It's About Learning

Thomas Jefferson — One Word Will Do

Source: thebigrocks.com/brevity

In his talk Assessing Digital Innovations in Education at the Apple Leadership Institute in Vancouver BC this past week, Dr. Michael Fullan challenged the room full of Teachers, Technology Directors, Principal, Superintendents, and other educational leaders to start making some significant changes to our education system because “Kids Can’t Wait.”

I have been working as a change agent in education for the past two decades so his talk was reassuring and inspiring. Reassuring in the sense that those of use who have been working toward improving education need to keep on working because we are finally starting to see some progress. Inspiring in the sense that many younger leaders are picking up the challenge and are motivated to keep on pressing toward change.

While these aspects of his talk were excellent the most impactful part of his talk was the reminder that there is a tendency toward paralysis by analysis and we (academics and educators) do a really good job of generating huge reports which become shelfware.

Fullan challenged the audience with the following statement [paraphrased]:

If you can’t say it in 3 pages you don’t know what you are talking about. If you write more than 3 pages people won’t read it anyway…