transform the world. I was very surprised by the interest and buzz around the of using Agile for learning session! I was so excited to share what we are doing at Litchfield Elementary School District at the Cortes Sierra Elementary School, with the passion and leadership of an awesome teacher, Mrs. Kimberly Mills, the most charismatic and innovative Principals in history, Chris Barnes, and a class of 4th graders who have grown close to my heart and have grown so much this year. I did have some technical difficulties that prevented me from playing some of the videos, my computer experienced some corruption the night before. I apologize to the attendees they did not get to see everything. We performed a live video feed to the Mrs. Mills classroom doing Scrum to talk about how they love Scrum and to answer questions from the audience. This was a big hit, despite some of the issues from a bad network connection. The students were awesome and so was Mrs The audience burst out in applause on many occasions, especially when they saw the video of one the students state during a Sprint Review, "I think we overestimated". So many attendees approached me afterwards, stating how they left with goose bumps. Two people even told me tears came to their eyes (tears of joy I hope). The students and Mrs. Mills are an inspiration. They are what one would consider and average classroom in a Title 1 school. A "Title 1" school is a school the Department of Education has determined to a significant population "disadvantaged" students. Mrs. Mill class ranges from resource students (students with Special Needs) to gifted students, diverse races & backgrounds. The beauty is you can witness how these students work together so well and how the students self-organize the strengths and passions of each. I had little to do with, what I consider a big success, I owe it all to this ordinary classroom, with a teacher bold enough to listen to my crazy idea that Scrum would be wildfully successful for learning. A learning experience based on Scrum can and does transform an ordinary classroom into an extraordinary one. Perhaps, what it really does, is remove the impediments for the greatness already in each student and teacher that is suppressed by the usual classroom experience. I have some great lessons learned on presenting at a big conference, especially about relying on a conference's network. I was happy that people left being inspired. Agile can transform the world for a vibrant future. You can find my Prezi here .

Thank you for all the Agilists at the Scrum Alliance who inspire me to keep moving forwards.

Scrum Against Stupidity

The news today talked about teens drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk, with many of these kids getting seriously ill.  I believe many of these sanitizing cocktail connoisseurs could have been saved from pumping the oozie substance in their mouths for a buzz if they were allowed to make more choices when they were younger.

"The bad decisions we see every day aren’t the result of lack of data, or lack of access to data. No, they’re the result of a schooling culture that is creating exactly what it set out to create... When we teach a child to make good decisions, we benefit from a lifetime of good decisions...and when we give students the desire to make things, even choices, we create a world filled with makers. " -Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams

I sat down a few weeks ago with some teachers who invited me to help them begin using Scrum for their team. These were very well intentioned and bright teachers, who worked very well together. As we discussed what was the most important goal for them, their frustrations with the bad behavior of their students surfaced. One of the stories we developed was to help students make better decisions.  I asked, "When do students get to make decisions?". The response was, students don't. I then asked "How will students be able to make good decisions if they have no opportunities to make any decisions?".  It was amazing to see how the teachers quickly began to express perhaps the issue was not the kids, but them. They reflected how they were caught in a vicious cycle of their own design. Their efforts to control students bad behavior by reducing student choices prevented students the chance to learn how to make good choices.

It shows what great people these teachers are to be able to have these insights. Of course, I was delighted when they came to the conclusion that using Scrum with their kids could be the framework they need to get out of the vicious circle and into a virtuous circle. Scrum is a 21st Century Learning framework that allows students to progressively grow in self directiveness and decision making at all stages of the process, while the teacher guides students with goals and constraints to work within.

Most classrooms are like this. I see great people who are teachers get lost in the paradigm that good student behavior is sitting down and listening. Obedience and compliance are the values. The teacher is making all of the decisions. Students must follow. The long term ramifications are that students never develop the mental muscles needed to make good decisions. Without the protection of strong decision making muscles, students are victimized by their own brains impulses, and end up doing stupid things. I think most teachers got into teaching to empower students , but, without a  system in place to operationalize student empowerment, the de facto standard of command and control and daily grind takes over.

In the book "Making a Good Brain Great", Dr. Amen,  makes the distinction between "brain-driven" and "will-driven" behavior.
Will-driven behavior is goal directed, capable of making good judgements. Brain-driven brains act on impulses and short sighted outcomes. When the brain is healthy, it is will-driven and uses hand sanitizer to clean their hands. When it does not work right, it is brain-driven, and wants to drink hand sanitizer.

From ages 3-10, the brain has twice the activity of an adult brain as it goes through explosive growth of social, intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities. By age 11, the brain begins to prune connections to increase efficiency. The connections of the brain that it did not use often are tossed and those connections used frequently are kept.  I believe frequent exercise of choices in a student's elementary school years will lead to more will-driven brains, as the brain will keep these strong connections during the pruning stage.

Source: Braintrust Consulting Group Not adapted for classrooms

I see Scrum as the ultimate will-driven brain building machine! It iteratively increases student decision making in rapid cycles of self-directed learning and frequent feedback mechanisms. Scrum uses a repeating Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle, called Sprints, which is usually 1 -2 weeks long.

• Sprint Planning - students engage with the teacher in commitment-driven goal setting. Self-organizing student teams  then collaborate to create and carry out their own tasks to achieve these goals.
• Daily - students check in with each other in a Daily Standup to to commit to their decisions for that day and be accountable to one another for the previous days commitments.  

The end of the Sprint is reinforced by rhythmic feedback cycles:

• Sprint Review -  student team is accountable for their results of their goals by demonstrating their work.
• Sprint Retrospective - students reflect and improve their teamwork, culture, values, and process.

Imagine, with each 1 week Sprint, students grow not just in their knowledge, but growth in character development, self-directiveness, and goal-driven behavior. Scrum provides an all-in-one integrated framework for growth in these areas and more, which I hope to describe in future posts.

If teachers do not allow students to make decisions in their early years, around age 11, the brain prunes the little decision making skills she had.  If teachers introduced Scrum in a students early years and continued to use Scrum in each grade, perhaps the students in the poster would be deciding on how to make the next generation of hand sanitizers instead of digesting them. Without opportunities for students to make decisions, they lose the decision making and goal setting capacity to make their dreams come alive.

I believe Scrum is the framework that can transform Seth Godin's manifesto, Stop Stealing Dreams, into a reality. Scrum can restore the ownership of dream building back to the students and turn schools into Dream Catchers rather than, as Godin believes, Dream Stealers.  Scrum is more than just a 21st Century Learning Framework, but, a Dream Empowerment Framework.

"When we teach a child to make good decisions, we benefit from a lifetime of good decisions" Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams

Remember, come to the Scrum Gathering Atlanta on May 7th 1:30pm to talk how about how you can help save kids from a future of gulping down ounces of hand sanitizer. Be an Agile Hero - Spread Scrum to Schools!

Generation Agile - The Scrum Gathering

Agilists can transform the world, not just the world of work, but also in education and communities for a vibrant future. I am honored and very excited to be selected as a speaker at the Global Scrum Gathering in Atlanta, on May 7th.  Join me at 1:30pm to stimulate ideas and action about how Scrum can transform education, why it is the best foundation for a 21st Century learning environment, and how you can be a passionate force for a vibrant future.

Watch the Trailer now for this action packed session

Session Description

Kiddie Hawk - Scrum In Schools for Generation Agile

John Miller Hyper-Sonic Flight

Your Scrum flight will be fueled by passion and meaning as we show how Scrum is being applied to classrooms and schools. Students are happier, more engaged, more creative, and empowered in an Agile learning environment. Teachers discover their work is more rewarding and fun. Understand why Agile is the BEST learning environment for 21st Century learners. A call to arms for us to ban together & outreach to schools using our Scrum expertise to build better schools & a brighter future for our children. Discover a new meaning in Scrum, and how it can power your passion to improve the world.

Your Thoughts

I would love to hear your ideas, what you want discover, discuss your own experiences, and how you would like to engage in the topic. Be a part of the transformation.

Please comment or email me at agileschools (at) gmail (dot) com.

John Miller

                                        

Schoolhouse ScrumMaster

This is an exciting week. Kim Mills, the innovative 4th grade teacher using Scrum in her class, is going to a Certified ScrumMaster training. I can't wait to brainstorm with her about applying Agile to the classroom for Extreme 21st Century Learning after she is armed with some serious Scrum know how.
Maybe we can get her to blog here about the experience.


John Miller
The Agile School Blog
Agileschools@gmail.com

Over the Rainbow to Extreme 21st Century Learning

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more"

The world of today is very different than that of the 20th Century, which much of our education system is based.  The 20th Century was a much simpler world, although not necessarily easy.  People worked individually on singular tasks, through top down command and control structures.  You had little collaboration or creative thinking by the general workforce.  Problems were solved primarily through defined process controls, in which defined inputs entere a repeatable process that deliver specific and expected outcomes.  The great strides of the industrial revolution was based on such processes, such as Taylor's Scientific Management and Henry Ford's Mass Production System.  The brains of management directed hands and eyes of the worker. Just as Dorthy was swept out of her simple Kansas farm, into a radically new world of Oz, we have left the 20th Century world for a brand new world, operating under different and novel rules, that our schools need to quickly adapt to in order to prepare our students for.

If I Only Had a Left Brain...

In the 21st Century, the Knowledge Age was born with the advent of digital technologies and the Internet. The worker was lifted out of the shop floor to the cubicle, putting her brain to work.  The skills required by the knowledge worker resided primarily in the left brain, such as analysis, logic, computation, and fact retrieval. The paradigm of the 20th Century management still remained the defacto standard, top-down command and control utilizing defined process controls for knowledge workers, called knowledge management.  

If I Only Had A Right Brain

The world is very different today in America from the Industrial Age.  As schools, and many businesses I might add, were just coming to grips with thr Knowledge Age, we already entered a new age.  The Conceptual Economy or Conceptual Age, was initially described by Alan Greenspan in 1997, and later made popular in Daniel Pink's bestselling book, A Whole New Mind. 

"The growth of the conceptual component of output has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but with the ability to create, analyze, and transform information and to interact effectively with others." -Alan Greenspan (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_age)

Conceptual Age skills reside in the right brain, such as, creativity, empathy, collaboration, design, and meaning.  Where knowledge work was about left-minded individuals working individually and together, conceptual work often needs collaboration of diverse whole-brained team members, taking divergent paths to creative solutions.  It is about designing for meaning, emotion, connections, and beauty, as well as function. Take a look at this toothbrush holder design in the image below which transcends commodity function into a design that expresses beauty and fun for the owner.

Conceptual Age Style Toothbrush Holder
From "15 Cool ad Unusual Toothbrush Holders"
http://www.designswan.com/archives/15-cool-and-unusual-toothbrush-holders.html

"The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate" -http://www.danpink.com/whole-new-mind

Not only is the Conceptual Age growing, but, Daniel Pink describes how the left brain knowledge work is being eroded in America due to automation of these skills and the outsourcing to cheaper labor overseas. This does not mean we can abandon these skills, since the left brain skills are still necessary, but no longer sufficient in the Conceptual Economy. Our sense of urgency to implement 21st Century Skills should be at code red!

There is No Yellow Brick Road in a Complex & Flat World

The world today is increasingly more complex.  I use the term complex as defined in the field of Complex Adaptive Systems. Complexity is defined as one that is connected, interdependent, diverse and adapting. The 20th Century was not complex, it was relatively stable and predictable, which is why defined process controls and top-down command and control approaches worked so well.  A complex system generates novel and unpredictable phenomenon, with entities constantly adapting to one another in an interconnected world. Look around, from the flattening of the world, the Cloud, to financial markets, our lives are filled with complex interactions.  The 20th Century model fails miserably in a world of novel and constant changes.   

An empirical process control approach, in which exists variable inputs, a variable process, with emergent outputs along with a bottom-up self-organization style of management, is the approach we should for the 21st Century. Emergent processes in a complex system rely on adaptive decisions of those closest to the action.  Think of the game of chess, where you must adapt and make iterative decisions based on the move of your opponent.  You can not go into a match of chess with a specific, step by step plan, because one must continuously adapt to his opponent's moves.  The gameplay emerges, it is not defined.   A simple path to follow like the Yellow Brick Road can not exist in a terrain that is constantly moving and shifting. One must constantly explore and exploit this dancing landscape and learn to dance with it.

Over the Rainbow to 21st Century Skills

"Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain... [begins to sing 'Over the Rainbow'] " - Dorthy

Permission granted. Source P21.org

21st Century Skills is an attempt to develop students who can tackle 21st Century problems in a complex and conceptual world. It is a great foundation to build on.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills outlines a framework for 21st Century Outcomes and Support Systems.

Learning and Innovation Skills

• Innovation and Creativity
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving 
• Communication and Collaboration

Information, Media and Technology Skills*

• Information Literacy 
• Media Literacy 
• ICT (Information, Communication, and Technology) Literacy

[*John's side note: I believe these Information, Media, and Tech Skills  falls short, which we'll discuss in a future post]

Life and Career Skills

• Flexibility and Adaptability 
• Initiative and Self Direction
• Social and Cross-Cultural Skills 
• Productivity and Accountability
• Leadership and Responsibility

Extreme 21st Century Learning

 "Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." - Wizard of Oz aka Man Behind the Curtain

Like many adoptions of new innovations, we approach the future from where we are, with legacy approaches.  In this case, I fear most schools will be approaching 21st Century Skills armed with 20th Century instruction and tools.  Many of the books and training for schools to adopt 21st Century Skills do just this. We run the risk of walking our students backwards into the future. For example, in a wonderful and free online course created by Intel, 21st Century Assessments**, it suggests for students to keep a problem-solving log so the teacher can assess the skill of problem solving. This 20th Century approach of documentation over demonstration still lingers, serving as a disincentive to student self-directed problem solving & creativity, the explicit goals of 21st Century Skills.  20th Century style burdensome compliance through documented reports and logs kills 21st Century Learning. Our students need more than a diploma. [**Don't get me wrong, these Intel Elements Courses are great, but, there is enough legacy creep to demotivate students to be true 21st Century Learners]

I argue that we must immerse our students in 21st Century environments with a toolkit that has proven to innovate in this conceptual age and removes the impediments toengage in 21st Century Skills. It can not be seen as another standard to adopt or a module to be taught in isolation to the curriculum. It must be taken to their extremes and engrained as the only way we teach and learn, displacing legacy learning that does not add value to an empowered 21st Century Learning environment. 

We have a model of this in the software development world, called Extreme Programming.  Software projects were failing at a staggering rate, being run from a 20th Century engineering approach.  Extreme Programming was born from the question, what if we took the things we know about teams and practices that make great software, and take it to their extremes, and threw out the legacy approaches.  Extreme Programming is uniquely a 21st Century approach, adopted by software teams around the world, due to the amazing success it helps teams achieve. 

We can draw parallels from Extreme Programming to 21st Century Learning. Just as a new 21st Century discipline such as software development, failed miserably when it was managed from a 20th Century paradigm, so will 21st Century Skills fail if instructed and learned in a 20th Century classroom paradigm.  21st Century skills require approaches, environments, and resources that are native to the 21st Century environments. What if we took 21st Century Skills to their extremes? What if we took innovative approaches, environments, and tools that were developed in the real world 21st Century to solve 21st Century problems and applied it boldly to the classroom?

No Yellow Brick Road, yet, There is Still a RACE

The 21st Century landscape dances before our bewildered eyes. A defined path of the Yellow Brick Road crumbles beneath our dancing landscape. In a dancing landscape, we are in a race to adapt and relearn and to toggle between exploration and exploitation. Extreme 21st Century Learning cross-pollinates innovative 21st century approaches to challenges in the real world to the classroom. These 21st Century approaches, combined holistically, is called R.A.C.E..  Real power in Extreme 21st Century Learning comes from using these approaches in an integrated combination, although each component could be used independently.   

• R is for Real and Relevant
• A is for Agile Based Learning Environment [see "Scrum in the Classroom" for a teaser]
• C is for Creative and Makers
• E is for Engaged Passions and Strengths

We'll take a deep dive into each of these in a series of upcoming posts and map how each takes the 21st Century Skills to the extreme using innovative 21st Century approaches. We'll explore the innovative approaches in todays world, such as crowdsourcing, gamification, agile, makerspaces, and design thinking, and cross-pollinate them into Extreme 21st Century Learning. I am very excited to be able to share these ideas and hear what you think!

John Miller

The Agile School Blog

agileschools@gmail.com