The Global STEM Education Center
The Global STEM Education Symposium, May 29, 2015
Engineering has more in common with the arts than science. It's a “creative process"
It's not just about what you put in but what actually comes out.
We need a coach these days and not so much an expert.
"It's not about what you know but what you can do with what you know."
The innovation economy requires a redefinition of what it means to be a teacher.
Classrooms for the innovation economy need to look more like kindergarten and less like lecture halls.
We need to prepare all students for what is increasingly an innovation period.
There are two kinds of innovation: 1. Grand challenges involve people, policy, security, sustainability, global health and enhancing life
The biggest challenge we have today is that of cooperation.
“We have to open our tent and …[develop] graduates who have the right attitudes, behavior and motivation. We must change who we teach, what we teach and how we teach. The challenge involves creativity, inventiveness.
Innovation only happens at the intersection of feasibility, viability and desirability.
Innovation requires changing the way people live so the kids better get some practice at it.
Expeditionary learning is what is necessary for our kids to succeed.
What should we do to make sure that the capabilities we are born with are developed?
The teachers who made the greatest difference were themselves outliers teaching in a way significantly different from their colleagues.
Isolation is the enemy of improvement and innovation.
Innovation happens at the boundaries of academic limits but never within.
Teaching the skill of self-evaluation and self-reflection is crucial.
Grit is best learned in the pursuit of real interests.
We should Invest in education R&D.
There should be an “Innovation Fund” to create new courses
Assess teachers on the basis of improvement in students’ work over time - more professional form of accountability.
Kara Miller: What if kids majored in a project rather than a subject, e.g. how to bring water to people across the globe? Radical rethinking of assessments and education.
Thomas Weber: There is a new culture of learning that looks an awful lot like early learning.
Margaret McKenna: I would require all the public schools in the nation to provide high quality summer programs.
Emotional and social development is the focus of early learning.
For STEM we need to make sure we have a curriculum that is demanding and competitive.
We are beating the creativity and humanity out of teachers. We need a revolution.
Fernando Reimers: STEM is a wonderful conduit to help students understand some of the most complex problems in the world. STEM could also be a wonderful way to develop collaborative skills to function in the world.
We need to build coalitions that will prepare students to invent the future that is uncertain.
Thomas Weber: We need some kind of initiative for early educators. Efforts should be made in training and compensation.
What can we do to celebrate play as learning?
Allison Scheff: We should redesign and reevaluate teacher education and teacher preparation. Scale is where we will truly find equity. #globalstemsymposium
When industry can integrate what it does well with what's happening in classrooms, we will be successful.
Collected by Shruthi Lakshmi Saravanan
HGSE Intern for the Symposium 2015