Invent. Design. Discover. Share. This is the future of education today.

The Big Ideas Fest is the starting point for a movement that supports innovation in education at a time when the need to accelerate high-quality learning is truly essential for our country and our future. The goal of this unique three-day meeting of experts and creative doers and thinkers is to spotlight, challenge and change the ways in which education can be made relevant to learning in the post-industrial world. The goal is to increase relevance beyond the sidelines of society and within the unique classrooms of the world, while placing learning at the front and center of all that we do.

Seminars exploring current research and topical issues in the biomedical sciences, addressed at the general theme of innovation. Seminars are organized in blocks with related content, and are presented by prominent outside speakers as well as by HST faculty members and graduate students. Each seminar block includes several semi-weekly presentations, in addition to wide-ranging discussions among speakers, faculty, and students. Discussions involve issues such as relations between presented research areas, requirements for further advances in the "state of the art", the role of enabling technologies, the responsible practice of biomedical research, and career paths in the biomedical sciences.

This course will serve as a two-week aggressively gentle introduction to programming for those students who lack background in the field. Specifically targeted at students with little or no programming experience, the course seeks to reach students who intend to take 6.001 in the Spring Term and feel they would struggle because they lack the necessary background. The main focus of the subject will be acquiring programming experience: instruction in programming fundamentals coupled with lots of practice problems. Lots of programming required, but lots of support provided.

An overview of the 5 courses offered for free by Teachers Without Borders. For teachers who do not wish to earn the Certificate of Teaching Mastery, Courses 1 - 4 are available to be taken as separate, "stand-alone" courses. Given the distinct nature and focus of each course, a teacher may choose to take only 1 or 2 courses, 3 or 4 as needed to support the work that they are doing in their classroom. This kind of course flexibility allows teachers to choose what they need and to enter any course at any time.

This graduate seminar examines the roles that civil society actors play in international, national, and local environmental governance. We will consider theories pertaining to civil society development, social movement mobilization, and relations between state and non-state actors. During the course of the semester, particular attention will be given to the legitimacy and accountability of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Case studies of civil society response to specific environmental issues will be used to illustrate theoretical issues and assess the impacts that these actors have on environmental policy and planning.

The process of Lesson Study is a unique form of collaborative classroom inquiry, frequently practiced in Japanese elementary schools, in which a small team of instructors designs, teaches, studies and refines a single class lesson.

Fusion provides guidance for third sector, user-led health organizations on setting up legal frameworks for collaboration. It provides a useful overview of models of consortium as well as some consortium monitoring tools.

A course designed to help teachers reach all students and to depend upon diverse cultures as a source of strength for curriculum and for classroom development.

Intergenerational collaborative story creation lesson. Excellent for vocabulary building, speaking, imagination usage, team building. Can be used for all ages.

Subject engages a dialogue with architecture and urbanism from the perspective of the visual artist. Ideas investigated thematically from early modernist practices to the most recent examples of contemporary production. Art making as an adjunct to the design process is challenged by both synthetic and critical models of production. Visual art practice is examined as a conceptual prologue to architectural and urbanistic thinking, as an integrated part of the design process, and as a critical epilogue. Lectures and discussions lead to the development of realized projects to be coordinated with architectural studio. In this class we will examine how the idea of the city has been "translated" by artists, architects, and other diverse disciplines. We will consider how collaborations between artists and architects might provide opportunities for rethinking / redesigning urban spaces. The class will look specifically at planned cities like Brasilia, Las Vegas, Canberra, and Celebration and compare such tabula rasa designs with the redesign of recyclable urban spaces demonstrated in projects such as Ground Zero, Barcelona 2004, and Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway. While the course will involve some reading and discussion, coursework will focus largely on the students' own projects / interventions that should evolve over the course of the semester. Of the two weekly class meetings, one will be a group discussion or lecture with the whole class and visiting guests, and the other will be an individual meeting between the student and the instructor to discuss his or her work for the class, including the final project.

Download the supporting PDF file for this episode http://bit.ly/ijlL3g from the Learning to Teach Online project website.

Engaging students in online learning is critical for success. In this episode, we speak with teachers and students about strategies for improving engagement and motivation in online learning environments. Effective facilitation, creating learning communities, strategies for motivating students, and encouraging and sustaining participation are discussed.

To facilitate conversation between disciplines, departments participating in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate have documented their work within the program and share their advances and innovations.

SPARK explores the impact of fame and notoriety on visual artist Chris Johanson, jettisoned to international art-stardom by his inclusion in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and a 2002 SECA award for emerging artists from the SF Museum of Modern Art. This Educator Guide explores the history and tradition of street-based works and the field of painting.

Although there are over a quarter of a million open courses published by an increasing number of universities, it remains unclear whether Open Education Resources (OER) is scalable and productively sustainable. The challenge is compounded when OER is examined in the light of its potential to allow both educators and learners in developing countries to contribute geographically bound learning resources in the context of varied infrastructural, technological and skill constraints. Between October and December 2009, 52 participants involved in various roles related to Health OER from five universities (one in the USA, two in Ghana and two in South Africa) were interviewed. The aim of the study was to investigate sustainability of OER based on possible cross-institutional collaboration as well as social and technical challenges in creating and sharing OER materials. The analytical framework was adopted from prior research in related areas: distributed scientific collaboration; cyber infrastructure; open source development; and Wikipedia. We adopted a qualitative approach for data collection, which included semi structured interviews and document analysis. The findings were analyzed and reported with many direct quotations included. The outcome of the data analysis is a model for productive, scalable, and sustainable OER based on cross-institutional collaboration. The report concludes with practical recommendations on how to the model can be operationalized.

This pilot effort between the two foundations is designed to help institutions and programs create succinct project portals that provide quick access to a project overview and selected instruments, materials, data and evidence related to their work.

An old saying holds that “there are many more good ideas in the world than good ideas implemented.” This is a case-based introduction to the fundamentals of effective implementation. Developed with the needs and interests of planners--but also with broad potential application--in mind, this course is a fast-paced, case-driven introduction to developing strategy for organizations and projects, managing operations, recruiting and developing talent, taking calculated risks, measuring results (performance), and leading adaptive change, for example where new mental models and habits are required but also challenging to promote. Our cases are set in the U.S. and the developing world and in multiple work sectors (urban redevelopment, transportation, workforce development, housing, etc.). We will draw on public, private, and nonprofit implementation concepts and experience.

Three major topics related to grouping students (i.e., group-learning paradigms, learning group configuration, and student leadership in academic work groups) were reviewed. Given the confusion arising from the interchangeable use of terms associated with group learning, a detailed comparison of cooperative and collaborative group-learning paradigms was presented. Definitions, common attributes, and practices that vary among the approaches were examined. Grouping strategies (e.g., group size, gender, race) and personality profiles (i.e., Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, Emergenetics®, and the STEPTM Program) influencing group-learning composition were then investigated to determine best practices and research deficiencies. Next, student leadership in small academic work groups was organized under three subtopics: situational demands, leadership styles, and leader attributes. Each area was analyzed in view of the extant literature. Implications of this conceptual analysis are provided. This publication aligns with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISSLC) Standard 3: "An education leader promotes the success of every student by ensuring management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment."

Describes how a teaching artist collaborates with a community group and an art gallery to create an intergenerational workshop for healing and storytelling around the wounds of war.

On May 13, 2008 ISKME sponsored a panel discussion entitled "From Collaboratories to Public Space: Bringing the World to Students and Putting Classrooms in the Wild." This wiki contains videos of the talks and discussion from the evening seminar.