An overview of the work done by Collective Invention and the Idea Factory in the field of education innovation over the last ten years. From a powerpoint presentation.

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A recently released video and in-depth report document Collective Invention’s partnership with the Vallejo Charter School.

“We must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.” – Pablo Picasso

For the four years since it’s founding, the Vallejo Charter School (VCS) has been on the forefront of innovation in education. By utilizing a cutting edge Experiential Learning model, VCS serves as a platform for innovation in the education sector.

Collective Invention partnered with VCS to assess the effectiveness of this model and to help the school understand its place within broader trends transforming education over the next decade. The resulting report is available to download here:

A School Worthy of Its Children

Highlights include:

• Many of the jobs that VCS students will hold in the year 2025 do not currently exist. They may range from Aquaprenuers who finding opportunities in technology addressing the state’s water crisis to Clinical Bioninformaticists who tailor drugs to fit patients’ genetic codes.
• 66% of education philanthropies are funding innovation in education, and 33% plan to increase funding in this area. By positioning itself as a center for prototyping and scaling new learning models, VCS can more effectively capture philanthropic investment.
• Ethnographic documentation of VCS’s model revealed a striking emphasis on attentiveness. “In classrooms around the campus we noticed an emphasis on the physical characteristics of listening: eye contact, empty hands and a still body. “Use your listening eyes,” we heard in one classroom. “Make sure your hands are hands are empty and your feet are still. No distractions while you are listening” we heard in another. Research by the Dana Consortium indicates that attentiveness is significantly correllated with improved scores on intelligence tests.

Arnold Wasserman at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club on Oct. 13, 2011.

New Academic Studio, based on our Creative DNA work, featured in NOCCA’s July newsletter. NOCCA Institute Executive Director Sally Perry Selected For National Cultural Leadership Program.

We uncovered some fascinating insights curating our track at the Social Capital Markets Conference, Polycentric Solutions: Local in the World. We’re still buzzing here at CI with the interesting conversations and great people we met and worked with. On-the-ground leaders from Oakland to Sweden to Kenya came together to cross-pollinate best practices about local solutions to global problems. Facts and highlights from the track include:

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In order to prepare students for a rich and turbulent future, we need to empower them with the tools of design. That’s why Collective Invention cofounder Arnold Wasserman has been working with the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) to create an event which provides high school students with hands-on experience using design principles.

The day’s learning experience will kick-off a series of phased projects in which students will take an active role in the design and expansion of their teaching and learning spaces over the course of the next few years.

In addition, the students will continue to hone their design skills and understandings to then contribute to the planning and design of the future Homer Plessy Museum.

Learn more about this event here.

At the end of the day, all impact is local. Creating impact means understanding the complex web of local relationships in which it takes place. Scaling that impact requires a deep understanding of where those complex local environments overlap- and where they don’t.

That’s why the Polycentric Solutions track at the 2011 Social Capital Markets Conference is being built around two living case studies: Berjeson, Gotenborg, Sweden and Cherryland, CA, USA. Though separated by half the globe, these two communities have numerous parellells that SOCAP attendees will be leveraging in hands-on problem solving throughout the conference.

Meet the Communities

View Polycentric Solutions in a larger map

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In most ways, the Roman Empire was a boon to everyone involved. Once-warring tribes were brought to a place of peace. These tribes could suddenly trade local goods, exchange ideas, and invest in shared infrastructure. The only drawback to the Pax Romana was Rome. Rome sucked resources that it burned on extravagant gestures, often designed to distract. It served as an information bottleneck, forcing bad decisions onto people with the local knowledge to make better ones. Worst of all, Rome became a single point of failure that eventually brought the entire system crashing down.

Today, these wealthy, ill-informed single points of failure are still causing disasters on a regular basis. Our small tribes accept them as a necessary evil because in a deeply interconnected and interdependent world we need our Pax. But that may be changing. For the first time in human history, advances in social technology are letting small tribes build an empire together without elevating a Rome. (“Social technology” refers to systems of organizing like democracy, not social media tools like twitter.) These emerging technologies and their practitioners will be featured in an upcoming Polycentrism Track at the Social Capital Markets Conference.

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