Agile Bedtime

The video says it all. Agile bedtime for my beautiful 5 year daughter. 

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.

The Princess, Phonics, and Agility: Part 2

Sienna, my 4 year old daughter, and I are happy to share with you our next steps in learning Phonics within the Agile Based Learning Environment (ABLE). After developing our "Learned It" chart from the prior post, which we set clarity for our quality of learning,  we now need to identify our Learning Objectives, continuing without Princess theme!

Artifact #2: Design The Learning Objectives 

Learning Objectives should make it clear what a learners should "know or be able to do..that the could not do before" [1].

With our Agile Based Learning Environment elements in mind, we design our Learning Objectives to be:

• highly visible, so we write them on cards or sticky notes and place them for all to see.  
• understandable by the learner, so, we attempt to write them so the learner can understand. For Sienna’s age, we will need pictures as part of the Learning Objectives.
• adaptable, so we make learning concepts independent from one another so that we can choose the right learning at the right time. 
• Even with my 4 year old, connecting her learning to a relevant purpose, let's her know that the learning is for a reason. Not just because I tell her to. Meaning is a powerful intrinsic motivator.

The Learning Objective Card Format

The Learning Objective Card format looks like this below.

Learning Objective Card Format Example

The Learning Objective card follows the format below:

I want to ___________      ________________,       

        ^{(Bloom’s Verb)          (Learning Concept)}

So that I can ____________________________                     

         ^{(Achieve Some Meaningful Purpose)}

• Blooms Verbs [2]  is a popular cognitive classification system, which allows us to to choose the right level of challenge for the perceived cognitive skill level of the learner. Bloom's  Matching the learning challenge to the right skill  will help the learner achieve a state of flow in their learning, one of the goals of ABLE  [3].
• Learning Concept is the knowledge we want to be learned. We want this to be a small as a chunk as possible, but still significant.
• Achieve Some Meaningful Purpose is to connect the learner to something personally important and relevant, preferably some intrinsic motivation.
• Learned It Level  is a space we track the Learned It level goals and achievements discussed in Part 1 of this blog series.  For Sienna, I will place the sticker/badge for the Learned It level she achieves. We'll discover more on  this in later posts.

Step 1: Identify Learning Standard

I started out with a larger Learning Objective, at the Standard level, as identified in the Phonics book, beginning and ending consonants. I then discovered with Sienna why we want to learn the standard. In this case, being like her big cousin is important and motivating to her. 

Our discussion went something like this:
Me: “What can your big cousin do that you want to be able to do when she is at school?”
Sienna: “Well, when she reads, like a book, she does it by herself”. Me:“Do you want to read a book by yourself?”. Sienna: “Yeah”. 
Me: “Well, to read a book by yourself, you need to understand something called consonants. Would you like to learn how to read words that start and end with consonants?”
Sienna: “Yeah!”

I then wrote on our learning objective card:

I want to recognize beginning and ending consonants, 

so that I can read by myself like my cousin. 

I read it to her and asked if we can meet the challenge together and she agreed. See our card in the image below:

Side 2 Image Source: Basic Phonics Skills, Level B (Grades K-1), Evan-Moor

Step 2: Break down the Learning Standard into Learning Objectives

A Learning Objective, to be actionably learned by Sienna,  needs to be small enough to be learned in one, maybe 2, learning sessions.  The smaller and more focused the learning objectives are, the faster the feedback, the more adaptable we can be, which results in highly differentiated learning .  So we unpack the Standard to small but significant Learning Objectives. We make it highly visible and adaptable, by placing each objective onto it’s own card.

I want to recognize words beginning and ending with B, 

so that I can read by myself like my cousin. 

I felt this could be broken down to a 3 smaller, independent, yet still significant Learning Objectives:

I want to recognize words beginning with B,

 so that I can read by myself like my cousin.

I want to recognize words ending with b, 

so that I can read by myself like my cousin.

I want to distinguish between  words beginning and ending with B, 

so that I can read by myself like my cousin.

We repeated this for the remaining consonants. The Learning Objective cards take some of the best practices great teachers use today, supported by powerful learning and motivational theories, by making it highly visible, adaptable, meaningful to the learner. It sets the stage for the learner to enter deep engagement, the flow state, with their learning.

Tips 

• The purpose behind the ABLE practices is to be lightweight and simple.  All you need to write learning objectives in this way are index cards and a marker.

• Want to try this in the classroom or with your teaching teams? Check out this powerful visual Learning Objective generation board. Better yet, get your students to help co-create the learning objectives!

Up Next

Sienna and I will share how we use the Learning Objective Cards to make a highly visual and adaptable learning roadmap, that we call the Learning Backlog, which offers many advantages over the traditional static curriculum planning and curriculum maps. Stay tuned, you'll enjoy how a simple visual tool empowers learners to be in control of their learning and allows the differentiated instruction.

Thank You,

Sienna and John

Agile Phonics: Pt 1

THE PRINCESS, PHONICS, & AGILE PART 1

Please try this at home!

Wandering Minds 

I have to admit, it is tough for my wandering brain to engage with my 4 year old at times. My mind needs challenging stimuli. As much as I love my daughter, I tune out after 10 minutes of playing Simba and Mufasa from the Lion King, or learning letters. I yearn for dopamine to be pumped into my brain, my mind wanders,  and then I feel like a bad father for not being in the moment with her.  

This week, I downloaded some Phonics books from the library for her. Indeed, not only did I tune out in 10 minutes of our first lesson, so did my daughter (it must be genetic!). To engage myself and her, we decided to combine Agile and Phonics. Engaging me with my love of Agile, and engaging Sienna with the Agile's visual workflow, empowering her with choice in learning, and providing her instant feedback on progress.

Designing Phonics ABLE Style

First, read this post regarding the elements of the Agile Based Learning Environment (ABLE). You will see these elements throughout.

Artifact #1: The “I Learned It” Chart

“Keep the end in mind” - Stephen Covey

What does “learned” mean? How do we know when to move on to the next learning objective? When do we know we met our learning goals? How do I motivate my daughter to achieve the highest level of learning?  As a learning team (her and I), we should have clarity of what “learned”means from the beginning so we can design are learning to achieve the right level of mastery and move on to the next challenge.  It also ensures we spend out time on the most important, not “over-learning”and not “under-learning”, the former is wasteful, the latter creates “learning debt”. Learning quality goes up when we design with the end in mind first, knowing our definition of done.

Resources Need:

• Flip Chart Paper
• Makers/Crayons
• Stickers (optional)
• Learning rubric

Step 1: Identify the Learning Proficiency Levels:

Basic Phonics Skills, Level B (Grades K-1), Evan-Moor

Educators are very familiar with learning proficiency levels. The Phonics book provided us with a rubric of 3 levels of learning proficiencies which we could use in our learning:

Level 3: Mastered

 • The student is able to complete the activity independently. • The student is able to complete the activity correctly. • The student is able to answer questions about the phonetic principle being practiced. 

Level 2: Showed Adequate Understanding 

 • The student is able to complete the activity with little assistance. • The student is able to complete the activity with minimal errors. • The student is able to answer some questions about the phonetic principle being practiced. 

Level 1: Understanding

 • The student required assistance to complete the activity. • The student made several errors. •The student did not appear to understand the phonetic principle being practiced. 

Level 0: Showed Little or No Understanding

 • The student required one-to-one assistance to complete the activity, or was unable to complete the activity. • The student made many errors. • The student showed no understanding of the phonetic principle being practiced. 

-Source Basic Phonics Skills, Level B (Grades K-1), Evan-Moor

Step 2: Design a “Learned It” Metaphor

Source: www.disney-clipart.com

The rubrics were definitely helpful to me, but, not so much to Sienna. How do I translate this to something more fun for my 4 year old Phonics learner? When in need help with Sienna, I always ask a“princess” to come to the rescue!  We came up with the idea of a Princess Castle visual metaphor for the learning proficiency levels.

Sienna decorating the "Learned It" Castle

Respecting our elements of ABLE, I asked Sienna if she like the castle idea. She loved it, of course, it involved princesses! I then drew a castle on a flip chart paper. The castle has 4 levels, corresponding to the Phonics learning rubric.  Level 0 - The Castle Gate, with Levels 1-3 being each next higher level castle tower.

Step 3: Design The “I Learned It” Badges

Teachers know the magical power of stickers for young children.  I pulled out our sticker stash and luckily found some princess stickers, imagine! I must be careful here, stickers or badges should be there to symbolize her level of learning and her effort, not as an extrinsic reward. I do not want the overjustification effect to take place, where an extrinsic motivation replaces that of her more valuable intrinsic motivation.

Level 3: Mastered
I asked Sienna, “What is the most important sticker for a princess?” She pointed to the Princess Crown “Wonderful, this is the sticker that you get when you really learned a lot about something and can do it by yourself”. This was became our level 3 - Mastery badge.

Level 2: Showed Adequate Understanding 
“Now, what is the next most important thing to a princess”

Sienna, “The wand!” “Great, that is our level 2 of learning, when you did a great job of learning, but perhaps not as much as when you get the Crown. You still might need a little help from Daddy”

Level 1: Understanding
Next, was our Level 1 learning. “Ok what is the next important sticker to a princess?” Sienna chose the princess gown. “Alright, when you learned something, but, probably need to learn some more, you get the princess gown. We'll know this because Daddy will be helping you a lot”.

I chose not to have a Level 0 sticker, if we do not get to at least to Level 1, we need to try again.

Each sticker with the corresponding “Learned It” Level number was placed on a flag on the right area of the castle.

Again, Sienna is part of the process, choosing her own “Learned It Badges”, symbols that are meaningful to her, inspire her, and ones in which she understands the ranking of learning it symbolizes.  To really make it hers, she colored the Princess Castle! Fun! 

Next In Our Princess Adventure

Sienna and I will share how we use the "Learned It" Princess Castle in a subsequent post to this series. I am sure you can already imagine how it might be used.

In our next post, Sienna and I will share how we develop ABLE Learning Objectives and the Learning Backlog so that we have a visible and adaptable roadmap for our princess learning adventure with Phonics.

Could you try something like this with your children or students? If so, share your ideas and results!

Thank You,
John Miller, CSP, PMP

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. 

ABLE Guide: Introduction

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. 

Agile Based Learning Environment Introduction

"Enhance creativity by changing conditions in the environment than by trying to make people think creatively"

- Csikszentmihalyi, Creativty: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Welcome to the Self-Organizing Classroom, powered by the Agile Based Learning Environment (ABLE)! ABLE offers you a simple and revolutionary approach to transforming the culture of  your classroom to one that provides students autonomy, love of learning, and purpose. The 5 steps in ABLE is firmly rooted in the theories of Positive Psychology, Self-Determination Theory, Complex Adaptive Systems, brain research, and the hands on experience of the contributors of the guide in implementing ABLE in real classroom. ABLE is focused on designing the learning environment and conditions so that 21st Century Skills, character, engagement, competency, autonomy, and  purpose emerge. It is designed to go beyond just putting students in control of their learning, but, doing so in a radically collaborative approach. It transcends individual student self-directedness to a collaborative form of self-directedness, called self-organization, in which learning teams achieve learning goals together.

The framework and techniques are designed to allow a classroom to embark their journey into self-organization safely and incrementally. Beginning the student journey from individual learning to that of a self-organizing classroom. It provides a path for the teacher to move from the “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side”. ABLE helps transform the teacher from the instructor into the skillful crafter of an empowering and engaging learning environment. 

ABLE provides guard rails against the chaotic classroom. ABLE provides tools, techniques, artifacts, and a rhythm of checkpoints that allows for constant alignment to learning goals and behavior. ABLE gives the teacher a self-directedness dial, a powerful mechanism to incrementally increase and adjust the autonomy of learning to students. So, rest any anxieties aside, and get ready to transform your classroom to a fertile ground of a true 21st Century learning environment.

ABLE Guide: Benefits

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. 

What Are The Benefits of ABLE?  

• mastery of 21st Century Skills built in to all learning:
• Creativity and innovation
• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Communication and collaboration
• Flexibility and Adaptability
• Mange Goals and Time
• Initiative and Self-Direction
• Social and cross-cultural interation
• Productivity and accountability
• Leadership
• Responsibility
• Work effectively in diversity
• Manage projects
• Produce results
• delivers the rigor required by the Common Core Standards
• mastery of Common Core Speaking and Listening Anchor Standards are built in
• real Life Skills that students can and will apply outside of the classroom
• diminished behavioral issues and improved attendance
• unleashes the love of learning
• self-mediatation of conflict
• higher order thinking and greater depth of knowlege
• teacher's role will be more rewarding as they move from the "sage on the stage" to the "guide on the side"
• character development integrated throughout
• adaptable to any curriculum and classroom structure
• rapid learning 
• minimal resources needed, just requires a marker and sticky notes.
• transformation of classroom culture
• radical student engagement & empowerment
• learners self-organze, allowing the teacher to provide more differentiated and higher valued instruction
• can start right away, ABLE provides an easy on-boarding process and a pathway to mastery
• provides "guard-rails" to protect the classroom from chaos as it incrementally empowers learners
• realtime differentiation of learning

Fall CUE - Supercharged Learners

I am honored and excited to speak at the Fall CUE conference this Friday with Chris Scott, rockstar teacher at SantaYnes School October 26th.
The session title, is, What Would Google Do in Your Classroom? If the top innovators of the world were to make students 21st Century Ready and Fully Engaged, what would that look like? I am excited to share with the many innovative educators at CUE, and I know I will leave inspired and engaged after talking with such inspirational people.

If you are going to CUE, join Chris and I at 1:15pm, Friday, October 26th.

http://www.slideshare.net/AgileSchools/agile-learning-fall-cue-2012-prez

Agile Learning Infographic

Agile Learning Infographic

Agile Learning is inspired by Agile product development principles and methods, with Scrum having the most influence. Although it is inspired by Agile, it is not dictated or confined by it. In many ways, the Agile terms are a barrier for educators in its adoption.

I have attempted to develop, with fellow educators, its own characteristics, personality, terms, and attributes as Agile is transplanted in the soil of education. In the infographic, a metaphor of flowing water emerged, with differing containers based on the context. The larger items are buckets, the smaller are cups, decomposing all the way down to drops of "Tasklets" the classroom moves through to learned.

I am sure I need to iterate this more to simplify and clarify the process. Thanks to Chris Scott and Evan Moore for helping me to clarify and simplify, and coming up with the idea of Buckets, which inspired the rest of the metaphor, from Cups to droplets of tasks, I call "Tasklets".

I will post a greater detailed description of the process for educators soon.

I really appreciate any feedback, as comments on this blog or emails to me.  This is my first try at an infographic, and please let me know your thoughts, especially educators, students, and parents. What does the infographic tell you about the process? 

Download as a PDF:
Original (Skinny)
Stretched Version

Note, I used Piktochart.com to develop this. I discovered it today and it is pretty amazing, except that the image size is a bit skinny.

Thank You ,
John Miller
agileschools@gmail.com

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 Learning Objective Board

An example of a ABLE (Agile Based Learning Environment) board for teacher teams to collaboratively develop learning objectives. More details to come. Please comment.

This could also be used by students to develop their own Learning Outcomes for a classroom that is self-directed.

References

Linking Levels, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria
Jenny Moon, Exeter University