New Learning Cartography: Small Steps for a Big Journey with no Destination

New Learning Cartography: Small Steps for a Big Journey with no Destination

This article was published in IntrepidEd News on 13 Jan 2023. It was written in collaboration with Michelle Blanchet. Some years ago, the education world grabbed hold of this idea of 21st century skills.  Experts and leaders identified and agreed on four “essential skills” necessary to succeed in the uncertain world of tomorrow. This brainchild [...]

Meaning in times of crisis: New narratives 3

Meaning in times of crisis: New narratives 3

This article was published in Intrepid Ed News on 25 August 2022. Part 1 Part 2 Sometimes you just need a good ol’ crisis to shake things up, to get things moving. It’s like the story of the frog you put in tepid water and slowly turn up the heat. The frog won’t ever realize [...]

Chapter 5: From I to We—The Source of Becoming

Chapter 5: From I to We—The Source of Becoming

This article was published on Intrepid Ed News on 14 July 2022. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the previous four chapters, I have tried to bring to light the tension between the emerging infinite world—where the Metaverse may [...]

Chapter 4: Starting Small to Make Big Changes for a New Education Narrative

Chapter 4: Starting Small to Make Big Changes for a New Education Narrative

This article was published in IntrepidEd News on 9 June 2022. There is no distinction at all between the everyday world (samsara) and freedom (nirvana). There is no distinction between freedom and the everyday world. —Nagarjuna Futurephobia is not a word that we come across very frequently considering its potential impact. You’ll find only a [...]

Chapter 3: Decentralized Networks of Learning as Biomimicry

Chapter 3: Decentralized Networks of Learning as Biomimicry

This article was published on Intrepid Ed News on 12 May 2022. I ended the previous chapter with a teaser, one that I promised in this installment to explore: Can we really have learner-centered and competency-based education in our current education system? The thing is, this might be the wrong question to ask because it [...]

Writing a New Narrative for a New System

Writing a New Narrative for a New System

This article was published in Education Reimagined's Voyager on 4 May 2022. This article was the #1 read in 2022 in Voyager. No matter what happened during the pandemic, no matter how much we think the world may have changed, if we continue to hold the same values that make the old system thrive, nothing [...]

Chapter 2: Schools as Places of Becoming: The Incipient System

Chapter 2: Schools as Places of Becoming: The Incipient System

This article was published in Intrepid Ed News on 14 April 2022 This is the second installment of a longer series, a long conversation (Chapter 1 can be found here). It builds on the idea that there is no one future of education because we are all on our own journeys, and that includes schools. [...]

We are not beings, we are becomings

We are not beings, we are becomings

This article was published on UNESCO’s IDEAS LAB on 11 March 2022. While the UNESCO report Futures of Education came out with much fanfare and generated much excitement, its most powerful consideration has received surprisingly little attention. It’s not that the authors haven’t put this consideration front and center—on the contrary—yet somehow it has eluded [...]

Chapter 1: The Metaverse will open up an infinite world and may help local worlds thrive

Chapter 1: The Metaverse will open up an infinite world and may help local worlds thrive

This article was published in Intrepid Ed News on 23 March 2022. This is the first installment of a longer series, a long conversation. It builds on the idea that there is no one future of education because we are all on our own journeys and this includes schools. With not even one-fourth of the [...]

Let’s stop talking about the future of education: let each of us do the inner work

Let’s stop talking about the future of education: let each of us do the inner work

This article was published on Intrepid Ed News on 18 Feb 2022. I have been wrestling with a question for months, looking for clues to an answer in conversations, books, podcasts, and quiet moments of reflection. I’m not the first person to have posed this question, and for centuries it has created significant, sometimes bloody, [...]

The Metaverse will make our worlds smaller… and make schools “places of becoming”

The Metaverse will make our worlds smaller… and make schools “places of becoming”

For millennia, we have lived in two worlds: one imagined, the other physical. The Metaverse will make these two worlds smaller until they partly dissolve into one another. One of our worlds is shrinking and it will soon cease to exist. The other one of our worlds needs to shrink or it will cease to [...]

The Long Game: Everything changes and so will the narrative of school

The Long Game: Everything changes and so will the narrative of school

This article was published on IntrepidEd News on 4 Jan 2022. I can’t keep track of how many conversations I have had where at some point my counterpart declared that something or other I’ve proposed “will never happen because…” I’m not suggesting I’m some kind of soothsayer or that I’m the holder of Truth. I [...]