The Buzz on Big Ideas: December 30, 2009


	Program Highlights

	Video: Julia De La Torre (participant), Global Studies Coordinator, International School of the Americas "It’s not just about inspiring people to think big but it’s also about designing a professional learning experience...The fact that you have teachers and policy makers and technologists and business people all in the same room. It’s been a fascinating experience." -De La Torre

	Video: Yvonne Chan (Keynote speaker), Principal, Vaughn Next Century Learning Center and Member of CA State Board of Education, Trusting You Have the Knowledge-Base to Create Something New "Human capital is just like the wheel of your tire. You have to take it to the store for alignment." -Chan The program highlights videos were captured with donated Flip Cams.
	Did you take videos or photos at the Big Ideas Fest? If so, please tag them with "bigideasfest" on YouTube or Flickr.
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	For more info on Big Ideas Fest 2009 (or 2010!) please email bigideas@iskme.org. Visit the Big Ideas Fest website and ISKME's website.

It was thrilling to watch the inaugural Big Ideas Fest come to life. Kudos to those of you who were willing to step outside of your comfort zone with us and create a new kind of education conversation. For those of you who ventured out west for the Fest and those who couldn’t join us in person, we’re in the process of creating an online space for Big Idea seeds to grow.

Video: Arne Duncan, Secretary of U.S. Department of Education, Big Ideas Fest Welcome

"This event seeks to do what the nation most needs – breakdown those silos that inhibit change and generate new ideas and strategies that can be brought to scale to prove outcomes at all levels of education and to truly make education relevant to those it serves. " -Duncan

Big Ideas in Motion

Big Ideas are born from out of the box thinking. Improv challenges us to do just that. Throughout the Action Collabs and the Fest at large the primary tenets of improv were used to encourage top-down, bottom-up, AND side-to-side thinking.

Follow these tenets and many things become possible.

Suspend judgment
Let go of your agenda
Listen in order to receive
Build on what you receive
Make your partner look brilliant
Look for connection

"I liked how improv helped loosen up the imagination and how our Action Collab leader encouraged the 'no idea is a bad idea' type of brainstorming. Being encouraged to think with a group of people in this sort of boundary-less way was really, really inspiring for me" (participant).

The Buzz on Big Ideas

Fast-paced and interactive, Action Collabs used the process of design-thinking to focus on coalescing big ideas to make education relevant to learning, such as replacing schools with “learning studios.” Now that’s a big idea! Facilitators also engaged participants in improv activities used to encourage expansive thinking through Identifying Opportunities, Design, Prototype, and Scale and Spread. The walls of the Ritz were covered with sticky notes, sketches of new school structures, and designs for online and handheld technology.

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